Yesterday, in search of adventure, I headed back to Riverbend Park near Hickory NC to attempt to clear it of the 8 geocaches I have not found yet.Luckily I DNF'd on the very first one.
With the pressure off, I spent the rest of the afternoon with my trusty companion Bailey The Wonder Dog, enjoying the outdoors, hiking the trails, climbing over rocks and waterfalls, and hunting down geocaches.
I have been to Riverbend Park twice now on geocaching trips (Geocaching Adventures: Riverbend Park and Hiking Riverbend Park), but some recent hides have added some awesome new caches.
One of my favourites of the day was the parks only multi-cache: Puzzzles@RBP. Each stage is a puzzle that must be solved in the field in order to get the coordinates for the next hide. It was short, only 3 stages, but it was probably one of the more fun geocaches I've done in quite some time (and I've done a lot of good ones recently).Fun and adventure is, after all, the name of the game. Thats why I didn't mind DNFing the first cache, and why I didn't mind not finding the cache at the waterfall (both micros in the woods - go figure). I still had a blast, got an adventure, saw new things, played with my puppy, took a bunch of photographs, and generally had a good time.
Win. Win.
Here are some more pics of the day, including this tiny ammo can (which isn't compensating for anything!).
A nice set of waterfalls. There is something soothing about the sounds of water flowing over a waterfall, and something overly adventurous about climbing on them. This was taken from the far side (from the path)... one of us had damp paws at this stage, but didn't seem to mind.
An ammo can of old audio tapes. Rock'n'Roll was the theme of this cache. I neglected to take any as I left my cassette deck in my other decade.
One of the many well groomed trails in the park. Despite the heavy rains we've had recently the trails were nice and dry (mostly).
A scene from a cache well off the beaten track. You can barely see Bailey peeking out from behind the tree (can you spot her?)
Microcosm. This mini garden was discovered after hoping over one of the logs in the picture above. It was a little bit of green in a sea of brown leaves and rotten trees.
