Sore Feet

And Allergies :(

Today was disappointing. I still made 1 find and kept my streak going, but I looked for 9 caches and only found 1. I'm glad the 1 happened, but it's still a bummer to be home with my knees creaking, my feet throbbing, and my back aching and only getting the one find.

Since my abundance of free time is about to come to an end, I took advantage of today and drove to the southeast side of town, where I don't normally get to lately. I saw on the geocache map that there were a good number of caches on SE 15th St. and a couple just a little ways off of that road, so I wanted to get at least a few of them.

I used to go this way semi-regularly when I first started scrapbooking. The lady that organized scrapbooking days lived down here and she would set up her house for the day with plenty of table space and supplies laid out for everyone who came. When she stopped hosting these events I stopped driving to this part of town--and I had never gone beyond her street anyway, so some of this route was brand-new to me.

The first stop was the TB McPherson Recreational Complex. There are two caches here. One is fairly close to the parking lot, so I grabbed my caching backpack, my sturdy poky stick, and my gps to hunt it down. The signal sent me to the far side of a retention pond that looked straight out of Land of the Lost--lots of trees, water, ferns and Sleestaks (ok, kidding on that last one).

Once on the far side, the needle pointed straight into the middle of the pond. Well that was out of the question so I sighed and went to look for the other one. It was in the far corner of the park, beyond the baseball field. Once the gps told me I was within 50 feet I gave up on this one. The route was across a creek and up a very steep bank. I didn't see the cache or I might have attempted this, but as it stood, I wasn't going to try that much craziness for a potential DNF (did not find). So back to the parking lot it was. Doublechecking the coordinates for the first cache showed the near side of the pond this time so I wandered over. I was able to get quite close to where the gps said Ground Zero was, but I couldn't fully investigate. There was a guy with a camper nearby just hanging out and I didn't want to look suspicious. Moving on...

I decided to skip to the farthest southeast cache on my short list for the day. It was called SRD and part of the description was that it would be easy to find because the name gave it away. Well, I had no idea what SRD meant, but wanted to give it a shot anyway. I was able to park fairly close and did make the find quickly. I didn't realize until I signed the log how new of a cache this was; I think I was the third person to sign. This was a pretty little spot and I'm glad I came out here today.

There was another cache just around the bend from here. I grabbed a plastic bag from my car to do some trash pickup while I walked to the second site. My bag was mostly full before I got halfway *chuckle* One good thing was noticing this:

There was a sign next to this saying it was a FL Dept. of Transportation Survey Marker. Now I know what an SRD is ;)

I wasn't able to find the other cache. I think the power line overhead was confusing my gps, but still thought I'd be able to find it based on the hint on the cache page. No such luck. I turned around to go back to my car and finished filling the trash bag.

I had another failure on the way to Boulware Springs Park. My gps pointed into a sludge pond and there were several middle schoolers walking home from school, so between those two things I figured discretion was the better part of valor.

There were 3 caches in the front part of the park, before the Hawthorn Trail. The first one I looked for was a no-go, but I spotted the landmark needed for the second cache which was a puzzle cache. I came up with an answer and headed off to the new coordinates. After a bit of a search I couldn't find anything. I finally gave up yet again and headed for the third one, but by the time I got to Ground Zero I was exhausted. It was a micro-sized cache which means it's the size of a 35-mm film canister or smaller, and the likely spots were large trees with saplings surrounding them and the whole lot covered in Spanish moss. Forget that. Time to call it a day on the southeast, but I held out hope for one last attempt nearer to home. Well, I'll spare the details for now, but I came up empty-handed one last time and went home. 1-for-9. Bah.