The Salamanders Of Columbia

The main streets of South Carolina towns seem to encourage being infested by small animals.  In Greenville they are infested with cute little mice.   In Columbia it is the salamander.

This is actually appropriate as the salamander is South Carolina's state amphibian, and Columbia is the state capitol.

10 salamander statues have been placed along Main St.  During Team Awesomesauce's latest adventure we did a multi-cache that took us on a tour of five of them.

I love finding features of towns like this.  It gives the place a lot of personality.  The following are several photos of the salamander statues we say.  Hopefully someday you will go check them out for yourself.

Team Awesomesauce Rides Again

I am blessed with a great group of friends who like to go on geocaching adventures.  So far we've done a weekend long power trail, and some geo-art.

We call ourselves Team Awesomesauce (for obvious reasons), and we are: Yours Truly, HoosierSunshine, FailedApparatus, NCBiscuit, and the enigmatic NinjaChipmunk.

This past weekend we went on another adventure. We started in Charlotte North Carolina, and ended up playing geocaching trivia in Columbia South Carolina. This is the story of that whirlwind adventure.

We started in north Charlotte where we found a puzzle cache, a challenge cache, and a well hidden micro.

While we were in the area we took advantage of the season and found a cache that was placed in a valley that is covered in kudzu during the summer months.  The vegetation was a lot more navigable this time of year, so the going was easier.

We then headed over to Rock Hill SC where we did a couple multi's, a puzzle, and some gadget caches.

The coolest cache was a Letterbox Hybrid called I'm Not Lost, I'm Geocaching (GC4J01E).  The cache involved following a series of arrows from the cache description to work your way across the campus at Winthrop University.  You really should check that cache out for yourself.

After lunch we drove the 75 miles over to Columbia South Carolina where we did some more fun caches.  The first was at this really cool mural of a tunnel.

That cache was interesting for an unusual reason.  The mural is on a 3 storey building overlooking a parking lot owned by a church.  While we were there the church was having all of the cars in the parking lot towed.  As a result we had to dodge several tow trucks, and one really angry car owner,  while finding the cache.

Once we found it, we took a few moments to admire the fire hydrant where Clifford The Big Red Dog goes for walks.

We then checked out the state house, festivally decked out for the holidays, then took a walk down main street in search of another rather cool multi-cache.

Along the way we decided to become street performers to earn some gas money.  We were not successful.
One of the last caches we did was a cool gadget cache.  The cache is a 5 gallon bucket suspended 10ft in the air via a rope that is attached to the tree with a padlock. Another rope hung down from the bucket. To open the cache one needs to pull on the bucket rope, at which time you get dumped on with ping pong balls.  Also in the bucket is the log book, and a key to open the padlock (and allow you to reset the cache.)

We had so much fun we did the cache three times.  Most of us were impressed.

Shortly after this we headed over to Fuddruckers to attend the It's All Just Trivial event, hosted by HoosierSunshine and FailedApparatus.  This event is part of a series of events where teams of 2-6 geocachers compete by answering a series of geocaching related trivia.  It is some of the most fun one can have an event, and you should all come check it out.  Keep up with future events here.

After the event we all headed back to our various houses, and closed the book on another fantastic Team Awesomesauce adventure.

Final Approach: An Awesomsauce Geo-art Extravanza

On July 23, 2014 a new geo-art series called Final Approach was published just north of Greensboro North Carolina

As soon as I saw it I knew just the group of folks who would be perfect for this mission: Team Awesomesauce.

You may remember Team Awesomesauce from our powertrail adventure in Tennesee in early July. The team includes Yours Truly, HoosierSunshine, FailedApparatus, NCBiscuit, and the enigmatic NinjaChipmunk.

Yesterday Team Awesomesauce suited up and met in a Walmart parking lot near Greensboro North Carolina, jumped into a rented "Geovan of Destiny"-esque mobile, and set off on an epic quest to turn this series of artisnal question marks into smiley faces.

The quest led us on a series of back roads that weaved through some picturesque North Carolina countryside.

Most of the geocaches themselves were simple PnG style hides. We each took turns jumping out of the van to make the grabs.  Here NCBiscuit is doing her part.

I did the navigating, and jumped out on occasion to find a cache or two.  I tried to add some style to this one.

HoosierSunshine, despite having a sore ankle, also got into the geocaching log signing spirit.

 FailedApparatus did all of the driving (as the Geovan was rented in his name) but he still did his part to grab a few caches.

Alongside her cache retrieval duties, NinjaChipmunk took on her roll as photographer sniper. Here she is in a stunning action shot.  Note the intensity and sneakitude of taking the shot from the open van door.

There are 82 caches in the series.  We signed each long with Team AZMSCE (cause writing is hard):

6 hours later, including several pit stops, a delicious lunch, and... um... hair treatment...

... we accomplished our goal.  One airplane worth of question marks converted into happy faces.

That is a lot of smilies.

We found a few additional caches along the way. By the time we finished the day we had logged 94 geocaches in total.

Team Awesomesauce has now gone our separate ways, and slid back into the murky shadows of our cover identities as civilians.  However, you never know when another mission will call, and Team Awesomesauce will suit back up and ride for on another epic quest.

Stay tuned!

Power Play In Tennessee

Last weekend I spent geocaching in Tennessee with 4 other North Carolina cachers.  Our goal was to do some of the power trails near Bristol.

It all started a few weeks ago when a local cacher named NinjaChimpunk put a call out on a local geocaching group wondering if anyone would be up for such an adventure as this.  I signed up immediately (after getting permission from my wife), and a few others jumped in as well.  We quickly had a team, and started making plans.

First up was selecting a team name.  I suggested Awesomesauce McGansky (seemed like a good name to me), but we shortened it to Team Awesomesauce (we shortened it further to AZMSCE when we signed the cache logs).

Several of the cachers are from a fair distance away, and my house is the closest to Tennessee, so 3 of them crashed at my house Friday night.  The other met us at 5am Saturday morning, and we all piled into the Geovan of Destiny, and drive the 2 hours thru the dark to our chosen hunting grounds.

Somewhere along the way we picked sauce themed nick names for ourselves (would you expect anything else from a group of geeky folks engaged in a geeky activity?)

I picked Duck Sauce for myself, tho in retrospect I realized it may be confused as an homage to Duck Dynasty.  Let me tell you, it isn't.

We arrived at the start of the first power trail just after breakfast, and we quickly assumed roles.  driver, navigator, jumper, cache signer etc.  We soon got our rhythm figured out and were signing log sheets left and right.

However this was to be short lived, and fate was about to toss us a curveball.

We found about 50 caches or so when we started noticing that the vans brakes were acting funny and overheating. All that stopping and starting was kicking the crap out of them.

50 more caches and the brakes gave in completely, and started grinding.  We made the decision to abandon the trail and head to a garage to get the brakes fixed.

Fortunately the repair shop had the van fixed in a couple hours (two new rotors, two new pads), and we were back in business.

We spent the rest of the day geocaching along the highway, finding caches on signs, and hidden in guardrails.

We had a few other must-do caches on our list as well, so from time to time we took a break from the power trail to take in scenes like this one.

And to check out history, like this cemetery that contains the remains of Davy Crockett's grandparents.

As the day was coming to a close we saw a truck parked on the side of the road, at a cache going the other way.  We wondered if it was fellow cachers.  When we finally turned around and arrived back at that cache, it turns out that they were the cache owners of the series we were currently doing.  They had noticed us doing the power trail and had stopped to wait for us so they could grab the travel bug trackable code on the van. 

It was really cool to meet the cache owners, and we chatted for a few minutes, but then it was time to resume the trail.  So we headed off again.  A couple hours later, at sundown, we finished for the night.

We grabbed some food, then crashed at a nearby hotel.

My son let me borrow his Scooby Doo suitcase, so I used it to pack my stuff - it seemed very appropriate.

The second day, Sunday, we ended up noticing more interesting things along the way, starting with this abandoned steak house near the hotel...

... these purple cows...

... and this giant guitar on a music shop.

We finished the last cache on the last power trail at 5:30PM, and we started the drive back to my house.

All in all we did a great job keeping on track.  Despite having a few DNFs, and spending a couple hours at a mechanic, we found 392 of 424 planned caches.  Not bad all things considered.

This was a new experience for me, but it was a great deal of fun.  I really hope Team Awesomesauce hits the road again to tackle another power trail.  If we do, stay tuned.

Have you ever done a power trail?  Let me know in the comments below.