A DEEPER LOOK
CANTON AND SURROUNDING AREAS
Tyler State Park

Around one pm, we pulled up at Tyler State Park. We had never been there and wanted to check out the park, do some hiking, and find three geocaches. One of them was a multi-cache called A Deeper Look. It took you to four places within the park that go unnoticed, and each waypoint had information about the park and natural features in the direct area you were standing in.
The first waypoint was about two hundred feet from the ranger station. We didn't bring any of our supplies, and made the quick find. It was interesting to read the information in the thermos jug we found that told us about the Civilian Conservation Corps role in creating a small wading area for children and the old fire rings.
The next waypoint was 0.65 mile further into the park, so we drove closer. Lara kept saying she didn't mind hiking but I was telling her that my previous experience caching in state parks was to conserve energy and park as close as you can, because trails lead you further places than you are intending, or that you might spend time walking down a road in the park instead of hiking trails, and that was a time drain.
Our second parking area was close to both the second waypoint and another cache, Prairie Dog Getaway. We found the second waypoint of the multi, another thermos jug with a card telling about the bridge you can see in the back of this photo I took of a friend's travel bug that I wanted to leave at the cache.
We hiked up a greenbelt area and then climbed a small hill to the prairie dog cache, and found a nice, large ammo can underneath a large fallen tree that made a nice place to sit for a while and enjoy nature. Scout posed for photo ops with the travel bug and cache.
After this, we headed to the third waypoint, and then on to the final. We were so excited to finally have the coordinates (each thermos jug had, on the card inside, coordinates to the next step of the journey). We took off all happy, even though finding a parking spot for this leg was tough. We were parked near an access road that was blocked off, some kind of digging going on. We headed down the main road briefly before heading up another greenbelt, then a turn off to the right that led back to the blocked off access road. The scenery was nice (top and bottom pictures), but we could not get closer than about 450 feet from the final cache.
We all three tried to get into the woods and only ended up getting frustrated and covered in little green sticky seed pods. We had them all over our pants, and Scout had them all in his freshly groomed coat. He was trying to lick them out of his fur and kept coughing, and apparently they were deeply imbedded in Lara's pants. I had on jeans, so I was doing slightly better.
We decided we had gotten too intimate with nature. After trying a couple different angles, we realized we could not access the cache and after all that, would have to take a DNF on it.
Note - after logging my DNF online, I saw that the next person behind me, that same day, logged it as "Found", even though he only completed the first two steps. I am not sure if doing the same thing violates my own cacher's set of ethics.
We did have a great adventure, but the seed pods were almost the end of Lara. We pulled up at the parking for the third cache in the park, and she decided to abstain and hang out in the car pulling seed pods off her pants. I did that one on my own with Scout. We crossed a wooden bridge and ended up in the forest by the lake, and I had a mild freakout because I heard a large animal moving slowly through the forest. I found the cache, and also found large prints in the ground and lost the trail back. We crashed through the bushes, Scout giving me a "mom, please.."pained look and getting more thorns and burrs in his coat.
After this, we discovered the joys of the dog brushes. I pulled a few out and I brushed Scout, then helped Lara brush the pods off her pants. We were much happier chicks, blasting Erasure and checking out the park on a grand geocaching adventure.
After this, we took on Tyler. More to come later...