New Arkansas Power Trail

[Woodwalker9]

Mathseeker and I have just returned home after finishing up Arkansas' newest power trail. It's called Americana Highway 70 Series and begins just west of Interstate 440 in east North Little Rock and travels east along U.S. Highway 70 to Brinkley. The trail now has 174 P&G caches with plans to extend it to West Memphis to include almost 400 hides.
The trail is a joint effort by LostBoys20007, KTJx2, Cabot_Fish, CrazyCowboy, and the Bates Gang and has been in the works since sometime last year.
It is so good to see a trail like this in Arkansas. Finally Arkansas cachers can hunt a power trail without leaving the state. This has caught the attention of the ARKANSAS DEPARTMENT OF PARKS & TOURISM and Kim Williams has a nice write up about it HERE where she refers to it as a wonderful tourism tool for the communities that are included along the route.
For all those who like power trails, this is a must do series. Mathseeker and I sure had a ball this afternoon.

[astrodav]

Huummm .... looks like I know what I'll be doing after my next several VA appts. Got one coming up Thursday. Being as my time on these is always limited, I'm sure it'll take me maybe a dozen trips to ever get the whole thing done, especially when they start getting further from the Rock.

Thanks for bringing this up. I have my notifications set up basically from Perryville to LR on Hwy10, & from Perry to NLR via Conway, depending upon whether it's a McClellan or Ft. Roots visit. I rarely go East of town, so I might have overlooked this for quite a while.

Looks like fun.

[Ashallond]

oooh, tempting to do one of these days.

[idratherbehiking]

This looks like a really great power trail and I am just itching to go do it.



The shot above is not even the whole thing. Looks like a good long day of caching. I think I am going to try and do it in one day by myself just to see if it can be done.

[astrodav]

If the caches themselves aren't overly difficult, which I don't THINK they are, it SHOULD be possible for 1 person to do it in a day.

Although I mentioned that I currently go east of the Rock very rarely .... in my AP&L days I went out that way quite regularly. The road is generally flat, straight, smooth, & all that good stuff.

The only thing which might work against you would be rush-hour. There's actually quite a bit of traffic to LR in the morning, & away from LR in the evening. Lots of LR workers live out that way, although not anything near like Benton, Conway, & the NorthEast Corridor. Most of these commuters will be on I40, but not all of them.

It would surely be a LONG day if done individually, but I do think it would be easily possible for an experienced cacher who works it right.

[SJClimber]

Yo, Rhone and I did this a few weeks past. What fun. Even stopped at Craig's BBQ in DeValls Bluff. The cache owners have really done a good job on this one. Will check on any new ones this fall...

[rklmbl]

We did the caches on the Americana Highway 70 trail today. We found #1 at 5:45 am and #174 at 7:08 am. After 63 years, Craig's BBQ in DuValls Bluff is getting it right with BBQ and pie. We finally realized that we had made a small error in finding #1 and #174 and we had to go back and find #'s 2 through 173. We had a blast finding the caches in this rich agricultural area. We did finally complete the entire trail at approximately 2:30 with 2 meal stops and a couple of rest stops and we look forward to doing the Brinkley to Memphis leg when it is completed.

[Cpdenton]

We also did the trail from end to end yesterday. The Dentons, along with BSA534 set out at cache number 1 at about 9:45 yesterday morning. Seeing that rklmbl had been there before us, we thought maybe we could catch them. Then we realized who we were talking about. Of course they started at 5:45 am! No way we were going to catch up to them...anyway. We stopped in Lonoke and got a subway for lunch. Maybe we should have stopped at one of those barbeque joints along the way. We finished the trail at about 5:45 yesterday evening. Also picked up four caches along the way to get us up to 1999. The event next weekend will be our 2000th cache...unless we can't resist a FTF or something between now and then.

Thanks to all who put the trail together!

[OldRiverRunner]

I'm not into power trails, but I am into a challenge. After studying the trail over the weekend, I decided to see if I could do the entire trail, solo, in one day. Better yet, could I do it in 6 hours or less? And, seeing that the trail consisted of 174 caches, could I find 26 more and make it 200 in one day, all done solo?

I left home a little after 5 AM on Memorial Day and headed to North Little Rock. I checked my watch after I arrived at #1 and started the timer. It was 6:25 AM. At 12:23 PM, I had signed the log and returned # 174 back to its hiding spot. Unfortunately, I did have 1 DNF (#27, I believe), which I believe is missing. There were a couple of others that I found had migrated from their hiding spots and had to be put back into place. But that one appeared to be GONE. Anyway, I spent way too much time looking for it, but I still was able to complete the other 173 under my goal of 6 hours. Then it was off to find another 27 to reach my goal of 200.

Between 12:23 PM and 1:35 PM, I took my time finding 5 other caches in the Brinkley area before heading south down Rt. 49 to hit the Delta Heritage Trail. Along the way, I picked up 4 other caches, including the ParkCache at the Louisiana Purchase State Park.

I arrived at the Delta Heritage Trail State Park parking area near # 1 of that power trail series, unloaded my bike, and found my first cache at 2:45 PM. By 5:10 PM, I had biked 3 miles, found 18 of the power trail series, found the ParkCache, and had 7 DNFs for my efforts. I cycled back to my van, loaded up, and headed home. I arrived home at 9 PM, worn out, but satisfied that I had met my goals for the day, recording 201 finds, including 2 ParkCaches. What a day!

In retrospect, I enjoyed the Delta Heritage power trail quite a bit, although I was very tired by the time I started and I think that, plus time pressure, contributed to my high DNF rate. I plan to return sometime again later this summer and complete the trail. Although this is a power trail, the hides are challenging and each one is a little different. The Americana Highway power trail, however, became too long and too boring for my liking. It is definitely all about the numbers. I am glad that I did it, for the experience and for the challenge of the personal goals I set for myself. But I doubt I will try to do a power trail of this type again. At least not in the near future.

[captaincooder]

I am excited too about this power trail, because I hear from all cachers that it can be done in several hours. Those rumors were with teams, so I've been wondering how long it would take to do solo. ORR, you've answered my question. It took you six, so...multiply by two...it will take me twelve! Not bad at all! I tried loading them all into my GPSr this morning, but my PQ didn't include five of them, then I had computer issues. I went to my great aunt's funeral in El Dorado this morning, but didn't have time to get to the power trail and get home at a decent hour. Maybe Wed or Thur?