Our Bamboo Forest Adventure

Well, after a reasonably successful day of geocaching yesterday, I was more than ready to attack the bamboo forest in Gainesville today following our visit with my son at the YDC.

After visiting hours were over, GeoTeen1 (“GT1”) and I headed out for the forest. I’m very NOT familiar with this area, so I got a little turned around here & there till we finally found where we were supposed to be.  Parked our GeoVan at about 10 till 3, and away we went.

The forest itself was WAY COOL! It was smaller than I expected… for some reason, I’d thought it would be acres & acres of winding, serene trails.  It was much smaller than that, but nonetheless, it was still gorgeous. It was also several degrees cooler in the forest, which was good…I’d worn a long-sleeve shirt, and with it being in the low 60s today (yay – FINALLY!) it was kinda too warm.

We spent the first several minutes just wandering around the forest, enjoying the view.  It was like a whole ‘nother world in there!  A hawk would periodically screech, birds were chirping, etc. 😀 Very serene and pretty!  After our sight-seeing tour, we got down to business to try to find this durn geocache!

I remembered reading in the online logbooks that GPS reception was spotty at best in many places in the forest.  The bamboo, which was sky-high, created a very thick canopy between us and the sky.  The other geocacher’s experience proved to be true for us, as well.  I spent almost an hour zig-zagging back and forth and going into random circles.  Oooh, 38 feet left!….no, wait… 52 feet right…. no…. 23 feet back the other way… up this hill, down this hill, maybe over here, and…. argh! Finally, when the GPS told me AGAIN that it was 26 feet from me, I decided to give up using the durn thing (yes, still learning, slowly, not to rely too much on it!).  I randomly picked a spot (a tree, actually), and started circling around the tree, poking anything & everything with my walking stick to find the buried treasure. 🙂  Every circle around the tree, I went wider and wider until I was reasonably sure that it wasn’t there.  When I was done with that little exercise in dizziness, I picked a new spot to start over in.  After a couple more rotations around the new spot, I stopped and looked around for a minute.  If I were a geocache, where would I hide?  What doesn’t look quite right…what doesn’t quite fit in??? Suddenly, something caught my eye that of course I’d passed by ten billion times before.

I walked over to this area, and using my walking stick, nudged this thing (won’t say what it was so as to not spoil the fun for others) over a bit to see if anything was under it.  And… SUCCESS!!!!!! Yep, there it was, the small geocache container I’d been searching for forever. 🙂 OK, maybe not quite FOREVER, but it was starting to feel that way. 🙂 My GPS still insisted it was 48 feet in the opposite direction though, LOL! GT1 and I signed the logbook, swapped out some trinkets, and headed back home. 🙂

This was definitely an extremely neat, fun, awesome, and UNIQUE cache! 🙂 If you ever happen to be up this way, try to find this one. It’s absolutely beautiful scenery, and, whether you find it or not, you won’t be sorry you visited there. 🙂

If you want to see all the pics I took, click HERE. 🙂

Happy hunting, y’all!