"Where are we going?"
"Where they went."
"Suppose they went *nowhere*?"

"Then this will be your big chance to get away from it all."

 

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

 

Why do all my planned trips to Des Moines (and beyond, in this case), start out at oh-dark-thirty? I think it's a conspiracy! It's got to be the black cows, working their insidious, evil will, undetected.

 

In any case, my alarm went off on time this time, promptly at 4:15 a.m. The automatic coffeemaker was already busy at work, creating that oh-so-necessary beverage that makes the world go around. The snooze button worked very well, too, but I only hit it once. Couldn't afford to miss this trip - it was time to visit the GPS Adventure Maze at the Putnam Museum in Iowa! I had heard so much about it from others who had gone before. I had a rendezvous in Omaha at 5:30 a.m. to keep - with 8601delphinium (henceforth known as 8601d), jlondon1963 (jl), and the male half of Shadow Chasers (sc).

 

It started to rain very hard as I approached 120^th St. I should have taken it as a portent, and perhaps have turned back, but 8601d's house was far closer then mine was, and I was too tired to consider driving back. Besides... THE MAZE was out there! Arrived promptly at 5:30. Nice timing, go me!

 

I stayed awake long enough to impress upon them all that there was one cache on the way out we absolutely had to hit, then I lapsed into sleep. I did miss the crossing of the first Great River - the Missouri - but that was fine, I've crossed it so many times...

 

 

"It's a big rock. I can't wait to tell my friends. They don't have a rock this big."

 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 2: Becoming Part 1

 

The cache I absolutely refused to miss was Patriotic Rock in Iowa. I'd heard so much about this rock - it is freshly repainted every Memorial Day, with a new patriotic montage. With everything I had heard... they understated. The artist is incredibly talented, and there was a board set up there with photos of the rock from past years. This cache promptly went on my favorites list where it will stay. Dropped off a ear of corn TB in the ammo can, but the rock was the real draw, of course. I did not have a camera, but my traveling companions took plenty of pictures!

 

And then I think I went back to sleep. We weren't planning to do any serious caching until after the museum, 200 miles and 3 hours into the future.

 

"I hope they have pins."

"You hope they have *what*?"

"Pins. You know, for my hat. Like these."

"Oh! I thought you said *kittens*!"

<ten minutes and much discussion later>

"So, who wants to post about the trackable geo-kitten idea?"

 

Live Geocachers Trapped in Car on Way to Davenport Museum

 

Don't ask. You don't want to know.

 

               

"I'm sorry. Last time I checked, I thought we lived in a free country. So..."
"No, we don't."
"No?"
"It's the United States of "Don't Touch That Thing Right in Front of You.""

 

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

 

The museum was great fun. We met up with cachephrase as arranged - actually, we both pulled in at the same time, just another instance of great timing! We traversed the maze, and solved all the puzzles... never cheated once! (Not that the puzzles were that difficult, true.) The exhibit was set up more for the very beginning geocacher, or earlier, but we still had a great time.  On the way to the gift shop, we passed the kid's area, and we just couldn't resist. Cachephrase got a lot of extremely zany pictures of us in a boat, a tree, with antlers, and I'm taller then I look!

 

Enter a 'nose in the air' museum employee. "You weren't taking flash pictures, were you?" "Yes." "Well, I suppose it's okay here, but can I ask you not to take them anywhere else?" "Sure." Inwardly thinking, "And can we ask you not to be such a stuck-up jerk?" It was his whole smarmy attitude that was irritating. Besides, if they didn't want flash pictures taken, shouldn't they have, like posted a sign or something? Oh well. We already had our crazy pictures anyway!

 

"Kermit, where are we?"
"Well, let's see. We're just traveling down this little black line here, and uh, just crossed that little red line over here."
"Look, why don't we just take that little blue line, huh?"
"We can't take that. That's a river."

 

The Muppet Movie

 

The rest of the day was crazy caching - 'cross the Mississippi (the second Great River) into Illinois, where I picked up another state - thank you very much! I commented that the US map looked like it had measles when I colored in the states I've cached in, and 8601 countered that his just looked like a great big mump. We did some caching along a bike path running right by the river, with sadly limited success, then headed back into Iowa, where we had much better luck. In total, we snagged 29 caches that day.

 

The capstone of the evening was the SLAGA event at Culvers in Davenport, where cachers here to visit the museum from all over gathered. Ran into a couple from Sioux Falls I'd met before in Valentine - funny how that happens! There was a big St. Louis contingent, and some locals. Not having attended MOGA, I didn't really know anyone, but the others did, and the food was good, too. Enjoyed the event, but I was getting tired, and just as happy to head back to our motel room in Iowa City. We lost cachephrase - she needed to swing south to complete the Iowa Delorme Challenge.

 

"I don't wanna get up, I'm a Toys R Us kid..."

 

"Um, I didn't order a wake up call...?" And our intrepid traveler was unwillingly thrown out of sleep mode by the turning on of the TV by the evil JL at 7:15 am. On a Sunday! I behaved, and no shoes were thrown at her head. Off to the hotel lobby for some flat, floppy, cardboard-flavored waffles, and acidic brown stuff masquerading as coffee - no DONUT. The Sioneva was NOT happy. And the weather was not designed to brighten her mood - heavy rain and storms rolling through the area. But still, we bravely pressed on - picture a line of four umbrella-carrying cachers, walking single file down a partly overgrown bike path in the pouring rain, getting slapped by wet Queen Anne's Lace and unidentified yellow flowers. That would pretty much sum up the morning, until about 11 a.m.!

 

This is running really long, so to wrap it up... we drove north to get out of the line of storms, and cached away to our hearts' content , here, there... everywhere! We got back at 10:30 pm, having found a total of 71 caches - 29 the first day, 42 the next day. That smashed my personal record for most caches found in a day!

By Sioneva

 

 

 

 A strangelet is a hypothetical object consisting of a bound state of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. An equivalent description is that a strangelet is a small fragment of strange matter. The term "strangelet" originates with E. Farhi and R. Jaffe. Strangelets have been suggested as a dark matter candidate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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