Geocaching

FTF

One of the “desired” goals for a geocacher is to be the First To Find a cache. There are people that get the emails publishing a new cache on their cell phones and spring into action. We on the other hand, take the Doris Day approach, Kay Sera Sera. If one happens to get published and is located where were were going anyway or is a suitable alternate location for caching, we’ll give it a try.

It almost happened while we were out west in Colorado, there were two that had not yet been found along our route one day. Unfortunately we ended up second on both finds, one by a day (hadn’t been logged online yet) and another by mere hours.

Last night a little before 11:00 PM a new cache email came in, it was only a little over a mile from home. We figured we’d got get it this weekend because we just knew somebody was probably on their way to go be the FTF right then.

This morning we looked at the logs for the cache, called “old ting,” and no one had rushed out last night to find it. We briefly thought about looking for it on our way to work, but it looked like it was on a dirt road and I had just washed the car…

At the end of the work day, no one had logged the find yet, so we drove by the spot to see if it was an easy spot on a drive by. There were some trees and a few bushes along a right of way, but we couldn’t spot it.

After dinner and because it is so close our house and to get there it meant a walk along the dirt roads of the horse district, my wife and I headed out to see if we could find it.

Wen we arrived at the corner our GPSr was indicating GZ about 20′ into the side lawn of a house. Realizing that the first 8-10 feet off the road is a right of way and not necessarily homeowner property we poked about along the tree line + and – 40′ to no avail.

Didn’t find the cache, but I did find a cell phone in a bush on the north side of the property’s driveway. For a second I thought, “Oooh, clever hide,” but the phone had no contact called “old ting” or “geocache” or “GC1TH5W”, just a bunch of back and forth calls between the owner and Deidre…

My wife, the shy retiring person she is, knocked on the homeowner’s door and asked if they had ever heard of geocaching. Either A) he genuinely didn’t know anything or B) he does and is in on it. I had my own question, “Did anyone in the household lose a cell phone?” The same A & B possibilities applied for this as well.

When we got home and checked the logs to see if someone had found it, there was a note from a volunteer geocaching reviewer marking the cache as unavailable, because of experiences similar to ours from other people.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 245

Wooo Boy!

If I thought keeping a meeting together for the Miata Club with 18 attendees was hard, try it with about 75 geocachers, like herding cats in a thunderstorm.

I have now eaten at the Golden Corral twice in the last three days and if I never eat there again it will be too soon.

Started up, went down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 242

Half Cached Weekend

We were one for two yesterday in Aiken and 4 for 8 today in Florence and on the way back. Technically it was really 7 we searched for. There was one that you could complete without really finding the first stage, but we misread the requirements for the second stage and then didn’t really try to find the first because of the description and location.

Premium Members (that’s me, not that I’m anything real special, I just paid them $30) can download a file from Geocaching.com that you can use to generate staggering statistics on just how you have been wasting your time. ItsNotAboutTheNumbers for instance:

Total: 122 finds
Total days since first find: 113 – Overall find Rate: 1.08/day, 7.57/week
Total days with a find: 40 (Every 2.8 days or 35.5% of your total days) – Average finds per caching day: 3.05
Best day: 4/03/09 – 7 finds
Most consecutive days with a find: 8 from 4/19/09 to 4/26/09
Longest caching drought: 11 days from 2/23/09 to 3/05/09
Average total cache difficulty: 1.53 – Average total terrain rating: 1.63
Average physical cache difficulty: 1.56 – Average physical terrain rating: 1.64
Approximate cache-to-cache distance: 6445.97 miles (10373.78 kilometres)
Active Caches: 120 of the caches you’ve found are still active (98.4%)
Average log size: 29.2 words – Biggest log: 120 words – Shortest log: 4 words – Number of one-word logs: 0

How about a map?
US State Finds Map

State (caches): South Carolina (51) Georgia (19) Colorado (15) New Mexico (15) Nebraska (6) North Carolina (6) Wyoming (5) Utah (3) Arizona (1) South Dakota (1)

Started down, went up, back down, up again, down again, up once more, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 239

Crazy Creek Cache Conquered

Crazy Creek CacheWith a third try and a big hint from the cache owner we found this sucka. Funny thing is the GPSr lead me to the correct GZ several times in our two previous fruitless attempts, but I just wasn’t looking in the right spot. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, so we feel a little foolish for not having found it before, but the other 4 cache hides in Hitchcock Woods were all so similar that we expected this one to be of the same type. Not so, it was a clever hide that we hadn’t seen before.

The lesson was learned and we now have another arrow in our cache hunting quiver for the next time the expected ones don’t find the mark.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 224

Lucky Seven

GEOffery the GiraffeAfter last night’s dinner in Lexington we continued west on I-20 to Florence. We were going to met Donna’s cousin for breakfast at the Cracker Barrel on Sunday morning.

I picked out seven caches in northwest Florence near the HIE where we were going to be staying, so we would have something to look for before we met Laurie at 8:30. The first one we even walked to because it was behind the McDonald’s at the same exit.

Another cache was right down the road from the hotel near a boat ramp. It was back in the woods a hundred yards or so and we had been doing the drunken bee dance for about 10 minutes and getting a little frustrated. It was an ammo ca, it shouldn’t be this hard to find. It was kind of trashy in there too, cans, bottles, plastic bags, etc, amazing how much considering how far away we were from where humans should have normally been. We were standing there deciding whether we should dance some more or give up, we had the time constraint of the breakfast meet and all, when I saw some black boat line at my feet and wrapped around the base of the tree we were standing next to. My natural curiosity led me to see where the other end of it went. There, suspended about 20 feet above our heads by that black rope, was an ammo can.

We found six, but elected to ignore the last one when Donna read in the logs about there being a lot of ticks in the area where it was hid. We had run out of time anyway, when we got to the Cracker Barrel it was already 8:27. Laurie’s car wasn’t there. She is normally very prompt, so we knew we wouldn’t have to wait long.

Pretty soon it was 8:40 and still no blue Honda Accord, so we broke out the cell phone and gave her a call to see where she was. She wasn’t answering her cell, so figuring I had mislabeled her numbers in our phone’s directory I tried the home number. She answered and I asked,”Where are you?” “Home,” came the reply. She quickly put two and two together and knew why I was calling on a Sunday morning, so she added, “That’s next week.”

Earlier this week when via emails we agreed to meet for breakfast, both Donna and I overlooked the fact that Laurie had put the date of 6/7 in her email. We just assumed that it was to be this Sunday.

I guess we will be eating breakfast at the Florence Cracker Barrel two Sunday’s in a row.

Having been promised seven caches today and only getting six in Florence when we went out shopping this evening we made a slight detour and stopped by to visit GEOffery the Giraffe.

Started up, went down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 224

When The Going Gets Tough

To Mr. Fletchers RideWe went for a nice little hike in Hitchcock Woods this morning, that is until we were stumped for the second time trying to find the Crazy Creek Cache. We tried three weeks ago and trampled the heck out of the hillside where this thing is located without finding it. Today we were confident that it wouldn’t elude us again, unfortunately all we did was delude ourselves. Also we didn’t know it at the time, but it set the tone for the rest of the morning. We tried two other caches more near downtown Aiken after we exited the woods and were stumped by both of them.

When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping, so we went to Kroger to get our weekly supply of groceries (at least there we found everything.)

I changed the oil and rotated the tires on the Emperor after shopping.

This evening we drove with some friends to Lexington for some deep dish goodness at the Uno Chicago Grill there. This is the very antithesis of last weekend’s pizza in Hendersonville. Donna and I knew better, sensing a large meal, we split a salad and a pizza for one. That was just enough, but regrettably when Rudy and Patti offered me a slice from their large pie, the still lingering great taste in my mouth overruled my common sense and I ate the tendered piece. It tasted great but sat heavy with me for the next couple hours.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 221

It Didn’t

The weather that is. It was raining when we got up, so we decided to take the Interstate back instead of US25. This put us off the Geocaching Along A Route plan, so that even when the sun did come out towards the end of the trip and the top came down we were nowhere near anything to look for.

Here is a photo from yesterday. The 404′ Hickory Nut Falls at Chimney Rock Park.

Hickory Nut Falls

Started up, went down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 212