The Perfect Caching Vehicle
A common question asked in the “Getting Started” forum at Geocaching.com is: what is the best geocaching vehicle? Truthfully, our Honda Civic does the trick over 99% percent of the time. The other less-than-1%-of-the-time, we employ a 1994 Toyota SR4 pickup (though sometimes we will rent a vehicle if the rough road adventure is part of a larger road trip—mostly because it’s fun to drive different cars sometimes). In the case of this day, we needed the ground clearance to help clean up some caches near home, in Morgantown, West Virginia.
The primary reason for the truck was to find A Busy Day in West Virginia. This cache is located within the Little Indian Creek Wildlife Management Area, which is home to a lot of potholed gravel roads that aren’t getting a lot (read: any) maintenance. While the hide itself was unremarkable (except for the creepy feeling we always get while hiking around Little Indian Creek), to log the find required fulfilling a challenge. In this case, a cacher must find a minimum of six different geocache types in a single calendar day. I could never seem to make it work and the best I seemed to manage via serendipity was finding four types in one day during a stroll through downtown Baltimore (daylight hours only!). As if they could read our minds, the organizers of the Cache N Cabell geotrail in Cabell County, WV made it possible to all six types in one day, provided you attended the kick-off event for the geotrail. Despite the fact one of our cats had died just two days earlier, we weren’t sure we were up for the challenge. But the urging of a friend had us making the trip and it was so worth it. We had an amazing time and even got a trackable geocoin for being one of the first to finish the geotrail, not to mention being able to log this challenge cache near Morgantown.
Our second target was the recently re-enabled Take a Walk in the Park at the stunning hidden gem, the West Virginia Botanic Gardens. While we have been frequent visitors to the gardens, we always had to park at the top of the gravel road to the garden area and walk down. Today, for the first time in our visits there, we could drive to the lower parking lot where we were greeted by a kind garden volunteer who eagerly told us a bit about recent happenings and was armed with maps and newsletters. She said they’re planning on having the lower lot open for several hours each weekend day while the weather is nice so now there’s no excuse to visit if you haven’t done so yet! The cache was nice too, it took about 30 minutes of walking on mostly level ground to make the find and get back to the car.
For the remaining three caches we would find, we picked up perennial caching buddy bitmapped. Our first stop was to try and locate the information needed to locate the final stage of A Stellar Hunt. This is a very unique two-stage multi cache. We had never seen anything like it before though the idea itself is actually pretty simple. After some careful work with the recommended binoculars, we found what we were looking for. Punching in the coordinates, we realized the final stage would truly maintain the stellar theme and bring smiles to our faces. I highly recommend this cache, even to those who normally really hate multi-stage geocaches (like my husband!).
From downtown Morgantown, we headed high into the hills of South Park to locate Breathalyzer, a new and improved version of the well-loved Take a Deep Breath cache. In addition to the first cache of the day, this is the only other one of the day that we truly benefitted by having the truck. With a higher clearance vehicle, this cache can almost be obtained by sticking your head out the window of the vehicle. Without it, parking and walking about 200’ will get you the same smiley. It is great to see this gadget cache back in action. Bring a sanitizing wipe or swap if you’re leery about germs, but it is also a very worthy find.
The final cache was along the straight segment of Dent’s Run Road that is probably part of Westover but sometimes feels like Granville and definitely doubles as a large truck parking lot. The same caches had populated this stretch for a very long time (which is fine because they were good caches!), but caches, like people, have life expectancies and the time has come for some of those great, old guard caches (I loved A Taste of Canada, Eh). Two new caches had popped up here. The first, PIPE DREAM, is one of the best gadget caches in the area and the second, our target today, Swag Trading Post, is intended to be a large, kid-friendly cache where any kid can come up a big winner with a nice toy. It certainly lives up to this expectation while simultaneous scratching at your legs on the way in and out.
So despite earmarking this day for caches requiring a truck, only one of the five really called for the higher ground clearance. So don’t worry, your normal, everyday care can almost always get you where you want to be!