Nicodemus National Historic Site

On our Spring Break GeoTrip across Kansas, we stopped at Nicodemus National Historic Site in Nicodemus, Kansas.  Of course, there was a Nicodemus geocache!

A little background information about Nicodemus:  Former enslaved African Americans left Kentucky in organized colonies at the end of the of post-Civil War Reconstruction period to experience freedom on the free soils of Kansas. Nicodemus represents the involvement of African Americans in the western expansion and settlement of the Great Plains. It is the oldest and only remaining all Black Town west of the Mississippi River.

While at the Nicodemus NHS, Jacob (aka Buggywasher) participated in the Junior Ranger Program.  You may ask what is a Junior Ranger?  Well, according to the National Park Service, a Junior Ranger is an explorer, a learner, and a protector of National Parks.  Junior Rangers complete a series of activities and share their answers with a park ranger.  At the end of the activities, the Junior Ranger receives a badge and a certificate.  It's a pretty cool program.  This is the 2nd one Jacob has done and he really has enjoyed it.

Jacob hard at work!

Jacob is an official Nicodemus Junior Ranger!

While we were at Nicodemus, Jacob and Jeff were able to use their National Park Passport.  For Christmas last year, my mum got Jacob and Jeff National Park Passports.  Each book contains information about our National Parks with a place for National Park stickers and stamps.  Each National Park has a cancellation stamp for you to put in your book.  Jacob and Jeff were able to stamp their books while at Nicodemus!

Spring Break GeoTrip

I've been so bad at keeping up with this blog.  Between my other blog (What's Cooking At Jen's House,) school, work, teaching, family and everything else, I just haven't been writing about our geocaching adventures, even though we've been geocaching during the last few months!

All three of us are on spring break for the past week, so we Jeff planned a big geo trip around Kansas.  When we were talking about and planning our trip, we knew that we wanted to combine several challenges...the Kansas 105 County Challenge, the Delorme Challenge and the Virtual Challenge, along with going to a few specific caches.  So Jeff worked for hours and planned our route and the caches along the way.

Early on Tuesday morning, we started out on our trip!  It was a beautiful spring day, all of us were wearing shorts and enjoying the mid 80* temps.  We visited some pretty cool cache sites on day 1.  Marblecake, The Love Shack, Boston Corbett Dugout and the Oil Museum.

Boston Corbett Dugout

Love Shack...I wonder what stories this house could tell...

Hmmm, a totem pole in front of the Oil Museum...Interesting!

Marblecake...the rock formations are amazing!

We stayed the night in Hill City at an awesome Bed and Breakfast.  After seeing what hotels were available in town, we called the B&B and were told to come right over.  The proprietor was so nice and friendly and the old Victorian house was lovely.  We stayed in the Angel Room, which was beautiful and overflowing with antiques and angels!  Our breakfast in the morning was wonderful~blueberry pancakes, sausage, fruit, Costa Rican coffee, OJ and milk.  Jacob told us that was the best place ever!

The Angel Room was on the 2nd floor with the "tower" and the middle window.

Day 2 took us from Hill City to Scott City.  Our caching started in Morland City.  We watched the sun peek over the horizon at the City Park.  Jacob and I played a few games of tether ball as Jeff searched (and replaced) the cache.  We traveled to Hoxie, were we did the Green and Yellow cache.  The cache container was well done!  After caching in Colby, we stopped for a picnic lunch at It's an Oasis.  Let me tell you, it was NOT an oasis.  The wind was howling and we ended up quickly making our sandwiches and eating them in the car!  We headed towards Mt. Sunflower, the highest point of Kansas, and the Colorado border.  We found Crazy Tricycle along the way to Scott City, which is where we spent the night.

 

 

It was really WINDY!

We started Day 3 with the windchill at 14*!  Brrrrrr.  We had the heater cranked, whereas two days before we had the AC cranked!  We started caching in Amy, Ks.  We did a run on KS 4, which led us to 20+ caches in a row.  What fun!  One of the caches in Great Bend led us to the Fuller Brush factory.  We took a 20 minute break from caching while I ran into the factory store.  Grammy Shaw used to buy me brushes from the Fuller Brush salesman.  The Lady Catherine was the only brush that could go through my thick hair.  I was pleased to see they still sell Lady Catherine, so when mine gets worn out, I know where to get another one.  However, I don't think it will wear out anytime soon...Grammy bought this last one for me about 17 years ago...and it's still going strong!

Our last cache of the day (or so we thought) was in Lincolnville, Ks at a cemetery.  Our 49th cache of the day.  It was just getting dark and a thunderstorm was heading our way.  Just as we finished up with the log book, it started to rain and hail!  A big bolt of lightening and the crack of thunder scared Jacob half to death!  So we high tailed it out of there.  It's a wonder that my poor Prius is still has all it's parts underneath as I bottomed out several times on the gravel road out of there! 

Once we made it home, Jeff and I began to log in all of our finds on geocaching.com.  Just after we finished, we noticed there was a new cache in our area...only 9 miles away!  Jeff got dressed and ran out at 10:20pm to claim the First to Find!  The 50th cache of the day, making this our record number of caches in one day. 

We had a great trip.  3 days, 841 miles and 115 different caches. 

Geocaching Trip Labor Day 2010

We took a quick geocaching trip last Sunday and Monday.  It was Labor Day weekend, so Jacob didn't have school, I have Monday's off and Jeff was on leave.  Perfect timing for a road trip!  We packed up the Prius and took off heading southeast towards Dunlap, Kansas.  Since Jeff is from Dunlap, Iowa, we decided to set a cache in Dunlap, Kansas!  Dunlap, Kansas was a small town that in it's heyday, must have been a bustling farming community.  Today, there are gravel roads instead of paved, there are old buildings that are abandoned and in disrepair.  The school is all boarded up.  There is a church, and it actually seemed to be one of the few buildings that looked as if it was well taken care of. 

Burden, KS

Who-who can find me?  Jacob can!

Big Brutus

We continued southeast towards Chanute and Columbus.  Columbus is in the southeast corner of Kansas, near Oklahoma and Missouri.  Once we reached Columbus, we started heading west, zigzagging north and south, hitting caches in particular counties.  We're trying to attempt the Delorme Kansas Challenge and the Kansas 105 County Challenge so we needed to be specific on where exactly the caches were!

Little House on the Prairie

Bossie

We had a great time...  2 day, 706 miles (we only had to fill up once!) and we found a total of 69 caches.  We drove down a lot of gravel roads, traveled paved roads that were more like gravel roads, and saw a lot of small-town Kansas...Big Brutus, Little House on the Prairie (which is a replica of their Kansas home) and Bossie dancing the Bosa-Nova. 

Kansas City's 10th Anual Geocaching Picnic and 1000 finds!

Mr. Diecast64 and Buggywasher

Jeff, Jacob and I jaunted over to the Kansas City area this weekend for the big Kansas City Geocaching Picnic.  We left our house on Friday, cached all the way to Lenexa, cached all day on Saturday, attended the picnic, cached after the picnic and cached on the way home Sunday morning! 

We had a few exciting moments on our caching weekend...  Our GPS was acting goofy, so we stopped at a coffee shop in Tonganoxie.  We were able to reload the geocaches back into our GPS.  For some reason, the geocache coordinates and information didn't transfer to the GPS.  While in Tonganoxie, we stopped at a park that had a couple of caches and we decided to enjoy our picnic lunch in the park.  One of the caches was called "Somebody Get Me a Medic," which was pretty ironic since Jeff is a medic.  While walking to the picnic area, we were surprised by a minivan that drove off the road and crashed through the trees.  Jeff was the first one to the van and helped stabilize the man who fell asleep at the wheel.  The fire trucks, ambulance and police all showed up within 5 minutes, which I thought was fast.  Luckily, the man was OK...just a few cuts on his head and a totaled van.  What a way for Jeff to begin his vacation!

Another exciting moment was at the picnic.  Jacob did some kid's caches all by himself!  He was the FTF on all 3 of them!  :)

Entering the coords into the GPS for Buggy's 1st cache all by himself!

Our other exciting moment was hitting 1000 finds!  Our 1000nd find was the picnic itself.  What an accomplishment!  We've found 1000 different geocaches all over the world since 2008.  We've seen some awesome places and met some wonderful people along the way.

We met some amazing geocachers at the picnic, and we chatted it up with lots of friends.  Jeff, Jacob and I even won some prizes!  We ate some delicious food, discovered lots of Travel Bugs and coins and had a wonderful time.  A big thanks goes to the Byonke's who organized the picnic and to all of those that helped make it a fun day~

900th Find!

Buggywasher and I have driven a few hundred miles during the past week seeking our 900th cache.  We finally found No Girls Aloud in Salina, making it our 900th find! Here's to 900+ more caches!

During the past week, we've seen some interesting places in Kansas.  Beautiful place that are off the beaten path.  I feel a little sorry for the people who don't geocache.  They are missing the real Kansas.  Kansas is much more than the big cities and the views you get from traveling the I-70 and I-35 corridors.  There is a lot of history, a lot of wonderful places and a lot of good times to be had. For someone who dreaded moving to Kansas 6 years ago, I'm very glad we've gotten to see the real Kansas.

We've seen great churches in communities that were thriving 100 years ago and tombstones of immigrants that were so far from their homeland.

 

Jacob has stood on the front steps of a bank that was built in 1900. 

We've seen interesting "art" made out of barbed wire!

We've seen antique modes of transportation, calves along the side of the road and old farmsteads.

Jacob has stood in the doorway of an old jail.

We've seen a lot of old, one-room school houses and the endless straight road ahead.

We've seen how people traveled to Kansas, and have even had a little fun.  

"Wait for me!  Don't leave me behind!"

We've also seen a rather interesting use for bowling balls!

And this is just a fraction of the Kansas we've seen!  These pictures are just from the last week!

Happy Caching!