The Blair Woods Traditional Cache
Badd Companie: As part of the process of replacing, this one bites the dust. Area near the final had been radically pruned, so much of the spooky tunnel through the cedars and saplings was gone. Then the container was twice muggled, as well. Enjoy the new one while you mourn the loss of the old one.
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A night cache with a seasonal element in Pawnee Prairie Park
With Halloween approaching, the woods are spooky at sundown with long shadows and rustling leaves. They are even spookier after dark. Join me on a tour of the Blair Woods, if you dare. The Blair Woods is actually an area of Pawnee Prairie Park with a labyrinth of trails. Running here in late afternoon, one gets the feel of the woods in the famous Project movie.
After parking at the above coords (corner of Harry and Seville), proceed to N 37° 39.890 W 097° 27.337 for the start of your ghostly adventure. There are street lights within 100 feet of the northeast entrance to Pawnee Prairie. The shoulder on the south side of Harry is too soft and I nearly got the geotruck stuck in a sand dune there. Better to park on Seville facing north for a fast escape.
Enter the park and follow the dirt road west to the co-ordinates in the previous paragraph. You will find a white stake, veer left down onto a sandy trail and begin to look for reflectors.
Follow the trail of reflectors on a LONG tour of the Blair Woods. You will be on dirt trails most of the way, at times the trails are primitive and you should be on the lookout for miscellaneous trip hazards. At times, the trail goes through cedar forests and the reflectors will be on branches instead of trunks or large limbs. At one point the trail veers sharply to the right on a hairpin, goes up log steps and bushwhacks to reach another adjacent trail.
At times, you will leave the woods; if you do not see reflectors immediately, continue on the trail until you do. I can't conjure up a tree in the middle of a pasture everytime I need one. When you re-enter the woods after a jaunt in the open grassland, you will reach a cedar tunnel. Going through the tunnel, you will need to keep low and look for reflectors down low. Soon after the end of the tunnel, you will see several reflectors close together. This is the final cache site.
It was so spooky here that I could not hide the ammo box very well at all. I managed to find a little bit of timber, some sticks, some leaves and some grass to cover it. Improve the cover if you can, but there is a shortage of loose material in the area.
The ammo box contains the usual log as well as Halloween treasures (though nothing gory). It also has a 1969-D Kennedy Half as a first to find alternative to the two travel bugs, one of which is a jeep. (If you grab the jeep, the last digit in its code is a number and not a letter!)
Many parts of this cache are spooky. Everytime I got close to Cowskin Creek I could hear large creatures dropping into the water. Near the southernmost point on the trail, I thought I smelled cigarette smoke (which is rather frightening out in the woods after midnight), and leaving the area I heard loud animal snorting like a wild horse, or boar, or wolf, or mountain lion. It certainly wasn't Bambi.
The trail is LONG. I am guessing the total walk round trip is about a mile and a half, but what do I know? Near the start is a mud hole. After that it's pretty dry.
In the bushwhacking area, I didn't see any poison ivy. At times, it is close to the trail.
Enjoy! But be wary. Anytime you cache in the woods you should be on a heightened stage of alert: this is no exception here. After you have found the cache, you may leave the final area by either backtracking or by following the trail until you reach familiar turf. It is always a good idea to set the parking area as a waypoint Another good waypoint is anytime you cross a bridge. The bridge waypoint is especially useful in returning to the parking area from the final cache.
PARENTS, GRANDPARENTS, if you would like your kids to find this in the daytime (on Halloween weekend only) e-mail me before Oct 29, and I will e-mail the co-ordinates for the final after someone else has gotten credit for the first to find. I'll send the co-ordinates either on the 29th or early on the 30th.
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Treasures
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