Caching the State Parks

Been a while since I've put anything on here been doing most of my "sharing" on Facebook.  But, this medium is more conducive for this kind of thing.

So back in 2008 the Arkansas State Parks created a Geocaching series to encourage folks to visit all of the state parks.  The general gist is, find a cache in each park with a clue to the whereabouts of the final cache.  Well, back then the kids were too young to really do much with it so I ignored it.  A couple of weeks ago they "re-announced it" so we decided to have a go at it.

We decided that we should actually visit each Park (previous visits counted) instead of just "cache and dash".  The whole family also have to have visited the park.

The next Saturday we headed over to our local state park (Pinnacle Mountain State Park) and eagle eyed Emily quickly found the cache for us.  1 down, 51 to go.  I forgot that I've been "collecting" pictures of the State Park signs.  Fortunately it's close so I'll swing over there in the next couple of weeks to grab a picture of it.  I'd also like to "collect" some of the caches that are located there.

This weekend we thought we'd snag a few more.  We started off at Plantation Agricultural Museum in Scott.  Learned a bit about Cotton Ginning and such.

Then it was on down the road to Toltec Mounds Agricultural State Park.  Watched an interesting 10 minute movie about the history of the site.  Started to walk one of the trails but were chased off by an approaching storm.

Then we headed east to the Louisiana Purchase Historic State Park (a nice long drive).  After 15-20 minutes of fighting the swarming mosquitoes (it is located in the middle of a swamp) we failed to find the cache, quite frustrating after the drive.  Storms were looming, it was getting dark, and the mosquitoes were swarming.  So, we headed home.

Today, we headed north to Woolly Hollow, a nice jaunt down a mountain biking trail led to a wooden bridge.  Then we had to do a bit of searching to find it.  Found a suspicious pile of sticks under a tree, bingo.

Eli and I headed back to Louisiana Purchase Historic State Park armed with bug spray and determination to find the cache.  After searching for 15 minutes and forcing my phone to "relocate" itself I set my phone down to within a foot of the cache.  Continued searching with no luck.  Was ready to give up, turned around and said "hey Eli, here it is".  Success.

So, we're 5 for 5.  47 plus the final one to go.  The rest are going to be a bit longer slog from the house.  We've visited 4 more (Crater of Diamonds State Park, Devil's Den State Park, Mount Magazine State Park, and Petit Jean State Park), as a family so those will be quick "cache and dash" visits.

Some of the ones we need to visit are 30 minute visit kind of places with no camping, etc.  Others are bigger with lots to do.  So, hopefully over the course of the next year we can visit the rest.  Use some of the bigger parks as a "basecamp" to go visit some of the smaller ones.  Should be a good way to see the whole state.