And rain came pouring after.”

and I knew she had enjoyed it as well.

From this point on till the evening it was t-storm tag. We’d pass a cache... Nope too much rain. If it let up, we’d try for one, and even got out once with an umbrella in a little wooded area, which didn’t work well because the area had low dense branches and it would have been crawl or tear up the brolley.

We found the cache and made the trades in the van instead of standing in the rain. The best tag of the day was when we had a park and grab. Got out, crossed the street without a sprinkle, signed the log and cold torrential rains soaked us before we got back across the street. I could swear the howling wind said “you’re it!”

It was along about this time too that I discovered we were much further than ½ mile from what CACHES ALONG A ROUTE (the rumble was there, just lost among the thunder) showed us to be. We came to the conclusion that the preferred route of Google Earth was not the same as the preferred route of Streets and Trips. Oh well those caches will be there if we pass this way again, maybe.

I also discovered that on one of the queries I didn’t place a check in the Earthcache box. Wow, was it the wrong one to not have on the map! We must have driven around, back and forth, hither and yon, several times trying to find the Des Moines Headwaters. Our GPS track looked like a web from an inebriated spider. We pull up just as the rain catches up to tag us again. We quickly find our answers, take the pics and head off in a direction we hadn’t been yet. Here we found the signs leading to the headwaters.

Vic pulls over to take a pic of the dam, which has wind-whipped water spraying a cloud above its rim. When she got back in the van we noticed several birds struggling against the wind, trying to get to nesting boxes set on poles. They would appear to be hovering but were actually being pushed back by the winds, and when they managed to get close, the box would sway away. We tried to take a pic; birds were out of frame, tried again, nope no good. I really detest the shutter lag on our digital camera. We kept trying for at least 10 minutes. I would say we were pretty tenacious in our attempts, but they paled in comparison to those of the birds, who were still trying when we drove off in search of Lake Shetek.

Ok, it has been a day! Time for Van Camp, and pork and beans for dinner! We get our Minnesota park permit and a camping spot. Putting up our plaid curtains and rearranging the back of the van we realize that it is 6 pm and we have a really long rainy night ahead. Did we bring a DVD for the laptop? No. Did we bring cards? No. Did we bring historical romance novels? Of course! Will I read one? No… Ok I might make an exception.

Now, Vic is sensitive to heat and gets rashes from it. She anticipates the discomfort and gets a bit, hmmm (I’m going to have to clear this description with her) shall we say, uh, temperamental (this was the word she picked).

Earlier in the day we had purchased a small battery-powered fan and she was trying to adjust the airflow to her liking(?) then Grr!, 3 minutes later pops up and says she can’t sleep, too hot, no air movement, and wants to open a window... but it’s raining. Readjust the fan and maybe make it 15 minutes this time. The park Ranger had come out to let us know there was a tornado watch till 1:00 a.m. Great, that helps! “Should we just go home?” I said “Naah, we’ll be ok and if we left we would probably just be heading into a storm.” More tossing and turning from her while I actually fell asleep despite her turmoil.

Gaaah! She had opened the van’s door to go to the restroom and the light came on. I was sleeping good and that hurt, bad! So when she got back, she grabbed the camo duct tape we carry in our cache bag and taped over the lights, because we both know there will be at least 2 or 3 more trips tonight and she is nothing if not considerate. Morning comes and we clean up at the camp’s facilities, roll up the futon and drive off. That’s the good part of Van Camp: no tent to pack up. This could definitely work for me in the future. Vic’s opinion is: motels, unless it is 50 degrees or cooler and we bring entertainment.

We head for the nearby “End of the Line” cache which is in a quaint railroad town setting. We follow the GPS arrow along the tracks and over a bridge and run into a few pesky gnats. Waving our hand to ward them off, we continue. Seventy feet to go and the gnats are so thick, and irritating us so badly, even with bug spray on, that we have to abandon the search and retreat, brushing black patches of clinging gnats off of each other. I had always considered the “Minn’so ta skeeter” stories to be tall tales, but if the gnats were this bad, I could see the skeeters flying off with Paul Bunyan’s flapjack griddle.

Pipestone. Overcast and breezy but no rain. We grab breakfast at the Mickey D’s and head for the courthouse and the tracked 105mm howitzer cache. Don’t let that term fool you, it’s a tank cache... and like most tank caches we DNF it.

On to the 3 Maidens, which is on the grounds of Pipestone National Monument; six really impressive erratics. Six? You’ll have to go there and find out. The visitor center is next and we catch the movie and watch some native artisans work the catlinite before we take the nature trail. Due to the volume of rain lately one trail was closed. We took the other and walked along the quarry sites, many of which were flooded. I had to try it. I picked up a discarded flake of catlinite and took my pocketknife to it. It was very easily worked. I left the piece where I had found it.

It was still windy and chilly as we made our way to the Sioux quartzite bluffs. Really impressive red rocks. (Ever since the Sioux Falls and Gitchie Manitou, we’ve liked red rock Earthcaches.) Just before the falls on the creek the trail was barricaded as the flow of water was immense. Braver than I, Vic ventured out further onto the boulders for the picture of the falls. A mere foot from the raging waters, she got the photo and stepped carefully back. Whew! I still had a wife! Going back since we couldn’t go forward we checked with the Oracle on the way to the visitor center. No predictions. He doesn’t do weather. We picked out some souvenirs from the gift shop and head for South Dakota.

Devils Gulch, that looks interesting, let’s pull off. We walk over a wobbly metal grated bridge and I get a funny feeling, and so does Vic. Wow, another beautiful red rock place! We look around a bit and spot two snakes sunning themselves in a pit. Vic asks if there are rattlesnakes in S.D. “Oh yeah, but these aren’t rattlers... the one behind you is!” She catches on real quick, not even a squeak out of her (must have noticed the smile on my face) but I made sure to stay out of her reach for awhile. Crossing back over the bridge we got the same tugging feeling again and, reading the nearby information board, we found out why. The water below the bridge is over 600 feet deep! We also read that this is where, when the posse was in hot pursuit, Jesse James, on his horse, jumped the canyon to escape. I could see it was possible, but have to admit Jesse must have needed a really big saddle.

This was the leg were the preferred routes were off the most, so we didn’t get many caches in S.D. We rolled on through Vermillion to head for Obert where Vic had wanted to place a cache. The town park was right off the highway and was complete with his-and-her two-holers. We found a good place for the cache (not in the outhouse! We wouldn’t do that) and started gathering coordinate readings and even took out my vintage rangefinder (another Victorious Shopping find) to get distances from landmarks that we could find in Google Earth. Confident we had a good hide we titled this one “Oh Boy! Obert!.. Oh?” and went on to visit Maskell, the next town, where she found family names in the walkway in front of city hall (some kind of fundraiser, I believe.) Not much walkway though; Obert’s two-holers were bigger than the Maskell City Hall.

I’ve been working on developing my own Earthcaches and hit upon the idea of picking geological sites that Lewis and Clark had mentioned in their journals. One of those sites was at Ponca State Park, where we were now headed. We pass through Newcastle… Newcastle? Why do I know that? Driving through I spot a historical marker but Vic passes it by. I caught the word “volcano” and the memory erupts into my conscious mind. "That’s it! Do we have another cache container?” We have a few types so we turn around and go back to the marker. It is for a nearby feature that was mentioned in the L&C journals, a place where the cliff side was venting smoke and radiating great heat. Early settlers had thought it was a volcano and it became known as the Ionia Volcano (after the now gone town). A long time ago the phenomenon stopped when part of the cliff fell into the river. We called the cache near the marker, “I Could Have Been...” a great earthcache!

Pulling into Ponca Vic is exhausted. It has been a long day, she didn’t sleep well and she does all of the driving (her insistence, something about white knuckles when I drive). So I pay for our chosen campsite, look around the displays and go back to the van. Wrong campsite; the one I told the staff we wanted was ninety feet further away from the restrooms. We can’t have that! I go back in and fix my oops, mumbling all the while. Pulling into our site, we start to settle in for the night.

Remember that table fan? We had picked out the site for its proximity to the facilities and it turned out to be an electrical site. Well we plugged that fan in to hold the mosquitoes (Nebraska skeeters, small enough to be blown away) at bay while we ate dinner. Wow! Electricity at a camp site! We had always tent camped in primitive areas before, and in cooler weather, or we would have thought to bring a bigger fan. I had planned on the table fan being run by the inverter. Live and learn! Vic was slightly more comfortable and really exhausted, so she did get a decent night’s sleep.

The next morning we found the limestone exposure that we would develop as “L&C Allom Stone Clift” Earthcache and completed our research. The river along this area has not been “improved” and is quite tranquil. I would not hesitate to camp here again. It is really a gem in the Nebraska Parks system. Stopping on the way out of the park we explored the fountain near the entrance, which consisted of several sculptured columns progressing from ancient to present wildlife and human ancestors. It also had a large pond with a border incorporating fossil-bearing rock from the park. Pictures really don’t do it justice.

Heading home! We had Van Camped, taken a few more steps toward our Gold Earthcache Masters pin, logged 20 caches including the EC’s, outran (sometimes!) torrential thunderstorms, learned a few things and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

So maybe our next cache trip should not center on finding Earthcaches? Oh, wait we’ll be seeking our 500^th cache soon. I’d like to make it our 12th Earthcache also, then we’ll qualify for the Gold Earthcache Master pin. Two more Earthcaches to find, but the nearest two are about 150 miles from home, no problem…
except that they are both in opposite directions and the caches are mounting up 479... 480... 481.