The next morning, we awoke a little bit earlier than the day before, but not by much.  Even though we had adapted to the three-hour time difference, we were in full vacation mode, so a 7:00 a.m. wake-up time was fast becoming the norm.

After breakfast and a shower, we called Aunt Lotte to let her know that we were on our way out the door.  Lotte indicated that she would meet us there, but she had to get ready first.  That said, we figured that we had plenty of time.

To get to the Peachtree Rock Nature Preserve, we took US 76 East from Chapin to the town of Ballentine, then turned on SC 6.  This route took us south to the Lake Murray Dam and had once served as a nice short-cut from I-20 to the Lake House during our cross-country road trip to South Carolina in 2006.  The road, which was under construction back then - and now - goes right over the top of the dam and gives a lovely view of the lake on one side and of the Saluda River on the other.

We continued on SC 6 for about a half an hour, stopping along the way, of course, to do some geocaching.  (We didn't want to be waiting around at the trailhead for Lotte.)  We looked for two caches en route.  One was at a small city park, just off of SC 6; we thought for sure that this one would be an easy find.  What we discovered, however, was that the cache was just not accessible from the park; instead, it was only accessible from a dirt road that we didn't feel like taking.  So we gave up on it.

The next cache was behind a church that was located on SC 6.  Thinking this to be an easy find, we went to work looking for the cache.  Fifteen or twenty minutes later, we determined that this cache was not as easy as it sounded.  We decided to give up on that one, too, because we needed to get to the trailhead.

Having spent so much time looking for caches, we were late getting to the trailhead; Lotte arrived ahead of us and called to ask where we were.  Fortunately, we were only about ten minutes away, so we didn't leave her waiting too long.

When we finally arrived at the Peachtree Rock Nature Preserve, we found Lotte waiting for us in her car and ready to go hiking.  We apologized for being so late; then, we, too, got ready for our day hike.

We set off on the Peachtree Rock Trail around 10:00 that morning.  From the trailhead, we started out hiking downhill, on a gentle slope, for about two-thirds of a mile.  At a third of a mile, we came to the trail junction, where the loop began.  Lotte told us that, when she hiked that trail with Erika, they had gotten confused with the various trail junctions; as a result, she learned that we should always keep left, at every junction.

As we reached the bottom of the hill, we came to Peachtree Rock, a giant rock formation - flat on the top and balanced on a very narrow base.  The formation was roped off to keep people away from it, in case it should one day topple over.

Nearby, about a hundred feet from Peachtree Rock, we came to a 20-foot waterfall that trickled into a small creek.  We stopped there to take pictures before crossing over to continue the trail.  I turned to take a picture of Lotte, John and Mary, but at first, they didn't seem enthused with the idea.  So I said, "Come on, pretend you like each other!"  And they geeked the camera - all three of them!  I guess it runs in the family...

We kept going and soon came to the next trail junction; again, we stayed left to do the longer loop.  At that point, the trail began to climb gently up a ridgeline, to where it intersected with a road.  The road looked to be a fire line that had been bulldozed through the woods.  As we went further up the trail, we could see that the area had burned within the last few years, and that fire line was just one remnant of that.

The trail soon merged onto an old forest service road, which we followed for about a quarter of a mile.  Here, it was very important for us to stay alert and watch the chevrons on the trees, because it was very easy to miss them.  At one point, the trail left the forest service road and became a single track again; we went right by it!  It was a good thing that we were paying attention, because we back-tracked right away and found the blue and red chevrons on the tree.

We continued to climb to a point where we had an amazing view of the forest below; it was quite stunning and peaceful.  From there, we started hiking downhill, towards the next point of interest on the trail: Little Peachtree Rock.

Little Peachtree Rock, unlike its larger cousin at the beginning of the trail, was a much smaller and much more stable rock formation, but with the same type of erosion all about it.  It was part of a "boulder garden", containing boulders of all shapes and sizes.  Being a rock climber, Mary asked if she could climb up to the top of the large boulder next to Little Peachtree Rock; so John helped her up.

After leaving Little Peachtree Rock, the trail continued towards a large, flat area covered with white sand - so white that it looked like the ground was still blanketed with snow!  It was quite unusual.

As we continued hiking, we soon came to a third rock formation: two giant boulders, equal in size, with the same erosion marks as Peachtree and Little Peachtree Rocks.  Again, we had to stop there so that Mary could do some rock climbing.

Towards the end of our hike, the trail began to ascend gently back towards the trailhead; and before we knew it, we were done!  And it was only 11:30 a.m.!  We could not believe that we had finished that three-mile trail so quickly; we began to believe that the trail was shorter than what we had read in all of the materials.  And, on top of that, we managed to hike that entire trail without the usual 11:00 a.m. meltdown, for the second day in a row!  We were very pleased.

Having completed the trail, it was time to say good-bye to Lotte for now; she had to leave to go give a music lesson (and to do more prep for Uncle Richard's upcoming surprise party).  With that, we got into the car and drove away.

It was still early in the day, and we had no place in particular that we needed to be, so we spent the next few hours geocaching.  First of all, as we headed back north on SC 6, we returned to the church to try looking for that cache again.  Unfortunately, we walked away empty-handed; it just wasn't meant to be!

During our caching adventure, we went into Columbia and stopped in to visit with Omi and Opa for a little while.  While we were there, we gave them a couple of gifts: a video-tape of home movies, copied from the DVD's that we had made for Aunt Lotte; and a framed canvas of Mary, dressed in Victorian clothes.  The picture had been taken recently at her day care center and was absolutely precious.  Omi loved it so much that it replaced the drawing of their old house in Marengo, IL on the living room wall!

Upon leaving Omi and Opa's house, we went to look for a must-find geocache - one called "A Pun Cache".  John being the punster that he is, he deemed it important to find this one.  It was located at a business near the junction of I-20 and I-26 - so, not too far from Omi and Opa's house - and the pun was in the name of the business.  Its initials were GPS - how clever!

While looking for that cache, we came across something else of interest; in a nearby business complex, John and I spied an ACS building!  (ACS, of course, is the company where John works.)  He had no idea that they had an office in Columbia!  He would have to remember to bring his badge with him the next time we traveled to South Carolina, for he would be able to check e-mail from there.  (His Blackberry still wasn't working; he was dreading reading his e-mail, when he finally did get an internet connection.)

Since we didn't have an internet connection in the Lake House - and since John's Blackberry didn't have service in South Carolina - our back-up plan was to find a public place (i.e. a Starbucks) to connect periodically.  This was necessary to ensure that John would not become overwhelmed by his e-mail and that there weren't any fires that needed to be put out.  We had already learned that there wasn't a single Starbucks in Chapin, and there weren't many in Columbia, either.  However, the Columbiana Mall - Columbia's largest mall - had free WiFi in their Food Court!  Perfect!

So, on the way back to the Lake House that afternoon, we stopped by the Columbiana Mall to connect.  We spent only about fifteen minutes there - just long enough for John to clean up his e-mail.  I also logged all of the geocaches that we had found to that point (with Mary's help) to ensure that none of them were missed.

Having taken care of that minor detail, it was time to return to the Lake House.  Along the way, we did some more caching.  One of our stops was at the Crooked Creek Park in Chapin, an immaculate city park with hiking trails, picnic areas, and a nice playground.  We found three caches there.

It was still early in the afternoon when we arrived back at the Lake House.  Instead of lounging about in the house, we decided that it would be more fun to take the boat out to Dreher Island to do some caching.  There were several caches that we could look for along the shoreline of the island - why not look for them by boat?

To get to these caches on Dreher Island, of course, we had to take the boat under the bridge.  Although this had been easy in the past, when the lake was low, we weren't sure if it was going to be so easy now.  Would we be able to squeeze the pontoon boat, with its canopy, underneath the bridge?  We would soon find out.

As we approached the State Park Road bridge, we slowed the engine and assessed the situation.  John determined that, with the canopy arms in their current, upright position, we would not be able to clear the bridge without causing damage to the boat.  So, he looked to see if there was a way to lay the arms down.  Sure enough, all we had to do was pull a couple of pins, and we were able to lay the canopy and its arms down flat.  And that was all it took to get the boat under the bridge without damaging a thing.

After putting the canopy back up, we sped up again and headed towards our first cache.  When we got within 200 feet of the cache, we slowed the boat and prepared to beach the boat on the shore of the island.  With the lake near full capacity, this was very easy to do.  As John steered towards the shore, I stood watch on the bow to make sure that we weren't going to hit anything big, like a rock or a large tree trunk.  When we were close enough to the shore, I grabbed the rope and hopped onto the bank while John shut down the motor.  John then jumped off of the boat and secured it to a nearby tree, while I helped Mary onto the shore. 

We found the first cache easily enough - it was hidden in a niche in the tree and not obscured by a lot of ground cover.  We also found, nearby, a gigantic bird's next on top of a pole; it was kind of like an added bonus.

Then, we went to look for two more caches, on another part of the island.  That was when we ran into the same problem as before: the trees were interfering with the GPS signal, and the ground cover was so thick that finding the cache was almost impossible.  We spent fifteen minutes searching for each cache; and just as we were about to give up, we stumbled upon them.  (Finally!)

The afternoon was still young, so we decided to look for one more cache before heading back to the Lake House.  That cache proved to be the most challenging of the four - so challenging that we went away empty-handed.  For one thing, John wasn't able to safely dock the boat near the cache; the best that he was able to do was to pull up close enough to the shore for me to hop out.  Then, I started having signal problems again with the GPS; our readings placed the cache under water!  We guessed that the cache had been placed when the lake was low.  I tried looking in some of the nooks and crannies in the trees close to the water's edge, but I couldn't find anything.  So, after ten minutes of searching, I finally gave up and waved to John to bring the boat back for me.

(We learned later that the cache was not under water; but we found that out too late.  Oh, well!)

Once I was back in the boat, John turned over the controls to me and had me drive back to the Lake House.  (We also gave Mary a turn; she loves driving that boat!)  It had been a fun afternoon, but it was time for us to call it a day. 

After we returned the boat to its dock, we went into the Lake House and spent the rest of the evening relaxing.  We ate dinner, watched a DVD, and finalized our plans for the next day...

Return to Spring Break in the South.

Return to Naked in the Woods.