Road Trip to Find/Log Mingo!
December 3, 2024
A plan was hatched.. a reason for GeoJewett to be up in the Kansas and Oklahoma over several days .. and a plan to get "Mingo" (GC30), the oldest active geocache in the world. I have wanted to get this Geocache for a while -- and trying to plan my trips each year to Kansas to grab it, but it never worked out -- until now!
Published on May 11, 2000, just eight days after the The Original Stash was activated, "Mingo", is the seventh geocache ever created. To most people it’s just a hole in the ground, next to a fence post, in the middle of nowhere. However, to me it’s a hole in the ground, next to a fence post, in the middle of nowhere, worth traveling 2,266 miles to find.
My son Evan bought tickets for us to see Styx in concert on Thursday, and I needed to attend the ASB company holiday party on Tuesday night and attend a meeting Wednesday morning. This meant that I would need to drive from Austin, TX to Tulsa, OK on Monday, then drive from Tulsa to Kansas City, MO on Tuesday. On Wednesday, was the trip out to Colby, KS to get Mingo, then travel back to Tulsa, OK to attend the concert and then travel from Tulsa back home in Austin.
Austin to Tulsa
The day started at 7:30 in the morning, with my Tesla Model Y all loaded up with road snacks, drinks and other items that I was transporting up to Kansas. The Tesla was charged up to 100% and I was off. I had one planned geocaching stop along the way closer to Tulsa, OK. The drive was familiar as I drove from Austin through to the Dallas area and north into Oklahoma (as my son now lives and works in Oklahoma). Since I was driving alone, I was jamming to some music and looking around a little more than I would have if I had someone to talk with.
I saw a large mushroom, a strange looking cowboy statue, lots of windmills and several other odd things along the way, some dilapidated as they were used a long time ago to advertise business that were no longer in operation. The countryside was really pretty and the 8 hour drive passed by really quickly.
Odd Observation
While traveling on I-49 from Tulsa, OK to Kansas City, MOs I noticed another oddity.
It was the complete lack of creativity when naming of roads and exits. The roads where literally named with single or double-letters and where listed on the exit signs in the same way. They started with A and B, and went through the alphabet and then started with double-letters.
I could not find anything on Google that explained why these letters were used for road names, but it did not seem to be a grid system where you usually see numbered or lettered roads that intersect each other.
First Stop: The Infernal Machine v2.0 (GC6XJQA)
This was a recommended geocache by members of the Central Texas geocaching group, and it was most definitely worth it. I reached out to the cache owner when I arrived as it is located on private property. While I waited for a response, I headed out to another gadget cache by the some cache-owner, Park-&-Gadget #1 "Proceed with Caution" (GCA8T1K). This one had me stumped for a little while, as the box was humming, and with warnings all over it, I initially avoided it as I did not want to mess with any electrical boxes to avoid being Kentucky fried. However, I can report that the box is very safe and is the Geocache! I am not going to spoil the cache, as it is a gadget cache and really well done, and makes you use your head and hands to solve.
After solving and logging the gadget cache, I headed over to the Infernal Machine after receiving the okay to enter the property and work on the cache. You had to start by first finding the entrance and turning on the red-light. I was in for a really good challenge on a really well designed gadget cache!
You enter the "cache" as it is a building! This was version 2.0 of the cache, rebuilt from scratch by the CO (Kbkwick & Huntgator) using old barn, donated materials, and parts from version 1.0 of this cache! Within the entrance and through out the cache, you could find older signing boards and memorabilia from the original.
I would highly recommend the geocache for anyone who wants a good challenge and love caches that you can walk into and use your body as a tool-of-the-trade. The cache consists of red-herrings and dead-ends, as well as fantastic use of camouflage to hide secret doors. There are bunch of trackables hidden all throughout the entire geocache and the owner highly recommends interacting with the all the aspect of the cache, being careful to return items back to the original state and being careful to avoid pitfalls and aspects of the cache that could do you harm if not treated with respect.
Second Stop: Thar She Blows! and Where Eagles Roost!
After a pit stop in Tulsa where my son put me up for the night, I was off to Kansas City, MO with two scheduled geocaching stops along the way. Two more caches were recommended to me: Thar She Blows! (GC4ADE) and Where Eagles Roost! (GC272).
The Blue Whale is a RT 66 landmark was actually a favorite swimming and fishing spot in the heyday, however, the park has become run-down with the whale being kept up, but the other attractions are in need of some love!
After spending some time at the Blue Whale, I venture off to find "Where the Eagle Roost!". After driving an entire day before and on the road again today this was a great distraction and way to stretch out my legs while hunting for a cache!
On the hike, I had found a place where people had a camp fire, and a buoy that had been stranded (probably when the water was higher).
I really enjoyed the hike and smelling some fresh air! I did not spot any eagles, but had a good time anyway!
On my bathroom stop at a truck-stop not to far from the Blue Whale, I noticed a sign in the bathroom listing various landmarks along Route 66, and found one about the Blue Whale.
Tuesday Night and Wednesday Morning
I drove into Kansas City and found the hotel where I would be spending the night and attending a company holiday party and a business meeting the next morning. It was a good break, comfortable bed and some good food (better than the road snacks I had in the car).
Stop Three: Mingo and Surrounding Caches
Today was the day I was heading out west on Interstate 70 out to Colby, KS to find "Mingo"! A lot of people wished me safe driving with puzzled looks on why I would venture out to the boonies of Kansas to find a Geocache, as the trip would expected to be boring.
However, the road trip was anything but, with beautiful landscape, but very flat. There was a lot of "nodding donkeys" (oil-pump-rigs), windmills, cattle grazing, rustic fences of various kinds in various states of disarray or in great shape.
The sunset was absolutely beautiful with mother nature putting on a great show for me to enjoy as I drove down the highway.
As I drove through some of the small towns along I-70, I noticed some signage that seemed odd .. that said that if the lights above the sign were flashing, then the interstate was closed and you must exist, and can not proceed. You then also noticed that there were railroad crossing guard-arms that would come down across the highway.
What I found was that there sections of roads were prone to some pretty bad snow storms, and they would close sections of the highway to prevent stranded cars and hotels filling up due to the bad weather, so they would stagger the closures as resources in the small towns were used up.
So, yes, this geocache is technically buried, which according to the Geocaching Guidelines is a major no-no. Upon researching this geocache, the cache is older than Geocaching.com, and therefore was grandfathered.
MINGO! (GC30)
I finally arrived at Mingo, but it was dark, and the temperature had dropped 25 degrees from when I left Kansas City and the wind was gently blowing making it even colder while opening and logging the cache and reviewing the trackables.
I had snagged a couple of trackables from other caches on the way and had two trackables that I had held onto longer than I wanted to .. and I made sure to leave them behind in Mingo.
Mingo Madness! (GC8GDEW)
This cache turned out to be one very frustrating puzzle cache! Mother nature had turned down the thermostat quite a bit, and it was just above freezing when I left Mingo and was catching a couple more caches before heading to the hotel.
I only had my headlights available (along with a flashlight) to illuminate the cache. I found myself struggling to concentrate on the puzzle, so I ended up recording the responses from pushing the buttons on my phone, then running back to my car to listen to them, write them down.
I returned to the cache only to find that the puzzle had changed - and had to "apply, lather, rinse, and repeat" the process of recording the responses and going back to the car to puzzle it out. I kept writing them down as I knew it had to repeat, and got lucky on my 5th time through and had the order written down -- entered it on the keypad and received "Wow! Your are Right" and the code to open and get the log to sign!
My fingers where frozen, and my patience worn thin, but I solved it. What a really cool cache, and really should be done with more than one person and when you can just sit down near the cache.. learn from me and do not try to do this in the freezing cold..
Thanks to the cache owner for putting it together, I just grabbed it at the wrong time of day and wrong time in the year! :)
Finding the Geo General Store! (GC5P98P)
The was the last cache of the night, and while the description said that it should only be grabbed during daylight, I really had no choice, since I was not coming back here anytime soon. So I tried to be as quite as possible.
Strange Red Lights in Synchronized Blinking
Nope, it was not aliens or any strange or unexplained phenomenon, but just the opposite -- just a display of all the technology that we have operating and seen in the night sky. The flashing red lights were the warning lights to aircraft that were atop of all the windmills in Kansas.
In 2022, Kansas generated more than 34.2 million megawatt hours of wind power, which was enough to power about 3.2 million households. In 2023, wind energy accounted for 46% of Kansas's electricity net generation, which was the third-highest share of wind power for any state.
Back Home to Texas
It would not be a road trip or a Geocaching trip if there was not some sort of disaster or problem that as a Geocacher you have to overcome to finish the hunt or retrieve the cache. In this case it was my trip back home. I woke up and found that one of my tires had lost a lot of air, and was not completely flat, but was not going to make it home from Tulsa.
After a stop at Discount Tire, I had a plugged tire and all full of air and ready to make my trek back to Texas!
