Tag Archives: Fountainebleau State Park

My Latest Interest: Geocaching

I was out looking for a bald eagle’s nest at Fountainebleau State Park when a Texas auto pulled up. The driver asked if I’d found it and having been there before, helped me locate it through my scope. When I asked if they were birders, he replied, “No, we are geocachers from Biloxi.”

Well, I knew what geocaching was since our grandson, Mac, had just gone on a Cub Scout geo outing. When my new friend asked, “Want to see one?” I followed him up to a little path into the underbrush. He reached down and lifted up a root, showing me the drilled hole in the underside, with a small cylinder inserted. He showed me the rolled up log sheet inside – and I was hooked. I went to his website (Gulf Coast Geocachers)read up a bit, downloaded an iPhone app, and was off and running.

Here’s a little of what I learned (from Wikipedia):
Geocaching is an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches” or “caches”, anywhere in the world.

A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook where the geocacher enters the date they found it and signs it with their established code name.

Larger containers such as plastic storage containers (tupperware or similar) or ammunition boxes can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value.


Geocaching is often described as a “game of high-tech hide and seek”, sharing many aspects with benchmarking, trigpointing, orienteering, treasure-hunting, letterboxing, and waymarking.

Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica. After 10 years of activity there are over 1,532,000 active geocaches published on various websites. There are over 5 million geocachers worldwide.

So, I’ve done some geocaching at Fountainebleau and Lake Fausse Pointe in Louisiana and at Village Creek annd Goose Island state parks in Texas. I find that it goes well with dog walking, biking, and birding and like the fact that it gets you outside. I also like the geeky aspect of gps and online record-keeping and tracking objects around the country and the world. I also like the inter-generational potential of it; kids love it.

So for now, it’s a “give it a try” activity to check out. When the birds are resting, it is a chance to get out the iPhone and see where the closest geocache might be. And perhaps, there’s a new bird waiting there as well.

I-10 Builds Character

We moved today from Fontainebleau State Park which involves jumping on to I-12 which hooks up with I-10 out of New Orleans.  It’s never fun and today, with the temperature a muggy 79 degrees, it seemed worse than ever.  The haze hung over the wetlands and the tractor-trailers made life miserable.

Things got worse as we headed past Baton Rouge in a windy section with heavy traffic.  A kid in a car beside us yelled something and pointed toward the back of our rig as we navigated some curves.  I swung into a breakdown lane, just after an on ramp, and carefully exited the truck.  The traffic roaring by was scary but as I went to the back of the trailer, I saw what they had been yelling about.  Our electrical cord had escaped from the holder and was dragging the plug down the highway.  Talk about road rash — the plug looked pretty sad as I stowed it safely away.

Getting back on and up to speed was tough and then we nearly missed a split of the highway, needing a quick change to a left lane but then we were over the Mississippi and things got a bit more quiet.  The GPS route to Lake Fausse Pointe State Park looked a little crooked but I wanted off I-10 so we followed the routing. I told Mary, ” It looks like a goat path on the map.” Louisiana doesn’t spend a lot of money on their back roads — the road we were on was narrow, pock-marked, but straight with a speed limit of 55 mph.  No way was I going that fast on such a road, which wound back and forth, through little hamlets, past many fishing camps, and eventually coming to a pontoon bridge, ending with a sudden lurch up over a levee on to a real road.  (The park ranger, hearing my route, told me that several bigger rigs have lost antennas and mirrors on that bridge.)  We won’t be going back that way.

A pontoon bridge rated at 5 tons (now what do we weigh?)

Nearly every camp/home we passed on the “goat path” had a name:  “Bud’s Swampland.” “Who Dat?” …. It was an interesting look at rural Louisiana but it was nice to get on a wider highway for the last 15 miles down to the park.  As we listen to peepers this evening, it’s a far cry from the chaos of Interstate 10.  In spite of the mosquitos, I prefer this setting much more.

Southern Comfort

After a nice stay at Harrison Bay State Park in Tennessee, where we had the park nearly to ourselves, we drove down to ClarkCo State Park in Mississippi where we have stayed before.  Since we were moving on  Martin Luther King Day, the traffic was relatively light through Chattanooga, Birmingham, and Tuscaloosa.  We settled into ClarkCo and I had a chance to take the dog on several long runs (she can roam on the back trails since no one is there.)

Staying with in ClarkCo for a few days gave us a chance to see Kevin and Jason, our Mississippi friends.  They took us out to eat at a local favorite — Charlie’s Catfish House — and we enjoyed a wonderful meal and had a great time.  Of course, the food is fried and tasty — one of those places where you don’t worry about calories.  We topped it off with a King Cake back at Kevin & Jason’s Laurel home and I got the baby, which means good luck and I have to buy next year’s King Cake.

Catfish, Steak Fries, & Hush Puppies

It’s a pretty easy four-hour drive down to Fountainebleau State Park, on the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain.  The park is great — even while nearly filled with locals here for the weekend.  It’s neat to have kids framming around on bikes and enjoying 70’s weather.  The birding here is superb as well and all Louisiana parks have decent wifi.  So, after a week of 3G, we could get caught up on some of our laptop projects.

I’ve had the bike out and got Penny running alongside.  It’s a good way for both of us to get exercise when we can’t let her run.  We are off to Lake Fausse Pointe state park tomorrow — a place we’ve not visited, then start heading west toward Texas.  Enjoying shorts and T-shirt weather and many birds.

Photo by Sam Is Hungry

Great Weather and WiFi

Any day that starts with seeing a Great Egret on an early morning walk and ending the day with a bike ride with the dog alongside is a good one.

Yesterday (Day 4) was a “get it together” day at Clarko State Park in Quitman, MS. I got the water system operating after winterizing it. You always worry about problems due to freezing and we had one split spray nozzle — which was easy to replace. I washed the truck and the Airstream, taking off months of salt and crud.

There were only a few campers at the state park so we had the place pretty much to ourselves. The birding was wonderful (see my birding blog) — and the dog could run free on the miles of back trails and roads. She went nuts with the many squirrels around — chased a wild turkey, and had her nose down in an armadillo hole until I pulled her away.

Today, we had an easy trip down Highway 59 to I-12 and ended up at Fountainbleau State Park in Mandeville, LA. It sits at the northern end of Lake Ponchartrain on an old sugar plantation. Louisiana parks have WiFi which is a big help — we can only do so much with our iPhones.

I got the bikes unloaded from the chaos that is the back of the pickup, hooked up the Springer system, and took Penny for a spin around the park. She gets a wonderful workout and is snoring beside me on the couch.

We are going to stay here for a couple of days — do some bike riding and birding — and then head on to Texas. Weather is nice — today got up to 70 but it will be in the 50’s tomorrow. However, reading the weather forecast that my Vermont friends are facing, mid-fifties sounds pretty good.

This state park is about half full with many people who stay for weeks — with big rigs. We are the only Airstream here.