Wow! What a great weekend! What a great group of geocachers!
I love events and travel to attend and host them all over the place, and can honestly say that this is one of the best I have ever attended!
A huge thank you to all my co-hosts and helpers who assisted with the planning, set-up and clean-up.
Special appreciation is extended to Geezer and Deezer; these guys made the poker run, start to finish, and did one fine job of it! Thank you!
Thanks to Old River Runner for a lot of new and interesting caches!
Thanks to CacheMates for being patient and waiting on me to climb Turtle Rocks on our cache expedition!
A huge thank you to all who brought ammo boxes and cache trinkets to go in them - I think we ended up giving away 22 ammo-box and 8 mini-size stocked caches! I hope to see them all listed soon!
What's a caching trip without a little adventure?
What with the weather putting a halt to geocaching Saturday night, and the forecast calling for more of the same Sunday, I decided to leave after the event.
Arkansas StickerDude and OzarkMtnGhost followed me out of the park on our way to dinner and called me by radio - "Hey NatureFish, you know that you have no tail-lights on that clunker?".
Well phooey - I had the headlight switch replaced the day before the trip, so I 'knew' it was okay... had to be a blown fuse.
We stopped at a gas station and they took turns laying on the wet pavement, contorting and twisting around under my dash, trying to find a blown fuse.
I had just about decided to get a local hotel and get them fixed the next day when Gunnar pursued his suspicion that the new headlight switch might be at fault - sure enough, as soon as he touched it, they came on - a loose connection!
Whew - thanks, guys! We went on to Conway and had a nice dinner.
I was approaching West Memphis early this morning and the radio starts turning itself off and on. That's interesting.
A few minutes later the tail-lights are gone again.
Now the headlights appear dim. Just out of curiosity I switch them off for a minute... and hear the defroster moter pick up speed! Huh. Turn the lights back on, the defroster quits.
Of all the places to have car trouble, all the interstate exits where one might have to get off, this was the one of choice, I-40 Exit 260, where an old friend of mine manages the repair shop for a TA truck-stop, and, he happened to be on duty!
He checked my old truck out, told me the headlight switch was defective, and had caused an overload on the electrical system that had killed the alternator. They don't work on cars, have no parts, and no one delivers parts for miles around.
So we charge the battery enough to run the engine and I made the 17-mile run back west to Forest City with all electronics shut down (gray dawn now, raining heavily, no defrost or wipers!)
Found an Advance Auto Parts store, but they don't open till 9 a.m., so I got in a good nap while waiting.
When they opened I talked to the manager, a super-nice fella name of Eugene Nalls, who pondered only a few seconds about how few and far away any service garage would be in that town on a Sunday morning, then rolled up his sleeves and went to work, replacing my alternator, headlight switch and power invertor right there in his parking lot!
It took him until after noon, he would accept no payment but for parts, and I was back on the road!
Well, you can say that Mr. Eugene Nalls at Advance Auto Parts in Forrest City Arkansas is my new friend! What a wonderful thing to do for a stranger passing through his town! You can bet his Regional Manager will be hearing from me!
Having just spent a couple of days at beautiful Pettit Jean Park, had the wonderful experience of meeting all of you Arkansas geocachers, then having an Arkansan go so far out of his way to get me back on the road, you can bet I came home with a real appreciation for Arkansas and its people.
Thank you to everyone who came... your giving up your time to come and meet me, to allow me to get to know you, was a blessing and gift I will long remember!
Ed