King of the Wild Geocache!

Davy Crockett was a 19th-century American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier and politician. 

He is commonly referred to in popular culture by the epithet "King of the Wild Frontier".

Crockett grew up in East Tennessee, where he gained a reputation for hunting and storytelling. After being made a colonel in the militia of Lawrence County, Tennessee, he was elected to the Tennessee state legislature in 1821. In 1825, Crockett was elected to the U.S. Congress, where he vehemently opposed many of the policies of President Andrew Jackson, most notably the Indian Removal Act. Crockett's opposition to Jackson's policies led to his defeat in the 1831 elections. He won again in 1833, then narrowly lost in 1835, prompting his angry departure to Texas (then the Mexican state of Tejas) shortly thereafter. In early 1836, Crockett took part in the Texas Revolution and was killed at the Battle of the Alamo in March.

Crockett became famous in his own lifetime for larger-than-life exploits popularized by stage plays and almanacs. After his death, he continued to be credited with acts of mythical proportion. These led in the 20th century to television and movie portrayals, and he became one of the best-known American folk heroes.

Flash forward to the 21st century and we can now say that he is also the subject of a very enjoyable Earth Cache that takes you to Rogersville, TN and the tiny, yet lovely Rogers Cemetery.


This cache led us to a lovely and serene little stream flowing close to the peaceful final resting places of members of the Crocket family.


Our little team quickly gathered the information we needed to claim the Earth Cache and had a nice wander about to appreciate the area and give our respects to the past.

I don't feel as if this particular post needs long paragraphs, so please simply enjoy some of the photos from the moment.

Flavors of Awsomesauce!

Columbus, Magellan, Marco Polo, Neil Armstrong...Throughout history, there are tales of the great explorers who have gone on legendary journeys for the sake of honor, country and fortune.

This is NOT one of those tales. 

Instead, this is the story of 5 friends on a mission to break their own personal records and reach for new milestones!

How do you know you have a geocaching addiction? When you are willing to get up before the sun does, to travel 2 1/2 hours to another state, just to begin a long day of stop and go caching fun for the HWY 11E/11W power trail runs!



Since there were 5 of us going and we did not want to spend a lot of time writing out our names on the log, we knew that a team name would be needed.  And we all know there is only one possible name for this many super cool people....
and thus Team Awesomesauce was born!

You may be wondering what ingredients make up such an awesome team? Well, I am glad you asked...here is the recipe:

 

 

 

Have you ever been around someone who is so insane that they tend to bring out the mental in you too?  Well imagine having stuffed 5 of that person in one Geo-Van of Destiny and that was what the drive up was like.  (And I would just like to add here that I never even knew there were that many Steely Dan jokes possible!! They will know what I am talking about!) 

 

 It was an almost non-stop laugh fest as we effortlessly zipped through the first 50 caches. Then we began to notice something did not feel right with the brakes.  Then came the odd smell, followed by the loud grinding. 

 

You guessed it!  All of the stop and go action had taken its toll on the brakes and the Geo-Van was groaning in protest. 

 

At this point, we pulled over to enjoy a frosty treat from the local Dairy Queen (and grab a cache in the parking lot, of course!) while we phoned for help from a nearby garage. 

 

YUM!!!!!

 

Finding a garage that was open and able to take in a last minute repair on a Saturday was a miracle, but when you have this much awesomesauce in one place, miracles are bound to happen!  To sum it up, Two hours at a Shoney's, Two break pads, Two rotors and Two nearby caches (picking up on a theme here?) later and we were back on our way to conquering the power trail!

 

 Big shout out to FreeService Auto Center for doing such a great job of getting us in and back out on our way!! 

Once we were back out on the road, there was simply no stopping Team Awesomesauce...we were like a mad geocaching machine on a mission! 

The majority of our finds were just park and grab pill bottles hidden at guard rails and traffic signs, although we did throw in several really breathtaking and interesting Earth Caches and Virtual Caches- I will write about these in a separate post just to save some space on this one.  So most of our trip looked a lot like this... 

Luckily for me, only one dash ended up with me trying to scramble out of a muddy ditch full of banana peels! I escaped with only a few scratches to my leg and quite a bit of bruising to my calf and my pride!  Sometimes the gods of geocaching simply demand a blood sacrifice!! haha!







We came upon many interesting places with random unexpected sites
thrown in, such as disturbing self-dressing hot dog giving off a seductive lip lick inviting you to have a juicy bite of his wiener; or cows whose colors I am pretty sure you do not find naturally occurring on most farms.


All in all, even with the time taken out for vehicle repairs and bathroom/food stops, combined with several DNFs,  we were able to capture almost 400 smileys in just one fun filled, wacky weekend!! 


Team Awesomesauce definitely lived up to their names and I am looking forward to our next incredible adventure together!!

Team Awesomesauce enjoying a much deserved celebration dinner!!!

(Stay tuned for more posts with photos from our crazy outing in TN too!)

 

 

 



Geocaching...A Capital Idea!

This month I took a trip with two fellow cachers to our state's capital, Raleigh, for a little geocaching mischief!

Although I had been looking forward to attending a celebration event for Wimsey Guy's 20,000 find, I was not sure that I was going to actually be able to go as I had not slept for 3 days and was on the verge of delirium.  Definitely not a state you want a fellow driver to be in when operating a 70 miles per hour ton of metal!

So here I have to give a HUGE shout out of appreciation to my friends FailedApparatus and Hoosier Sunshine for making the drive from Charlotte to pick me up on the way, just so that I could get a couple of hours of sleep before the trip! How incredibly awesome can two people be??? 

The event was being held at a Dave and Buster's and there were quite a few cachers that showed up, many of whom I had not had the pleasure of meeting before and whose company I truly enjoyed! 

The beers and the caching stories were flowing free and the highlight was when Maingrey presented Whimsey Guy with a glittery silver Ammo Can with his name in sparkles to celebrate the huge milestone! 

After the event, we did a little caching before hitting our hotel, including finding an enchanting little gnome garden for my travel buddy Gnorman to visit!

We toured several cemetaries, including this one where George Washington's son-in-law was buried.

While searching for the final stage of a multi in the woods, I spotted the cache and attempted to climb across a fallen tree. Unfortunately for me, it was covered in broken limbs and I was stabbed in the leg by one. But we did get the smiley and I traded some coins for a small plastic mermaid toy.  I chuckled to myself as I thought...I have been "unicorned" while rescuing a mermaid! It really did turn out to be a magical weekend!





There were lots of interesting caches that we found and we even attempted a cool cache with a "choose your own adventure" theme, like the books I had read when I was younger! 

One of the best cache finds was a multi that took us on a tour of local art in town...we really enjoyed some of the sites that it took us to which we would never have known to look for on our own!

 

One of the more unusual and memorable caches, was another multi that involved unexpectedly discovering a horse/mule graveyard in the middle of the woods and using those memorials to answer clues to find the final cache...it was touching to read all of the headstones of the beloved pets.

I've told you before, geocaching will take you to some very interesting spots!

 

 

The trip back was filled with caches as well and rounded it out as an almost perfect caching weekend!!  Thank you again to my friends for making this invigorating trip happen!!

Never did find any Corn in the Walls

These are just some random shots from my time spent in Cornwall with my lovely pen pal Liz and her amazing family.  They were so welcoming and warm and I am so happy that I had the chance to meet them! 

 

Liz and Me on the beach in Polperro