An afternoon of geocaching and benchmark hunting

Saturday afternoon I wanted to do some caching, but I also needed to get my car inspected and the oil changed. It turns out that Jiffy Lube has free WiFi, so I fired up GSAK and loaded some waypoints into my laptop. When my car was done, I started with the nearest waypoint:


FY1903 WITCH
An easy benchmark to get started. It's at the edge of the parking lot of a restaurant supply company. Someone has painted a big arrow on the pavement, making it hard to miss. (Incidentally, I realized at this point that I had forgotten my digital camera. I was stuck making photographs with my Blackberry.)

The datasheet says it's flush with the surface... but I had to clean a half-inch of dirt off it. The datasheet also says it's marked "WITCH," but it actually says "WITCHY."

Next on the list were a couple of geocaches. Two quick park n' grabs in the same parking lot.
GC14A06 Pole Position
GCIW18T At the Crossing

After signing those two logs, it was on to search for a benchmark. FY1904 FRASIER. The last recovery for this one was in 1977, and the NC Geodetic Survey reported it as DNF in 1994. The coordinates are "Adjusted" so they should be spot on. And they place it right in the right-turn lane of N. Duke St. All of the reference points mentioned in the description are gone. I can only conclude that the mark was destroyed when Duke Street was widened, sometime between 1977 and 1994.


FY1905 CARVER was a pleasant surprise...I was looking at the NGS datasheet, and not the logs on geocaching.com. The 1994 recovery note says "mark is now recessed 8 inches below the ground." I was expecting to log a DNF because I wasn't equipped to dig, but I found it at the bottom of a hole in the ground.

After a couple of benchmarks and a couple of microcaches, I was ready for a bigger geocache. One where I could leave a trade item and take a souvenier. On to GCTYX4, named in honor of one of my favorite ex-Presidents. The container was big enough to leave something, but I didn't... everythig inside was a soggy mess and smelled of mildew. But it was a nice spot to visit, and a good hiding spot.

I looked for two more benchmarks, FY1906 and FY1907, both of which seem to have been lost to the widening of North Duke Street.

My final geocache of the day was part of the Caches for Wolves series: GC18QP6. This was yet another log-only microcache, but it was fun finding it. It was hidden in a way I had not seen before.

It was nearly time to head for home, but I had one more stop to make on the way home: FY2936 CASH. I had attempted this one once before, but using the GPS built in to my Blackberry. The description says it's "flush with the surface of the ground" but I couldn't find it. Armed with a better GPSr, and a long screwdriver for probing in the ground, I was hopeful of making a recovery.

Most of the reference points listed in the description are gone. There is no fence and no house. But the mark on the utility pole is still there.

And another mark has been painted on the road:

The datasheet mentions a dirt driveway... it appears to have been paved but not moved. Given all of this data, I have a pretty good idea of where this mark should be. But lots of probing with the screwdriver failed to locate it. It's either been destroyed or buried. If I ever get a metal detector  this is going to be one of the first places I use it.