Spring Break!

Chert Chasing 101

 This story precedes the already published Cache and Splash story.

Spring break!! A lot has happened since I left off on Thanksgiving weekend. A sinus surgery in December, just two days before Christmas, a new puppy we named Pitch, a close call on being laid off from work, giving up Pitch because she was far too energetic for us and didn't get along with Gitchie (it was tough giving her up though).  I have another sinus surgery scheduled for the middle of this month also. We haven't done a lot of caching in that time, so we are itching to get on the road.

We begin our planning for a trip to the Nebraska panhandle to work on the 93 County and Delorme challenges. The idea was to take our time, go from cache to cache, see all the great sites, Chimney Rock, Toadstool Park, Carhenge, and gather info to create a few more EarthCaches, basically enjoying ourselves Van Camping. To facilitate a more carefree trip, I had put together a GSAK database from six pocket queries with all of the caches in the western 2/3 of Nebraska, so that we weren't locked into a specific route.

A short time ago, Vic had decided having Microsoft Streets and Trips on my lap wasn't working the best for her and we purchased a Garmin Nuvi. I also had bought a 1 gig micro SD card to use in it. I was just learning how to load data when I went to remove the card and somehow shoved it entirely inside the unit. Oh great, I just made a costly mistake. I contacted Garmin and explained my problem and they said they would replace the unit and give me a Garmin SD card as well; it wasn't a one gig card but hey they didn't have to replace it. All I had to pay for was shipping the first unit back to them. Boy, I was relieved, but would we get the replacement in time for our trip?

Sometime prior to this I had discovered the joys of GSAK macros. We could now easily check to see what counties we had found caches in, what Delorme pages were covered and I now had a keystroke macro/exe combo to import the different icons for caches onto our Streets and Trips map. That one was fun to watch as it opened and closed folders, typed in data, entered, opened the next screen, check marked boxes, and changed pushpins to icons all without my doing anything more than an initial double click... sure beats the way I had tried to do color coded pushpins before and it had the familiar, easily recognizable icons. Before I had to have a cheat sheet to use for the pushpin colors, in fact, it is still taped to the laptop. Anyway, I went to the GSAK forums and found a macro that would load caches into the Nuvi as points of interest and we were eager to try it out.

Two weeks before the trip, Vic gets a doom-and-gloom feeling that we need a backup plan in case the early April weather doesn't cooperate in northern and western Nebraska. I tell her to figure out something different then, kinda huffily, after all the work I had put into queries and such for the panhandle trip. One week before the trip, actually 5 days, she finally decided the alternate would be to go down through Joplin Mo. into Arkansas then cut over to Oklahoma to catch and follow Route 66 back up. She had the general route planned but now we had to set up our caches along a route queries and do it quickly, time was running out. Omaha to Joplin, we were ok with interstate and major highway, no problem there. It was after our westing from Arkansas the troubles began. I entered 2 places in Google Earth clicked and it took me onto the turnpike. I don't want the turnpike, so I enter points a shorter distance apart and it got me where I wanted. I tried for another leg, turnpike! Again shorter distances, turnpike! It was a long frustrating evening but by leaving off the first and last interstate legs I managed to get Vic's route down to eight pocket queries, two days worth, with one of the segments only eight miles long. I was beginning to think Google gets a percentage of the turnpike tolls. We would only run these queries if needed to avoid apparent adverse April weather in Nebraska. We also got the replacement Nuvi today so I had a day or two to figure out how to load and use it for our trip.

Surfing the Garmin site after I registered, I found we could download and choose our "vehicle" from several available graphics.  I wanted to use the cannon or the pirate ship or the biplane or even the big ol' RV, Vic chose the station wagon, because her family used to take trips in one. I wanted different and fun and I get trumped by sentimentality. She didn't like the British lady talking to her either. I guess all of the Anglophiles are on my side of the family. Even though we haven't named any of our other GPS units my sons' said we needed to name the Nuvi (it talks dad, it has to have a name!) so we all decide to name her.....Lucy. That way when we pull in the driveway I can say "Hey Luuuuucy, I'm home."

Wednesday, the next night, was make-or-break day,  the weatherman is telling us of expected accumulations of up to twelve inches and blizzard like conditions predicted for the weekend over most of the area we had planned to travel. Our choice had been made for us and I set the queries for the Route 66 trip to run beginning tonight and tomorrow. I'm also informed that Vic doesn't want to sleep in the van on this trip, so we will need to get motel rooms each night. She swaps the camp gear for suitcases and starts getting everything together while I set up databases.

5:00 p.m. Friday, April 3rd!!! I have the next 2 weeks and possibly more, (I have surgery scheduled Wednesday the 15th) off from work. I finish loading the electronics including a Tungsten E2 Palm that had been tossed in with the M135 we got from eBay, because it didn't work. After a $65 dollar repair we now have a pair! And an M135 to spare. It seems every trip there is more and more data sets I have to do to get ready. We'll also be putting the Nuvi and a good suggestion my son gave us, to the test on this trip. Let's hope the weather holds out for our southern route. (Cue......sorry, sound effects have been temporarily disabled for this story. You may thank me for that! Look for *)

The drive went fairly quick, we enjoyed the time on the road, commenting on passing scenery and singing along with the radio. Our local country station plays NASCAR talk shows on Saturday mornings so we tuned in an oldies station instead as "we head out on the highway, looking for adventure, in whatever comes our way."*(this one is a judgement call, if you've heard me sing before, you may be glad about the disabled sound effects). Leisurely caching along the route we pick up a rest area cache and a DNF from our alphanumeric run, then go on to visit a crafty cache near a restaurant that blended in very well with its surroundings. You gotta love the time and thought that go into some of these hides.

 What has been working well for us is to use streets and trips to choose upcoming caches along or off the route then select that cache for "The Lucy" to take us to, turn by turn. When we arrive at the locations it's up to the legends and geosense to make the find and sign the log before Vic talks into an mp3 player making notes about the cache and anything we may want to put into the online logs. At the end of the day, I download the separate mp3 notes into a folder to be played back later while logging. This was suggested by my son one day after he spent an hour recording obnoxious sounds for his own amusement... and to annoy his brothers. Yeah I was slightly annoyed too when he played "I found the cache under a log and when I opened it, blllllghghhgh ......oooh that feels better!" *but not so much I didn't see the merits of the suggestion. He's a pre-teen, what can I say?

Arriving in Joplin in the early afternoon, we seek a few caches; one that stands out was in a neighborhood park that we crossed some railroad tracks to get to from where we parked. Something I have always enjoyed doing was walking tracks and searching the ballast for interesting or unusual rocks or things. I spotted what looked like an orangey, rusty tow hitch. Turning it over I saw that it was a chert nodule that was semi hollow in the round area with a dark rusty colored, marrow like, area that really reminded me of the ball end of a femur. I picked it up and pocketed it. Bones of the Earth! You can find all sorts of treasure caching in new areas! We danced quite a bit once in the park, along pathways and flowerbeds with my GPS taking me further away and Vic's doing a better job of leading us to the clever hide. While I retrieved the cache which was out of Vic's reach, she felt eyes on her... from the direction of the empty rails. Then she saw two beady points looking at us from under some debris and pointed them out to me to take a pic. It was, we think, a woodchuck guarding the rails from chert-chasing tourists. I had my souvenir; we wouldn't fight him to get more.

Waking early, as we usually do, we pack up, check out and drive to the Chert Beds EC. What a place!! There is a falls over a man made structure but below that the water tumbles over the chert beds themselves and there are multilevel, water smoothed, hole pocked, fracture lined, rock beds on the road side of the stream. Chert is a flinty type material capable of being very smooth and glass like and razor sharp if flaked. Sharp wasn't a problem here as the water had rounded and polished exposed edges. The true beauty of the chert is in the coloring ranging from cool creamy white into shades of grey and shot through with dusty rose, pinks, reds and oranges mostly along the fracture lines. We were amazed and thrilled to be walking along exploring details, seeing images in the colorful stone much as we do with clouds. "Hey this looks like a Picasso!" "Is that a Pollock? No! Not the rock, the fish in the river." I can never let a poor attempt at humor go by. You should know that by now. There was a big chert boulder, split off from the main beds and I wanted to climb onto it to take some pics of the falls as it was the best vantage point. Did I forget to mention I had brought my old 35mm camera with a wide angle lens? Perfect for this place! We found a gnarly rooted tree growing on one spot among the rock and even a sandy/gravely beach area. Here and there in some of the weathered depressions there was evidence of small fires, built to ward off a cool evening and bring cheer to pleasant diversions streamside. I'm jealous, I would love to have such a place to visit regularly back home.  

   After spending quite awhile at the beds, we set off for the next EC at Wildcat Glade. There was a nature center building here, but we arrived about an hour before it opened. We walked along the paths and read the signs about the flora, and little critters that lived here. Strolling down the creek side path we found a more greyish variety of the chert with sharper exposed surfaces dottled here and there with lichens. It was a very pleasant area more geared to exploring wildlife and vegetation than geology, but had both in abundance. We weren't sure about one of the logging answers and thought we should wait to ask at the visitor center, but it didn't open for another hour. We decided to push on to the Prairie EC next on our list.

  The prairie had us walking along a wooded edge of the section, so as to not disturb the native plants. Along the way, we saw several of the mima features that were the subject of this EC. Like rolling little wavelets in a sea of fresh springtime green, the mima hummocks rose up to add interest to the panoramic view. You could just picture little girls in calico dresses and bonnets playing among the tall grass.

  Vic made the comment that we had visited the three earthcaches in the wrong order as far as the wow factor goes, that we should have started with the prairie, then the grove and finally gone to the falls. I enjoyed each of them for the lessons and the views that they shared with us, but I do have to admit that the wow factor could have skyrocketed at Wildcat Grove had we seen one of the local variety of tarantulas while inspecting the lichen covered chert outcroppings. It definitely would have caused A. loud frightened exclamations,* B. startled backpedaling ending in a possible fall, C. racing heartbeats that would take forever to calm. Vic would be even more upset since she is the spiderphobe. We would have ooohed and ahhed at seeing a floating butterfly or a scampering 4 legged lizard, but double the number of legs and give it a fuzzy body and we would have regretted making our visit before the facilities were opened for the day.

 Much of the trip through southern Missouri and northern Arkansas could be described by two words, Rock and Raptors, the roadside was thick with outcropping and in some places the solid rock had been terraced by drill and explosives to allow us passage through on our journey. I can imagine the gargantuan efforts this would have taken before pneumatic drilling, long lines of single or doublejacker's and their shakers grunting with each swing of the ten pound hammer beating the rhythm of Progress into the limestone an fraction of an inch at a time. The men clear the area as holes are charged and after the shout of "Fire in the Hole"* A booming concussive wave* fractures the solid rock face to bits and before the dust settles, wheelbarrows come in to cart off the rubble. One canyon we passed through had 3 terraces high and was long enough it would have taken weeks and weeks to clear in this manner. We drove through it in minutes. Do we ever truly appreciate the efforts of those who prepared the way for us and left some truly wicked places to hide a bison tube?

   The skies often held several majestically soaring eagles, circling overhead in loose patterns as if waiting to swoop down and feed on some weakened creature... ok that sounds more like buzzards...and probably was. To tell the truth, I find it difficult to distinguish whether one of the big birds in flight is an eagle or carrion cruiser without a good close glimpse of an un-feathered, ugly head. Not that it really matters as I find both to be pretty impressive birds but I'm not going to hug either one. I did do an internet search to find silhouettes that will help me identify which bird is more foul than the other though. The differences are subtle, so I'll have to print it out and tape it to the laptop, so I can tell if it's a regal eagle or just a vulgar vulture.

      'Talk to me' was an interesting cache in an area where leftover building materials from a nearby housing development had landed. We picked up some interesting marble tiles and found the cache which contained an fms radio where, if the cache owner was listening you could chat a few moments. We tried but no response. Another urban wooded area warned of pitfalls along the way. They were pretty well concealed by tall grass and I did manage to drop into one, stopping my fall straddling a log instead of a relatively soft landing in the bottom of the pit. There wasn't any cartoon like crossing of eyes and rolling off into the pit with banshee like wails though, my thighs had taken most of the impact. Whew

    In Arkansas we met Popeye, who keeps a watch on cachers, Papa Smurf, a Gooneybird, a chain eating tree and visited a Haunted Pizza Place. We made our order to go, extra cheese, hold the pepperoni (we didn't want any spectral salami coming back to haunt us) and headed for the Oklahoma border to spend the night in Tulsa. Relaxing in the motel pool and hot tub after purchasing forgotten swimwear, we get a good night's sleep without any heartburn and were ready to get our kicks on Route 66.

  "Thar She Blows" was a Route 66 attraction at a swimming hole with a big whale dock/platform. This was a fun discovery, but one of probably very few leftover attractions from the heyday along the route, we had expected more. 

   A series of caches along a road through a nut grove, proved to be a serene peaceful drive. Stopping at the color coordinated gates along the way to pick up even more smileys than the tranquil setting had already given us.

   We had a little trouble getting to a cache in a reclaimed coal mine area, the maps and what we were driving in just didn't match up well and it was a very winding confusing path. Vic did manage to find the right place but since the gps pointed to a small, yet steep hill, I got to be the designated climber and log signer while Vic chose a nice piece of coal tailings to add to our collection. I remember this one being under rated, at least for a 48, overweight, out of shape man. But I triumphed and managed to catch my breath enough before we stopped at a cache in a nearby small cemetery that I didn't feel becoming a resident was imminent.

  Our route we had followed today was pretty much parallel to our route on Saturday in fact for quite some distance we were a mere 19 miles from the highway we came down on. Stopping here and there to sign a few more logs, we make our way north towards Kansas City and discuss going on home that night but Vic is tired enough we decide to stay over, actually it took us almost an hour and a half to stop for the night, trying to find a suitable, affordable motel. Checking in we settle down for the night, then make the most of the continental breakfast the next morning before the drive home. We only seek out one cache at a rest area on the way "north bound and down" since we had found the sister cache "southbound and down" on our first day," north bound and down, driving up and caching, we gonna find that needle in the hay, we gotta long way to go and a whole lot of micros, we're north bound and caching all the way.*" (sorry about more singing but we're almost done here!)

The next few days we relax and get a few things done around the house before surgery day. This one was a more delicate operation than the last one was and I had a very rough recovery from that one. I was apprehensive but things went very well and I am on my way to rediscovering my long lost sense of smell. We'll have to hold out to see if it helps my singing as well.

By catsnfish

A couple of empty-nesters who caught the caching bug not realizing it was incurable. So if we’re found in the woods waltzing with Garmins, lifting lampskirts while tying our shoe or looking for “gum” underneath benches, be sure to stay away... it’s contagious and the only temporary relief can be found in finding bison’s, ammo’s, nano’s, or passing coins and spreading travel bugs!

Publisher's Note: Catsnfish write the periodic column The Adventures of Catsnfish. Subscribe (free) to The Online Geocacher to get an email alert when a new article is published.