The Bridges of Madison County

A couple of weeks ago me and a co-worker had to work out of town over in Winterset, Ia.  What an interesting area.  In town you have John Wayne's birthplace, along with a really cool bronze statue.  As well as this "castle" type thing out in  one of the parks.  We got a little time to go and check out a few of the covered bridges.  I've never seen the movie that some of these bridges where in but they where pretty cool to see.

So far after doing some research on the net, there used to be 19 covered bridges in Madison county, but today only 6 remain, and only one you can still drive across.  I wish I would of had done some research ahead of time to know more about the bridges.  I did just learn the bridge you can drive across was just repaired in 95 after an arson fire, and I guess they have had a few problems with this.  We noticed a box at each end of the bridges, that housed camera's.  We where guessing it was trying catch anyone up to no good.

It was awesome to see the old construction of the bridges.  Very interesting plus using curved pieces of woods back in the day these where built.  It had to be quite the task building them.  It your in the area and have some time, check them out, they are really neat to see.  I'll leave you with some pictures I took of them.

Hanover Bluffs

This past weekend I went on a little road trip to go around and look for a few terracaches and a few geocaches.  I 'm not sure how I got as far into Illinois as I did, but sometimes you just get going and notice another cache on the map that looks interesting.  I really enjoyed this terracache called Hanover Bluffs.  Also in the are is a geocache called Hanover Bluffs (GC).  In the Hanover Bluffs area there was a geo pretty close to the parking area and the terracache was pretty far into the area.

I got a kick out of this sign as I started down the trail.

At this point in time I wasn't sure where you could swim.  But as I got deeper into the area I did find a lake that I think they where talking about.  I also found this little spot and decided to do a little skinny dipping.  J/K

As I kept following the path, which seemed just to go downhill the whole time.  I finally made it to a spot where I had to do some climbing to get to ground zero.  Normally I would play billy goat but   I had a head cold and every time I went up 10 feet up the hill I had to stop and catch my breath.  Once I made it to ground zero, There was a lot of places to look.  I spend the next 20 minutes looking for the cache but wasn't able to find the cache.  Finally I decided to sit down for a bit and just relax.  As I was sitting there, I looked over and noticed something, and sure enough it was the cache.  I looked threw the logbook for a bit, and then signed it.  I rehid the cache and started back down the the trail.  I wanted to explore the area a bit more, and was walking along on the edge of the trail and almost tripped over a benchmark.

After that I walked around on the trails a bit and found where they where talking about no swimming.  Finally it was time to head back to the car.  Now since I went down hill the entire time on the way in, sure enough it was up hill the whole way out.  But I really enjoyed this hunt.  I just wish I wouldn't of had a head cold.

"M"adJack Tribute Cache

Last weekend I made a trip up to Wisconsin to do a few terracaches and check out some areas that have some geocaches I'm interested in hunting down.  I wanted to do a little recon to see if all the snow was gone since most of these I have picked out are high terrain.  But I came across this terracache that I just knew I had to do it, while I was there.

"M"adjack Tribute Cache  just peaked my interest when I rolled right past Platteville and saw the giant "M".  Now I've seen the M before, but long ago before I ever did any caching.

When I was getting close my thought was I have to get to the top of this thing.  I didn't know they had a stairwell on the south side of it that takes you to the top.  Which each step has a plaque with a name of someone that donated time, or money on the creation of this thing.  Plus it has a number on each plaque.  Yup, the number of each step.  There is a total of 266 stairs to the top.

While I was heading up to the top, they have a couple of places you can stop with benches on there was a geocache at about the middle of the way to the top.  I won't fully show the spoiler photo but you can pretty much get the idea here.

Now I'm thinking cool, but still I'm only half way up.  Time to get to the top.  So I continued on and up and up and up.  Finally I reached the top.  They do have one of those bonicluar things you can look threw to see the view.  Which was amazing.  Here's a panaramic photo I made with my camera:

Well, now half of the task was done, reaching the top.  But still was a ways from the cache.  There was a nice trail that led back into the woods for a 1/4 mile or so, that I followed and took me very close to the cache location.  Once I reached ground zero I was doing a quick look and didn't spot anything, lots of good hiding spots but wasn't able to find anything.  I'm blaming that on the lack of oxygen. :)  Finally I decided I would sit down on this log and grab a breather and I about sat on the ammo can.  Funny how that can happen sometimes.

Now my hat goes off to anybody that would carry a fully loaded ammo can up all those stairs, and back that far.  That's Freakin awesome!!!


All in all this was my favorite cache hunt for the day.  I'm so glad I saw the 'M'.  I really enjoyed this cache.  I'll also post some photos of the information on the "M" itself.

Crusing Down the River

At the end of last summer I had been eyeing this cache that hadn't been found yet.  It was a couple of weeks old but the trick was it was on a small island in the middle of the river.  This area is a popular spot where you can rent a canoe or tubes and float down the river.  I was thinking on how I could get to it but I was missing one think.  If I parked to float down the river I would of had about a 15 mile hike to get back to the car from the pull out point.  I didn't have another person to park their car at the pull out point so we would have a ride back to the start of it all.


So I got to looking at the maps and the boundary's of the state park and it looked like I could get to it by following the edge of the river.  One small problem.  The terrain next to the river had very steep slopes and a lot of bluffs.  So I did what any other stupid person would do.  Tackle the terrain for 2 miles to get as close to the cache as I could.

As I started off on the trail, I ran into some rock climbers and some repellers.  It was a perfect day to be out in the woods, and really cool to stop and watch some of these people.

 As I moved a lot down the trail you could tell few people had traveled this far in, but yet I ran into a few more groups of climbers.

This was about the end of the trail and the terrain got very ruff.  I started to have to find animal trail to get to the top of some of the bluffs just to have to climb right back down them again.  Still this was a amazing park and I think few see these bluffs.  I finally got luckily and found a broken animal trail with a lot less ups and downs.  Which about a half mile of that I finally had to climb down the last bluff to a low spot and hike back out to the river.  As I got as close as I could before I had to cross the water, I found a fallen log next to a small beach like area.  I decided to take a break for a bit there.

As I was sittng there I could here people coming down the river and of course they spotted me.  This is when my trip got kind of interesting.  They had to stop right there and they came over to me.  One lady sat down on my log I was sitting on and started jabbering away.  She was drunk.  Then the questions came.  What are you doing out here? Are you homeless?  Are you some sort of murderer hiding out in the woods.  They just where not buying my hiking story.  Thankfully they didn't stay long and it was time to get wet.  I stripped down to my shorts and just my GPSr and headed for the small "island" in the above picture.  At first it got very deep, then very shallow, then deep again.  As I got near the island I saw another group floating down the river but they weren't interested in me at all.

Once I reached the island all the trees and bushes where a mess and hard to bushwack threw, but I finally was able to wiggle my way to the cache container.  Of course when I found it, I found a little trail that came from the other side of the island that was very easy to pass threw.  I signed the log sheet and then headed back over to where I left my camel-pak and other hiking supplys.  I decided to take another break and started doing some thinking on how I could find a way back that was easier.

This is where I started to devise a plan using the river to make it back.  I finished off the rest of my water in my pack, I didn't realize how warm it was till I ran out of water.  That gave me the idea that I could put my electronics inside of the battler of the bag, to keep them dry.  Once I put them in, I used the straw to blow air into the bladder and fill it up with air.

I then put the pack on my back, and went into the river.  This made a make shift floating device.  I just did a back float and got into some current and let the river do all the work.  Which this worked out very well, I got to see those bluffs I had been climbing up and down on.  I think by this point all the people on the river today were down stream and I had the whole place to myself.  What a great way to finish up the cache hunt.

I noticed by this time it was past the time I told my wife I would call her by.  It took a lot longer to hike out there than I had planned on.  But my cell phone didn't work out here at all.  Thankfully she didn't freak out that I finally called about an hour and a half late.

As I floated down stream I hit some shallow spots that had lots of rocks.  Those spots kind of hurt the legs a bit, but it still was a fun trip.  When I finally made it back to the truck I had traveled 4.67  miles with 976 feet of elevation gain.  Which is a lot of elevation for Iowa.  Two months later the cache owner made another trip down the river and planted two more caches.  Those I can't reach from the park so I'll have to the floating down the river thing.  I'm looking forward to attempting those this up coming summer.

My Pathtag's

So far I've had two different pathtags made up.  Both of these use my old geocaching handle of Parabola.  The one on the right was the first one I had made which I've just done alot of on-line trading and have dropped a few off in some caches along the way.


The one on the left has a twist to it.  I've worked with a bunch of Terracachers to make this one happen.  I put one tag in a baggie with logging instruction for Parabola.  What I did is had a bunch of tags made, then sent some to terracachers around the world, who dropped them off in random caches.  Using some of the code on the back for the cc code, and a code so I can tell who left the tag, they get to log this cache.  One of these days I'll map out all the cords of the found tags just to see where they all where found.

I've still got some I need to get placed which will be my goal for this spring.  I've had a lot of people e-mailing me, trying to get me to trade for this tag, but I've turned them all down.

Some day I'll have to get a "Tape worm" tag made up.  I've got some good ideas for it and some of the art, just need to put it all together.

Hawkeye Area Council Geocaches

Hawkeye Area Council

2010 was a very busy year for me.  I put out a lot of geocaches for the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scout program.  The whole idea was to introduce scouts to geocaching.  With the way we set it up the majority of the caches were named after merit badges and had the requirements of the badge on the cache page.  There was also a cache named after each rank that a scout could reach which turned out to be a series inside of a series.  You have to find the 11 ranks to get all the information to help you find the H.A.C. -Eagle Scout cache.

In all there was:  3 events
                          6 puzzle caches
                          20 multi-caches
                          71 traditional caches

You can find the bookmark list here.  This list has all of the geocaches and event on it.

We the whole idea was first brought to me by WindChill.  I thought the idea was great and instantly thought of putting one cache out for each year of the scouting program.  There was a few certain caches the would have to be placed like the 12 "cache to eagle caches" and the 5 "treasure of scouting caches" and then a C.I.T.O event which Borky00 hosted.

To open the caches up to try to hit every ones interest I was able to get my hands on a pallet of ammo cans.  This made it so I could put trading items inside the caches for people that like to trade, the containers where large enough so travel bugs could fit in them.  Also with the mix of the types of caches, and some that were drive up caches and hiking caches.  I figured this would open it up to show any scouts just about any combination of hides.

Some of the local cachers did donate some containers/swag/spray paint to the project.  They were WindChill, Welch, DuitTuit.  Also there was some special travel bugs that where put out by the Scout program.  Which they where intented to draw attention to some of the great things about scouting.  Borky00 made some pictures for each one and came up with the idea of attaching keychains to them that would hold those pictures.  They are still floating out there.  Also there was a travel bug that you need to attach to a pinewood derby car that's goal was to reach the location of the big scounting event for the year.  At the moment I can't think of what that event was called though.

But getting back to the caches.  My first task was to try to get permission from a whole lot of parks in the county's that made up the Hawkeye Area Council.   Since I had 7 counties to deal with this ment I had quite alot of people to contact.  I was so relieved to get all of those counties on board without any trouble at all.  Everyone of them thought this was a great way to get people to enjoy their parks and they gave me the green light.

I also had to locate a bunch of Eagle Scout projects to try to hide 12 of the caches by or somehow use the information from the plaques to send a cacher off to where the cache was hidden.  I really found this to be one of the hardest tasks to do.  I have seen tons of project threw the years while out caching but never marked them.  Also once finding one, I had to look and see if there was any caches with 528 feet of it.  If there was I couldn't put a cache at or near the project to keep within the distance guidelines of geocaching.com.  Then I would have to try to make the project a "virtual" waypoint and send the cacher off to a location where I could put a container out.  This took me about 6 months to complete.  These caches had one of the scout law in each of the caches.  When a cacher could tell me what laws were where, they could get a special patch.

The other required project was the 5 "treasures of scouting".  These could go any where though.  I was able to get one place right at the scouting office.  These caches also had cards in them that a cacher could fill out and drop in a box or mail to the office.  Those cards where put in to a monthly drawing for a special geocoin.  WindChill took care of the drawing each month.

As the year went on I found I had to use most of my free time to get these caches place.  At a couple of points I really thought I was going to have to reduce the 100 caches to much less.  But I kept at it and kept at it and finally towards the end of the year I was getting close.  Then I found out I was going to have to have spinal surgery.  At that point I was about 13 caches away.  Since the snow was now hitting the ground it ment I wasn't going to be able to make any more "hiking" caches.  I was really trying to avoid placing many park and grabs.  The whole point was to get people to get out and enjoy the parks and exploring new areas while telling people about the scouting program.  Luckily I still had some decon containers.  I figured if I'm going to make some park and grabs, I wouldn't place a micro container.  I really wanted to stick to making the caches have a few trading items and room for a travel bug.  I did have to convert some of my own caches that I had listed on Terracaching.com.  I really didn't want to do this, but I feel it worked out ok and don't think anyone had a problem with it.

When it came time for my surgery I still had about 6 caches to place.  With the snow on the ground I couldn't do any type of hiking cause I couldn't risk falling on ice.  Luckily I got some help from another cacher.  Dazedandconfused got a container ready and went off to a spot I found that a cache would fit and meet the guidelines.  They got that one placed for me and I was able to finish up with a few more park and grabs.

Once all the caches where placed I almost didn't know what to do with my free time.  This whole project determined where I was going to cache for everyday and I just hadn't had time to venture outside of the areas I was placing caches.  I really think this whole project showed scouts most of the aspect of geocaching.  Which it was very cool they released a geocaching merit badge too.  I still need to get my papers turned in and I'll be a merit badge councilor for the badge.

I think the whole project turned out very well and a lot of people have really enjoyed the whole series.  I also have to give props to IowaAdmin for reviewing all the cache hides.  I'm sure I kept his plate full over the past year.

Our Dogs

I was just thinking that I do talk about one of our dogs a lot when it comes to geocaching.  He goes with me a lot when I go caching.  His name is Rusty Fox.  He is a pure-bred Shiba Inu. He is about 15 months old.  We got him a little over a year ago and he has really turned into my companion.  He loves to go for walks and really enjoys the outdoors.  He keeps up with me the whole time we are out.  Doesn't matter how far we hike.  When I placed the H.A.C. -Life Scout (GC2H1CT) he tried to keep up and go where ever I went.  Since that cache is on top of a large bolder and you have to climb about 20 feet to reach the top, he tried to climb right up with me.  I had tied his leash to a tree so he would stay down but he still managed to get about half way up before he ran out of leash to go any further.  We somethings think he is a "reindeer".  He can jump really high when he wants to.  Many times he has made it over our fence in our yard.  Here is a photo of Rusty:

Our other dog is a pure-bred pug.  His name is Frank.  Frank is a little over 6 years old.  He's not quite the outdoors type but he does like to go for walks.  He likes walking in town though and not out in the forest.  Pugs drink quite a bit of water and due to there smashed in faces you have to really watch to make sure they do not get over heated.  He's more of the inside dog and just enjoys laying next to you.  He really like people paying attention to him and enjoys laying down next to you.  I don't take him caching very often.  He does like to go for car rides though.  Last fall he got sick and we took him to the vet and found out he is diabetic.  Which ment a big change.  We have to give him special food and make sure he doesn't get into the other dog food or the cat food.  We have to give him shots twice a day.  Here is a photo of Frank:

Again, I talk about Rusty a lot when I talk about caching.  He goes just about every where with me, so I figured I should introduce everyone to him.