400th Geocache!

We hit a big milestone in the past weeks by finding our 400th geocache. We'd been within twenty caches of 400 for the past few years but only recently started going again. We found #397 recently and hoped to break the barrier with a series of four caches.

The series is Tour de Scaggsville, crafted by a geocacher who is also a fan of bicycle racing. The first three caches all provide clues to the coordinates for the final cache. We did the first three in reverse order, starting with TDS 3 - End of the Road??? The find wasn't too far off a dead end that used to be the major thoroughfare for Scaggsville. A small shopping center blocks the road and the new road is just north of there. We found the cache and collected information for TDS 4's coordinates.

Searching for TDS 3

TDS 2 - Scaggsville Station is at a location that used to be a country store/gas station. It's been renovated into a fun little eatery. I'd give the name, but the name was part of the clue for TDS 4. The cache was down the hill in a pleasant open field. The exact spot is starting to grow thorns, so I imagine the difficulty will only increase through the spring and summer.

View from the cache

TDS 1 - Tour de Scaggsville is a multi-stage cache, using clues from the church and the graveyard to guide geocachers to the find. It's a little confusing since the whole series of caches does the same thing, building up clues for the final find. We walked around the church and found all the different cornerstones with different dates (lots of additions to the building). That led us into the cemetery to find more information.

By the church

In a tree

The graveyard has a large variety of tombstones, some dating back to the early 1800s.

Tombstones

More tombstones

The one we were directed to was the marker for the Scaggs family (for whom the town is named). Their dates gave us coordinates to the final stage of this cache and TDS 4.

Dates on the other side of the tomb

The final stage of TDS 1 was down a hill in nearby woods. The church put a little amphitheater in, which we admired along the way.

The final stage of the series, TDS 4 - Rocky Gorge Reservoir, is located at a nearby playground and reservoir. I did some wrong calculations about the final coordinates and wound up far from the recommended parking area. When I walked through a second parking lot on the same road, I realized the mistake. By this point, the kids were no longer interested in finding geocaches, so luckily my "did not find" was not frustrating for them. I refigured the coordinates but it was lunchtime, so we headed home in hopes of coming back again.

The reservoir

Deer tracks and human tracks!

TDS 1 was our 400th cache, so we made the milestone. Hopefully we will surpass it soon!