Florida caching
Posted By Shirley on March 20, 2010
Just returned from a week in the Sunshine State…..a very short week it seemed! I can feel more Florida vacations coming in our future. Although neither of us wants to move there it felt so good to take a little chunk out of this NE winter. For the locals it was a cold winter, but coming from New England even temps in the low 60’s during the day felt good. Once we’ve both retired, a month down there each winter sounds very do-able.
We got to spend time visiting with family on Marco Island and friends living in the Palm Beach area who I hadn’t seen in 30 years. What a great reunion that was. It makes me sad that we lost touch for such a long time and that we’d missed so many memories that might have been, but I’m so excited to have reconnected. There’s so much catching up that we hope to do.
We spent a couple of days exploring The Everglades. Larry was hoping to touch a real alligator which I told him wasn’t happening. I was wrong…..granted this ‘gator was only 8 – 10 inches long and being held captive in a large plastic bucket in a gift shop, but it was ‘alive and kicking’ and we each got to hold this poor little critter. I hope they release him back into the wild soon……if that’s possible. We also visited Big Cypress Swamp and Lake Okeechobee. Took lots of pictures and saw lots of wildlife. We checked out a couple of beaches though they were tough to get to because of all the private property along the water. Those beaches we found were mostly deserted at this time of year and very beautiful with the water much more blue/turquoise than you’d ever see here in the northeast.
Of course no vacation would be complete without some caching…and we got to add another state to our caching adventures. We’ve now cached in 17 different states and New Brunswick, Canada. We found a total of 19 caches that week. It wasn’t our biggest caching week but that also wasn’t the primary reason for our trip. When we started this hobby we love so much we always thought it be something we would do to bring us to new & interesting places and a way to get out to get more exercise. It does all of that. We found caches in Delray, Boynton Beach, some around Lake Okeechobee and some virtual caches in the Everglades.
The adventure story of the week was at a cache site next to Okeechobee where we were stopped by a Fish & Wildlife Environmental Police officer. We had pulled into a graveled area to park. The cache was hidden less than 100′ away, just over the rise of a small hill with a short section of guardrail along the top of the hill. The officer happened to see us crossing over that guardrail and stopped to investigate. Fortunately he had heard of geocaching but still wanted the ‘proof’. We had to show him the actual cache and it’s contents. After a lengthy discussion on geocaching and the use of GPSers he seemed satisfied that this old couple from Massachusetts was only into some harmless caching and not growing marijuana out in the ‘back 40′ of Nubbin Slough.
We had a great week and are already plotting our next visit…..this time to the Gulf coast for more caching and sunshine.
Happy Caching!!
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