AN EARTHCACHE CALLED GIBSON'S FOLLY--

Earthcaches are my favorite form of geocache.  There is no little container out there waiting to be found.  Rather these caches are designed to highlight some interesting geological or historical feature for example.

In this case, Mr. Gibson's folly comes to us from Sebastian, FL.  Back in 1885 Capt. David Gibson organized a team of volunteers to dig an inlet through the barrier surf to allow ships to get to the growing villages of Sebastian and Malabar.

The work was a success, but--a few months later the canal was slammed shut by what we now know as a category III hurricane.

Today's version has a modern steel and rock seawall protecting both the north and south side of the inlet, the north one curved nicely to divert the ever moving, sand-laden ocean currents from filling the navigable channel.

In the top photo you can see plainly the fairly smooth canal water at ebb (outgoing) tide boiling as it collides with the open ocean which, itself, is fairly smooth in the distance.  In the smaller photo below, a slow shutter speed helps reflect the velocity of the outgoing tidal water as it sluices past a bridge abutment.

In an Earthcache the person who creates the cache usually posts a small series of questions designed to help participants learn about the cache features and, with their correct answers, prove they actually visited the cache location.

In this case there were questions about tidal flow, cause and effect.  Measurements also were required on the beach of a swimming cove to see how our results compared to other geocachers.

We also were asked to provide other interesting photos which reflect critters we might have encountered for example.

The one to the left shows an aquatic worm, exposed by the low tide on the beach, busily doing some home construction.  Below it is a photo of interesting sand geometry created by the outflowing water of the ebb tide.

The bottom photo shows some seabirds flushing from their lunch table as we slid by only to circle, land and resume their lunch behind us--again part of life's cycle influenced by tidal action.

The only thing we revealed in our log posting for this cache was the distance we measured of the size of the swimming beach.  Other questions were answered directly to the cache creator via email.

Based on our on-line log, our emailed answers and our photos the cache owner then chooses whether or not our effort is worthy of being awarded a little smiley face--acknowledging the legitimacy of our claim and adding one more official "cache found" to our growing, personal history of success in this delightful activity.

As of January 24th our count of caches "found" was 510.

By the time of this story being published our cache count has grown to 570 including a "Smiley" for this earth cache.