As I stated in my profile, I am involved in Scouting as the Advisor of a Venturing Crew. We have been looking forward to attending the annual Greater St Louis Area Council (GSLAC) Fall Fun Rally at the Beaumont Scout Reservation on the Southwest corner of the St Louis area. Not wishing to waste a trip, I set up four Geocaches to stop, along with three or four crew members, and pick up during the return on Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, the one that would have been the start of the return home was missed, still talking about how much fun we had, I simply forgot that the first cache of the day was just outside the reservation. Oh well, next time.
GC1Y7AZ - Wright City Westbound
First find of the day. Along with three members of the Venturing Crew (Odessacrew), we worked our way out of the Greater St Louis area to the Rest Area just outside of Wright City. Braden, a new member of the Crew, had never been Geocaching before, so we gave him a quick lesson of how it worked then headed out to find the cache. Not a lot of muggles in the area at the time, the amusing part was after the log was signed for me and for the Crew, as we were getting ready to put it back, someone called out that we needed to make sure it found its way back to its hiding place. I smiled after looking up and seeing two men walking at us, one of them holding a GPS unit in his hand.
It's not often that we run across another Geocacher when dealing with a location, and its always fun to talk to others who are involved in the game. So we stopped and talked for a few minutes, then we handed them the cache and proceeded for Cache #2. Oh, we shared our two "track this cacher" trackables with them before moving on.
GC25AJ2 - Exit 198 rest area motel
Next stop, the westbound rest area in Boonville Missouri. When we arrived at the location, I looked at the GPS device and smiled as it was pointing across the rest area with a distance of .13 miles. So, we were off again. Two of us headed off on foot. We were joined quickly by the new Crew member, and after a little bushwacking, our newbie made his first find!
Now, this is listed as a travel bug hotel, and there are five bugs listed for this location ... but they are not there. In fact, we are not the first visitors to point out that the travel bugs are missing from this location. So we signed the log, and as we were putting it back where we found it ... well ... our two friends popped up, having worked their way down to that end of the rest stop as well.
GC14W1R - Knucklebuster
We stopped in Kingdom City and grabbed a quick bite to eat. We figured that if our two new friends had this one on their list, we would give them a chance to get to it first (since they stated that they were heading the same direction we were and grabbing caches along the way.) We pulled into the rest area, worked our way around to where the arrow pointed towards another bushwacking adventure (tall grass and weeds), and three of us headed up the hill to find the cache.
Find number two for the new guy! A magnetic that was pretty well hidden, he managed to come up with it. Checking the log, I was surprised that the two men who we had previously encountered, had not been to this location yet, and for all we know, they may not have planned on catching this one.
The trip home from the Beaumont Scout Reservation outside of St Louis was an excellent opportunity to introduce another Scout to the fun of Geocaching, and he walked away excited about having been involved, and looking forward to doing it again. Better yet, he walked away with two finds as a member of Odessacrew. If he keeps it up, if he gets his own GPS, we will have to get him started with his own account on Geocaching.com. All and all, we came home 3 for 3 of the caches we searched for, and 3 of 4 of the caches I had programmed for the trip.
