Trip 31: Geocaching and Tiger Bay State Forest/Buncombe Hill Interpretive Trail

State Parks visited: 29

A Sunday off is a wonderful thing.  A Sunday off, spent with friends, is even better.  But a Sunday off, spent with friends, and then watching your favorite football team clinch the conference playoff title?  A beautiful thing!

Our particular Sunday began with some geocaching in the Daytona area.  Rob, Olivia, and I met up with Chris, Xandra, and Randy to conquer an interesting series of caches.  I'm not sure what kind of permission was granted for these caches, but we...ahem...broke the law in our pursuit of them:

This cache series has since been archived once we posted questions about its legality in our logs.  We were successful in finding the 6 or 7 caches, however, and logged each one the same way:

We even picked up trash and tried to help preserve the area.  Not all of the trash, however, made it out with us:

Xandra and I found a mudpit in the middle of the trail and had fun mud wrestling, too!

Okay, so maybe not.

Anyway, we finished geocaching in this area and then found several others down the highway.  Our final destination was the Tiger Bay State Forest.  Not only is it our closest state forest, it has several geocaches hidden within it and a trail that qualifies for our Trailwalker patch. 

We cached a little and then made our way to the parking area.  There's a lake there, Indian Lake, and we walked down to check it out:

Rob even managed to skip a few rocks:

Pretty soon we hit the trail.  The trail itself is just under two miles and not very difficult to maneuver.  We had a lot of fun!  A few pictures:

The trail was very well marked, and you could see where the rangers were clearing some of the brush.  They even marked some obstacles so you wouldn't trip...

Beware, the dangerous deer moss!!  Try not to trip over it, okay?

Olivia and Xandra held hands part of the way down the trail.  Olivia, being the cute and lovable kid she is, requested a couple of others to hold hands as well.  Being the fun-loving, agreeable types that they are, played along:

Trust me, it didn't last very long.

We took a short break to find another geocache hidden just off the trail.  We used it as an opportunity to grab a snack and a few pictures.  I love love love this self portrait!  So many things going on in it:

A few other highlights from down the trail:

Olivia is very much like her daddy:

After this we found ourselves back at the trailhead.  We attempted to find a couple more geocaches, but they were hidden better than our ability to find them.  From here it was time to say our goodbyes and head toward home.  This was such a relaxing day!  It just goes to show you don't have to go far from home to have a good time with friends.