I’ve had geocaching fever for a few weeks now and there are 2 caches on Eglin Reservation that I’ve been wanting to get to fill in some blank spots on my geocaching stats. I had no idea we’d end up stuck in a tank trap.
We finished everything we had to do by 1:30 and I managed to talk Troy into riding up the woods with me.
I planned to grab two caches and then get back home in about two and a half hours.
The first geocache is named Road Less Traveled. The premise of the cache is Did you drive or Did you walk?
When we got to the road the concept became quite clear.
I have 4wd but not the clearance to make it, so we decided to walk.
It is important to note that I made the decision not to drive before Troy could say yes or no.
We walked down to the cache and then I couldn’t remember the clue to open the container. The clue was in the truck, quite a way back up the hill. I called my dad and asked for the answer.
Luckily, he knew the answer, so I opened the cache, signed the log and we were back in the truck in no time.
See? It really is possible to run into the woods, grab a couple of caches and get back home at a reasonable time.
We were off to the next cache which ironically is named Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader.
I turned off the main road and we came across a pretty sketchy looking mud hole. There was no water, but the clay was mucky looking, and we had to get across the muck and up a high berm, so we stopped and looked at it for a minute.
Now, most people won’t believe me when I say that I asked Troy what he thought but it’s the God’s honest truth. I looked right at him and asked what he thought we should do, and he said, “Keep going.”
So, I went.
I had to go over a berm, through the muck and up another berm so I floored it and went.
Just as my front wheels hit the bottom of the berm on the other side of the muck the truck came to a complete stop.
I still had the gas pedal on the floor, but the vehicle did not budge.
Troy swears that I let off the gas, but I did not. The muck grabbed us and sucked my truck in like quicksand.
I tried to back up but obviously I was not going anywhere.
We opened the doors and when we got out the muck almost sucked our boots off. Slick, heavy, clay quicksand.
He tried to dig us out but then when I tried to move the truck we just sunk even more.
Here’s where I should tell you that we knew there was a storm coming but we also thought we would be home before the storm hit.
The sky is getting gray; Troy is covered in mud (I did not have one single towel in my truck), and we are not going to get unstuck without help.
Which is about the time a hunter came walking up the road. A very unfriendly hunter who, when asked if he had a tow strap, never stopped walking, and mumbled something about there was one in his truck.
I have a geocaching friend, Drop Hunter, who doesn’t live too far from where we were and has a 4×4 that I know will be able to pull us out.
Except, I don’t have his number, so I have to call his brother, The Whitten Boys, to get the number.
And as expected, he laughed the entire time I was telling him the story. I am notorious for getting stuck. But he sent me Drop Hunter’s number, and I called him.
Sadly, he no longer has his truck.
This is not good. It’s starting to rain and the spot we are stuck in is mucky because it’s a drain off for rain.
Suddenly, the hunter is back with a 3-foot piece of the thinnest rope I have ever seen and asks if this will work. Troy just shook his head and told him thanks anyway. Three feet of string would have done no good at all.
Troy is digging and pacing and cussing and tells me to call his brother. His brother lives in Destin, which is about an hour away. The same brother who always gives me a hard time when stuff like this happens.
But we had no choice, so we called him, sent him this picture. He said he was on his way.
It started raining harder and the hole we were sitting in was starting to fill up with water.
This is what we saw when we pulled up the radar. The tornado warning was a nice touch too.
We’re the little blue dot.
The Whitten Boys called me back saying that he is close so he’s coming even though his truck is not 4wd and he asked where I was.
“I’m on the road to the Are you smarter than a fifth grader cache. Right at the entrance, you’ll see us.”
Now it’s completely dark. It’s lightning, raining pretty hard and we’re sitting in the truck when Troy says “So the are you smarter than a 5th grader means are you smart enough to park and walk down this road or do you try and drive through this big bleeping hole?”
If that is the case, we are not smarter than fifth graders.
He starts talking gloom and doom. This hole is filling up with water fast. This truck is going to be toast when it floods. Blah Blah Blah…
I refused to believe that. I mean really, statistically, how many vehicles can one woman sink? One I can believe – since it actually happened – but I’m just not buying two.
Then I got a message from The Whitten Boys telling me he’s on the road to the geocache but doesn’t see me.
Ummm.
He told me to send him my GPS coords and a few minutes later we were relieved to see headlights pull in behind us.
He had stopped and picked up Drop Hunter and they were here to laugh at me help.
Except, he thought I was in the tiny car I sunk and he only had cargo straps. Plus, he didn’t realize he’d have to get close enough to get stuck and his truck isn’t 4wd.
We all stood there in the rain watching the water level rise when my BIL pulled up.
The first thing he said was “This is NOT the picture you sent me” which caused us to laugh and tell him that things were changing fast and that we needed to get of there as soon as possible.
He does not have tow straps, but he does have three hundred feet of good rope to use.
It’s a shame that rope was tangled beyond belief. Between the four of them they managed to get it untangled.
Troy waded back into the water to tie the rope to my trailer hitch only to realize that the hitch was on his truck. I have been telling him for a while that I need my own, but he thinks switching the one we have between our trucks is a better idea.
Or he did until he found out that the hitch was on his truck and not mine.
Luckily, his brother had an extra in the back of his truck, so they were able to put that on and tie off the rope.
While that is going on Drop Hunter and The Whitten Boys are telling me that this is not the road to the cache at all and as far as they can tell, there is not even a cache down this road.
Oh. I wonder if this counts as a DNF. Then they tell me the cache is on a hard packed road and the smarter than a fifth grader thing is about figuring out how to open the cache – not get to it.
AND it’s over a mile away so I’m not even close.
Finally, the rope was tied and my BIL pulled my truck right out. He said he did not have to pull hard, and Troy told him that’s because my truck floated through the hole.
So, there we all stood, in the rain, wet and muddy, but we have successfully unstuck me.
I asked Troy if he wanted to try the right road and grab the cache anyway, but he glared at me, and I really did not need a verbal answer.
Going straight home didn’t sound like a bad idea anyway.
Thank you so much to the Whitten Boys, Drop Hunter, and my BIL for helping us! If you ever need me to pull y’all out let me know – my truck will have a winch on it soon.
