Bear Lake Adventure

Today we set out to find all the caches around Bear Lake.
The first one just inside the park gate is Dad's Day 2009 #5


MBW(majorbookworm) found it pretty quickly and we were off to the next one.








Our next one on the list is Bear Stump

This one had AA's(animal addict) name all over it. Obviously it was in a stump and there was one right there close to where the GPS was leading us. She claimed the find. It had a travel bug to trade and was big enough for the jeep. So we will be saying goodbye to the jeep and let it hang out here for awhile.
I think it will enjoy it's new temporary home.

Time to drive around to the other side of the park to find the parking place for the rest of the Bear Lake caches.
Our next stop is The Ark. We also found it in a stump and it was full of.....yes, you guessed it....Animals.
I didn't get a picture of this one because I was holding all the animals in my jacket while the girls sorted through them. AA dropped in a rabbit, rooster, and a sheep. MBW claimed a chipmunk, AA claimed a wolf, and hubby claimed the beaver. His scouting patrol at Woodbadge were the beavers.

Time to hike to our next cache. This was the first part of a 2 part multi-cache. Findley Find

Up a steep hill and into the rocks....MBW claimed the find after a bit of looking around. She found it in a spot hubby had just looked :)
We entered the co-ordinates for the second part of the cache and spent a few minutes enjoying the view while we decided what to do next.

Hubby checks the clues.

AA enjoys the view









More hiking to our next cache. Family Fun Hike: Findley#1

The directions said to turn off the main trail on a trail that goes to the right after you see bear lake. Well the GPS was pointing right and there was a faint deer trail that didn't last for long but we followed it anyway and kept following the general direction of the GPS. Yes! there was some bushwacking involved. Okay we are in the general area. There is the pile of logs that someone talked about when they logged their find. We must be close. We start looking around while hubby is trying to find GZ. He kept walking around in circles within a 200feet radius. I got tired of following him around and just started looking. I ran across this stump while I was looking so stopped to take a picture.  And then hubby is yelling "I found GZ"

When I was about half-way over to him he had spotted the cache and claimed the find.
Okay, so we were all complaining about the "wild cache chase".  Maybe it is time to change the batteries on the GPS. It helped a lot!


We signed the log and bushwacked our way back to the main trail.



When we got back to the main trail, we checked the GPS to see which was closest, the next cache or part 2 of the multi. It showed that the next cache was closest. So off we went to find Lucky Memorial Cache. I was holding the GPS and it said to go left, but hubby said the directions were to take the trail that broke off of the main trail. I didn't realize it at the time but it was about 20 feet from where we parked the car. We kept getting further and further away from the cache. We passed right by the second part of the multi and didn't realize it.
We finally got going the right direction on the right trail, up and down the hills just about as far as we had just walked on the other trail.

GZ led us to a nice viewpoint and there were some sticks that looked like they were placed as a memorial to their dog lucky.

The cache was found in the nook of a rock under some pine needles just like the clue said. We were all looking around in the crevices until I had hubby read the clue one more time and realized it said nook. So I looked for a nook and found the cache.




I was getting pretty tired by this time, we had been hiking around for more than an hour and a half. We headed back toward the car along the trail with the co-ordinates to the second part of the multi in the GPS. I was dreading going all the way back around where we had just came from. So when the GPS said the cache was off to the right we headed cross country.

We found this grave site along our way, possibly another pet cemetery.










And sure enough we were back to the original main trail, we found the log site that the clues pointed us too and with a little bit of searching, I finally claimed the find.

But that isn't the end of our Bear Lake caching adventure. One more to finish it up. We didn't have the coordinates but I knew it was right along the road we were parked on and it was a memorial stone.


Old School


There it is! A quick find by AA and a picture and we were on our way.

That is the end of our Bear lake adventure but not the end of our geocaching for the day. That story is the next blog post.