Operation: Military Travelers
As told by Spoerke
Last week my wife and I headed toward Fort Devens to do a little Geocaching. It took three days for us to finally find a cache, and even then the fourth day was quickly approaching. Let me start with a prelude to the trip.
We purchased 5 travel bugs and a hitchhiker for each of them a few weeks ago. These travel bugs have similar missions to visit US military installations around the world. One will visit Air Force installations, one will visit Army installations, one will visit Coast Guard installations, you get the point. To get them started, we wanted to place each of them near an installation respective to their mission. Fort Devens was the choice for the US Army Installation Traveler.
On day one, we stopped by a cache near Hanscom AFB, which was a quick find and we left the US Air Force Installation Traveler there. Then we headed toward Fort Devens. As the sun was setting, we couldn’t find an entrance to the park that past Geocachers mentioned and we decided to put it off for the next day.
Day 2 brought with it some illegal activity as we paid no attention to the “No Trespassing” signs posted around the area, and started looking for the cache we abandoned the day before. Oops.
About an hour into the hike, we realized that we were pretty dumb to have only grabbed one bottle of water from the car, but determined and getting desperate to find this cache we kept going. Then, we ran into some new high voltage power lines, and the bridge that previous Geocachers used was nowhere to be found. There was no crossing that river. So, we headed back to the car and drank a lot of water on our way back home.
On the third day we got a late start and we had a new Geocache in mind for the US Army Installation Traveler. Oh, I shouldn’t forget, I dug out my CamelBack that I used in Iraq and filled it with water for this trip. No more heat exhaustion for us.
It was about 8:30PM by the time we arrived at the new location and “dark” would be an understatement. It was black in every direction thanks to the wonderful canopy of trees blocking what little light the moon could offer. I told my wife I didn’t want to use a flashlight if my eyes could adjust to the darkness, especially the high powered flashlight, but really there wasn’t any other choice if I wanted to make it out of there in one piece. So, the high powered flashlight came out and suddenly we could see quite well.
First we tried to bushwhack our way through the marsh, since the cache was only about 1/4 mile from the car. That didn’t work to our advantage, so we retraced our steps and returned to the car in search of trails. By the time we found a trail it was probably closing in on 9:30PM, early, but the blackness surrounding the flashlight beam was quickly draining my eyes of life.
Our GPS does not have a long battery life, and for the next hour we wandered trails, hoping that we would find one that our topographic trail map displayed. Yeah, the trail map was wrong… really wrong. Destined to find this cache, we kept going.
At about 10:30PM we had narrowed down the possibilities enough to believe we were pretty close to the cache. The GPS concluded that we were right, but the high powered flashlight was growing dim and so was the low powered flashlight. We were both exhausted and growing quite hungry, but being so close we pushed on.
Just after 11PM we found the cache and the GPS was useless. Okay, so my wife found it while I was chasing mice through the woods. We dropped the US Army Installation Traveler and low and behold, someone left a working flashlight in the cache! We took it and thanked them profusely for helping us get out of the woods. I don’t know where we would have ended up without a flashlight.
So, the few pointers I’d like to leave everyone with is to always have plenty of water (CamelBacks are great), always bring extra batteries for your flashlights, and pay attention to signs (they’re there for a reason). Good times.
date posted: | last edited: | author: Spoerke
Tags: fort devens, massachusetts geocaching, military travel bugs, military traveler
One Response to “Operation: Military Travelers”
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this is a great find for me. i have gotten a little hooked on following the adventures of cachers and the stories of their finds. enjoyed this one.