US Trip 2016 – Heading south

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After driving through the Smokies, we continued towards New Orleans, through Atlanta.

Tracklog - Heading south

We had to start early for the next part of the trip, since we were scheduled for the VIP Tour at the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta at 4pm. We had a long way to go, and a lot of caches to find!

As the previous days, we prioritized counties and virtual caches. We found a couple more caches in North Carolina, before crossing the border to South Carolina. We made GC1NGRD Fission around the bend, a Geocache of the Week, our first find in South Carolina – awesome cache!

The first virtual of the day, was a cool miniature of the South Carolina interstate network.

S.C.A.L.E.

We found a few more caches along the road, including another virtual, before it was time to cross the border to Georgia.

Crossing the border to Georgia

We stopped at the welcome center (as we always do), and found both the caches there. We’re always impressed by the huge rest areas and welcome centers, we don’t have anything even close to this in Norway!

We continued towards Atlanta, stopping at carefully selected caches along the way. One of the virtuals brought us to a nice place (not going to spoil the cache), where they sold ice cream 😀

Ice cream

We managed to find almost all the caches we had planned, except for one. Due to heavy traffic, we decided to skip one cache so we could get to the World of Coca-Cola in time instead. That cache was one we needed to get a county, and that was the only county we missed on the entire trip (except for the 1-2 that we barely touched, and that had no caches that could be found anyway).

We believe we made a wise decision, at least we made it in time to the World of Coca-Cola 😀

The visit took a whole lot more time than we thought, and we spent way too much time in the gift shop. But sometimes you have to forget that you don’t have time, and just take the time you need. So we did just that!

World of Coca-Cola

World of Coca-Cola

Tasting different exotic sodas
Tasting different exotic sodas

After our visit, we walked to find the cache closest to us. No way we were going to miss another county!

The cache had a DNF on it, so I was afraid we might miss this one as well, but we gave it a try – and we found it! When we came back, we remembered how many caches we had found… This was our find number 12 000 !

12k milestone

Hitting 12 00 right outside World of Coca-Cola wasn’t bad.

But we still had a long way to our hotel, so we had to get going. Luckily crossing the border to the Central time zone later that day gave us an hour extra.

We found a few more caches along the way in Georgia, before crossing the border to Alabama – playing Sweet Home Alabama on Spotify as loud as we could while driving across the border.

Sweet home Alabama

We stopped at the webcam in Auburn, and a few more caches, before ending up at another Geocache of the Week, GC3MFAD The Director’s Travel Bug Hotel.

We found the cache without any problems, and after logging the cache we had our first of several Police encounter on this trip. He asked if we were alright, I told him we were geocaching and that was it.

A couple caches and some miles later, we arrived at the hotel for some well deserved rest.

We started early the next day, as we’ve done every day, and continued south for a short detour to Pensacola on our way to New Orleans.

On the road again

As with the previous day, we continued to stop at carefully selected caches. After finding several traditional caches, and almost making it to the Florida border, we ended up doing a longer stop in Flomaton.

We had just planned to find a simple letterbox hybrid there, but ended up getting a tour of the small museum. Experiences like this is one of many great reasons
to geocache!

Flomaton museum

After the stop at the small museum, we continued towards Florida. As with many of our detours, this one was to find a virtual cache.

Florida

After the short detour, we crossed the border back into Alabama. We did a couple more interesting stops, including this funny looking travel center:

Oasis Travel Center

Off the tracks

We did a quick stop to get the virtual at the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park in mobile.

Huge bird

After that it was time to cross the border to Mississippi, and as usual we stopped at the Welcome Center. This Welcome Center was huge! And it had lots of impressive decorations.

MississippiHorse inside the welcome center

One of the next caches we had planned was another Geocache of the Week. But we quickly realized we just had to give up that one, it would take way more time than we had, and probably make us very annoyed along the way 😛

We stopped at a couple more caches, before it finally was time to cross the border to Louisiana, and visit another Welcome Center.

Louisiana

We got a bit less favorable weather after entering Louisiana, so we didn’t stop much before we reached the hotel. After a few minutes in the room, the weather cleared and we headed downtown. Since we didn’t want to deal with parking, we took a taxi. The driver had just started his shift, and happily told us half his life story.

We got him to drop us of at the first virtual we had planned to find, and he was a bit curious why we wanted to go to that area… We later learned why 😛

Lafittes blacksmith shop

We had a list of virtual caches we would like to find, and hoped we would be able to find as many as we could before the daylight disappeared completely.

We got to see a lot in the relatively short time we had, and we did find all the caches we had planned – even one extra 😀

New Orleans

New Orleans

New Orleans

New Orleans

After finding the caches, and having to DNF a traditional, we stopped for something to eat, before taking a taxi back to the hotel.

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