Fish Slough Traditional Geocache
Crow T Robot: Please contact me if this one is replaced. Thanks.
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(micro)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
A part of my life that can never be again.
In 1959, when I was 8 years old, Daddy bought an old 1930s era school bus.
We had 700 acres up on the prairie and it had some unbelievable fishing ponds on it, but it was all wide open, flat pasture land with no trees...great cattle land, but it wasn't like being in the woods. About three miles to the west of the ranch was a beautiful little creek named "Fish Slough".
We got ahold of that old bus and we decided we were going to make us a fishing camp. In a wild Oak and Cabbage tree hammock, Fish Slough make a big, sweeping "S" bend. Where it curved right and then left again was a flat, dry grassy meadow about 30 feet wide and maybe 50 feet long, with a white sand beach all the way along the water's edge. Where the slough had made it's curve it had carved out a deep hole of about the same size as the grassy place. This spot is where that old bus spent the rest of it's days.
We took some of the seats out for the grown-ups to camp on the floor and left others for us young'uns to sleep on. Daddy and O.D. Godwin drove the bus as far into the woods as it would go, then chained our old jeep and O.D.s truck to it and drug it the rest of the way. That old bus never moved again. From then on this was our 'Fish Camp' and we spent many happy weekends there.
We had kerosine lamps for light, we cooked on Coleman stoves or an open fire and the bathroom was behind the palmetto patch. We had a huge frying pan that we found at an old turpentine camp in the pine woods near Opal, and I wish I knew how many times we filled that old pan up with catfish, bass and breams.
Toward the end of the 1960s the government finished straightening the Kissimmee River and as the floodplains started to suffer, so did the prairie and Fish Slough. In the days before dredging the river would flood every year, flushing out the ponds and sloughs and filling them with fish at the same time. Another thing that happened about the same time was that the ranchers started fencing their property in the area. When I was a child there was not a fence to be found on the prairie. Between these two occurences the days at Fish Slough came to an end. My children never saw Fish Slough like it was and my grandchildren won't either, but as far as I know, that old bus is still sitting there.
The cache is hidden where Fish Slough crosses under County road 724, also known as N.E. 240 st., but it has always been and will be Eagle Island Road. You won't have to drive a rutted dirt road like we did: the county paved the road in 1970 and put in a modern concrete brige over the slough. If you come off Highway 441 you will go about seven miles west until you see this bridge. There are places to pull off, but be careful..there is traffic now. The cache is not in the standard container, but you will know it when you see it. It contains a log only so bring your own pen! As you sign the log, look southward over the pastures and notice a fairly large oak hammock about two miles distant. Be sorry that you never went there, you missed a part of something that can never be again.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
jurer zrgny naq pbapergr pbzr gbtrgure jvyy lbh svaq guvf pnpur