Sunday, September 06, 2009
Brookings - Bushwhacking Day/Nano Discovered!
Bad Duck and I decided our caching today should be on a relaxed pace, directed north along 101 and not too far from the road. No long trails, no bushwhacks.
You know what they say about good intentions?...........
We started well…..seriously! Apple fritters were once again first item on the agenda but we arrived only to discover the first batch of fritters were sold out and the second batch wouldn’t be ready for 40 minutes! What to do?.....Uh…go find some geocaches!! Hunted and found the three closest caches and returned to finally get our fritters - they were worth the wait! Most excellent fritters!
Sticking with the plan we picked off a few more easy road-side caches north of town then decided to give Guarding the Nano another try. Once again we could not find the cache. Just as we were resigned to move on to other caches a vehicle pulls up. These folks had that familiar “geo” look about them and quickly revealed themselves as cachers and joined us in the search. We discover that they are fairly new to geocaching so Darren begins demonstrating the many variations of this common hiding location he’s seen. Amidst one masterful demonstration I hollered “STOP! I SEE IT!!” That’s all I’m saying - but THAT was a clever hide! Well done, trailsailor - hats off! Glad to finally get that one!
I think it was the elation from finding that tough cache that caused us to let our guard down in terms of staying with the plan. We decided to do the next closest cache which only involved a short 0.2 mile walk from a beachside parking lot. Found it without much fanfare and then we made the biggest mistake of the day…....we looked at the GPSr map and saw another cache close by! It’s just down there at the other end of the beach….yeah, it’s a multi but probably is just one of those quick ones….....yeah, right! Ooooops! The coords to what we thought was the final stage were 3/4 mile away! We WEREN’T going to DO this! After a quick contemplation we decide to continue up the hill to get a different cache close by then see what the terrain was like from that cache to the “final” of the multi.
In the meantime, we get a taunting text from Emeljay and Monkey Junky as they were heading to a difficult bushwhacking cache called Black Point - “Hey guys, where are you? Heading to Black Point…going to beat you!”. Okay, that’s not nice!
We contemplate some more and realize how far we’ve veered from the “plan” and choose to head for Black Point as well. Might as well just keep going and get everything on this trail system now - we’re over half way there anyway. Off we go again. Pretty quickly we find that we have to leave the Oregon Coast Trail and bushwhack through chest high grass and brush, blackberry vines and gorse to reach Black Point! Aauughhh! Darren and I finally catch sight of them just as they arrive at GZ and pull out the cache! Ten minutes later we plunder through the rest of the bushwhack to reach them. A very thin ridge with steep sides, this Black Point! This would be very scary on a windy day! Signed the log, took many pictures then made our way back to the main trail.
Sitting is better than standing!
Oh, we’re not done yet…...........
Once we’re back on the trail we see that the multi “final” is not far away and neither is the Fat Bottomed Girls cache. Determined to finish off these whole group of caches we continue. Fat Bottomed Girls cache went fairly quickly (helps when you have previous finders and/or hiders along with you!). Onward. Finally reaching the “final” of the multi we discover it was NOT the final….nope, it’s back the way we just came 0.3 miles! Had we actually read the description for this cache we mostly likely would never have gone for it and thus leading us into this fine mess. We are a long ways from our vehicle and MJ and Emeljay are wanting us to hike one last cache down to the beach and back….dangling the carrot of a ride back…saving us a long walk! Not much of a choice if you ask me!
So trying to wrap this up quickly….we hiked down to get South of Boardman cache then back up to finish off the multi and finally a very short walk out to their vehicle. They dropped us off at our vehicle back at Lone Ranch and we headed back to camp. Fun day despite getting side-tracked - but then geocaching often does that!