Stuck in the Mud

It should be obvious by the title how this story turns out.

I started geocaching in 2001.  This is a hobby where you take a handheld GPS receiver, enter coordinates of a box usually hidden in the woods, then go find it.  The adventure is in the journey to the geocache rather than what is in the container our how it is hidden.

During the evening of New Years Day, 2003, I was driving home to Eureka, Missouri from a family event in Marthasville, Missouri.  I decided to look for a couple of geocaches along the way. It was cold outside and there were only a couple hours of daylight left.  I decided to find a geocache hidden on a bridge along the KATY trail – not far from Highway 94 near Defiance, Missouri.  There apparently was no place to park near the geocache location and I didn’t want to walk 1.5+ miles round trip in the cold.

I chose to drive onto a farm field dirt road. (At the time I thought it was public land.)  I estimated the route could bring me within 1/4 mile of the geocache and that would be an acceptable distance for me considering the weather and time of day.  I slowly drove my front-wheel drive Pontiac Grand Prix through the field.  At somewhat of dirt road intersection,  I turned left in the general direction of the geocache.  I approached a mud hole that was about 10 feet in circumference with no way around it without driving into the corn field.  It didn’t look like it could be too deep since there were no other standing water in the vicinity.  I figured I would just gun it and splash my way through.

The moment I hit the water, the front of the car sunk to the floorboard!  I tried to rock the transmission back and forth, but the wheels did nothing, but spin. I could barely open the driver’s door without mud pouring into the car.  As I stood in ankle-deep mud, I decided to  get a small shovel out of the trunk.  I went between bailing water and rocking the transmission back and forth.    Nope.  Wasn’t making any progress.  The driver’s side floor was now caked with Missouri River silt as I got in and out trying to get unstuck.  Bear in mind it is below freezing and it is starting to get dark.

My only hope was to find a nearby house and ask for help.  I jogged briskly through the field for 10 minutes until I reached a farm on a hill.  I knocked on the door and quickly told my story – hoping the man had a tractor that could pull me out.  It just so happened he did and his nephew was visiting who could drive it to where I was stuck.  He grabbed a chain, I held onto the back of the tractor and we headed toward my car.

The Grand Prix did not have a solid frame to latch onto near the trunk.  Luckily, after 30 minutes we were able to inch it out of the mud hole.  I thanked the guy, gave him all the cash I had in my wallet (about $20) and headed home, embarrassed.  The frame under the rear bumper was bent from the stress of the pulling from the tractor chain.

A few weeks later, I went back to look for the geocache … and even drove back into the field to park just before the mud hole!  I walked the rest of the way and found the geocache on the old rusty bridge of the KATY Trail that crossed the Missouri River.  See my geocaching.com log notes under the user name of ‘konopapw’, below.

Would you believe this is not the craziest thing I have ever done to find a geocache?!

“Cache is located along the Katy Trail. You should not leave the trail to find this cache, it is within reach of trail. The walk to the cache is flat and level but will be over a mile and half round trip and possibly more depending on where you park. The cache container is a small flat black box containing only a code word, email me the code word when you find the cache.”