Galena and Dubuque

Continuing along, we finally reached Galena, Illinois.  Galena is a beautiful town in western Illinois, situated in the rolling hills along the Galena River.  Since it was the Labor Day weekend, the town was packed with people and the roads leading into and out of town were heavily lined with cars and motorcycles.  We pulled into a parking lot along the river to look for a cache we had gotten a DNF on last year.  We were back to redeem ourselves!

As we crossed the bridge we yelled hello to a woman paddleboarding down the river.  She was having a great time and Chablis and I decided we want to try that sometime in the future.  (Hint, hint Captain Brian!)

 Near the cache is a tunnel that is painted inside with scenes depicting Galena.  Did we redeem ourselves?  Yes, we did!  Barely 5 minutes after our arrival, Chablis and her eagle eye spotted the cache.  I can't show you a picture because it will be a total spoiler.  Sorry!

Since town was so crowded, we decided it would be too hard to be stealthy while geocaching, so we headed out of town and 10 minutes later we were crossing the Mississippi into Dubuque, Iowa.

A couple of months ago I had heard about a cache (GCQMKA) here that sounded interesting and I put it on my "Out of State Geocaching Bucket List."  We decided to park at the bottom of the hill and hike up. 

Here is a view of the limestone walls....

3/4 of the way up is an outcropping with a small flower garden and a bench.  The cache is hidden in this area.

We found the cache and then Chablis and I finished the climb to the top....

I thought the view was great but could be much better if they would trim some of the overgrown vegetation.

On the way back down I snapped another picture.  The limestone and wrought iron fencing in the middle of the picture surrounds a stairway through a limestone tunnel that we had to go through to get back down to our car.

After that we headed back into Illinois, grabbed a few more caches on the outskirts of Galena and then headed home. 

Over the course of our 12 hour excursion we grabbed 14 caches and in the process we viewed a battlefield, a fort, a train depot, parts of Galena and an elevator in Dubuque.  It was quite the day!