For those of us that didn't get to go to GeoWoodstock, let us know you best stories.

Well that's kind of vague, but here's a story...

While Cym and I were hunting GCN1YP, Cym nearly stepped on a rather large tarantula which was sitting in the middle of the trail. That freaked me right out. I mean I only see those things in pet stores! Needless to say, I gave it a wide berth and walked through the woods on the side of the trail when passing it.

The funniest part about this cache was when we got home and read some of the other logs. We hit the cache about 5 hours after The Hobos and I am the one who found and uncovered it! (you'll have to read the logs to find out what I am talking about, lol). Let's just say, there were NO notes at the trailhead that we saw. Luckily it wasn't still there.

It would have been my luck to have been the one to pick up the rattle snake. Sound like fun and my kind of cache.

I got alot of red bite marks all around my ankles. But otherwise I had a Great Time.

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Originally posted by LaRobley:
I got alot of red bite marks all around my ankles. But otherwise I had a Great Time.

Fire ants? Cause that's what I assumed they were. I have 25 bites on my right foot/ankle and about 7 bites on the left foot/ankle. I have been liberally applying cortizone cream twice daily ever since.

I love it, spiders; snakes; and ants. All we need now for a great time is a couple of Coyotes and a bear or two. Sounds like a lot of us missed a really great time.

Just Kidding I would have loved to have been there to meet all the people and see some new cache locations.

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Originally posted by AtlantaGal:

quote:

Originally posted by LaRobley:
I got alot of red bite marks all around my ankles. But otherwise I had a Great Time.

Fire ants? Cause that's what I assumed they were. I have 25 bites on my right foot/ankle and about 7 bites on the left foot/ankle. I have been liberally applying cortizone cream twice daily ever since.

My guess would be chiggers. If you'd been bitten by fire ants, I think you'd know it at the time - they hurt big time. Chiggers typically make a welt a little bigger than a mosquito bite and itch like crazy - and they love ankles.

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Originally posted by mertat:

My guess would be chiggers. If you'd been bitten by fire ants, I think you'd know it at the time - they hurt big time. Chiggers typically make a welt a little bigger than a mosquito bite and itch like crazy - and they love ankles.

But chiggers stay in your skin and continue to itch. I've actually had them before on my arms. These look like large fire ant bites. I just assumed since it was Texas, the ants are bigger there too. The bites didn't turn deep red till after a few days.

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Originally posted by AtlantaGal:

quote:

Originally posted by mertat:

My guess would be chiggers. If you'd been bitten by fire ants, I think you'd know it at the time - they hurt big time. Chiggers typically make a welt a little bigger than a mosquito bite and itch like crazy - and they love ankles.

But chiggers stay in your skin and continue to itch. I've actually had them before on my arms. These look like large fire ant bites. I just assumed since it was Texas, the ants are bigger there too. The bites didn't turn deep red till after a few days.

Got me stumped - maybe someone from Texas can shed some light.

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Originally posted by mertat:

Got me stumped - maybe someone from Texas can shed some light.

Well I am stumped too. I looked at about 20 photos online and fire ant bites and chigger bites look the same, lol!

I was hoping since Larry had them too, he could tell me what he thought they were.

A few are healing, but most of mine are red welts. I look like a lepper

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Originally posted by AtlantaGal:
But chiggers stay in your skin and continue to itch.

Not really the Wikipedia article on Harvest mite (commonly known as chiggers) agrees with what I read in other places. It says

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For humans, itching usually occurs after the chigger detach from the skin.

Answer.com's article says

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it takes four to eight hours for its feeding to create an itch, so by the time you notice it the mite may be already gone.

So I would think there is a good chance it is a chigger, because everyone I know that has been bit by fireants anywhere knew it when the bite happened.

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So I would think there is a good chance it is a chigger, because everyone I know that has been bit by fireants anywhere knew it when the bite happened

I would have to agree. The fire ants are bigger in Texas and Hurt even more (than ones from here)when they bite. And the delay on the pain from the bite may be at the most around 3 minutes. And it is Pain. I would put money on the Chiggers.

BTW the scratches incurred by My excursion into the woods at the SCT - you saw them...Have all turned to a Severe Case of Poison Ivy. So I'm down with Your Lepper leg look. "Been there done that and then...I keep doing that." When will I ever learn?

The delay in a reaction is the only thing making me think it's chiggers. Cause the bites look the same in pix. I've been bitten by fireants before and know that I felt it as they were biting.

quote:

Originally posted by Slayerette:
BTW the scratches incurred by My excursion into the woods at the SCT - you saw them...Have all turned to a Severe Case of Poison Ivy. So I'm down with Your Lepper leg look. "Been there done that and then...I keep doing that." When will I ever learn?

You'll hate life for awhile. At the CITO, thorn scratches on my arm turned into PI. It gets in your bloodstream then and pops up in other places. It's still popping up slightly on my opposite arm currently. And I usually have no reaction to the stuff.

Welp, AG already mentioned my almost stepping on a Tarantula - I swear I didn't see it and I was watching the trail.. Gave me a minor palpitation since I was wearing Tevas at the time..

Otherwise, it was a nice trip, even with the temp being 96 or so on Friday and right at 100 on Saturday. Big difference was the humidity was really low, so that helped.

Lots of people there, which was good, but there was some confusion during the events, which wasn't. We stayed on the southside of Dallas and mostly enjoyed hitting some parks and trails.. about 45-50 caches todal for the 4 days, with (thankfully) a good chunk of regular caches.

All in all a nice vacation/trip, except for the $5 per person per day in the TX state park - $30 total, and the "year pass" was $60 - dunno if that was per person or per car, though. Ah well.

Member of the Texas Chigger Club also... Got PI on right arm as well.
The $5 a day per person peeved me off, nothing on the cache page about it!! The disorganization was a let down as well.

Attended Snoogans 1Deg Event and the GW4 dinner, raffle and coin thing with Chaucerbosser. Rest of the time was spent with her (CB) and local cachers JoJoCat, GraphicMan, Faccoweeindian and a cast of others. That resulted in a h#ll of a fun time.

I say Fire Ants when I was eating dinner and sitting on the Grass. I noticed alot of these little Ants Crawling on my pants. They are just about gone now.

LOL @ Texas Chigger Club!!! We should get Mary's friend to make us tshirts with that on them!

When I was in Utah, I went to an event and one of the members was just back from GW IV. He told us about the 1 degree of seperation thing and he shared the coins he'd gotten. Southside gang would be happy to know that he had one of their coins from their challenge.

Fire Elemental gave me a nice tour of some great sites in UT and had nice things to say about your coin swapping AtlantaGal.

They told me that UT has terantulas in the summer too. I don't think I could handle that at ALL. Levitation could be possible -- even given my ...uh largess.

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Originally posted by birdies:
Fire Elemental gave me a nice tour of some great sites in UT and had nice things to say about your coin swapping AtlantaGal.

It must have been northern UT. Isn't FE from Colorado? Cool that you met him. What's he like? Is he my age group or older?