It was a drizzly, misty, spitty, sprinkle of a day. At least the sun isn’t in your eyes while driving on a day like this. The car was packed, fuel topped off, ready to roll, just needed one thing, Vic. Picking her up from work in the early afternoon, she takes the helm and we’re on our way.

Kearney bound, in the footsteps of countless pioneers following the Platte River Road to the promise of the west. Only we were on the interstate, in a car, covering the same distance in an hour that took several days for the pioneers in prairie schooners or pushcarts to cross. Riding in comfort, effortlessly driving over the occasional hill that would have been a struggle to surmount with wagons pulled by horse, mule or oxen. Crossing the Platte itself on a ribbon of concrete, with no concern for mired wheels, deceptive channels or the fabled “quicksand.”

One advantage our predecessors on this journey had was that when they needed a “rest,” they rested. On I-80 ( all interstates for that matter) you get a rest where the states have decided a rest is needed and has provided facilities for that purpose. These facilities meet a variety of needs including restrooms, information, vending machines and in some spots, sculptures are provided for our viewing pleasure. Pleasant semi sheltered areas to picnic in and areas for your pet to “exercise.”

Little do most travelers know of the hidden treasures within many of the Rest Areas. Ranging from nano’s to gallon buckets, they are the welcome Smileys to get us out of the car and into wooded areas, tall grass along fence lines or the nearest metal surface. These caches are often the first finds in new states for travelers. A quick off of the interstate, a short search and back on the road. These are our friends on wet rainy days, giving us quick caches to find along our routes without risking the fishtail or worse, down soggy minimum maintenance roads. Yes, we have learned from previous errors in judgment to take those signs seriously. For our trip out, we sought the rest area caches exclusively, not only because of the rain, we would also need to be checked into our room before the weekends first activity was scheduled to begin.

That activity was a separate event called the Off Planet III cache. Due to the rain and cloud obscured skies this event was postponed. We had figured that would be the case. We would use the extra time to try for a few caches near our motel, but the first and most important thing we did was to find the donut shop we had gotten apple fritters from, while on a vacation here in our pre-caching days. It was there, right where we left it three years ago.

Vic had reminded me of them when we first planned to attend the Geo picnic. They were really good and I have a weakness for fritters anyway. Unfortunately, I have been on a strict diet. For a long time, a real long time. The shop opens at 6 am both Saturday and Sunday, so guess which caching couple will be starting their days off early with a big sugar rush?

Back at the motel and settling in for the night, I connect to the Internet and log our four finds for the day, only four? No wonder we were in town earlier than expected. Afterwards, I check out both the local and the geocaching.com forums and play some off topic games before closing the connection and turning out the lights. For the next 2 hours I was tossing and turning like clothes in a dryer. Bed was too soft, couldn’t get comfortable, some unnamed partner was snoring, loudly, too hot, too cold, finally fell asleep only to wake about 5 am with fritters calling my name. Jooooe.

After showering, I try to check email and we can’t connect to the Internet. We check at the desk, but there is a problem with the motel’s modem that no one can diagnose. Its almost six, so we start out and buy 4 fritters, then park at the next building down from the donut shop, where there is another motel with wifi. We hook up no problem, but there is a strange mmm mm mmmm sound in the background as we check email. Turns out the sounds were me enjoying my share of the fritters. They was goood! They was!

We began our pre-dawn hunt with 2 in a nearby park. DNF the first after searching a pine tree with flashlights for about 15 minutes. The second cache we looked for was the first leg of a multi that we didn’t realize was a multi, because I normally filter those out on trips. We enter the final coordinates and will try to get that one later in the day. Dawn was on the horizon and with it our find rate increased dramatically, yup we found another one for a one hundred percent increase. A half dozen more rate increases and we head back to the motel to get ready for the picnic.

Pulling in to the event site, there is a good sized group there already. We fill out our name tags, deposit the salad we had brought on the food table and look for familiar faces and names we have seen but not yet met. We discovered a few t-shirt bugs and had some nice conversations. One member, due to jesting posts, had adhered a t-bug tag to his cheek, that was titled “Trip’s Double Dog Dare.” Lots of young cachers and 4 legged cachers were present as well.

Foods on! Come and get it! There was a good selection of picnic staples and a few interesting salads I haven’t tried before. I actually managed to not heap my plate and kept the portions to a reasonable size, however I did go back for seconds of two of the salad items. So far I hadn’t blown the diet too bad, if you don’t count the 2 fritters I had this morning. Fritters don’t count do they?

After the plates starting filling the trash bags, a member with a BIG VOICE ( not the one in my stories, but equally impressive) welcomes everyone and begins the drawings for door prizes. This takes awhile as there are a lot of prizes ranging from keyring flashlights to geocoin proofs to be given away. My number had been drawn twice, once for a flashlight and again for an unactivated geocoin/bottleopener. I was tickled.

Then it was awards time. The award for 1000 caches found by group members is a golden ammo can personalized with the cachers name and the 1000^th find cache. We had four of those and it was pointed out that over a third of one couples 1000 finds were FTF’s. We had a canine cacher who had logged over the 1k mark as well and he was presented with a special award of dog biscuits in an etched glass container. There was also one individual with 3k caches and another with 4k caches who received awards as well.

At the conclusion of those awards the president of our group climbed upon a table and drew forth the Ceremonial Logbooks for the Nebraska 93 County Challenge and the DeLorme Challenge from an ammo can nearly as tall as herself. A list of successful candidates was called upon and after a short inquisition, (What is your name? What was your quest? What is your favorite cache?) were allowed to approach the logs and sign. Now, for all posterity, it shall be known, that these individuals had stepped up and met the challenge.

A group of about 8 people were called away for a short conference under a nearby shade tree. When they came back it was time to play “To Tell The Truth.” The Nebraska volunteer reviewer, Heartland Cacher, had always kept his/her identity secret, and had decided that at this event , he/she would “stand up.” The local forums were having fun guessing who or what the reviewer actually was. Some say he/she was a robot with a gps heart and multi-tool fingers, others swore he ate nano’s and ‘produced’ ammo cans.

The group of people taken aside earlier, were the panel of questioners and the three Heartland Cachers, while the Nebraska cacher with the greatest number of finds, acted as emcee. After some good questions and very good answers the panel had formed a consensus that #2 was the “Real Heartland Cacher” Drum roll please…..“Will the Real Heartland Cacher please stand up?” All three rose, all three sat down. The emcee walked up and introduced himself as the mysterious reviewer. Explaining both his reasons for being anonymous at first and for coming out now, he went on to present some prizes to people that had correctly answered questions regarding his career as reviewer. And now we know!

Everyone was then gathered in front of the shelter, for a group photo and after that we were kept in line to be counted off by sixes as we filed past. This would form teams for the event caches. My team had the newest registered cacher present at the picnic, the event was his first cache. We were sharing helpful tips and worked with him to enter the coordinates into his gps. Our first cache was a five part multi to build a poker hand by each team taking an envelope with a card sealed inside, from each cache, so he got plenty of practice loading coords. We were then to return to the shelter and get the next cache’s coordinates. Vic’s group had been given the wrong coordinates for their first cache and they ended up in the middle of a cornfield. Not only that but they had to work hard to get to the wrong spot, crossing a few fences along the way. Getting corrected coords by phone they soon found the cache and returned to the shelter.

I had stopped to talk with a caching couple who wanted to thank us for placing a particular cache, and Vic was getting hot, so neither of us finished all of the event caches, but we were with our teams in spirit, as we drove back to our room to cool down. I did manage to eat several cookies between the various event caches and before we left, Ok, six big cookies, because self control went out the window with the fritters this morning and let’s face it, I’m no cookie rookie either.

A short nap in a cool room, top off the gas tank, and we were back in time for the awarding of the event cache poker prizes. After determining the best hand, Monty Hall (with the big voice) said “Let’s Make a Deal! High hand, you get your choice of…bag #1, box #2 or envelope #1”,yes we gave him a hard time for that but he didn’t ever call it envelope number 3. “I choose.. box #2 “ “ Jim , tell them what they’ve won!” ”New Cars! For your entire team!” and he gave the team captain the box of hotwheel cars to hand out. Next up was my team’s captain, “I’ll take bag #1!” “You have won!…. micro caches!” It was a paper grocery bag 2/3 full of 35mm and advantix film canisters. I grabbed several of the advantix and a few 35mm even though I have at least ninety film containers at home. Hey, a prize is a prize! I think our team captain is still trying to hand the rest of them out. Vic’s team had the 3^rd best hand, so they were stuck with envelope #1, so named, we found out, because it held the best of the prizes. Each member of the team was given….. a card.. granting “Head of the Line Privileges For Cobbler!!” the other teams were thumping their heads and muttering “We could a had the envelope!” The Nebraskache members who have attended this annual event in the past have always raved over the Dutch oven cooked cobblers that have become a tradition and big selling point for event attendance. They were just beginning to bake under the red hot coals, as dusk began to settle over the Kearney State Park.

With dusk, activity shifted to optics that had been setup for the Off Planet Event Cache. This was originally to have been at a private observatory not too far away. However the previous days rain and the fact that the field we had to drive through had not been mowed, made the picnic location a much better choice. We were given the opportunity to view several celestial bodies through a huge pair of binoculars and a mirror telescope. The moon was almost full and so bright that it almost hurt to look at it. Jupiter and several of its moons were visible in both the binoculars and the telescope. We also trained the scope on a distant star cluster at the edge of the galaxy that looked like a strawberry with points of light instead of seeds.

A bonus was the satellite pointed out to us, that we followed across the sky with our naked eyes. This was about the time, at Vic’s insistence, that I became the bad guy and took photos of the Off Planet event. I did warn people, but when the flash went off there were several painful groans. I took 3 pics altogether and figured I had pushed my luck enough.

“Cobble Gobble, Cobble Gobble” Time for Vic and her teammates to lead the flock to the cobbler. There was a choice of apple, blueberry, cherry, and peach., hot from the coals, steaming bubbly, fruity cobbler. Vic chose blueberry and brought it back to cool while she went to the restroom. I snuck a taste of it even though I’m not fond of blueberry, mmm. When it was opened up to the rest of us, I quickly got in line for the cherry. I am now a “Cobbler Gobbler!” It was as good as the reputation that had preceded it. A little more conversation and some trading of travelers and discovery of bugs and coins found the event winding down. It had been a good day, we had enjoyed ourselves.

Vic sent me out the next morning for take home fritters as she packed up and tried to connect to the Internet. Still no luck connecting to the net and the owner of the donut shop said I couldn’t buy all of his fritters, he had to save some for his regular customers. “Don’t you have fritters in Omaha?” “Yes, but none this good!” Taking all he allowed me and returning to the motel, Vic and I both, had one fritter each and packed the rest away to be frozen until the puppies next visit. It’s going to be a few weeks, so I hope there’ll still be some left for them. I just became a “Cobbler Gobbler” this weekend but I’ve been a “Fritter Critter” for ages.

Packing up and checking out we go in search of caches. The closest one we decided to go to was called “the worst hidden cache in Nebraska.” The gsak smart name for this waypoint in the gps was “worsthid” or something like that and I had convinced myself it was the cache near a herd of buffalo sculptures that had a galvanized mesh “skin” for topiary plants to grow around. When we got to the coordinates for the worsthid I couldn’t find it, I was so confused, there were no buffalo here! Vic got out of the car and grabbed the keyholder from the only piece of metal that wasn’t barb wire for 50 feet in any direction. Then she drove to “You Can’t Roller Skate” which was in the galvanized buffalo herd. I didn’t understand this name, didn’t get it at all. We stated that when we logged the cache and got several replies. I guess not knowing the song, doesn’t help my understanding any, but at least we now know where it came from. I’m also sure there are those who don’t understand some of my cache titles either, like “Stark”, ”Bluebottle, Brownbottle …Flew”, “Bridgin’” or the internationally known (one person from Germany on a layover found it.) ”Not a Jetta, Not a Rabbit.”

South of Kearney some 20 miles or so is the “Funk Lagoon EarthCache” this was the other recently published EarthCache referred to in my “Going for the Gold” story. We learned more about the importance of wetlands, their management and the geological formations that allow them to exist. Collecting the required logging information, we drove south past the source of the gunfire we had heard, and there was a nice string of decoys set out on one of the wetland ponds. It was a little unnerving hearing the gunfire and not knowing where it was coming from, but I hope the hunter got his limit. It’s all part of managing the ecosystems.

At the end of an earlier story (Birthday(B)ash), I had mentioned the Nebraska 93 County Challenge to Vic, and after seeing a few people logging the Ceremonial Logbook at the event, she was game for it. Thanks to the Streets and Trips map and all the pushpinned caches imported from gsak we knew of some caches that would give us another county. “Murder or Not” was down a minimum maintenance road and as we approached the site we saw a big cowboy boot on top of a large tombstone. We got out and read it before walking to the crest of “Boot Hill” which was a small area fenced off with barb wire and a tree in one corner. I didn’t see any headstones but there were a few small bushes in the fenced area.

This was my favorite cache on the trip home. It was so picturesque, it just sent you back to the time, not in a tourist trap kind of way with character cutouts you poke your head through for pictures, but a “we’re filming Little House on the Prairie here.” On the way up, we saw prairie dog holes and little itty bitty cacti, the last time I had seen those was when I worked on “Dances With Wolves.”

The seed heads of some sort of Prairie grass growing along the base of the hill were so slender and fine that I was reminded of a faint purple mist hovering a few feet off the ground and wavering in the wind. The photo’s I took will never do justice to the memory. This is a big reason we love to Geocache.

Another reason we love caching came up as we approached the crossroads that would lead to the next cache. I had seen a hawk land on a telephone pole about a hundred yards away and told Vic to pull up and see if we could get a pic. I’ll give a quick explanation before I tell the rest of the story, both Vic and I are fascinated by raptors, birds of prey. To me, more than anything else, they symbolize freedom and power. As we drive along any given day, we point out every owl, hawk , eagle and even vultures that we see, to each other. Whenever I see one up close, I feel almost joyous.

As we slowly drove closer to the pole, the hawk took flight and gracefully flew off into the distance, but I had also seen another hawk land two posts further down. Vic walked towards that one and took a few zoom shots, before it too flew off, but this hawk came back around, flared his wings and circled within camera range for a few minutes, squawking at Vic the whole time. After a moment he perched again a few poles further down. When Vic came back to the car I asked if she got any good flight shots since he was posing so well for her and she said she hadn’t been able to find the bird in the viewscreen of the digital camera. I decided to try and walked down the road to almost an exact replay. I did manage to both keep the hawk in the viewfinder and zoom in for a flight shot that I’ll include with the story, but it was disappointingly blurry.

At one point driving along the back roads we had to stop to allow a turkey hen to cross the road followed by about 16 turklings.(they call baby geese goslings don’t they?) about 5 of them didn’t cross and looked around in a confused cluster. I wish I had a video of them as they moved in a tight group in short spurts and all swiveled their heads at the same time to nervously look at us, then the road, then the ditch. Seeing that they weren’t going to cross until we left, we carefully drove past them. Later when logging the cache, I looked up the term for young turkeys and found out they are called poults. So if the turklings roosted in a maple or an oak, that would make it a poult tree. We learn so much from our trips!

Back north to the interstate for a bit then one more dip south to pick up another county. As we drove to the next 2 caches I looked them up in the palm and remembered reading the story in the ‘The Complete Roadside Guide to Nebraska’ and told it to Vic as we drove. We’re going to get a lot of use out of that book doing the 93. There are other versions of the story but this is the one that I had read. The first cache was at the historical marker and the second was at the gravesite of Susan O. Hail. This was a pioneer woman who had died on the trail west. She was buried by her husband who used lumber from their wagon to construct her casket, then returned to Omaha and brought back, in a wheelbarrow, a finely polished tombstone to mark her lonely grave, before continuing his journey west. The stone was remarked upon in journals of subsequent travelers along the trail and so made its way into the History of the West.

I can shut down the laptop, let the ac cool my thighs ( I need to find a suitable tray/desk for the laptop on these trips) and relax for the rest of the trip home since we had finds already in the remaining counties on the way. The time had also slipped away on us and we needed to get back. Later in the evening after recording our bug discoveries and emailing EarthCache answers, logging our finds, I was able to run a new ‘My Finds’ query to see how many counties we have logged a cache in. 73 more to go and we are eager for it.

Now if only Van Camp was still with us.