On Family Day
On Graduation Day Talking to his Sister
Proud Mom
Proud Mom and Step Dad
Me and Jon
Well, we got on the road tonight about 7:00 pm. It poured when we got into Orlando for about 20 minutes then it cleared up and has been pretty nice since then. We stopped at the okahumpka (or something like that) turnpike plaza and while we were there had to grab the cache that was located there. So, we walk up and make the easy grab. As we open the log sheet to sign it what do we see but BSmith7575 and Tiki-4 were the last finders of this cache. How weird is that? We are 85 miles from home, grab a cache only to see the last ones there were from the Space Coast also...pretty cool. We probably will not stop again to look for a cache until we get to Atlanta around 1 or 2 am. We have a couple of TB's to drop in that area. It is about 9:40 pm right now and we are just North of Ocala. Signing off for now.
3:00 a.m. entering Atlanta:
Well we made it to Atlanta just before 3:00 a.m. and had a cache in mind to find. So we pulled off the road in search of a cache so we could drop a couple TB's that wanted to get back to this area. We found a nicely stocked ammo can hidden in the ground ala BlueMan style. Swapped out 3 bugs while the local LEO drove past not paying us any attention.
7:00 a.m. :
Got to the Tennessee line and stopped at the welcome center. Got our picture for the SCGA T-shirt challenge. Had the local security guard take our picture then proceeded to talk to us for what seemed like forever. That slowed us a bit but it is always nice chatting with new folks.
Barb is driving and just got confused as we are driving along through Tennessee and all of a sudden it says welcome to Georgia. She thought we were heading the wrong way. It is overcast this morning and the mountains look really cool with all the low lying clouds floating in front of them. Oh yeah, we found a really cool hide in Chattanooga...we may have to bring this idea back to the Space Coast. We just drove by a sign...gas $3.39! Signing off for now.
4:30 pm:
We stopped in to see one of our customers in Paducah KY. Had a short visit and then headed on our way. He had suggested going down to the river where they have built a flood wall to hold back the waters from the Ohio River. The wall is 2000 feet long and has really cool murals painted all over them. They brought in a famous artist from LA to do the painting. Then we attempted to get a FTF on a cache that has been out for 3 weeks with no finds. It was a 4 difficulty. It brought you to a steam engine. Somewhere on the steam engine is a micro hidden...no hints, no idea of where it might be other than you don't have to climb on it. Needless to say we did not find it either. Paducah is full of history and I wish we could have had more time to spend exploring the area. Now we are in Illinois, we did not realize we would be driving this much in Illinois. Looking like we will not get to our hotel until around 9:00 tonight. But we are enjoying the scenery along the way. Barb is looking for a White Castle burger joint. She loved those growing up in Chicago area. That is all for now.
10:30 p.m.:
Ok, so we arrived in St. Louis around 7:00 p.m. or so. We were planning to grab some White Castle burgers for dinner then head over to the Arch and check that out. Well if you ever get the chance to check out the Arch in St. Louis make sure you do it. It is well worth it. I have a problem with certain heights so I was not real eager to head 630 feet into the air but I decided to try it. It cost $10.00 per person to head to the top of the Arch. You ride in these small round elevator type things. If you remember the Rock n Roll ride at the local fair this is basically the same thing. It takes 4 minutes to reach the top of the Arch. Then you get to walk around inside and look out small windows all over the entire city of St. Louis and beyond. This was incredible to say the least. I used to be a big St. Louis Cardinal fan back when Ozzie Smith still played shortstop for them. When we got to the top I notice across the street was Bush Stadium and there was a game going on. We stayed to watch the sunset from up there as well as see the city lights after dark. Well worth the $10.00 each for this. Barb took several pictures and a few videos while we were up there. I will post a couple later this evening. All in all a very good time for our very short visit. Now we really need to get to our hotel room near Fort Leonard Wood! It will be around midnight by the time we finally get there. We were up by 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning and we have gotten about 1-2 hours sleep total since then. That bed is going to feel really good if we ever get there. Photos and video will follow. I need to load them on my computer first. That is all for now.
A view of Busch Stadium from the Arch in St. Louis
Dale n Barb in front of the Arch in St. Louis
11:00 p.m.:
It is Thursday evening and we have spent most of the day at the Fort Leonard Wood Army Base. We were able to see Jon in formation coming to the family day ceremonies. It was really good to see him again. He has gained 20 pounds all muscle since joining the Army. We did not get to spend as much time with him today as we had hoped but did end up going to dinner with him. That was nice to be able to sit and talk with him about what he has experienced up to now. We did not do any caching today at all. Tomorrow we have to get up early and be at the base by about 7:15 a.m. for an 8:00 graduation. Then we will hopefully get to spend a little more time with Jon. He is being held over due to a mix up by his Captain. They never gave him a test that he has to have before moving on to advanced training. So he has to stay for up to a month before he is able to due this last test. It is called a "rubber suit" test for the EOD training. We will probably start heading home on Saturday and do a little caching along the way. That is all for now.
August 29th:
Well we woke to thunder and lightning. We were under a severe thunder storm warning. Up to 60mph winds, quarter sized hail and heavy rains were all predicted. It had been storming most of the night. We got ready and headed to Fort Leonard Wood for graduation ceremonies starting at 8:00 am. We arrived and it was raining. All the soldiers were already there an hour early practicing their roll in the ceremonies and cleaning the room. We finally got inside and got our seats. They ended up being in a perfect spot as we were about 2-3 rows beside and in front of where Jon ended up sitting. We were able to see him during the entire ceremony. Everything went great, it was a very nice and emotional graduation. It is hard to explain how proud you feel sitting in that room and seeing Jon and all the other recruits going through the ceremony.
After it was over we were able to get a few photos and go outside...where it was still very cloudy but no rain at the moment. We ended up spending about 2 hours or so outside with Jon as everyone was running all around seeing family and saying goodbye as many of them were heading home (Split-Ops....kids still in high school going through basic then coming back next year to finish training) or heading to their next base. Jon has to stay at Fort Leonard Wood for about another month as they were supposed to have given him a test wearing a rubber suit (used for going in after a bomb) but they never gave it to him. So now he has to stay there and wait until the suit is available for him. There are only 6 on the entire base and there is a unit already training with them. So Jon is scheduled to be tested on September 25th or there about. He ended up having to go back to his barracks so we said our goodbyes. We were hoping that he would get a weekend pass but as of this typing he has not had that granted. We will be heading back home on Saturday morning sometime. We are not planning to rush home but should make it back by Monday sometime. Hopefully we will get a chance to do a little caching on our way home. We did do some around here but not very good ones. That is about all for now.
August 30th:
Today was pretty much a blur. We hung around Fort Leonard Wood area to see if we would here from Jon one last time. We checked out a few souvenir shops but did not really find anything of interest. Did not hear from Jon so we headed on our way out of town. The plan was to drive to Pine Bluff Arkansas, doing most of our driving during daylight hours so we could see Arkansas since neither of us had ever been there. Well with our late start and caching along the way that did not really work out. We stopped at one park that had two caches in it with high difficulty/terrain ratings. It started out as a paved sidewalk in open sunlight. Then there was a slight trail that turned into a nice walking trail into the woods. To one side of us was a river and to the other side were rock formations from the mountain side. As we walked the trail it got a lot smaller then we saw a cave up the one side so we headed up there to check it out. That was pretty neat. We found a good cache along the way and headed to the next one. This one was a little harder terrain but we got it. Very cool area and nice caches. Got back to the car and talked to my dad on the phone. He told us about the progress of Hurricane Gustav. We were still 9 hours away from New Orleans. We stopped to grab one more cache before dark. It was in between two houses.. a small park that had a pavilion with fire place and a small river that was spring fed. It was really nice. By the time we signed the log it was dark. As we headed back to the car a local LEO (law enforcement officer) came up to see what we were doing. He and Barb exchanged hellos and we went on our way. The trip through Arkansas was interesting as it was mostly smaller roads and we got to see a lot of the country side. As we got closer to Little Rock we thought we would get a room for the night. Well little did we know that 7 hours North of New Orleans the hotels were all sold out to evacuees. So we decided to drive through the rest of Arkansas during the night. We drove all night until about 6 a.m. when we finally stopped in Louisiana. We grabbed about 2 hours of sleep in the car and then got up and went caching. Everyone is evacuating and heading North. It is now Sunday the 31st and we are heading East into Mississippi. Hopefully we will avoid most of the traffic issues.
Sept 1st:
We ended up changing our route due to the hurricane. Traffic was fine for the most part since we were heading the opposite direction that everyone else was traveling. We have been driving what seems to be forever. We crossed into Mississippi and stopped at the welcome center. A very nice center right on the Mississippi River. It was cool seeing the bridges and the water. It seemed the water was quite low. I would love to see the river after the hurricane. We headed through the state without much trouble. We checked out a few caches along the way. When we got to Alabama we stopped in Mobile to check out the area. We went to a Virtual at Battlefield Park and that was really cool. It was closed due to the hurricane but the gates were open so we went in. Took a few pictures and found the virtual cache that was there. Then we headed on out. We drove into Florida and it was getting late. We were hoping to find a hotel in the panhandle somewhere, well that did not happen. All the way to Tallahassee they were booked. So another long night of driving and we are really tired. Then we got detoured due to a fatal accident on I-10. They sent us off on a county road with no directions on where to go. So about 100 cars traveling on this road with no idea where we are going. We ended up going about an hour out of the way. Finally got back on the road and found a room in Live Oak. 2:30 a.m. we finally had a bed to lay in. Got up this morning and checked out. Had about a 4 hour drive and we would finally be home. FINALLY we are home!! 2,680 miles later in 6 days. We are tired. Glad to be home. All in all it was a good trip.
