Gettin’ Soggy in the Dunes
As much as I enjoy hiking around in Oregon’s coastal dunes, I was reminded today that doing so this time of year will likely result in wet feet. That’s exactly what happened to Rod of Family Explorer and I as we tackled a few dune caches between Florence and Reedsport.
The day began on a very positive note as we nailed FTF on the newly reconstituted The wedding cache, The old ball and chain II. Just as we were leaving the parking area, we spied a familiar vehicle belonging to a well known FTF addict…....Mr. Copper! Approaching the vehicle we noticed he had company…..Bad Duck. Their collective shoulders dropped in disappointment when they saw us - FTF stolen right out from under them!
With that high note accomplished we headed to Siltcoos Campground to start our dune trek for a group of six caches:
The “wet” theme of the day raised it’s ugly head right off the bat as we made our way to Vehicle Closure - had to broad jump a submerged sand road twice to sign the log - feet wet to just above the ankles! ....It would get worse!
Next cache was Sand Dunes #2. No wading involved at this one, thankfully.
The next two caches (The Firefly Cache and Sand Dunes #3)allowed the boots to dry some more as we made our way along a sand road and into the open dunes where we spotted an ATV class underway.
Minor water obstacles getting to The Firefly Ladies cache…..........then the fun began!
One final cache to get - On the Road to the Sea. Had we known how much standing water was in the sand road giving access to this cache we might have just bagged it and came back during drier times. However, once we were within 500 feet there was NO going back! And that’s exactly where we encountered a two foot deep ‘river’ running down the access road to the beach. We managed to keep fairly dry by skirting the edge of the road but the final 60 feet left absolutely no other choice but to wade right in…..so we did. To make things worse, we weren’t finding the cache right away and we’re sloshing around in the water looking here, looking there - finally spotted it but not before feeling the cold February water soak completely through our boots.
Our return to the vehicle would be best accomplished by heading west to the beach another 500 feet then south one mile. The problem was another 100 feet of deeper water to slog through before getting to the beach! It didn’t really matter at this point so we just plowed right through it and made our way back…..our cadence set to the regular ‘squish’ ‘squish’ ‘squish…...
Despite the water filled boots, we had a good day and chatted about future plans to complete some of our common geocaching challenge caches. At least it didn’t RAIN!