The Online Geocacher
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Sat, Jul 19, 2008

Where did we leave off? That’s it! "And we now plan our caching trips around earthcaches."

"So what should we do for our anniversary?"
Most wives might say dinner and dancing or a movie.
"How about a cache trip? We’ll take a whole week off."
"Not a bad idea but we can’t afford to spend too much."

"OK! We can camp in the van and bring our own food, yeah, that will work... but we need to do a few things first. We’ll need curtains if we plan on getting any sleep, and our air mattress is too big to use in the van..."

A futon cushion offered by one of our sons was a first step, but how to make the curtains? I get an email at work saying she found the perfect material for the curtains, and we already had it. We can use Velcro to keep them up.

Coming home I spot the material, "Dear, where did you get that plaid?" "It was in the closet and, we had 8 yards!" "I was going to make a kilt from that" "Oops, well look at it this way, how often do you really need to wear a skirt, and how often do you wear the one you have?"

I couldn’t fault the reasoning but made some cutting suggestions anyway, (you could do that with fabric, but why?) that may eventually let me squeak out a kilt from the remaining tartan. Self-adhesive Velcro wouldn’t hold the weight of the curtains, so we tried Superglue to hold the Velcro to the van interior... that worked, until we tried to put the curtains up. Oh screw it! (light bulb goes on) so we got some little brass screws and they worked out great. A quick oil change and some Icy Hot for my wrist and the van was ready.



Our last cache trip, while enjoyable, had left us frustrated... driving in circles or making wrong turns, so we decided we needed mapping software. A little research and discussion led us to decide on Microsoft Streets and Trips. It had its own GPS receiver and would give us turn-by-turn directions!

Watching several listings on eBay, we got a feel for what they were going for and began our bidding efforts. Outbid! "We ain’t bidding that much!" Outbid again! Then finally we had ‘Shopped Victoriously’ (I love that phrase) and it was on its way. We had asked the seller to turn the GPS on before shipping so we could see if it could track our shipment better than the post office did. It got the intended laugh and smiley. As it turned out, it arrived just after we got home from the trip. We did get a power inverter for the laptop and other electronics. This would end up being a very important item for this trip.

Now imagine all that you’ve just read with a small, intermittent background... a *kaff, kaff* noise. It wasn’t bad enough to cancel the trip, but the font size was getting bigger *kaff, kaff!*. A little bronchitis won’t slow me down. I make a note to take the nebulizer we use for our son’s asthma.

OK, we’re loaded, double-checked our list, all set to go. Des Moines-bound for the confluence of the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers. We find a few caches along the route but make pretty quick time. Principal Park, the home of the Iowa Cubs, is nestled in the fork of the rivers so we had *kaff* to get pics for one of our sons, the Chicago Cubs fan. Neat stadium.



To log the confluence Earthcache, we needed to measure the width of each river using the GPS. Set a waypoint, walk to the other end of each of two bridges and read the distance. Completing the measurements we hit nearest waypoint and found out we had walked right by one, twice. Found it, signed the log and got back into the warmth of the car. It was a cold, blustery day for standing on bridges *kaff.*

We drive around town finding a few caches between circling and wrong turns, where was that software? We noted some cache ideas new to us and DNFed our share as well. The next Earthcache, Bedrock, was fairly *kaff* close by so we made the drive to Saylorville Lake. This area came into being after the emergency spillway of the dam was open for 16 days because of a flood in 1984. The rush of water exposed some really interesting sedimentary features, with fossils, lime, sandstones and a thin layer of coal that blackened the mud in spots.



We took some great pics, wrote down the answers for the log and walked back along the gentle grade to the parking spot.

*kaff! kaff!*

I was really winded from the walk, so I plugged the nebulizer into the inverter and starting feeling better,*kaff*; before the treatment had finished the fuse for the car’s 12 volt output had burnt out. The nebulizer was pulling too many amps and we had no spare fuse (cue ominous background music).

The Legends State Park was our next stop. It was another Earthcache and camping was available. We had planned on staying here. The road that would lead us to the coordinates was closed but the walking trail was open so we started down the trail, *kaff*, had to stop to breathe, *kaff*.

"Maybe we better go back" my wife said, "No, I want to finish this Earthcache" I replied, while leaning over my walking stick. *kaff*.

I was stubborn, but when she said she could probably find another way down I agreed. I could have hiked on down but no way could I ever have walked it back up. By the way, my wife is an excellent navigator despite the wrong turns and circling... personally, we blame that on city planners.

I’m glad she found the way. This is Vic’s favorite Earthcache so far, a beautiful sandstone canyon with a babbling brook running through it. The soft sandstone was marred by the names and dates scratched into it, but those were interesting in themselves as well. There is even a feature that if viewed from the right angle shows up as a face.



We probably spent about an hour and a half here before moving on.

Now here is where a good wife comes in; she says that she is really worried about the late spring snow in the forecast and would like to try to get home before the storm.
"I suppose you’re right but you won’t be disappointed we didn’t get more caches, will you?" *kaff!*

Day one of vacation ends and we didn’t even make it to van camp. The end of day two brings an ambulance to our door. *Gasp, Gasp!!*

Five days in the hospital with my first asthma attack, a couple of weeks to recuperate and we were ready for another road trip!

To be continued...