Category Archives: Georgia birding

Taking Princess Ariel Home

I did some geocaching at Choke Canyon State Park and want to introduce you to an interesting trackable that I found in a cache there.

I love geocaching in Texas parks: they all have multiple caches, the traffic is pretty high so there is good turnover in trackables, and they use large ammo boxes as caches that are a piece of cake to locate.

With GPS, you get led to the site. Here’s what my iPhone looked like as Penny and I zeroed in on the site.

As expected, the cannister was easily found with my "truffle hound" helping me out.

I signed the log and saw that among all the items folks had left in the container (essentially junk like lucky coins and magic rings) that the was a trackable item with a metal tag attached.

Each trackable has a unique code that identifies it and allows the owner, and others like me, to observe the activity. I reported that I had taken the item so it now shows in my inventory.

In looking up the number, I saw that Princess Ariel was launched in Vancouver in 2010 but as you can see from the chart, sort of got lost in Texas. (Probably stashed away in someone vehicle and forgotten.)

So, I plan to lug her back to Vermont, probably visiting a few caches along the way, and place her in an active cache where someone can find her and move her along. I think she needs to explore New England.

Florida Plans

I’ve mapped out a three month trip to Florida. It was much tougher than planning to go to the Southwest because Florida state parks fill up fast — often I grabbed the last site available — and the state wants all the money up front. So I’m sitting with over a thousand dollars on my AMEX card so I guess we’d better go.

I got some advice from my brother and sister-in-law, some birding friends, and used two birding guide books: Birding Florida by Brian Rapoza and the slightly-dated A Birder’s Guide to Florida by Bill Pranty.

Right now, we are planning to head out right after New Year’s, subject to weather forecasts.  We take the Airstream to Georgia and then down to a big birding festival in Titusville in January.

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We then hit some good birding spots in southern Florida for February.  (The Keys were out of the question since everything there is tied up 10 months ahead of time.)

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In March, we work ourselves up the western side of Florida, hoping to hook up with some old friends from Central New York who winter there. We end up in the Pensacola area as we think about heading home in mid-April.

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One of the nice things about hauling your own lodging is that you are flexible. If we find Florida to crowded, too wet, to0 Republican (just kidding!), we can head back to our old haunts along the Gulf Coast, and just eat some of the deposits. The long-range forecast (30% cooler and wetter down south and 30% warmer up here) adds another element but we’ve done the rainy slushy winter and Florida’s got to be better.  In my next post, I’m going to pick a few target birds for the trip.