Geo-Caching

Yesterday (Sunday)  was another warm and breezy day.  The week-enders had all left and we got back our quaint and sleepy little rv park  :)

It has been very breezy here each day, with some days breezier than others.  It has been nice because we have always had nice ocean breezes coming in and have not had to run the air conditioners :)

The windy conditions have not made for great kayaking so we decided to spend the day sightseeing and Geo-Caching.  It is a fun way to spend a day and learn about new places.  The locals are the ones that hide the cache’s, and they know of places the rest of us may not know about.  We find it a great way to find interesting places that you might otherwise miss.

We use this GPS  to help us find our cache's.  I have heard that you can also use a I-phone or Droid.  We like this GPS because we can use it not only for Geo-Caching, but for hiking and kayaking.  It has features to mark your location, and keep "tracks" so that you can find your way back if you are out in the woods or on the water.  I feel much more comfortable knowing I can get back to where I started.  One other feature I particularly is that it keeps track of the time and distance of your hike or paddle. 

If you don't have a GPS, and would like to try Geo-Caching, go to the website I linked to earlier.  Down towards the middle of the page, there is a place you can enter information to do a search for Geo-Caches.  Type in your zip code and search to find some Geo-Caches near where you are.  If you are very familiar with the area, I guarantee you will recognize the place and will be able to find the cache without a GPS.  They give you some hints.

  Here is Al at our first "found" cache.

and here is what he found

 Sometimes it is only a paper to write down your name and date you found the cache.  Sometimes, there are "treasures" inside!

These are some of the homes we found on this part of Keaton Beach.  Pretty, aren't they?

The houses here are all sitting up on stilts in case of a tidal surge. 

All Floridians remember the No-Named Storm of March, 1993.   It did a LOT of damage to Florida, then headed up the east coast and did damage all the way up.  There was over 6 billion dollars in damage by the time the storm was finished with the east coast of the US.  It was also called the "Storm of the Century."  

March is not normally when you expect such a storm.  It was more like a hurricane than regular storm, with winds gusting to 100 mph!  It dumped a lot of snow as far south as the Panhandle of Florida, and spawned a lot of tornado's.  There were 10 fatalities in the Keaton Beach/Steinhatchee area alone.  One fatality was in the little motel that was owned by the owner of this RV park.  

We were living in Tampa at that time, and  lost the solar pool heater that was on the roof of our home.  We were lucky though.  It was a very bad storm.

This part of Florida,(Apalachee Bay)  got a sudden and unexpected 12 foot tidal surge.  Keaton Beach was completely destroyed...all the houses gone!  The Rv park where we were staying used to be a restaurant.  The tide rose 6 feet in 20 minutes....in the middle of the night!  Twelve feet may not sound like much, but you gotta realize, we are sitting in our rv, which is about 5-6 feet above sea level!

Anyway, that storm is why you don't see houses here that are not on stilts!

Here is a photo of s scruffy looking bird we found at a nice little boat ramp.  I don't recall seeing one like him before so I had to look in my bird book.  The closest thing I could find was a  Common Merganser, but they are supposed to be in freshwater, and he was in saltwater.  Anyone have an idea what he is?  He definitely looked out of his element and maybe not too healthy.  With the oil spill heading this way, I thought about that, but I don't think it is too close to Florida...yet.

We followed our Geo-caching trail south to the little town of Steinhatchee.  It is another quaint little seafront town.  Another hidden gem.  The Steinhatchee Rive flows into the Gulf of Mexico.  It even has waterfalls, Florida style :)

Here is a view of Steinhatchee from the bridge.  

There are some rv parks there, but we didn't see any we liked better than where we are.

Sunset photos from our last night in Keaton Beach.  There were clouds blocking the final dip into the ocean, so this was the best I could get.

The severe storms that have hit Arkansas and Tennessee are heading towards south Georgia, so I think we are going to pack up and try to beat the storms.  I sure don't want to be driving in heavy rain. 

Taking it Easy

Yesterday (Saturday) there was a big fishing tournament across the street.  There were lots of prizes, including a $3000 cash prize, and several smaller cash prizes.  It drew a lot of fisherman.  Our sleepy little town suddenly changed!  The rv park is completely full and many of the week-enders have arrived.

At the marina across the street, they have an unusual way to launch boats.  They have a large machine that has two straps on it.  A boat comes in on it’s trailer and and they put straps under it, then pick the boat up off the trailer and put it into the water.  They remove the boat from the water the same way. I wondered what it cost to have them launch your boat for you. It was kind of interesting to watch.  When we used to keep our big boat at the marina in Tarpon Springs, Florida, they used a forklift to lift the boat in and out of the water.

We went for our morning walk and searched for a few Geo-caches.  We found one, but could not find the other one that was supposed to be at the cell tower.  We’re not having good luck finding any treasure on Keaton Beach!

This is where we found one cache.

Check out the little container on the back of the sign.  Can you see it?  That’s what you may be looking for.

Here are a few scenery photos I took on our Geo-Cache walk.

and of course, more kitty pictures. 

We bought two $5 tickets for a chance to win a nice Carolina Skiff boat, motor and trailer.  They had the drawing after the fish weigh-in, but we didn’t win it, unfortunately!

Yesterday was the warmest day we’ve had so far and we almost turned on the AC.  We’ve resisted that because it’s so nice to just have the windows open and get the wonderful sea breeze. 

We didn’t do too much yesterday, partly because of the heat and partly because of the crowds.  We decided to extend our stay another night (again).  Every time it gets closer to time to leave, we find the need to extend our stay.  We could easily spend a month or more here!

Sunset wasn’t great last night due to a layer of clouds right over the horizon which blocked the sun when it went down.  This is the best I could get.

GeoCaching

We had previously heard about Geocaching but had never really gotten into it. We had wanted a small hand held GPS that would be good for hiking boating and kayaking but the hand held ones we found were not user friendly. We happened to see a great deal at Walmart on a Magellan 1500 GPS. It was supposedly a $439 unit on sale for $199. Al and I never could pass up a good bargain, and knowing we could return it if it didn't work right, we decided to buy it. I found a website for Geocaching and learned that there are hidden cache treasure sites all over the country. The website gives you general locations then you use a GPS to find the "treasure." There were even several here in the small town of Cairo, Georgia. A group of people hide a small "treasure chest" and list on the website the GPS coordinates and some hints on where to find it. Some of the containers are fairly large (gallon sized) and others are very small. You can take an item from the cache but you are then obligated to leave something. We actually found our first cache in Azalea Park in Cairo. Al found it actually, I was headed in the wrong direction. I had to retrieve it though as Al finds Poison Ivy where ever he looks! We signed our name to the log book but didn't take or leave anything. We discovered the Magellan GPS was not what we wanted. The screen wasn't very bright, it was difficult to use and you couldn't download sites directly from the website to the unit. We decided to return it and wait and get a better unit at a later date. We probably will get a Garmin. We have a cheap model Garmin E-trex but it is aggravating to use. Not user friendly! We're looking for a good all around hand held unit and will try this sport again. I think it would be a lot of fun while camping in a state park.