ADVENTURES IN CACHING

George Mitchell Nature Preserve

The Woodlands, TX

This day, I met up with two girlfriends to go for a walk in the George Mitchell Nature Preserve. This 1700 acre nature preserve out in the Woodlands was opened officially in October of 2007. At that time, there was only a one mile round trip trail along the trailhead parking that we used today. Since then, another two mile loop has been added on the other side of the creek, accessible by another trailhead. Numerous little trails have been opened up along both creek sides, and volunteers from the parks department have built a new bike trail, as well as maintained the trails since Hurricane Ike did so much forest damage.

My friends who joined me today are not geocachers, but one of them goes caching with me fairly regularly. She is frequently willing to go out to explore nature or walk our dogs together. We brought both her dogs and both mine, putting us at probably three hundred pounds of dogpower between us.

Early along our walk, I convinced her to let her dogs run off leash, as I wanted to let mine loose. My dogs like to explore nature at their own pace, and always come back when called and to "check in" frequently, and I know her dogs well enough to say they will stick with mine. This way we could enjoy our walk more thoroughly without being hampered by excited dogs. There was no one else out on the trail this brisk afternoon; otherwise, I wouldn't have suggested it. My dogs only need leashes in the wilderness to appease other people who feel uncomfortable with large dogs running loose. I have total trust in the fact that they will always come back when called, and will stay within earshot. If they run ahead on the trail and I lose a visual, I just holler for them to "wait" and they always stop and turn back to look at me, as if to say "well, then hurry already!"

They especially like swimming in creeks. Here are my dogs exploring the waters of Spring Creek. One of the two caches we were after today had sort of an interesting first couple of days. Typically, caches around here are found within the first 24 hours, no matter what the difficulty/terrain rating is (this one is a 2/2). This one, Knarly, was published January 7 and gave people fits. Here are the notes back and forth on the cache page. See if you can figure out what happened (now, mind you, the cache page states it is right off the trail, and gives parking coords...for the north trailhead):

January 8 by Team Troglodyte (2856 found)I spent about and hour wandering around the pleasant trails in the preserve looking for the one that this cache might be "just off of." The closest point I could find was about .21 from the cache, and the terrain was very inhospitable appearing. I applied my theory of "if it's that hard, it's probably not the way." and decided to keep looking. Finally ran out of time and abandoned the hunt. When I get a chance I'll be back with more time and/or a bicycle.

January 8 by HuntersKeepers (468 found)My apologies to Team Troglodyte!!!! I put the wrong parking coordinate in when I set up the cache. You were on the wrong side of Spring Creek.

January 8 by Team Troglodyte (2856 found)So, attempt number two goes down in flames with me standing 220' from the cache on the wrong side of the creek. I should have trusted my mapping software which was showing the cache on the other side. Upon returning home to log this failed attempt, I found that the parking coordinates were incorrect. Hopefully the third try will be the charm.

January 8 by rchaag (36 found)LOL, I was on the wrong side as well. Was trying to figure out if the trail had been extended past the creek.

January 8 by HuntersKeepers (468 found)I guess I could have left the wrong parking coordinates and just increased the difficulty of the cache to about 4 1/2. I'm just trying to help everyone's New Year's resolutions of getting more exercise.

January 9 by Nathan_Texas_Taylor (88 found) FTF!! Looked a while before spotting it. T-TB L-TB

January 9 by Team Troglodyte (2856 found)This cache is getting to be my nemesis. Looked for about 15 minutes before throwing in the towel. It was particularly annoying, knowing that it just been found minutes before. On the way out, I re read the cache page and noticed it was a small - for some reason I was thinking ammo box, but it still should have turned up.
In any event, I had the pleasure of meeting Nathan_Texas_Taylor while en route to GZ.

So, after all that, poor old Team Trog gets pounced by a newbie! And, after all that, the cache page still lists the parking coordinates on the north side. However, I could see from looking at these logs, and knowing which caches these same people had hit in the preserve on those days, that the parking lot listed would not get me on the right side of the creek. Hence, we chose the south trailhead today, and were successful. It was about 0.80 miles back along the trails from parking.

Before we found it, though, we made a stop at a cache called The PileUp. Before today's logs, this one only had a 50% found ratio. It was five for five on finds/did not finds. I had previously dismissed it on another caching adventure out on this side of the preserve, but the cache owner recently updated the hint and then a newbie found it, so I figured I could certainly find it.

It is an ingenious hide and I certainly don't want to give it away to any local cachers who read this blog. I almost didn't find it myself but 1) I was determined to find it, since every time I try to show one of the other girls I am with about caching, I can never find the darn things and 2) I had a moment of insight when I saw something just a little...different...

So, two caches, a nice walk outside in a peaceful nature environment, some good conversation, and a chance to let the dogs burn off some energy made for a relaxing spot of time in the day. After this, they followed me to a park in the same area for a quick park and grab style cache near some shady benches, and then it was home again. This bit of peace that I find on walks like this is what helps me through times of stress during the weekdays.