8 October 2016 Jonesboro and North

We spent the night in Jonesboro and made our first stop at Craighead Forest Park. The park was a perfect way to start the morning. The attractive park surrounds a lake and was first developed in 1937 as the Young Men's Civic Club. The City of Jonesboro has done well in keeping this park. We arrived while a race was in progress, but it seemed like an odd race. It turned out to be an event called the Gearhead Endurance Challenge. Basically, the event ran for twelve hours and participants were sent out every 30 minutes to run the 2.5 mile loop around the lake in the 30 minutes. If you weren't back in 30 minutes, you had to wait until the next 30 minute run while if you finished your 30 minutes early you could rest for the next start. It actually sounded interesting for everything but the part about doing this for twelve hours. We were happy to enjoy the trails, find a few caches, and even see a late butterfly.

The exercise stations at this park rock. These and the ones at Foundry Park in Monterrey are the best I have seen. They are much more involved than the typical par course units common in so many parks.

We walked about halfway around the park before it was time for us to turn and move on to our next destination. If I were in the area again, I would be happy to return to Craighead Forest.

We were off to Tennessee and the oldest active cache in the state from January 2001. This location was a big step up from Arkansas' oldest hide. We enjoyed a boardwalk journey and a quick trip to the oldest cache.

The real interesting area of this park was a walk into the cypress swamp for a cache hide. This area offered a few herons and nice views of the swamp. We were able to reach the water's edge and find the cache along with a few crayfish chimneys, a lot of cypress knees, and an old turtle shell.

I've enjoyed caching in Tennessee parks. Today's adventure was another positive visit. We hoped to stop at a state park with a mound near Jackson and a now closed company plant location, but travel made us too late for a visit. Maybe the plant will reopen some time in the future for a return to the area.