Ah, Saturday.
The day started off with loose plans to join some friends at Lamberts Cafe in Springfield, MO. We decided against doing that because they wanted to have lunch there with a family member (it was their birthday) and we wanted to sleep in a little more before getting our day started. We decided to just go to Lamberts on our own whenever we got up and around. So I ran a geocache query along a scenic route to Springfield and then one on the quicker route. The plan was to geocache as much as we felt like on the way up and back, taking two different routes. We would hopefully get caches in several new counties today, and should definitely get to add Missouri to our states list.
We left about noon for Springfield. We chose the scenic route to head up there, which went out almost to Harrison, Arkansas, and then north through Branson. Very pretty drive and lots of geocaches. This route took us right past a cache that is somewhat near our house that we had to DNF on an earlier trip but thought we had enough experience now to find easily.
We were right. I literally walked right to it this time. I'm amazed at how much experience helps with finding certain caches. You will learn what types of things are possible and what types are even common. This one was a flat gray box magnetized on the back of an electrical box (the area was filled with those electrical box things). I saw it immediately when we arrived. We had found several others in the past that were somewhat similar, and we were pretty sure this one was one of those. Our first time here, we weren't looking for a container that looked like part of the electrical boxes, we were looking for a more traditional container. We have learned, I guess.
Moving on, we chose to stop and find the cache near this bridge.
An easy one to find, magnetized to a sign that was beside the bridge.
We came across a cache a little later that was in front of a Pottery place. It was really out in the middle of nowhere, but it was kind of a cool building. The owner (I guess) came out and greeted us as we were looking. He knew exactly what we were doing (he said he recognizes the type immediately as he mimicked us wandering around while looking down at a GPS type device). He gave us a little nudge in the right direction, but it was an easy find anyway. We found a little 1984 Olympics pin that we kept (and traded in some other trinket for it in the cache).
Into Missouri we went, ready to add a new state to our whopping list of 2 (Arkansas and Oklahoma). We took a little detour over to Table Rock Lake where there were lots and lots of potential finds. We settled on one that was on a trail, with the possibility of getting one more further down the trail. The problem is we were nowhere near the beginning of the trail. No problem, we just parked on the side of the road and bushwhacked our way through the woods until we got to the trail. Once we found it, we followed it until we were almost onto the cache. Suddenly, we entered a clearing that went all the way down to the lake. It was one of those power line alleyways, but it afforded quite a breath-taking view of the lake and the woods around it. Really wish this cell-phone camera picture did it justice, but it doesn't. It really was a breath-taking scene.
We did head on down the trail to pick up one more cache further down. This one turned out to be further away than we thought, and went significantly off the trail, but we got there eventually. A couple of downed trees were the site for this cache, which we found after a brief scouring.
We decided we needed to get down the road a bit, at this point. We wanted to get to the Lamberts between the lunch and dinner rush. At this point, we were going to have to book it to get there by 4:00. It took a bit longer to walk back to the van from our spot on the trail, but we did and headed for Lamberts. We arrived about 4:15 and put our names on the list. The expected wait time was an hour and a half, so we picked up a couple more caches in the near vicinity of the restaurant and came back to wait something closer to 20 minutes.
The food and experience at Lamberts was great. If you've never been and can get over there, I recommend it. They come by with vegetable side orders all the time and offer to put some on your plate. The best thing, though, is those rolls. They have these really big, delicious rolls. They come out with a cart of them and shout "hot rolls!" Then you just raise your hand up if you want one. The waiter will pick one up and launch it across the restaurant at you. It's a lot of fun. I made sure I got him to toss me a long ball at least once. It was right on target. Came in over my wife's head. She knew it was coming and closed her eyes and cringed, but it sailed beautifully past her ear and into my hands.
Touchdown.
On the way back home, we grabbed a few more caches, dropped off the geocoin somewhere in Springfield, MO, and found a travelbug! My first one of those, so I will get a picture up soon. This one came from the Philippines I think!