Monday morning dawned bright and early, and with it came the delightful prospect of an Explore. Paul spent some time examining his topo maps and having Geneva write coordinates on a paper plate so we could find this particular spring (I can’t remember the name of it now, but it has a name) using his GPS. We set off plenty early in order to avoid the heat, and began our explore.
We followed the coordinates, and got as close as we could on the road until it dead ended. We got out, walked around, found some bunny mansions, sat in the shade while Paul went hunting, and finally decided we were in the wrong spot.
This time when we got back in the van, I drove so Paul could fuss with the GPS. I got us to a road very close to town, followed it past some properties, across a dirt field and it dead ended near a fence, but there was a road beyond a couple of posts that looked like it led to something green, so we decided, what the heck – and started hiking down the path. We had gone about as far as we could, and decided that once again, we were in the wrong place, and were on our way back, when we saw a very. Large. Man. getting out of an SUV by the barrier posts, and began to belatedly realize we were probably trespassing. We made our way back to him, and he was the nicest man, very understanding, and we learned so much about the area around St. Johns from him! He was, as I mentioned, very large. In fact, his hands were roughly the size of Thor’s Hammer. You wouldn’t want to get into a bar fight with this guy, although I think he’d be pretty slow to get angry. Anyway, we found out that the place we had previously thought was Macintosh Spring, was actually Davis Spring. Macintosh Spring is on this man’s property! And he generously offered to let us hike there any time, all we need to do is obtain the key to the gate from him. What a great guy! Even better, when Paul tried to explain to him where we were trying to get to that day, he knew right where it was, and drew a map in the dirt and gave us precise directions (it turns out, we were on the right road the first time, we just turned 2 roads too soon). We happily shook hands and parted ways, thankful for good hearted people in small towns.
Sure enough, his directions were perfect, and we found both the stone cowboy cabin and at least the general area of the spring (although it is not a surface spring, but comes up through a pump). It was a grand excursion after all, despite two fails.
