Going Caching: Cruising The Coosa

The City of Rome Georgia lies at the confluence of 3 rivers and 5 hills.

For a geocacher exploring 5 hills over a long weekend of caching is practically a foregone conclusion. However exploring the rivers is a different story entirely (especially for someone who doesn't own a boat of any kind, and arrived in town in a rented Mazda 2).

So I was stoked when one of the activities advertised for the Going Caching long weekend was a boat cruise along two of these rivers.

To top it off, they had placed a special cache that would only be available via a boat.

When I strategized my weekend I realized that the best time for me to go was the very first cruise, so on Friday at 10 AM I boarded the boat named Roman Holiday and headed out on a cruise.

The first stop was to grab the cache, which was magnetically attached to a bridge support.  Since this was the first cruise of the day, and this cache can only be found via a boat, First To Find honours were up for grabs.

To avoid the rush, the captain proclaimed that the person who had travelled the farthest to be here would get the honours.  That person happened to be Jeremy Irish (yes, *that* Jeremy Irish), as he hails from Seattle Washington, and most of the rest of the boat came from the southern states.

To save time they had two containers, one left behind, and one brought on board so folks could sign the log during the rest of the cruise (next cruise they are swapped out again for the next group, etc.). Here is Jeremy celebrating his FTF.

With the business of geocaching taken care of, we settled in for a leisurely 45 minute cruise down the Coosa and Oostanaula Rivers.

It was a bit chilly that day, but the waters were nice and calm, perfect for a selfie.

 As we worked our way thru town, some of the city landmarks made an appearance. All the while the captain gave us both an explanation of what we were seeing, and some of the history of the area.

Halfway thru the cruise the Captain started spinning a tale which he quite readily admitted was completely fake.  Then he mentioned that a famous character had a Rome GA citizen to thank for his popularity.  That character is...

Popeye the Sailor Man (toot toot). Yep, Popeye the Sailor Man (toot toot). He was strongs to the finich, cause he ates his spinach. He's Popeye the Sailor Man! (toot toot!)

(in case you are wondering, we really did sing the song - it was very geek nostalgic).

Then we had a bit more tour, and views of the rivers.

I'll leave you with one more picture of myself with Jeremy Irish, just to point out  the fact that while Jeremy may be one of the founders of Groundspeak and an elder statesman of geocaching, *I* am taller.

Thus concludes the tale of the time I found a T5 cache with the founder of geocaching.com.

Afterwards we docked and headed off to do some geocaching (remember geocaching?  This is a blog about geocaching). However that is going to have to wait for upcoming posts. Tho it may interest you to know that cars and boats were not the only types of transportation used this weekend...

Stay Tuned!