Shrek from team Shrek & Fiona posted a note to do a cache that is not visited very much.  It is on the lonely cache list.

  Two teams (the Balks and Team Raslas) responded that they would be interested in the challenge to go find this cache. We set a meeting time and place and when we got to the area we did not think about the past weather and all the rain we recently had.  To our surprise, the very small creek is now a raging river!  We looked for a place to cross upstream and at that point we thought about giving up before getting started.  We thought about that for about 30 seconds and all agreed to go get this cache one way or another.

   As a group/team we moved downstream looking for a way to get across--but nothing looked promising.  Now it is time to get serious!  Shrek found a dead tree and pushed it over. This will make a good bridge.  The Balks found a down tree, now it is bridge building time.  Our first try it floated away.  Our second try, the Balks' boots got filled with water when he stepped onto our second bridge,  On the third try, two people made it across the makeshift bridge, but after the second person, the bridge fell apart and floated away. Now what are we going to do--2 people on this side of the river and 2 on the other side.  We still have the dead trees that are now floating away so we made our way through the brush to catch up to the trees in the water and retrieve them.  We let them float farther downstream till we got to a narrower spot, but now the river split and there are two to cross.  We lodged one tree and crossed to the next spot.  We did the same with the next dead tree and made our way across.  Then we thought we better pull that one on land so it doesn't float away.

 The four of us are all together again to continue on our way to the cache. A few steps and the ground is all flooded under the tall grass.  We are now an hour into this adventure and our feet are cold and wet.  The water was deep enough to get into our knee high boots but no one was willing to turn back.  So through the wet marshy area we went stumbling and getting more wet.  This went on for another hour.  We are worn out when we finally get out of the wet tall grass area and back onto some hard ground.

 We rested for a couple minutes and thought how foolish this was, but how much fun we were having as a group.  Now for the easy part--into a small wooded area and out the other side to make the find.  We got the cache and signed our names.  A short rest there and then we looked at the fence that was only a few feet away thinking how we could get over that and walk up to the road just a few more feet away.  But then reality set in.  We can't cross that fence because it would put us on the interstate and there was no way anyone would stop and pick up four wet dirty and rough looking geocachers.  We put our back to the fence and our nose into the wind and headed back. It took two hours to make the quarter mile in and one hour to make our way back out stumbling and falling in the tall wet grass, crossing the makeshift bridges and returning to the cars for our group photo, wet and ducking behind open car doors to change out of the wet clothes. Now it was time to refuel our bellies and go home--but wait it was only noon so we couldn't waste the day and headed into the Black River Forest to hit some more but easier caches.

written and submitted by Shrek & Fiona

By Shrek & Fiona

Shrek and Fiona say caching is fun and is a great way to see some of the hidden places that are unseen by so many.