Woodland Mounds...

Jake and I went after another local geocache yesterday. This one required a decent hike into Woodland Mounds Preserve, an Indian burial ground in Warren County.

Geocaching.com lists the hike as 2-3 miles and states that there are several forks in the trail, with the left forks being the shortest routes. The problem with hiking that trail in the winter is that there were several places that "looked" as if it forked off. We took off to the left a couple of times only to find out it was nothing more than a deer trail. Those errors made the length and difficulty much more than if we had stuck to the main trail. This old decrepit body is really feeling it today!

The day was nothing short of glorious. Sunny and 50 is not the typical description for an Iowa day in January! The trail itself was a bit muddy and we had to walk along the sides where dead leaves gave us a little more traction, but it was beautiful. The trail wound downhill and across wooden bridges. I want to go back in the summer and fall - the trees will be fabulous. Maybe I will be in better shape so the long uphill climb back out won't kick my butt so much.

According to the information I have gathered about the area, an unknown Indian tribe had a village along the small river that runs through the park. A lot of artifacts were left, but no record of what tribe it was. It is very hilly there and along the uppermost ridge, mounds that are suspected to be either burial mounds or used for religious ceremonies are still visible.

The cache was off the trail a bit, but not difficult to find once we were in the area. See our photos we took along the way!

Our second cache of the day...

We were so pumped up after finding our first cache that we decided to look for another one. This cache was the Red Rock North Overlook cache. This hunt was so amazing that I can only hope future treks will be able to live up to it.

As we headed into the woods we found an unopened pair of flame orange hunter's earplugs. The wrapping was muddy, so we popped them out the wrapper and decided we would use that for a trade trinket rather than the coupons this time.

This hike was much more challenging terrain-wise. The land is very hilly with small creek running through the ravines. For a while, I was more concerned with not slipping since the footing was a bit muddy than I was finding the cache.

We were close to topping our first hill and even though we were not being in the least quiet, popped up about 30 yards from four deer. The does gave us a startled look and took off down into the ravine. We both agreed that was pretty cool and that we wished I had had the camera ready. GPS in hand we changed course a bit when we reached the top of the hill and were surveying the next ridge. Lo and behold, there were the deer. They were grazing and not paying us any attention.

At that point, we decided to try to sneak a bit closer and get a picture. With us on one ridge and them on the next, I struggled to get a clear picture of one of them through the abundant trees and branches. We snuck about half-way down the ravine without them noticing and I snapped a couple of pictures. They heard my camera beep and stared right at us and then turned tail and walked directly away from us. We high-fived for the pics and trudged up the other side of the ravine - again not trying to be quiet. We hit the top of the ridge where the deer had been and there they were not but 20 yards away just staring at us!

I stood taking pictures for about 15 minutes. The day was fairly overcast and my camera started to automatically fire a fill flash. I was so close to them that the flash created red eye! I fully expected them to take off, but they didn't seem to mind. One doe in particular seemed to be fascinated. Every time I snapped a picture, she cocked her head and took another step closer to us. She got to within 12-15 yards before she stomped her foot a couple of times, turned around, and flipped her beautiful white tail at us.

We decided to leave them in peace and head for the cache. About 50 yards away was the stash and our attention became focused on the find. Everything was packaged neatly in plastic bags, which was good because the outer container had a crack in it. I have posted on the geocaching site to let the cache owner know. Thankfully, nothing inside was ruined. We traded the earplugs for a celestial sun pendant.

After signing the log book and carefully covering the cache, we started to head back along the ridge. The deer were still there! This time two had decided to bed down and looked at us as if we were old friends by now. I snapped a few more pictures of them and we stood admiring them for another 5 minutes or so before heading back.

This truly was a phenomenal hike! See pictures of the cache and some of the deer!

And the adventure begins...

For Christmas, we gave my 17-year-old son a hand-held GPS. He likes to hunt and fish and the particular model that was picked out has both land and marine capabilities. We figured he would have fun with it. Little did we know...

Then a co-worker of mine asked if he would be going geocaching with it. I told him I had no clue what that was. He directed me to the Mecca of geocaching and a new obsession was born - not only for him, but for me.

We buckled down with the Garmin GPS76 instruction booklet to figure out what we were doing and picked out our first caches from the website.

On December 31 it was cloudy but not too cold. Jake and I decided to check out this whole concept and went after The Cliffs Cache. We parked and headed into the woods leading to the cliffs, GPS in hand. We scared some wild turkeys that ran ahead of us. It wasn't long before we had zeroed in on the general location and after a few minutes Jake found the cache.

It may seem silly to those who haven't done this. The cache is full of silly toys or trinkets. There isn't anything of value really. It's the search and discovery. It's honestly a thrill. Our hearts were pumping from the hike and from excitement.

We had forgotten to bring a trinket to exchange, so I had scrounged in my purse looking for something. All I could come up with were local pizza coupons, so that went into the plastic bag in the cache and we took a polished rock. We signed the logbook and Jake took a bunch of notes about the day and the surroundings in a special notebook he started especially for geocaching.

I have lived in this area for a long time and have known about the cliffs, but never visited. I probably still would never have visited if it hadn't been for this cache search.

Check out some photos from our adventure!

As we made our way back to the truck, we both agreed that we were hooked already and headed to our second cache of the day...