15 October 2017 ANF Visit

We were in town with a vacation day on Monday. We knew heavy rains were forecast for the late afternoon so we decided to stay near home and spend time on trails in the Allegheny National Forest.

Besides enjoying the woods, we spotted a non-scary snake crowding the trail and found a couple lonely caches.

Our luck didn't hold out. The heavy rains came and with them came lost power. We expected we were in trouble when we spotted these downed lines.

Our local rural electric provider already has a crew on work with this downed line. Unfortunately, there aren't many crews to tackle large outages. We had our LED's and blankets. Eventually the power came back.

11 October 2017 Muggled by a Dog

I am slowly finding all the available caches at Saltese. Soon their will only be night caches, and I don't cache at night.

This evening I stopped by Saltese for a couple of the finds requiring longer hikes. The never ending sunshine of Sunday had been replaced by overcast. By this evening grey was the predominant color.

It has become customary for me to visit a cache location not far from the parking coordinates with each visit. After at least a half dozen visits, the hide remained elusive. Not this evening. I hadn't time to begin my ritual swearing and promising to never return when there it was. It is so anti-climatic when I find a cache that has eluded me and realize the find should have been made on the first visit.

There it is hiding below a few rocks.

Maybe I should turn in my geocaching license. Here it is uncovered.

The find brought elation and a let down. I now knew it was more likely I would now find all the caches in Saltese at some time.

I continued my journey and moved toward my encounter with the muggle dog.

The weird part of muggle dog was I offended it with my presence long distance. I was at a much higher elevation. It was lower and across the road. I wasn't in its territory or doing anything threatening, but this dog was offended by my presence. He looked straight at me and barked as long as I could be seen (see the circle below)

Deer muggles are easy.

They know they are supposed to run away.

It was time to close out another year of visits to Spokane.

For a brief moment, I had a quick thought of stopping to see if I could find the first marker for the night cache. It was very brief.

10 October 2017 Liberty Lake

It was a perfect fall evening for a visit to Liberty Lake. My first visit to this scenic park was in Late July. At that time parking areas and trails were closed with fire warnings. I was here the evening prior for a very short visit and had confirmed the trails were now all open. The image below was taken near my first cache hunt. The image looks serene and dry. The first cache was just beyond the tree on the far right. About the same distance as the rock in the image. Unfortunately, the ground was wetlands and still very wet despite the lack of rain. I found out when I went in to my waist. I quickly scrambled back to shore, but was soaked. By some amazing luck the electronics all survived.

A normal person may have decided to call it an evening. I'm not that person. I regrouped and decided to head into the woods for a few woods caches.

It was a good hide in a smaller rock formation. Now it was decision time. Did I continue on with the woods trail or walk back and look for a drier path to the other side of the wetlands and more caches? My boots were wet. My pants were wet. Other things were wet. I might as well give a second shot to crossing over.

This trail was much drier with only occasional wet areas. My boots did get any wetter (or any drier for that matter).

There was a wide stream to cross on the other side, but my boots were already wet. ;)

The finds were fun and easy, but the sun sets early in Spokane so it was soon time to make my way back across. By the time I reached the other shore, the sun was nearly set.

I took one final walk to the end of a viewing platform.

There was no way these boots were going to dry before my trip home. I was just hoping to drive off some water to reduce my checked bag weight.

8 October 2017 Slavin Conservation Area

It was time for a return trip to Spokane for work. My flights were on time leaving me a few hours available for caching evening with the shortening days. Slavin is a good choice for a visit since it is a reasonable drive from the airport and a reasonable drive to the hotel when my trail time is over.

Slavin is part of a butte and offers a much different walk than other local areas. Almost a third of the area is wetlands and there are almost 140 birds listed for potential viewing.

It is well populated with geocaches.

There are often signs of the past use of the parklands in Spokane.

The wetlands were hosting plenty of waterfowl this afternoon.

A juvenile gadwall

The day was growing short so it was time to leave the multitude of birds and the few remaining unfound caches.

7 October 2017 Hell Hollow

There was a multi in Hell Hollow hidden by one of our favorite hiders so we were really happy for a return visit. We had been told there were some interesting twists on the hides so we were hoping for a colorful fall walk and some nice hides.

Most visits to Hell Hollow mean a journey down into the ravine.

We took a less adventureous way out.

6 October 2017 New Geocache Hides

Our flight home arrived in early afternoon leaving us time to visit North Chagrin. We were planning to place a new cache and hide a new multi to replace one we archived while CMP was doing trail work. Our walk on the trail brought home the message fall was here and soon the cold reality of winter would arrive.

Colors in the woods seem more muted these days. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's the woods changing with the loss of ashes and their wonderful fall colors. Either way, it seems less vibrant.

The board walk is a new addition from the recent work.

5 October 2017 A Second, Short Visit to the LBJ Grasslands

Vacations end. This one seemed really short. It was time to leave Oklahoma.

It was late afternoon by the time we completed our drive back to the grasslands. We had time for a few walks on the trails.

Our journey included a well done ammo can hide. This one had no tree fasteners so it met the guidelines though the use of carabiners. These do not show up often anymore so it was fun to find.

We also spotted this pool, which had FROGS!

It doesn't take much for a frog to amuse us.

Our last stop of the day was Cottonwood Lake in the grasslands. We made a couple finds here and left the ones on the back of the lake as we still had a drive to Dallas. It was a good stopping point for a fun vacation.

Nice tree at the parking area