Crystal Park Road

Many geocachers have placed caches along a route. Some are intended to help boost numbers and others to share an interesting area with other geocachers. Of course those are just generalizations, there are combinations and a myriad of reasons otherwise.
Our family enjoys planning trips to unknown areas. I actually have no less than eight different websites bookmarked that I use to try to find all available information about an area before we visit. I use them to find everything from historic locales to swimming holes. Of course we look at all the caches in the area also.
It was for the before mentioned reason that we were so excited to visit likestocanoe's Crystal Park series of caches placed along Crystal Park Road and part of the Womble Auto Tour. This series had everything! Beautiful Ouachita Mountain scenery, interesting historic locations, the perfect mix of conatiners that keeps the little cachers entertained, and caches that provide the more seasoned cacher with some challenging hunts. It just quite simply couldn't have been done any better.
The first stop in the series is Crystal Park Road. It's a simple roadside cache that is a great way to start the series. Any time the kids get to sort through traesure they have a blast. It was a great start and everyone was excited to see where we would be next! Of course we had an adventure there first. It's great to watch the kids just enjoy the outdoors and have a blast. Even if it does mean they make an impromptu slide out of the small hillside. LOL. There were far too many fantastic places we visited that day to mention in one blog. Some of the highlights were a recreational area built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) back in the mid 1930's. It has the kind of beauty that makes you take pause and let the world pass by. The cache there was a great hide. We even discovered a trail that we had no idea existed. It would make for a fantastic hike considering all of the natural wonder that can be seen from the road. We ended up spending over an hour at this location. Of course some of that time was because of technical difficulties I experienced with the cache itself. Let's just say that it was one of those situations that remind me of what a newb I am whenever I get to thinking I have any skill at all. HaHa.
Later we visited old buildings that had been used by the CCC as storage for explosives used in construction. Natural areas depicting the amazing beauty that can only be found in the Ouachita Mountains and a wonderful, refreshing mountain spring. That hands down beats any over priced trip to an amusement park. Have I said that we had the time of our lives yet!?
Our last cache hunt for the day was at an old homestead that had an abandoned crystal mine nearby. How cool is that! We finished off our day at the Charlton Recreational Area. It is another example of the many recreational areas built by the CCC. It still retains some of the original buildings and rock work but has been updated with modern facilities and even two jumping platforms for a fun way to get into the water. The wonderful thing about Charlton is that the water feeding the swimming area is spring fed maening that while the temperature outside is in the 90's, the water is a always cold. Very cold. It's awesome!
We have so many places we want to visit we'll run out of summer again before we do. Oh well. I'm still behind in posting everywhere we've visited but I'll catch up soon. Thanks to everyone who has taken a look. Leave a comment if you come by so we know you visited. Happy Caching!