Nathaniel Green Trail - Lake Brandt, NC

After several days of pretty steady rain I was able to hit the trails around Greensboro NC again. This time I went after seven caches along the south side of Lake Brandt on the north side of town. The fall leaves were just beautiful. The temperature was in the 60's and the sun was out. I started out about 8 a.m. and didn't see anyone on the trail until almost lunch time. The solitude was great. And there is nothing like finding those "regular" size ammo cans and lock n lock boxes. Even with the leaves covering the ground and more sky showing above I experienced lots of signal bounce in the woods. I use an Etrex Legend with no real bells and whistles so I don't know if that makes much difference in reception. I have learned a few tricks to using it though. For instance, I note that the needle lags behind first but that the increase or decrease in distance to ground zero tends to continue irrelevant of the heading shown by the needle. At times I also note that the needle will indicate a heading that is 180 degrees off. Knowing that the gz is in the direction of the tail of the needle, I have found myself tracking the tail of the needle, not the arrow itself. I can cross reference with the distance. If the distance is declining I'll continue to track the tail of the needle until it either swings around or I get to 0.0 distance. I often find that in order to fix the gz I have to track in from several angles and consider the point of intersect as ground zero. Thus far this has worked well when I get poor signal in an area. On the Townsend Lake Trails I experienced all the above but was able to find all but the most difficult caches there. Admitted, there were two that just eluded me completely. The geo-trails indicated that I was at ground zero but these were four star difficulties. My favorite cache of the day was Jose's Hat Exchange (GC1CFVT). If you go after Jose, be sure you have a ball cap to exchange. It is truly a big blue well-hidden rubber maid container!