Mark Twain Lake - Memorial Day Weekend 2011

[+doug_hollyNKC]

We (doug_hollyNKC), hkm80, and justinrcasey are heading for Mark Twain Lake next Friday May 27th and staying through mid day Monday. I guess you call it MOGA 1, 2 and 3 years late. But better late then never. If anyone happens to reside in the Great Northeast Region or will be visiting come see us. We will be staying closest to this cache GC1ANTG Cedar Keys, and I'm sure we'll be there every evening drinking some hawaiian punch and kool aid

 

So help us out and you old timers out there that have all the experience of those years at MOGA which cache's would you highly recommend?

 

GC1M6X2 - Earth Cache - MTL - The Narrows, along with Woody Woodpecker Cache GC1KZ58 on the way out to it.

 

Also plan on doing the Wherigo - GC1P343

 

p.s. oldtimers = geocaching a long time - not your age, unless you want it too

Edited May 20, 2011 by doug_hollyNKC

[+L Frank]

If you are going to Mark Twain Lake, the caches you mentioned are must do's. You also should add "Monolith" (GC25Z5Z) to the list. This cache is a secret surprise and only the people who found it during MOGA 2010 know about it. Take your camera.

 

You may also want to treat your clothes with 'Permetherin'(not sure on spelling). The ticks will be out and this is the only thing that kills them. You can find it in the pet section of your store. It is used to spray on your pets bedding to kill fleas and ticks. Do not apply it to your skin, use DEET for that. Spray your clothes and let dry. Your weekend experience will be much better if you take my advise. Have fun!

 

L Frank

[+doug_hollyNKC]

Thanks L Frank, greatly appreciate the reply. And I had planned for all you have mentioned. I'm sure the ticks and creepy crawlies will be out in force

[+deercreekth]

So how'd it go?

[+doug_hollyNKC]

Here's a summary I wrote on MOGEO forums:

 

Well about all I can say about my Memorial Weekend caching adventure to Mark Twain Lake is.....um....it was an adventure for sure.

 

Myself and Henry of HKM80 left about 7:00AM Friday morning and headed north to Cameron before jumping on US36 and heading east. Along the way we picked up 18 caches, most of all of them pretty easy ones. But we did stumble on one in Chillicothe GC14BXH and just down the road in Brookfield GC1VWKD, that were quite creative and something different, that I would highly recommend to future cahers making there way down US36. Both of these cahces were by JackieA0818 and Rainbowkitty. Makes me want to watch for more caches from these two.

 

We went through the town of Breckenridge, Missouri and grabbed a couple. The old downtown portion of this small town looks like all the buidlings have been abandoned for 40 or 50 years. It's actually a sad sight, but still one that's always interesting in the travels. Of course we stopped at Walt Disney's farm & house GC1H2Z1. Then we made a quick stop at Long Branch Lake to grab Macon County, then ran down the road to Shelbina Lake Park to grab a cache. This was one big, amazing, awesome etc. park for a not so big town. Another of those hidden gems we would have no idea about if it wasn't for geocaching.

 

From here me and Henry then made our way to Frank Russell campground just north of the Clarence Cannon Dam and set up camp and waited for the rest of our weekend caching crew to arrive. (ellebelle, justinrcasey, and the wifeys of me and Henry).

 

Come Saturday morning we had the perfect plan . The closest cache to our campsite was Cedar Key GC1ANTG. Oh how cool no finds since November of last year, we can give this cache some life back and get some of Scotty Love-Lonely Cache Challenge points. Well no darn wonder there's no finds since last November. We went into the woods from the picnic area / pond along a great trail, only to proceed a couple of hundred more feet and wonder what happened to the trail. We made it to Cedar Key and found the cache with no problem and also said ruh roh, this is going to be a tough day. 45 degree slopes / slippery rocks / sticker bushes and giant ravines running off the arms and branches of the lake would then greet us from this point on. Every cache was saying it's just 2/10 of a mile away. The only problem is right in front of us is one of the monster ravines or better yet an arm of the lake. So 2/10 of a mile would turn into 3/4 to a mile almost between every cache.

 

I've been caching enough that when bushwhacking through the woods, I'm always praying to find that next field just to get out of the gnarly/whooly stuff for a bit. Well this day would be the epitamy of be careful what you wish for. This huge 1000 acre field was full of water, ticks, and grass 3 and 4 feet high that was very thick and basically wrapped around your feet every step you took. So now I'm hoping to please let me back in the woods.

 

About 3 hours later and 5.6 miles we have a measely 8 caches logged . Oh yippee "here the thunder off in the distance?". So I check the radar on my phone and it would appear there is a severe thunderstorm warning moving straight at us with 60MPH winds and golf ball size hail. Ok that's enough for me, I heading back up towards that picnic shelter I tell the others. They follow to the picnic shelter, we wait out the 30 minute torrential down pour and then head back to camp to regroup and figure out what to do now. With the rain over the past 30 minutes or so these woods and hillsides in the woods are going to be nearly impassable to navigate.

 

Some of the group took a couple of hour nap, but me and Justin headed to Hannibal and Illinois. Mainly because I wanted to get an Illinois cache. We only did a few in Hannibal because we were seeing right away this might be a good option for a full day tomorrow. So of course it rained cats and dogs on Saturday night again and if there was any chance of having great success in these Mark Twain woods it was probably put to rest by mother nature along with Corps of Engineers apparently not maintaining any of the trails anymore

 

We all went to Hannibal on Sunday and seen some great places, great views and best of all some very high quality caches. I think we might of actually made a good choice finally. On Monday morning we broke down camp. Holly & Ellen headed for home back to KC. The rest of headed towards Paris, MO to grab several in town then along the side roads leading back to Union Covered Bridge. While the Union Covered Bridge was quite neat and unique place for certain the quality of the structure doesn't even compare to the condition of the Locust Creek Covered Bridge that we had been to on the trip down, but both were great places still.

 

HKM80 had to leave us after that and head for home, so me and Justin began the trek back down 24 Hwy towards home grabbing one each county we went through or grabbing one if it sounded really great. So as we are approaching Carrolton I see a 5/5 on the list ahead. Heck yes, lets go see what this is. So we get to the GZ, park on the side of the road, walk 100 feet up to a tree with a coffee can sitting in it in plain view, sign the log and leave. Whew that 5/5 liked to kill me

 

I ended up with 87 caches over the 4 day period. I had hoped for 150 or so, but still wasn't too disappointed, because I still had a great time hanging out with our best buddies for a weekend. About the only real disappointment was the trails at Mark Twain Lake, that are gone. They have some really pretty brochures and maps that show them quite nicely, so if you happen to find them let me know. I think now that MOGA is gone from there they are just not getting much use so USACE hasn't been messing with them.