Geocaching

Dipped Our Toe Back In The Water

On our way to do a little shopping today we decided to see if we could find From Tree To Shining Tree.

On our first attempt we found Stage 1 easy enough (well Donna found it easy), but Stage 2 in spite of being a regular sized container, eluded us. We were not the only ones who couldn’t find it either, several people before us couldn’t find it as well, including some cachers with very large find numbers. The owner checked on the cache and sure enough the final stage was gone.

Four months went by before the owner placed a new second stage in the field. We had the cache on our Watch List, so when it went back live, we went after it the very next weekend. We hadn’t saved the Stage 2 coords from our first attempt, so we went back to the first stage, where this time it was easy even for me, I had been there before. Good thing we did that too, the 2nd stage had been relocated. We knew this because we were lead right by where we were searching on our first try to a spot 25 feet outside the park fence to a barren spot that had no possible place to hide anything without it being in plain sight. We alerted the owner, who was mystified as to the mix up, as she was sure had placed the final hide inside the park, she would check on it hen she got back in town.

Three months go by this time before the cache is reactivated. We don’t get to go looking for it for another month. Two hundred and forty three days after our first DNF we finally get to add this cache to the find database.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 556

One Hundred and Three Thousand :-)

We were gone for 12 hours, basically from dawn to dusk. A couple miles out of Aiken the Emperor passed by the 103,000 mile mark. Drove 325 miles total, probably 45 with the top down, and spent $22.50 on gas. We ate breakfast at Hardee’s, lunch at Jack’s Cosmic Dogs and dinner was chicken salad sandwiches Donna had made and we took with us. Walked around 2-1/2 miles of the West Ashley Greenway. We found 12 caches (a personal best) and DNF’d 2 (pretty much average.) Crossed off Charleston County and Pages 59, 60 & 61 from our South Carolina Challenges.

So were the hot dogs worth the trip? Yes and no. They were My-T-Fine and if I’m ever in the neighborhood again I’ll definitely stop by and try another variety, but I probably wouldn’t hop in the car drive straight there, eat a dog and drive right home.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 529

Cosmic Dog Run

How far would you drive for a hot dog for lunch? 135 miles? We would.

Saturday we are going to take a road trip to Mt. Pleasant, SC to visit Jack’s Cosmic Dogs. Now the timing of our trip may be a mistake, this place was recently featured on the Food Network’s The Best Thing I Ever Ate (which is the reason we are going), so there might be a crowd, but after driving that far we will probably even wait a bit before giving up.

You know now that I look, if we were to swap the rotation of our loop, we could hit a second place featured in the same show, a BBQ place in Orangeburg. But we won’t be doing that, we’ll just save that for another day.

Of course we will be doing some geocaching too. I’ve picked out almost 40 along the route, but 3/4 of them are if we feel like it on the way there and back. The important ones will be in the middle around Charleston where we hope to get 3 Delorme pages and 1 county for the SC Challenges.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 527

Unobtainable Goal?

We are fast approaching the end of year one of looking for tupperware using satellites. Our first find was called Up Sand Creek in Hitchcock Woods on February 15th and since then we have found another 312. The other day when we were talking about this milestone I foolishly said, “Hey, why don’t we try and get to 365 caches by then so we can finish up the year averaging one a day.”

Right now we are averaging .95 caches found per day, so it sounds like we should have an easy time of it. Not necessarily so. There are only 25 caching days left until the 15th and we need 52 to reach the goal, that means we would need to average a hair over 2 a day until then, or more than twice our average so far. Considering we mostly cache on weekends and there are only 4 of those left, we will need to find an average of 13 on each of those Saturdays and Sundays. Our best weekend ever was in August with 14.

The goal is not impossible to reach though, we have had 2 days with 11 finds and one with 10, so we just have to get busy and hope for nice weekend weather until then.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 526

Onions Are Like Underwear…

…you gotta have ’em. Or so said a contestant on Chopped this evening.

This morning we met the MMC for breakfast in Augusta and Donna and I left a bit early with plans to do a little geocaching on the way. Well it turned out we weren’t that early and didn’t stop anywhere. There was a cache that was located right behind the shopping center where breakfast was to be, so we walked around to grab it before going inside. With the title and the hint we think we found a part of the cache, but the actual container didn’t appear to be around. Dang.

The eleven of us finished eating by 8:15 and we were then stuck, the bowling alley, our post breakfast entertainment, didn’t open until 9:00. We stood around outside the door of the restaurant chatting and watching someone in a truck in the parking lot tossing bread out of his window feeding seagulls. After the novelty of that wore off, we trooped down to Kmart (the only other place that was open in the center) and shopped for blue light specials. Tiring of this Donna and I said, “We’ll meet you there.” There was geocache right down the street. Found it, yeah!

A couple of games of bowling was quite enough (my wrist was sore by frame 5 of the second game) and most of the group were busy picking out a lunch place while Donna and I and another couple walked 2/10 of a mile to behind a restaurant to try and find a cache that was hidden there. It was sprinkling slightly and GZ was between the back of the restaurant and its dumpsters, it wasn’t the tidiest place, so we gave up looking after about 3 or 4 minutes. Darn.

After our failure the 4 of us went our separate ways. Donna and I were going home, but couldn’t agree on what we wanted for lunch, so when we drove by the place the rest of the club had picked, we pulled in. It was BBQ place, not atypical as they had other meat items and seafood on the menu, called Flyin’ Cowboy. The food was slightly better than good and I could probably eat here 2 or 3 times a year, but probably won’t because it is 25 miles away. One of our group ordered a “Manhandler” which consisted of 6oz of pulled pork piled on top of a softball sized loaded baked potato. John was up to the task and finished the whole thing, along with both his side dishes, earning himself the title of “Potatohandler.”

To recap, on today’s Miata Club event, we all drove separately to a restaurant and had breakfast. Afterward we did some shopping together followed by driving to a bowling alley separately. We bowled a couple of games together and then drove separately to another restaurant and ate lunch. Well, at least some of us actually drove Miatas…

Here is the top count from yesterday, the first nice day since it seems like Thanksgiving. Today it was cold in the morning and now hasn’t stopped raining since this morning.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 521

Hi, I’m Zeke And I’ll Be Taking Care Of You

After a pleasant afternoon geocaching we decided to eat out for dinner. Because a couple of our favorite haunts are not open on Sunday we settled for a third tier option, Chilis. They have that 2 for $20 thing going on which we had enjoyed at one in Statesboro, GA on our way back from Florida at Thanksgiving. This dining experience wasn’t as good as that one, but that is a whole ‘nother post.

While waiting for Zeke to bring our drinks, Donna spotted an application booklet on the table to join their E-mail Club. They ask for your birthday, so we figured maybe you get a free margarita or something on your special day. Trouble was we didn’t have anything to right write with, so we asked Zeke if he’d lend us a pen. We both filled one out and handed them and the pen back when Zeke brought our appetizer.

As we finished our desert Zeke asked if we wanted anything else, when we replied in the negative, he dropped off our check and disappeared. Trouble was, he didn’t leave us a pen. I eyeballed the receipt and noticed that it was that thin glossy stuff, almost like old time fax paper, and thought, I bet this is pressure sensitive. I grabbed the salad fork, which I hadn’t used, turned it backwards and test wrote the total on the *guest copy*, with the handle. It worked, it was a little light, kind of like I signed it in pencil, but fully legible.

Zeke returned a few seconds after I had finished filling out the charge slip and said, “Did I forget to leave you a pen?” “Yep,” I replied, “But not to worry, I signed it with the fork.” He was so stunned than he forgot to say thanks for dining with us or hurry back or whatever the corporate mandated server’s last line is.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 519

Page 32

Catfish BayWe were 0 for 2 at Catfish Bay (pictured to the left) just south of Parksville. We were 1 of 2 in Greenwood and the one didn’t count, it was a bonus cache for finding a series and doesn’t exist on geocaching.com. We were 2 for 2 in Calhoun State Park which allowed us to check off Page 32 of the South Carolina DeLorme Challenge.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 519