Good morning everyone. It's off to the Sooner State this week. The oldest geocache in Oklahoma is 'Pine Creek' GC84. Hidden in October, 2000, it was found three times. There is no log entry to indicate when this cache was archived. The oldest active cache is 'Where Eagles Roost' GC272. This cache was hidden in February, 2001, found 1,188 times and has 357 favorite points. It is the third most favorite cache in the State, located West of Tulsa, near the Arkansas River. The most favorite cache is 'And Jesus Wept' GC7051. This virtual was placed in July, 2002 in Oklahoma City. It has been found 2,549 times with 463 favorite points.
Despite the pandemic's grip on the world, I was still able to take in a couple of camping trips with sm66. We packed up her trailer and went to a park that I featured in a blog not too long ago. Bird's Hill Park. I have been to Bird's Hill Park on many occasions, but I have never camped there. The intent of both camping trips was to relax and take each day and each hour as it comes. The first trip had been planned for a few months now. I originally had taken two weeks vacation with the hopes of going to Geo-Woodstock in Abbotsford, BC. That's obviously not happening, so it's camping during the second week of my vacation instead.
(campfire is set as I finish reading my book)
We had good weather for most of the two weeks we were camping. The first week was warm to the point that we needed to have the A/C on in the camper during the day. Two weeks later, we had the heater on overnight as the temps dropped to the single digits for those that read Celcius. In the 40's for Fahrenheit readers.
(sitting back, relaxing, and start reading my next book. I'm not a prolific reader, but I completed this book in a week when it normally takes me months)
We did go for a couple of walks. During the first week, we went to check on a cache that was disabled at the time. I noticed it was missing from the official Geocaching app and that got my curiosity. I had used this cache as a waypoint back at the end of June so I could provide my Munzee friends the coordinates of where I am so they can deploy virtual Munzees nearby. One evening after dinner, sm66 and myself set out on a walk to check on 'Tree Eating Rock' GCTDB6. There have been twelve DNFs since March. Most of those DNFs are from people with fewer than 50 finds, some with fewer than 10 finds. Is it really missing? It had been found 876 times since February, 2006. The owner, cachegrab, hasn't found any geocaches since 2015 and hasn't logged on to the main Geocaching website since 2018. That's also the last time the owner did any maintenance on the cache. Because of the abundance of DNFs of late, our reviewer, OneCrazyCanadian disabled the cache at the beginning of July because of it's low health score. It's almost the end of August and no action has been taken so far.
We headed off for our walk while the sun was still up. The cache location was about 500 meters to the South of us, just past another campsite. I knew there was a way of getting there without having to cut through someone's campsite, so off we went on our adventure. Sometimes the journey to the geocache is more interesting than the cache itself. We were exploring paths that we haven't been down before, so who knows what we'll find along the way.
We also found this watch tower. We didn't know that this one was here. I know of another watch tower that's in the park. That watch tower is also the location of an Earthcache. More on that one next week. We checked out the tower and the view.
With the sun quickly setting, we needed to make our way to the geocache that we want to check on. When we did arrive at ground zero, we needed the lights from our phones to help with our search. I had found this geocache way back in May, 2016. Over four years has passed so I'm testing my memory banks on this one. We found the host to the cache, but no geocache. Just a remnant of the container. All those DNFs are legit. We headed back to our camper for a campfire and another game of cards. It also became a nightly thing to hear coyotes howling in the distance.
This is all that was left of the geocache. One side of the locking device from a lock n' lock container. OneCrazyCanadian archived this cache a week later. It's a good hiding spot and I'm almost tempted to hide a cache in it's place. It was averaging 60+ finds per year. I also haven't hidden any geocaches in almost two years.
Sadly, this particular week of camping came to an end. It was during this trip that we decided to come back in a week. sm66 had a stretch of days off and I have vacation time that I haven't used. All I needed was to get approval to take that week off, which I got. We'll be back in the same bay, but slightly down the road. What adventures will have during our second week? Until next week, be happy, stay safe, wash your hands, wear a mask, and most importantly, have fun. Peace out.
Sassy and Tinkers doing what they do best, taking over the dog's bed.
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