Geocaching

Dipping Our Toe Back In The Water

After almost 4 months, the mental anguish of the Great Hitchcock Woods Cache Purge of ’09 has subsided, so we are going to place a cache in the field. We have done several of these types of caches, i.e. find a patch of woods behind a shopping center and hide something, both here and elsewhere and figure it looks easy enough. We spotted a great place the other day and plan on placing it this weekend.

We also have 2 regular sized Lock-N-Lock caches that need homes, plus a couple of the previous hides, because of container size, that are going to need much bigger wooded areas to be reused.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 517

North, Paxville and Manchester State Forest

Geocaching By The Numbers:
1 New County
1 Tank of Gas
2 DeLorme Pages
2 Bags of Lance’s Peanuts
6 Caches Found Today
8 Hours Away From Home
247 Miles Driven
303 Total Caches Found So Far

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 515

3 Gargoyles and a Potato

It came down in buckets all morning, so we watched some DVDs to pass the time, TDTVS Season 5 Episodes 2 & 3 and Disc 1 of Series 1 of an English police show called Blue Murder.

About mid afternoon we couldn’t bear to stay inside any longer and hopped in the car with GPS in hand. There were several new caches on the north side of town that were begging to be found. And we found 6 of the seven attempted. One was in a magnetic key holder, another in a Jack Daniels bottle, three in small gargoyle statues and another in plastic potato. The one we missed must have been hidden using a Romulan Cloaking Device.

Tomorrow a road trip is planned to continue our state challenges. We are aiming to fill a couple of holes by bagging the elusive Sumter County and DeLorme Pages 45 & 47.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 514

Accidental Geocaching

Algae Covered PondAfter spending the morning cooking (quiche, bread, cookies, lasagna) and watching TV (5 “Christmas” episodes of West Wing) we decided to get out and take a walk in Hitchcock Woods before the threatened rains came (still waiting.)

We walked the Palmetto Trail and had a pleasant little walk except for the time I slipped trying to avoid a muddy spot and got my knee dirty. On the way back up the hill from Crazy Creek towards our car Donna said, “Didn’t there used to be a cache around here?” “Yeah, ” I said, “I remember we had to ask for a hint from the CO.” She wondered out loud, “Think it is still there?” I allowed that it probably wasn’t, as it, along with ours and others, got caught up in the Great Hitchcock Woods Cache Purge of ’09. We looked over towards the small tree it was hidden in and there it was, still hanging in a branch eye high. It was easily spotted because of the lack of foliage this time of year.

We went over and opened it up and right on top was a Travel Bug. Poor thing it had been stranded there since July. We decided to take it with us and then after some consideration we decided to take the cache itself. It was supposed to be picked up and removed by the owner in August. We’ll move the TB along and I’ll contact the owner and see if she wants her container back.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 514

Break's Over

After 3 weeks of not geocaching, we ventured out of the house this morning with GPSr in hand. A couple hours later we had found 4 (Donna 3, Brian 1) and missed two. One of the ones we missed was one we missed before, but that was because the second and final stage was MIA. It was just replaced about a week ago and I don’t know if we were the first to try and retrieve it, nobody had logged a find or a DNF, but when we plugged in the coords it was pointing about 40′ outside the park. Didn’t seem right, so we went back to the first stage again to check if we had the right numbers. Yep.

Emailed the cache owner and she said it was halfway between stage 1 and where stage 2 was before and it definitely was inside the park. She said she would check on it after the holidays when she gets back from Florida. But the seed of doubt has been planted, we are going to have to go back and triple check to make sure we got the final stage coordinates right.

We are at 291 finds and have a goal of making it to 300 by years end. Shouldn’t be too hard as long as the Christmas weekend weather isn’t too rainy.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 510

Black Friday

Jolly Mon SongDid the sane thing and avoided any place that had anything to to with shopping today.

We went 1 for 2 in local Palm City geocaches in the morning. There is another that we started after, but we aren’t counting either way – it was 120′ into a swampy area that neither Donna or I could see a non-watery path towards.

In the afternoon we went sailing the St Lucie River around Palm City, Stuart & Port Salerno aboard Jolly Mon Song the 34 foot “yacht” of Sandy and Paul. It was a 3 hour tour with a stop at Finz Waterfront Grille for lunch in the middle.

The evening was spent playing a variation of Oh Hell and watching JJ Abrams reboot of Star Trek in Blueray on the Tomlin’s ginormous flat panel TV.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 497

Happy Thanksgiving From The Front Lines

JeepWhile the turkey was cooking and some of the guests were boating, Donna and I headed into downtown Stuart to do a little Geocaching. There were very few people in most of the places in downtown, so it made it fun not having to look over our shoulders to make sure we weren’t muggled while signing logs. Our total take for the day was 7, we had done 2 earlier that were within walking distance of Sandy’s house and then five more in downtown.

My favorite hide was the one from the picture above, called Road To Victory, mainly because of the hide of the cache itself. The size was listed as a regular, which normally means an ammo can, but those are usually kind of hard to hide in an “urban” environment. So it was nice to find exactly that, an ammo can, that was hidden in plain sight, bolted to the back of a Jeep in front of a little military museum.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 495