Exploring a Walking Path in Carrollton, TX

My brother-in-law (BIL) and I have been walking the same path for two years now, and somehow it just not crossed my mind to search for caches along it. Sadly, almost all are in needs of maintenance and we only were able to locate two of them (and almost two years of DNFs on the others makes me think they are just gone).

Our first cache was a fairly easy find, if you negate all the webs that were around it. Also, park nearby so had to pay attention to who was around. Super cute cache name: Monkeys in the Zoo.

The next caches ended up being DNFs, and I'll list that below. But the third search of the day was successful, and I'm glad we were able to work together to find this one. Also glad I read the terrain and difficulty or I'd have made this much more difficult on us. Fun hide in an area I've been walking by for two years now and never noticed: Bel Air Greenbelt #2.

Now, the list of DNFs. One of these is likely still there, it just required tree climbing and I was really not prepared for that this morning. The other two I'm fairly sure are gone.

• Adding fun in our lives #1 (maybe fun if you like climbing trees?)
• Bel Air Greenbelt #1
• Bel Air Greenbelt #3

Road Trip 2016: Vermont and New Hampshire

Today seemed like a day with a lot of driving. A lot of pretty driving.

Along with some odd sites, like this tower of file cabinets.

Of course, this also included some stops for geocaches along the way (and one DNF)

• Little Farm (DNF)
• Tractor Beam
• Creemees to Bragg About
• Say Cheese
• X-it 40

Getting revenge on a previous DNF

A while back, we spent close to an hour looking for Rusty Bridge #4. Today, we found it. Finally!

We then headed across town to try our hand at Rusty Bridge #5 (Bridge to Nowhere). We were intrigued by the name, and since it was in the same series, we went for it. This one was much easier, and the location was just odd.

Road Trip 2013 - Day 5

Today was a drive to Tennessee, and we found our first cache on the state border - so awesome and glad there weren't muggles: Walk the line.



We also stopped at a few along the way, including at the store near Cherohala Skyway Visitor Center for Geocacher's where I bought a new bag for my crochet supplies.

And, probably the neatest stop of the day, but where sadly the cache eluded us: RIP Plane. Totally neat.

Hot day of DNFs

We wanted to get out and about again, and were very happy when Jared and Gabby wanted to come, too. What we weren't counting on was how hot it would be out. Combined with the humidity, it made the time spent caching much shorter than normal.

We started out with one that I really thought should have been fairly easy (McInnish Windmill), but we looked a while with no luck. We did, however, get covered in little burrs and stickers. This included the dog, who I was still finding them on later in the evening. She loved the wide open space to play it, at least.

Our next cache turned out to be another DNF (Pile of Rocks). It was just too hot in this location to search long, and there wasn't really an easy way to keep the dog, so we spent maybe 10 minutes there before taking a walk to another nearby cache.

We did finally find a cache (Bridge Over Nutria Waters). A lot of up and down on the bridge; I was the first daring enough to go under it (it really wasn't bad). A sneaky little bugger and that is all I'll say to keep the mystery for others who search. Let's just say we were relieved to finally get this one.

So, next time we will either do boring and easy caches if it is 100 out, wait until the evening, or perhaps our Labor Day trip will be someone up north with cooler weather...

Caching team back in action

As per usual recently, I started today off on my own for caching. I suppose this is what happens when you wake up at 6:15am and cannot think of something else to do. The weather was pretty nice this morning, and there were some caches I had wanted to hit up Wednesday (due to proximity to others I found) but that I ran out of time for. These ended up being fairly easy, with one of them at least a little more challenging (near a lamp post, but not, so a little of a 'decoy'). With all of them, I'm glad I headed out before the rush of muggle activity.

Before work and working out, I had some time to meet up with Angela at a Starbucks to work out some puzzle caches. I brought four that were annoying me, and because I knew what at least a few of the coordinates should be, we were able to figure out how to solve and come up with the coordinates. We were not so lucky on the other three, but will keep trying anyways. I wish I liked puzzle caches more, but it turns out that I'm just not that great at them.

With this interlude, I had a bit of a break before meeting up with James and Lisa. This put three quarters of our caching team back in place, and I am so glad we got to go out again. Since the weather was turning (there was tons of lightning to the east), we packed up a few extras things in case we should need them. Turns out we didn't, but it was probably a good thing to have tried.

We stuck close by and picked up some caches in a nearby pack. Of course, the first was the hardest and did have us crossing (or going under in our case) a train track. We found and signed this one pretty quickly once we got to it. Nearby, there were some nice flowers on a vine.



There was another cache very near, so we headed there next. This involved crossing some water, and I was of course wearing open toed sandals, so I hitched a ride on Lisa's back. We got to the location easy enough, but did not find the cache there. We did see something in the tree that probably had something to do with a cache, but never found a container or log. A few minutes later, at a different cache, we found two cache containers, and the log in one of the containers had this cache's name at the top in cursive. We left this where it was, but it seems perhaps out of place.



The last cache in this park for us was near a park, but the weather had the muggles away. Good thing, too, because although we spotted the cache quickly enough, getting it proved to be a bit of a challenge. Thankfully, we have a tree monkey!



The next few caches after this were mainly PNG DNFs (for one reason or another). We headed to a cache Lisa and I first looked for in February 2011 for my 30th birthday caching trip. That night, we came up with nothing, but the extra daylight really helped us and we spotted it fairly quickly today.

Then, back to some caches that I couldn't find or couldn't reach on Wednesday. We first stopped off at a huge dragon, but we did not have luck finding this cache. Plus, we had to kill quite a bit of time because there were quite a few muggles out in spite of the drizzle. Lisa enjoyed having it out with the dragon - I suppose it was a good day for the Slayer shirt.



After stopping at another cache I was too short for, we stopped at another close by park and played in the castle and dungeons. And, of course, another geocache.



While thinking about parks, we also took James back to one of our favorite caches in the close by greenbelt. This was the cache that taught me to look up and bring good flashlights. He found it quickly enough; it was fun to watch as he figured out how to get it.

After dinner, we noticed there were two caches within walking distance of our car. We dug around a bit for one of them, but with the dark and the thistle and the small rodents everywhere, we decided to come back another time. So, we headed for the easier (and more boring) one and found that very quickly.

My favorites from the day:
Cheap Seats
Just Chillin'
Castle Hillbilly

400th cache on July 4th

I started caching today with a goal of getting my 400th cache. What better way to spend the holiday (and a beautiful day off work)?

For the first cache, I pulled up early this morning and got right to the coordinates. Met dallasgk pretty quick after I got there and she said it disappears often, as it seems to have done again. I looked for about 10 minutes before she popped back over and confirmed it is gone. Second try for me without finding it. Guess I'll be heading back to try it another time (but this wasn't the start I was hoping for).

The next cache was easier and in one of my favorite places, a cemetery. I liked finding this one since it gave me a chance to explore the area.

I found several other park and grabs, mainly magnetic, and it was a nice leisurely pace. One of the PNGs was very cute, a rubber chicken with a tube in it's booty. Cute place on words there.

I met up with my friend Angela this afternoon to find the last four. We started out near her new house and ended up digging around in a lot of cedar trees. It was quite warm, but the shade of the trees was helpful in keeping out of the sun. For the next one, we headed to a dirt road (with no traffic at all but about a million grasshoppers). There were five here, but we were only able to find 2 of them. At one, there is a bathtub that has been sitting there long enough to be in the Google satellite photo.


Then my 400th cache - thankfully not a lamppost! We heading to another cemetery on a hill and took in the view. I've been to this cemetery before (there are some great bluebonnets), so I was pretty familiar with the area. Today, there was a big setup on one of the graves for 4th of July for a baby who never got to celebrate one. Those are always sad for me. But peaceful otherwise.

FP Series #601 - James Lewis
Kilt Inspector #14 - What's up chicken butt?
Other side of the hill

Out again with our awesome caching team

Sunday was a beautiful day, and we had the great fortune of getting back out with the team. Since Evan still has the boot on his foot, he was our driver, while Lisa, James, and I hopped out and found things.

We started near my house and found some nearby caches that, really, I should have found a long time ago already. One of the neatest nearby was Sit a Spell, which took us a little longer to find that it probably should have, but was still a fun location for us.

We then headed out to retry a couple of DNFs and clear those off of the list. Success on both counts!

Denton Rd. Powertrail #13 (thanks to a note from the cache owner)
Soldiers of the Empire (was replaced since our first visit)

Before wrapping up the night, took Lisa and James to find my recent night cache, which we also did some maintenance on since recent growth obscured some of the trail markers.

Finally found annoying DNF!

While looking for something to do Tuesday night, Fred asked us to take him to the hardest cache we weren't able to find. So, we did - and we found it. I've been out there at three other times, in the daylight, with no luck. On a cold night without a good flashlight, found in less than five minutes. I think the main reason is that I had knowledge that my caching buddies (James and Lisa) had found it, so I felt more forceful about finding it. Anyways, goodbye DNF and I hope to never drive by this spot ever again.

Cascading Stone Tube

Math school - part one

Lesley wanted to go out and do something active, so while searching in the area, I found this puzzle series called Math School. I printed out the pages - a LOT of math - and headed her way. Thankfully the guys were there too. After about an hour of math fun, we successfully completed the first nine coordinates in the series. We did not have much luck with the more advanced stuff, but we'll come back to that another day.

Since our heads were now sufficiently sore, we decided to head out and find the caches. They were actually pretty easy - the ones we could find.  Some PNGs, some worth spending a little more time at, some we couldn't find at all.

Our favorite was the one with the friendly llama, Stanley.  The cache was about 20 feet from him, and he sure was a friendly llama.  I'm betting he has seen a lot of us cachers, and he sure seemed to enjoy the attention we gave him.

All in all, that part of the series was pretty simple, and we'll finish up the others when our heads recover.  Mainly we just have one left for each of them anyways.

After that series, we made a few quick walk-in grabs near the Muddy Creek park (great park with some night caching, too).

Powertrail at night

Last night we set out to finish the power trail we started a couple of months ago with Lisa and James. This particular series is meant to be PNG, but we prefer walking, so we made a night of it. This meant parking cars at one end, driving one car to the other end, and walking back to the other cars (no pretty loops here - straight shot).

First cache for the series was in a busy intersection, but no one really noticed us because they were so busy hurrying to somewhere. We took the crosswalks here as a chance to cross the road. Sadly, there were no sidewalks for multiple parts of this trip, so there was a lot of walking on uneven ground or in the street. I am grateful for the blinky lights and reflectors I sewed onto my bag.

Made it to the second cache and looked around the area for a bit before we spotted the cache. Very neat fake sprinkler. If there weren't two more right next to it that were real, I may not have noticed it. I saw it, Evan grabbed it, and the wind threw dirt into Lisa's face. There was a note on the cache that the next three were the same type of container, so we moved towards those confident of our abilities to find them. However, no luck at #03 and #05, even after moving most of the camo a landscaping crew had placed.

Getting past the mud, we proceeded to the final two caches in the series. These were both quick grabs, for which we were glad after not finding two.

There were three more caches between us and the car that were not part of the series, but we grabbed them along the way. All were easy light post grabs, so a pretty upbeat (if boring) end to the searching for the evening.

Turns out we had good timing on the end of the search - less than five minutes after we arrived home, we got some nasty weather, including 60mph winds and golf ball sized hail. Very lucky we weren't stuck out walking in that mess!

Caching with cops...and other curiosities

Every time I head out caching, I expect to see interesting things and have a good time. Today certainly lived up to those expectations, and hopefully next time around I can handle things as well as I did today :-)

We started Saturday with a goal of finding 15 caches. Mainly, since my allergies are acting up and I'm on a ton of meds for them, we decided to stick to park and grabs. A very nice way to ease back into things. We grabbed 11 of them pretty uneventfully - the 12th was when things got interesting.

We pulled up to GZ, shifted into park, and a cop pulled up behind us. She comes up, asks why we're there since the nearby business is closed, and Evan decides to just tell her. Of course, he does this by saying "we are out geocaching, and there happens to be one in that lamp post." She stares at him like he's crazy, then he explains what geocaching is, shows her our map, the GPS, etc. Meanwhile, I grab the cache. I am SO glad it was actually there. I'm also glad it wasn't just a pill bottle, as is normal for lamp post caches. This one was a decent size and has a few goodies in it she could look at. She seemed to get a kick out of how many people had signed the log. When I signed, she headed back to her vehicle and left. Pretty easy to deal with, but HUGE adrenalin rush. I was always worried that my first encounter would go poorly, but I am glad Evan made the decision and we went with it.

We headed to one more park and grab then met up with some friends (James and Lisa) to help him move his travel bug eastwards. Drove east above 45 minutes then did a quick look for a large cache that we could drop the bug in. Found just what we were looking for near the Lake Lavon dam. It was a little odd to walk around out there near a tiger refuge with so close by, but we long ago purchased some bear spray...which was at home. As we climbed down the hill and walked across the field, we kept our eyes open. Needless to say, nothing really happened. When we got close by, it was pretty obvious where it would be, so I climbed to the center of a bunch of cedar trees and made the find. Then James climbed in to actually get it (I am not a fan of sticking my hands in holes...). Let the bug and helped move it further along in its goal.

In the end, we made 14 for Saturday. Not too shabby!

Sunday we had plans to meet up with James and Lisa again and go on a 'cache walk'. I made a path for the John Carter Park in Plano. It is a nice park with a ton of caches hidden along its paths. I made a path with ~20 caches on it and a loop, with the option to head back halfway if needed. Sent the starting address to James and packed up my walking gear.

Since there was still time to kill before meeting up, Evan and I went out for a few more park and grabs. First thing, we pull up to the GZ and there is a cop in their car sitting there. Needless to say, we decided to save that one for later. Did not need a repeat - how many times can you get lucky before having problems?

Hit up a few more park and grabs in the area, most were nothing special. The last one we found before meeting up with James and Lisa was my favorite - it was in a neighborhood park that was oddly empty (it was beautiful out!). I think I might go back and chill there with Dylan some day when I need something to do with him.

Then we headed to the park. Sprayed/applied the sunscreen and bug spray, made sure water bottles were full, and went on our way. Every cache we found was different from the others, and it was very enjoyable. After our 7th cache, we decided to exercise that 'cut back' option and leave the other half of the trail (well, slightly more than half) for another day. At that point, we had found 7 of 7 caches we'd searched for, although some took more time than others.

On the way back to the car, we searched for the last cache on the way - Rusty Bridge #4 (you have to be a paid member to see this one). The other ones we've found in this series weren't easy, but they were not like this one. We ended up looking for an hour and not finding it. After reading the logs, seems that is not abnormal. I'm sure we'll be back when we hit up the rest of the trail.

24 finds for the weekend. Not our best weekend, but definitely not our worst!

Evan caching in Argentina

I met Pablo for lunch. After that, we went and explored the city. I wanted to find a geocache that I had noticed before in the Japanese Gardens. The coordinates were off - I'm pretty sure its located in one of the telescopes, but we didn't find it. I kind of want to go back and look again, but its a LONG walk from here (considering you can't walk there as the crow flies).

After not finding that one, we decided to try for one in the botanical gardens. We found it fairly easily and I grabbed the travel bug from the case. That's the moment when I think that Pablo really understood what it meant.