The Adventures of Quartzcacher and Dentful1

[Dentful1]

Bruce and I have been discussing a 100 find cache run for a while now. Bruce has a personal goal of finding at least 100 caches in each and every month. Since he has been doing this he has shot up the state of Arkansas like buckshot hitting a deer. There ain't a city he has not been to that has great numbers for this to be achieved. We looked at the cache map and found that we can go after the 35 cache power trail in Williford and proceed to Pocahontas, Walnut Ridge, Paragould and then to Jonesboro. Bruce had read just about every cache description for that area and I had printed out the GSAK list to write notes beside each one. We agreed to meet at St Josephs hospital in Hot Springs and head on up. As we awoke on Saturday we discovered that it was going to rain all day up north. We immediately went into salvage mode to try to figure out something so we can still achieve our goal. We agreed on going towards Shreveport, Louisiana. Neither one of us has a Louisiana cache so that was a done deal. We went into the hospital so Bruce can get his WiFi hooked up and we dumped our GPSers of the caches already loaded and loaded up the Northwest corner of Louisiana. We had a moment in the hospital where we were about to go to jail. A nurse came out of some biohazard room right near where we were working and asked what are we doing. She asked in a nice tone and it seemed she was just messing with us. As she came back from wherever she went to and was opening the door to go back to the biohazard room she asked again and I told her we were hacking into her email and to help us out with her password. She went into the room and in 3 minutes a cop comes out of there asking us whats going on. We explained to him the whole geocaching thing and why Bruce has got his mobile command post scattered all over the double chair. The cop has heard of it and he seemed interested as he wrote down the web address of geocaching and left. Bruce got it together and we left the hospital an hour behind of our intended departure of 3:30am, so now it is 4:30am.
After driving down I-30 and hitting 71 South we found our first cache at 6:50am at "A Welcome Sign" which was the state line of Louisiana. We continued to cache our way into Shreveport. We arrived in Shreveport on find # 31. We had intentions of getting 40 or so caches in the city and head back up north for some power loops that we saw on the GPS and finish up our day. On cache # 37 we realized it was a mistake to go to downtown so we left that area and moved east. We gathered up some more caches in Bossier City and decided we need to cache our way out of here and head back north to the border. We got back on track and was knocking them out. I broke my previous record of 87 finds in one day at 5:50pm with find #88. At 6:50pm, exactly 12 hours after our first find, we found #100 for the day and was find #900 overall for me. We finished up that run of caches and got back on the HWY and headed back to Hot Springs and we grabbed a few easy grabs that were right on the road and finished up the day with find #110 at 8:05pm.
We stopped in Prescott to get a burger and you could see how exhausted we were. It was a long day, which is typical of a big caching day. We had loads of fun and we are planning on going back up to Williford and do another big day in a few weeks.
:arrow: I am happy to report of no flat tires or mechanical failures this time

We went to Williford a couple of weeks back. It was a lot of fun. I think we found 31 of the 35 on the loop. We fixed a couple that needed fixing and found all the rest. I hope they have replaced the ones that weren't there when we went, but even if they haven't, it is a lot of fun! Most of them have pretty good coords too! One of these days we will be going to Jonesboro too. It looks like you can get some pretty good cache loops up around there.

Congrats to you and Bruce on what sounds like a GREAT day of louisiana caching! And on you 900th cache.

Chris

[idratherbehiking]

Sounds like a great day. If you guys want some extra company on that Williford run I may be able to tag along depending on what day you are going.

[flannelman]

Hey I want in on that also if you go on a Saturday. I know Bruce's caching prowess having been on a few high octane caching runs with him. It is always a blast.

[QuartzCachers]

Well Aaron about covered it all with the numbers and such. We had a great day, and saw some really cool sights. There was a lot of interesting history to see on this trip, including a lot about the oil industry, and some really interesting stuff about river travel on and around the Red river, back in the 1800's.
We had a really strange occurence in a little town that I swear can't remember the name of, where we pulled up to GZ, to find another guy looking. I jumped out and said did you find it!? He said no, and went on down the hill a little. Aaron jumped in right where he had been looking, and found the cache. I hollered hey, we got it! The guy came running back and was all excited and hollering at some other folks who we hadn't seen. They all came running saying they found it, they found it! About this time I figured out that no one is THAT excited about finding a cache, and said I'm not sure we are looking for the same thing. They all said no they were looking for the redbud prize or something or another, and that it was worth 900 dollars! No wonder they were so excited!
In downtown Shreveport, there is an 80 foot tall mural on the side of a building, that has a cache at the base. It is not in the best neighborhood, but the painting is spectacular! It looked like some of the people would just walk right off the building! Awesome!
Now that was worth the trip into downtown, but the traffic and the stoplights, coupled with some blocked off streets for a motorcycle rally, and a few caches that were obviously missing, encouraged us to get the heck out of Dodge, and back to the small towns and the countryside, to start racking up the finds again.
Before leaving town however, we saw some B-52's coming in for a landing at Barksdale, and that was up close and personal! Ground shaking I tell you!
We also found a familiar name had found at least one of the caches recently (*TNT*), and a familiar name who owned a cache, The GeoStashers! It turned out to be a LPC, but my coords were taking me....Just kidding, they were on the money. :lol:
We wound up smack dab in the middle of several great runs of caches out in the sticks, by a cacher named Palarran. They run from just North of Bossier to the Arkansas state line. We found some guys selling some real good BBQ on the side of the road for their men's club, that I went over to purchase, to provide some cover for Aaron to find the cache there.
I got some pretty fancy ideas for some cache placements too! :twisted: Hopefully I can get something done with that soon.
We also had seven DNF's to report, and I am pretty sure that they were divided up with one that was probably there, and we just had enough, four that were obviously gone, and two that we were up in the air on.
If anybody makes that trip in the near future, and they find "Cedar Tree", by Palarran, I'm going to need a hint. :? And oh yeah, take gloves for that one! :lol: Just so no one thinks we went cherry pickin', we found several 3.5 and 4 star difficulty caches, and a couple that hadn't been found in over a year, even though they had been looked for.
I highly reccomend this run for anyone who is as crazy about this game as I am. I would try to do it after a couple of dry days though. We got lucky and had it that way, but if it has rained there recently, some of those red clay roads are rutted pretty deep, and it could be ugly.
From getting out of bed to getting back in, was a total of 21.5 hours for me, and it was worth every minute. Now I better get to logging them. I see that Aaron has already done his, so I am behind.
Oh yeah, and I'm glad this post is titled the adventures of, and not the MISadventues of! :lol: GREAT DAY!

[TnT]

Sounds like you guys had a ton of fun. It's not that surprising you saw our name on a log or two down there. Rhonda's family is from there, so several times a year, while Rhonda is visiting her Mom, I sneak out to grab a few. There are close to 150 in Shreveport/Bossier with our name on the log.

[jclaudii]

Wow, sounds like a great caching day. Me and Southerngirl have never had a day like that where we are so zoned in on finding as many as we can. Perhaps we will try someday, but for now we have fun. Glad you didn't get any flats, get stuck, or see any big foots on this trip.

[Dentful1]

Coming to this forum soon. (As soon as I get it wrote up)

Chapter 2....."The Gutting of Texas"
Starring Bruce as "Quartzcacher" and Aaron as "Dentful1."

[Woodwalker9]

Okay, I've heard part of the story and the unbelievable numbers. I heard that you even beat team Alamogul's best. You guys ROCK.

Congratulations on a fantastic job. I know you had a blast.

[Dentful1]

Quartzcacher or QC as some call him (Bruce ) and I ,Dentful1, (Aaron ) have met up once again to continue our quest for BIG numbers. This trip was bigger and better than the previous run of 110 caches in one day that we made back in the spring in the great state of Louisiana. QC had heard about this area of Texas that has power trails. He mentioned it to me back in the late spring that we were to go on a mission to the Linden/Jefferson area of Texas. QC was excited about this because he heard about a series called "Bridge of Death Road." He was so pumped up about this run because he now has a new ride, a Jeep Liberty 4X4 Off Road Edition. He kept on thinking of this one spot about a BIG muddy hole that he heard about. Sooooo we booked a camping spot on Lake O' The Pines and used a tent. We used a tent in 106*F days with 75*F nights. We used a tent with no A/C. We used a tent during the summer in Texas. Can you get the picture of what I am trying to paint here. We left Friday after work and arrived at 9pm and set up camp. QC and I both get up for work early in the mornings so we had no problem getting up at 4:30am to get ready to be on the trails no later than the break of daylight. We found our first cache at 5:30am and by 6am we had 10 caches in the book. By 7:28 we had 34 caches. At 8am I was talked into sending our good buddy Cachemates a text message letting him know that we had 40 caches in the books by 8am. I did so and got a text message back stating that I needed to hustle up and get a move on. I then replied back saying that I am not driving. For some of you that know me by now you would understand what was being said with that. By 11am we had 75 caches logged. It was about this time that I was concerned about QC's transmission. You see, I have been counting down the feet left to each cache so he could stop right next to them. But every time he over shot the cache by about 80 feet and had to put it in reverse to back up closer to the cache. Our 100th cache of the day we put in the time of 1:11pm. Soon after that I broke my previous record in one day with find number 111. We got into a few slow spots in between these power trails but QC broke his previous record in one day with find number 142. Let me reiterate that these find numbers are all in one day. At find number 150 we made it to the big muddy hole that QC was all worried about. Luckily it hadn't rained in these parts in about a month so the muddy hole was very passable. The only bad thing about no rain in about a month here is that the roads are a very fine powder and sand and it makes for a great dust storm when you stop and jump out to get a cache. It was about this time we realized that we could set another goal on top of our main goal of finding 200 caches in one day. We wanted to beat the number of finds that the number 1 cacher in the world, alamogul. had found in one day, here on these trails just a month ago. We had to get to find number 212 to tie up alamogul. At 8:42pm we found cache number 200. We just met our first goal and our second goal is just in reach. At 9:06pm we tied it up with alamogul with 212 finds. We could not stop there, we had 2 more caches to get in this series. Just one minute later we broke alamoguls record day with 213 cache finds. We ended the long day with 215 caches found. We only had about 20-30 DNF's, I lost count and will have to get those numbers from QC.

We made it back to camp and we bled red mud when we cleaned up from all the red clay dust that we were in all day long. QC and I had to get up and pack the next day to head on home. We knew that we weren't going to go after a lot of caches . We eased on home with 41 finds on Sunday. QC and I "Gutted Texas" with a total of 256 finds in 2 days.

[arkfiremedic]

I always enjoy reading about yall's adventures. Had a mini-adventure with Bruce a couple of weeks ago and had a blast. I've been looking at all those power trail caches and wanting to go sometime as well.

[jclaudii]

That is an awesome number of finds for one day. I absolutely love offroad caches. Did you guys have time to take pictures along the way?

[Dentful1]

This is the only picture we took. This is at the dreaded muddy hole at
Bridge of Death Road #13. Usually the water would be up to the bumper here. But with no rain in a month we had no problem.





http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg125/aaron_n_heather/06-27-09_1721-1.jpg[/img]

[Nukeworker]

Way to go Bruce and Aaron! :D We did some of those trails back last spring, but didn't rack up such impressive numbers as you two. Imagine what your numbers would have been if you hadn't had those DNF's. How on earth did you manage to maintain your energy levels to jump in and out of the car that many times in this extreme heat? You both Rock! NW & RBG

[Ashallond]

Impressive...very impressive. [end evil sith lord tone of voice]

Posted the feat on the GC main forums yet? :)

[Dentful1]

I just did post it to the "The Hunt/The Unusual" forum.

[cachemates]

Hey Guys that is an impressive day of Geocaching. I know you had a great time. It may be some time before that record falls. Glad you filled us in on how the trip went.
That mud hole looks like some I have seen before that didn't have a bottom. But then I didn't have a jeep.
Good story.

[chimps8mybaby]

Thats an awesome feat!!!! Good going guys!!!

[flannelman]

And why didn't you call me to see if I wanted to go too??

Sounds like ya'll had fun too.

[Dentful1]

Ummmmmm......The tent said it sleeps 4 but it only fits 2 with twin size air matresses. Yup. That is why. :roll:

[flannelman]

Well I got my own tent! I'm surprised Bruce even slept with so many caches around. :D

[Dentful1]

He sang himself to sleep with the song "Millions of Peaches" but it was "Millions of Caches." LOL!!!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

[QuartzCachers]

I haven't had time to reply here, due to a load of non geocaching stuff. I am still trying to get caches logged, but can't seem to get any significant amount of computer time to get this done, and you know me.....no copy and paste or one sentence logs. I just feel too guilty if I do.
We had an unbelievable time down there, and we have been scouting out more areas to go plunder in the near future. We should get a crash and dash type event together and all go down there, much like the Springfield, Mo cachers did in Clarksville a few months back. It would be a hoot AND a holler!
I love all caches and I love to go find as many as possible in one day. It is just part of the overall picture, however, and I love the history and the scenic areas as well. I just don't want anybody to think I only love numbers. These trips to these big number areas are more about the adventure of conquering strange wilderness and seeing new sights than gathering up big numbers. Although, at the end of the day, it is really cool to sit back and say, do you know what we just did!?
One last thing. I could not do this without Dentful1's help! Y'all, he is like a bird dog! When we pull up to a cache location, he is on it like a duck on a June bug! Many times on this trip, the log was already being extracted by the time I got out from behind the steering wheel and my boots hit the ground. I think we make an excellent team.
Now I think I'll go find just one today. HAHA!
Happy 4th of July from Kansas, Y'all! :D :D :D

[Ashallond]

Since I haven't gotten any caches in Clarksville yet, a cache and dash event around there would be awesome. :)