Cacher's Paradise- June 17, 2006

Another week, another geocaching trip. This week, Mad Mike was out of town at a family reunion so we decided to hit the Shelbyville area to pick up our friend Fish for to do some caches over there.

Fish lives near the park in Shelbyville so we decided to hit a cache we found in the area called Celebration Station. The GPS led us into the nature trail and we began to cast about for the cache. Unfortunately, Tserof's GPS unit picked that time to become possessed by Satan. We walked to where the GPS pointed... and it pointed in the other direction. We walked there... It pointed somewhere else. After half an hour or so of walking around the park in circles, following a GPS unit that was determined to point us anywhere but where the cache was, we gave up.

Geocaches 1, Geocachers 0, GPS Unit 666

On the way to our next cache, Tserof decides to try the geek equivalent of an exorcism and reboots the GPS unit. It must have worked because it performed admirably the rest of the day. Good thing it's waterproof. That holy water is murder on machinery.

Our next cache is the one I'm most looking forward to today, Horse Mountain. It's on the grounds of WHAL, the little AM radio station I worked at for three years in the early 90's. Boy has it grown up. The trailer that served as our studio has long since been pulled out and the parking lot has become a tangle of weeds. The clue to the cache mentioned the old satellite dish that I remember being outside. At first we couldn't find it. But soon we discovered that the dish was still there, it has just lost its battle with the weeds. Sure enough, right where the GPS said it would be, we found the cache. Neat cache. Lots of nice goodies. We took out a couple of things and put in our usual "Instant RPG Kit". But for this cache, I had something special. During my time at the radio station, I rose to the "meteoric" heights of News Director, which came with a giant raise (all the way to $4.55 an hour) and also a box of business cards. When I left the radio station, I took one card with me. I figured since this cache was set up to remember the station, I'd give my last card to the cache. I even signed it for the two people who might be interested in my career (unfortunately, I'm pretty sure my grandma can't get to the cache and my wife was already there so really, it's none). I shared a couple of memories of the station with the group, signed the logbook and bid my old home goodbye, probably for the last time. If you go do the cache, you'll probably see my card there (I can't imagine anyone will take it). If you do and you remember the old station, drop me a message here. I'm like Bruce Springsteen. I love to remember those Glory Days.

Geocaches 1, Geocachers 1

Next up, we headed to another cache nearby. It was a microcache but it was an easy find up near Economy Pencil factory. The cache was called, appropriately, Forget Your Pencil. I'm not a huge fan of micro caches. Too hard to find and no chance to browse the interesting collection of goodies that populate regular caches. But this one was right there so we logged it. Anything to get our averages up.

Geocaches 1, Geocachers 2

Next up, we saw a cache on the way to Tullahoma called "Big Duck." The description said it was on private property but promised the owner gave permission for geocachers to come on the property to look. We arrived at the coordinates, only to be greeted with a locked gate and a big sign promising that trespassers will be prosecuted. We had some trouble reconciling the sign with the promise of the cache owner that we had permission to scout the location. Deciding that, since in Tennessee "prosecuted" usually means "shot", that we'd avoid the law and possibly the morgue and give this one a miss. Tserof kept pointing out that the listing said we had permission but we thought it would probably be little consolation if they felt bad when they found the GPS on our corpses, we moved on.

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 2

Well, this is turning out to be a close match today. Let's see what the rest of the day brings. We moved on to the next thing down the line, a cache called Cemitree. It promised a terrain rating of 2. We knew from the description it was in a cemetary and we wondered how the hell a cemetary could have a 2 terrain. Not to worry. The cache owner, a person named Scoot the Frog, is apparently the Anti-Frodo. Instead of downplaying the hellish terrain leading to his cache, Scoot was overly conservative. We drove into the cemetary, drove down the nice gravel road, within 20 feet of the cache. A quick search (and by quick I mean 5 seconds) and we had it. I won't give away the exact location of the cache, but I will say what they did with it was pretty neat and we're planning to steal it for one of our own caches (the idea, not the cache itself).

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 3

Next up was a cache over Tullahoma way. It was called Ovoca Lake. I have lived in the Shelbyville area all my life and have been to Tullahoma countless times and I had no idea there was a lake here. Strange how that happens and it's the thing I love most about geocaching. You go to a place so many times and your routine gets so ingrained that you miss what's right in front of you. Twice now geocaching has pulled me back and made me re-examine my surroundings. First last week when I, somehow, missed an entire mountain despite being in Huntsville hundreds of times, and today with Ovoca Lake.

Anyway, we drove to Ovoca Lake and I discovered why I'd never heard of it before. Ovoca Lake is a lake like Monte Santo is a mountain. It's really more like the Barry Bonds of ponds (Barry Ponds?) than a real lake. But we weren't there for the fishing, we were there for the caching and the description promised a cache about 20 feet from the parking area. Needing a good Park and Grab to up our score, we dove in. And walked. And walked. Around. Over a creek. Around and around. Back over the creek and finally, we found the cache... About 20 feet from the car. Turns out we'd walked in at path #1 and the cache was on path #2. Silly us. Once again the cache was across the creek. Ash and Fish nimbly stepped over as Tserof and I, the modern day equivalent of The Fat Boys, looked for a way across. Ash pointed us to a spot and insisted loudly that was where we'd crossed before. Tserof and I both looked at it and agreed that it wasn't. Ash continued to insist as only a New Yorker can, that we'd both forgotten and that absolutely WAS the place we'd crossed previously. We still doubted but decided it was as good a place to cross as any so I stepped onto a spot to prepare to hop over. Problem is, the "spot" was really a huge sink of mud and I sunk to the top of my ankle. My ankle, having suffered a stress fracture last November and only recently having let me forget it, protested the ill treatment and rolled on me. Ow.

At this point, I've decided that, between the events on Monte Santo chronicled here last week and this today, that Ash was trying to bump me off for the life insurance money. As I pulled my foot free and limped to a different, more stable, spot, I made Tserof promise that if I died out here under suspicious circumstances, he'd tip off the CSI folks to my theory.

Tserof and I finally made it across the creek, Tserof no worse for the wear and me quite a bit worse for the wear. We took a little plastic cube (not sure what it was for but Fish fancied it) and added our requisite Instant RPG kit to the paintball tube and replaced it.

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 4, Ankle OWWWW

Next up was one in the middle of Tullahoma called Rolling Stock Report. This was another from our good friend and conservative terrain estimator, Scoot the Frog (as opposed to our enemy and sneaky bastard terrain estimator Frodo). We went to the coordinates and found an old Caboose that had been restored and put on display. Kind of neat and the informative sign gave a lot of information on the history of rail travel in Tullahoma and the uses of the caboose. Neat little history lesson. Unfortunately, we couldn't find the cache. It was a micro and just plain evaded us. We knew it was there as it had been found recently, but we just couldn't get our hands on it. Finally, we decided that, since micros don't contain goodies anyway, and since we were all quite happy with the caboose, that we'd just treat it as a virtual cache, log it as a success, and move on. Cheating? Maybe. But we're just rebels like that. We're being fitted for our matching leather jackets and greasing up our James Dean haircuts right now.

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 5, Ankle: Does anyone have an aspirin?

Next up was a real virtual cache called On Star. It is on the grounds of the AEDC Air Force Base and tells the story of the different camps that were housed there over the years. My grandmother used to work at the first one, Camp Forrest, during World War II and told me stories about it as a child so it was neat to see the area. Ash wrote down all the things to answer the questions for this one (Tserof, who never met a book he didn't like the movie adaptation of, was distraught that our geocaching trip had given him homework) and we moved on.

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 6

The next was also on the AEDC base, called Watchtower. A good name for it too as it was right by an old watchtower on the base (which is good since my other thought was that it was a cache placed by Jehovah's Witnesses). The clue for it was "log your visit" and Tserof complained about the useless clue. I wasn't so sure as the wording seemed too precise to not have hidden meaning. Sure enough, we soon found the cache inside an old hollow log covered by some leaves. Good big cache too. Lots of goodies including a fishing lure which, being Zen Bassmasters, we promptly took to add to our own cache we planned to plant, leaving a D20 and a samurai mini behind as payment. So far, this was my favorite cache of the day. Challenging, but not insanely so. Well-hidden, but not inside a freakin' cave on the side of a mountain, and a good big cache with fishing gear in it. Not to mention a bitchin' cool huge ass watchtower to look at as well. Bravo to the person who placed this one. Nice job.

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 7

Hey, looks like we're getting the hang of this geocaching thing. Got a hell of a lot of them done too. We decided to do one more before going home to pack up our own cache and place it. It was called Gone Fishin' and we decided that we couldn't very well be a team called the Zen Bassmasters if we hadn't done Gone Fishin'. We went to the location, Fisherman's Park in Shelbyville, made a few jokes about the giant sign for the guy running for Mayor who has the same name as Fish, tried to get Fish to stand in front of the "Fish for Mayor" sign for a picture, but he didn't seem interested in beginning his political career.

The cache was a pretty easy find, a small tupperware container among some rocks. We laughed as the notebook told of it being a replacement cache as the original had been washed away by the floods a couple of years ago. Tserof commented that it must have been a hell of a flood to get that high and Fish and I, having both seen it first hand, agreed it was quite a rise. Small cache but a nice one. Took a rubber fishing worm from the cache and, discovering we were out of treasures of our own, dropped in a quarter from my pocket. If you locate the cache, enjoy the jawbreaker my quarter bought you or call your mama. She misses you.

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 8

Woohoo! We kicked ass today. Got a lot accomplished, saw some cool spots, overcame a demonic GPS unit, and managed to almost re-break my ankle...

Ok, that last bit kind of sucked but the rest was good. We vowed to redo these caches in a couple of months both to take Mad Mike to see the good ones, and to see who all else had visited them. All in all a good day (he says as he downs a couple of Naproxen and rubs his swollen ankle) and a lot of fun.

From there, we had just one thing left to do, place our very first Zen Bassmaster cache. We placed one of our ready-made D20 kits in the ammo box provided by Fish, added some of the toys we found in the other caches, attached the fishing lure to the "official" Zen Bassmaster notebook to log the visits and we were ready to go. Almost. First I, being the originator of the Zen Bassmasters name and creed, had to write down the Code of the Bassmaster on the front page of the notebook. What's the Code of the Bassmaster, you ask? It's the secret of Zen, attained through long years of fishing trips. What does the code say? You'll have to locate the cache for that one.

Here are the coordinates. 35°30.299N 086°26.933W

The cache is called Wabbit Season and should be up on geocaching.com soon enough. If you're in the Shelbyville area for any reason, give it a try. We'll check in periodically to read your comments and logs.

Until next week, may the bass be with you...

-Gryph