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.

ADVENTURES IN CACHING

George Bush Park

This 7800 acre park in west Houston, formerly named Cullen-Barker, has the distinction of being the sixth largest city park in the nation. It covers a vast amount of territory, and offers many opportunities for outdoor recreation, including, naturally, geocaching as one of them.

The park boasts an extraordinary amount of caches hidden in it (at my rough count, about 62). Now, cache to acre, that's not that high of a density, coming out to be about one cache per 125 acres. Part of that reason, I suspect, is that the area lies in a flood plain, making it impossible to get into some areas of the park after a good rain. It might have something to do with accessibility, too, with a good part of it covered in thick forest, or a lack of places to hide, with many acres devoted to soccer fields and a shooting range. It also has an element of danger to it, with feral hogs that roam the land. It would not be wise to be out on the trail alone.

This day, I met up with another geocaching family to tackle a cluster of caches together. We had originally planned on having another family with us, and more kids, but it ended up being just me, and their family of four, plus their dog and one of mine. We met up at a park and grab cache near a large open field used for free flying model airplanes. The other family was about twenty minutes behind me, so Scout and I watched the planes doing kamikaze maneuvers in the field before they showed up and we hunted the cache together. I had kinda looked before and found a likely hiding spot, and might have DNFed if they didn't have their laptop with them, and were able to look up previous logs and notice mention that it was NOT in that likely spot.

After this, we moved the cars to a parking area for an equestrian trail and a hiking trail that led along a grassy pipeline area. We made a decision to just go after every other cache along this way, in which lay about six in a row. It was a great idea in theory, except that we forgot, until we got to the end, about the fact that three of them were a series building to a final cache along the same way, and that one we had skipped had parts of the coordinates in it for the final! It turned out okay, because we gambled that it would be right along the edge of the path, like the others, and we had the last three digits of both the north and the western coordinates, so we were able to find it anyway before turning back around. We even found, slightly by accident, a small cache that held the key in it that we would need to get to open the final - the bit of a trick at the end, when you reach the cache and see you have to hunt the key first. We were fortious that we didn't have to turn back for it after all.

We could see that this area could get quite swampy at times. We found bits of crawfish shells and tracks of wild animals, but not really any deep mud or wet areas, which is amazing, after this week's rain and snow(!). It was probably one of the best times to work this park, when it was too cool for mossies, but warm enough to hike with only one layer on. When I left the house that morning, it was fifty five degrees, and it warmed up about twenty degrees during the four hours we spent exploring the park. The sound of gunfire was continuous during our hike, due to the nearby shooting range. Who knew? I didn't even realize this park had one, nor that it would be so loud, and so well used!

My favorites of this section were the series final, (called "State of Confusion", with the first three containers, decons, titled with the intials for Texas, Idaho, and Maine), and another cache called Badger Poking 101. The latter cache was titled in a teasing reference to one of the HGCS class clowns, that the others like to goade into reactions. In fact, the "badger" itself had his log nominated for our cache awards last year for "Funniest Log" (it's the second log on there, if you have an account and want to read it).

This scene on the right was what it looked like 360 degrees around at the cache site. Try finding your way out of this one without tripping, falling, getting caught up in branches, keeping two dog leashes from getting tangled, guiding two little girls through, and watching out for snakes and muddy patches. It is a little bit of a challenge (though luckily, only like two hundred feet off the trail).

After this, we made our way back ot the parking area, where we watered the dogs and ourselves before heading for the other direction. We saw some beautiful horses, a paint and a black gelding, preparing for their morning ride through the forest trail. Then we hunted two along the paved hiking path, then turned around to catch a cluster on the northern side of the trail. One of them was about four hundred feet in, and a little darker and wetter than the other side. It was supposed to be near traces of an old corral, but all we saw was barbed wire.

The rest of the caches were along the edges of an open area bordered by forest in a large semicircle. We could see the water line along the trees, probably from Hurricane Ike but poossibly from genenral flooding. Check out the dark line along all the vegetation showing how high the waters came in the park. You can see how most of these caches were ammo cans secured high in trees along this forest edge. The girls from this other family were getting tired now, and not too thrilled about going after more caches, but the adults were determined and kept a bright face as we continued far in and around. We kept having this joke about how I was letting "Random Confusion", the husband in this caching family, find all the caches for me. He was walking out in front, doing recon, as "Skyfire" and I kept back with the girls and dogs. At one cache, they joked that he should let me find this one, and I said, "nah, I'll let you", but then I did end up finding it first, because I ended up turning towards the forest sooner. We had a good laugh about this.

We didn't see any wildlife in the park this day, except for some interesting birds. I saw none of the feral hogs rumored to be around here. The girls and I did, though, find this really pretty vine, or plant, growing up inside this tree on the left.

We had a really good day, with the final count, including the two park and grabs we found on the way out of the park, totaling sixteen finds. Afterwards, I was very hungry! Our hike was a good distance covered, and wore out the dogs, but I had no soreness or fatigue after. It was simply invigorating to be out in the forest, exploring nature and getting some exercise, on a nice winter day in Houston with a very lovely family. I ended up leaving three travel bugs and a geocoin in the caches, and traded for twenty yen in one cache (I actually had no trade items, but one of the girls donated for me). I actually wished I had brought more trading swag this day because two of the caches had Andrew Jackson silver dollars in them. From the Badger Poking 101 cache, I picked up a Red Jeep that can now keep my White Jeep company (That's a story for another day).

It was great fun. Now, today I am going to the craft store for materials to put the finishing touches on a fun Christmas series I am putting out. Tell ya about it later...;)!