2013-07-08 29 -81

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Expedition

The Plan

Just inside Etoniah Creek State Forest. Nothing to see here, but it does give me the opportunity to test a coworker's advice. He claims that rather than take 295 to Blanding, it's generally quicker to take I-95 south and cross a bridge to Green Cove Springs, bypassing traffic from both areas in one fell swoop. I admit, I'm intrigued.

The Geohashers

Geoff
Erica

The Adventure

Most importantly, my coworker's advice worked! According to my GPS, it was maybe five minutes slower than my other route. Notably, that time does not take stop lights into consideration, which Blanding has in spades. New preferred route!

And here I thought this would be a boring drive to and from the geohash. Which it would have been, if not for sudden dirt roads that were potentially flooded. I'd say it's mostly my fault. I ignored the GPS half the time and followed it at the wrong critical junctions. So we had a bit of adventure to go along with! Truthfully, if the weather had been any worse in the last two days, it could've been discouraging enough; parts of the road were still flooded, albeit minorly, though that's a problem when you don't drive a truck on those roads. A few looked bad enough that I got out of the car and tested the depth with an umbrella.

With a newfound respect for paved roads, we made it to the hash, which was on another dirt road. This time, I had known about it, and I knew the hash was on the side of the road. Cue gunning it to 30, because my Civic doesn't like dirt roads for good reason, but mostly because that was the imposed speed limit on the other roads. Go Speed Racer Go!

Finally, we drew a king! However, we almost forgot to leave the King of Hearts, but we left it near the state park sign. On the way back, we decided to go out to eat and had the following discussion.

"To us, going out for a drive on a whim, finding a new route for dodging traffic, driving ten miles on dirt roads in a car not designed for that, just so you can take pictures of paw prints and a cactus on the side of the road, is our definition of a fun night out."

"Yep!"

"We are weird."

"So?"

"I didn't say bad."