Geocaching Abilene State Park

We woke to a cold (34 degree) but clear morning, and decided to do some exploring here in the park. While paying for an additional night I saw a "Geocaching" notebook in the park office and we decided to see how many of the parks 17 caches we could find.

We started out across the road at Lake Abilene. The lake is behind a locked gate, which requires a combination from the State Park to open.  Once we handled that little detail we were in there all by ourselves!  The lake is low, like most lakes in this part of the world, and very red which is the color of all of the surrounding soils.  They have a boat ramp and a fishing pier, neither of which are anywhere near water right now!!

Lake Abilene - First you have to get in!

Lake Abilene - Low and red colored...

We found all four geocaches at the lake, including one that was a short distance up a tree.  I haven't climbed a tree in several years, but little did I know this wouldn't be the only tree climbing I did today!

Up a tree to find a Geocache

The Mighty Conqueror!!

We returned to the main part of the park and started looking for the five geocaches nearest the trailer. We found all five of these as well.  We don't usually find every cache we look for, so we were surprised at our luck so far.  Part of the fun is finding these well-camouflaged containers. They are in public areas and the idea is to hide them from folks who are just passing by.  You have to know they are there to find them.  Teri and I are about 50/50 on who spots the containers.

Teri finding a Geocache

This one was called "Squirrel Condo" as was hidden in a hole

We went out again in the afternoon to find the remaining caches, and sure enough we did miss one. The description indicated that it was up in a tree, and it was called "Three Steps Up".  Reading past comments we found that folks were having trouble spotting this one, and we did too. I climbed about as far up into this big oak tree as I wanted to and spent several minutes looking around, but no luck.  I guess we needed to leave one for next time.

Up a tree without a Geocache... 

We do have a "Night Geocache" that we'll look for after dark.  We'll use flashlights to follow a line of reflective dots to the cache.  Hope we locate it!

Mark