The Wolf Creek Bike Trail/Eagle Geo-Art, in the Wolf Creek area of Mark Twain National Forest near Poplar Bluff, has been out since 2014. L Frank and Denmother (John and Laurie ElFrank) have been looking for the right time to get down there and accomplish the 68 relatively high terrain traditionals in one trip, which meant they would need three days, according to their plan. While years passed with different factors preventing their trip, finally in January 2023, after Publiclandfun posted 'The Eagle has Landed' event, the Elfranks checked their calendar and the caches, and decided that with additional cars and geo-friends, this challenge could actually be done in two days (Friday afternoon, all day Saturday, Sunday till noon). So after a Facebook invite, BnDMoritz (Bill Moritz), Geokid12 (Robert Klemme), and Joebum (Drew Gourley) accepted the challenge. The following is based on L Frank's account of their epic adventure.
Friday afternoon with staggered arrival and without Joebum that afternoon, the four SLAGA geocachers got their gear together and met at BT#1 (D4.5/T4) and eventually found that tricky hide after a spidery adventure. Proceeding to BT#2, L Frank lost his machete, so some backtracking was necessary, but the find was made, before moving to BT#3. This hunt, under 2 years of leaf cover, took them a long time before Geokid12 literally tripped over it. Minding daylight, they cached their ways back to the cars grabbing BT#4 through BT#11, before calling it a day.
Joebum started earlier then the rest on Saturday to play catch-up, but then met the others to start BT#48 at 7:54 am. The five cachers planned to work their way back to the lot ending with BT#12, which they finished at 2:30pm, surprisingly, so their plans changed. They figured they might be able to cache their way to the other parking lot and finish with BT#61, then hike back. This gave Joebum a chance to get all the caches they'd found the day before. They finished BT#61 at 4:55pm with light dimming, but were dragging themselves to the parking lot. So L Frank called Publiclandfun, who agreed to pick them up at the lot and take them to their cars so they didn't have to walk the 2 miles back. Geocachers are the nicest folks!
Fairly sore, the five were determined to complete their mission on Sunday morning, starting with the signature cache in the parking lot for the Eagle Geo-Art. This happened to be BnDMotitz’s 4000 cache find and his 366 straight days of finding a cache. But alas, the team forgot the Champagne!
They found BT#49 then worked their way to the last two caches at BT#60 then BT#59. Their Eagle Geo-Art adventure was complete at 11:35am. Their stats revealed that they completed the challenge in record time. From their first find to their last, only 13 hrs and 45 min elapsed, with an additional 1 hr and 45 min of "to and from" time. Geokid12 said they had walked 3 miles on Friday, 11 miles on Saturday, and 4 miles on Sunday for a total of 18 miles. All five adventurers had a tiring, but very fun time on their Wolf Creek Bike Trail/Eagle Geo-Art weekend. And L Frank and Denmother highly recommend this multi-day challenge to other hard-core geocachers.
