Night caching in San Antonio

After some introductory geocaching, Rachel and Nese got interested in the idea of going geocaching at night. So I looked up some night caches in the area and was sad that San Antonio doesn't seem to have as many of these as Dallas. I did find two fairly close together about a 15 minute drive away, so we headed out for those. Jason's sister and boyfriend joined us as well (for their first caches). So, we were a happy group of seven going to find these.



The first cache was a little longer of a walk and once we got going, everyone took turns taking the lead. We only had five flashlights, so this was careful going. However, it was well maintained and full of lots of goodies at the end. Starry Night ~ Night Cache.

The second cache was fun as well, although we had a hard time with the trail. On the way back, after finally backtracking and finding the right way, we found a missing marker on the ground, which probably explains the difficulties. Glow Worm Night Cache.

Visiting In-laws

This year has been crazy, so I'm a little behind in blog posts for the caching I've done this year. Starting with late February, life just got really busy!

In March, I was visiting my in-laws the weekend after my grandma passed away. This trip was mainly to help with things at their house, but also to take Justin out for his birthday. In addition, Evan and I took him geocaching one evening, were we found 6 caches after dark all fairly close to their house. My two favorites from this trip out were:

Caleb’s Favorite Mystery Cache
End of the Earth

Christmas caching in California

Evan and I arrived in California today to visit Carrie and Jason. We can totally blame them for me loving geocaching, since they took me to find my first one several years back. In any case, I was very much looking forward to going out with them.

The first night we were there was cool and drizzly, but we made it happen anyways. Because of the weather, it was fairly easy to find parking near the GZ, so we made good time with this.

The first cache, Carrie had been to before, but local security had chased her away. This time, no one was around, so we had it all to ourselves and found the cache very quickly.

The second cache was a little trickier, since my coordinates where a little off. After reading the clue and misinterpreting that several times, I made the find. Was by this point quite wet and cold, but glad to find. Log was way to wet to do anything with, though.

Third cache was exactly where we thought, even the title told us so :-)

Last cache of the night was very interesting and earned a favorite from me. By the time we had the log back in, we were all very much done with the cold and wet and headed to yummy dinner.

Bullseye!
Stretch
Bat Cache (a.k.a. Nujawb 3)

Checking in on my night cache

I got a few emails and DNFs for my Creekside Night Cache, so while my buddy Jen is here with her boyfriend and his kids, we decided to go check it out. Their first night cache, and once they figured out what they needed to do, they really made good time out of it. Cache was in perfect order, and we dipped a few travel bugs from Seattle here.

Caching at night in Yelm, WA

For our last cache on our first day (boy, this was a busy day!), we heading out after dark, after explaining to the kids to keep quiet. We headed to The Tooth Fairy and quietly got out of the car. With some guidance, Seth spotted this once, since he was practically standing on it. However, we did have to wait out some muggle neighbors patiently and quietly before getting it, and everyone did great.

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

Caching in Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas

Because the neighboring states were so close to where we were staying (or, at least compared to how things work in Texas), we decided to spend the day driving to Nebraska to find some caches. This ended up being quite a day, as we found some neat things and met some neat folks along the way.

First thing after breakfast, we hopped in the car and headed to the closest cache I saw in Nebraska (other than one with a bunch of recent DNFs). This cache ended up being perfect, as it gave us an excuse to hop out of the car at the state border and read the plaques. Pretty easy to find the cache, and it must have been around a while, as the glue was actually gone from part of the duct tape and all that was there was some fabric.





After our stop at the border, we headed a little further into the state to Falls City, where there were a few caches around that seems were placed and maintained by some of there school classes. All of these caches we pretty dang awesome. The two we spent the most time at we probably could have spent more and still enjoyed them.

The first of those was at some tanks on display, which we spent a bit of time at before leaving without finding the cache. The second was an old train on display, also pretty neat to explore. At the training, another vehicle drove up and a family climbed out, also geocachers. So, we searched together and talked, of course, about geocaching. They were headed to a nearby park for more caching, so we wished them luck there. They gave us a hint about the tank cache and we went back and found it pretty quickly with that hint (in fact, cannot believe we missed it the first try).





After these, we decided to head south again and drove through the Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge. We didn't end up seeing much here, sadly. A few bigger birds, but since it seems like it is quite low on water, we didn't see what were expected. But, still a nice detour on a long drive.



We also stopped for a few easy finds on the way back into town before grabbing dinner in the plaza and taking a carriage ride (hey, I always want to and we are on vacation, so why not!) On the ride, learned a bit about the history of the area and the Spanish influence and architecture. Decided to walk around a bit after and we found three (pretty easy) caches in the plaza area.



Grabbed some quick dessert and started heading back to the hotel, but we weren't really all that tired yet, so we decided to do some more caching (of course :-). Grabbed the car and decided to drive around and find some more of the caches from the series in the plaza. These were all actually pretty easy, but took us to a lot of different areas of the city that we would have completely missed otherwise. At night, there was something quite nice about some of the areas. We got to drive through a fully lit Power & Light district, by the courthouse, and a ton of night areas.

A great, fun, geocache filled day and good way to explore the area. Some of the more interesting caches from the day:
Arbor Day 937
Speedy Delivery
Tanks for the Ladies
Eagle Stop
Pitches -- Courthouse District

Birthday caching

Some coworkers and I set off after work for some geocaching on my birthday. In our group of four, there were two new cachers, Dhawal and Jad. So, in addition to making the hike over to the caches, we showed them how to use the navigation unit and talked about other tips of the trade.

We perhaps took the most unfortunate route to the first cache, heading under the highway from the office we work at and through the thorns and like. Once we got there, Evan and Jad stood behind (Evan was wearing shorts and the thorns were not inviting). Dhawal found the cache quickly and Jad hopped over to take a look. Dhawal and I signed and then found our way over to a narrow, long, and high crossing across a nearby creek to get to the walking path across the way. Evan could not make the crossing (he made it a few feet and then went back), so Jad (who had had to crossed already) went back while Dhawal and I waited for them to do some walking through the trees, vines, and thorns to meet up with us again.

From there, we risked the traffic on local streets and made it to the next cache location. I had a gut feeling right away on where the cache was hidden, but since we had two new folks along who had never seen this type before, I kept my mouth shut for a good 15 minutes. There was a lot of climbing things (on their part) before one of them became wise to where I was standing and finally got curious enough to locate the cache. It was the first lamppost cache for both.

Next, we walked a ways to an interesting haunt. By this time, it was quite dark, so when we stepped of the main walkway into the trees, it was fortunate that we had some bright flashlights with us. Dhawal, Jad, and I hunted around for some time before we found a rather large homemade container handing at eye level. Signed and put it back, and moved on to the next cache.

For the last cache, we walked some ways to very close to where we started out. This cache was the second lamppost of the night, and it was found much more quickly than the first. After finding it, we saw that there was no way to get back to the work office without walking into traffic, so we made a rather long hike of it back to the office.

The (interesting) caches on this trip:
Tightrope
Hanging Out Beyond The Grave With Msdar

Hid my first night cache

So, I placed my first night cache yesterday with Evan and Dan. Was an interesting adventure, cannot wait for it to be published!

Started out by scouting out a place during the day. Had good parking, a fun bridge, and a creek. Brought along the reflectors, tape, and flash lights. Marked the trail, hid the cache, and backtracked. This should be a fun one.

When the cache is published, check it out at:
Creekside Night Cache

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

Christmas caches

After a long (kid-free) day with my family, we headed out after dark for some caches on Christmas with Fred. Thankfully, we dressed very warmly, because this turned out to be a very cold night with a large amount of time spent outside of the car!

Started off with a quick PNG, then did some walking for our next cache, Zippity Do Do Dah (GC11BDJ). This one was pretty neat, especially since it was not anything like what we expected to find.

Headed to a nearby area that I must drive by at least two or three times a week. I've seen people parked there for lunch, but never really thought much of it. A neat place to explore and imagine what different parts of the area might have been for - isn't often that I see an outdoor tiled floor with no covering. Check out the cache description for more if you are curious: Dreams Turned Nightmare? (GCKJFP).

Next for our first driving night cache - Knight Rider Night Cache #3 (GC31368). Neat concept, definitely recommend a couple of folks so that one can drive and the other direct. Might be a little tricky otherwise. Also (SPOILER), be tall - I say this because I'm 5' 4" and had to be lifted by two people to get this and even then it took several tries and arrangements to get it. Was quite interesting and felt accomplished (and freezing, because at this point it was not only cold, but also drizzling).

Decided to try for the normal walking night caches after this, although the first was disappointing because someone added a lot of barbed wire and it didn't sound like a good idea to climb through it. So, on to the next one, which was actually in a neighborhood - N8 like the stars (GC1APAT). I grew up in that area, so it was neat to go to one of the newer places that has been built up since I moved away. Also, hard to stay quiet since we didn't want to wake anyone.

Then, our last cache for the night, Howler II: Night Cache. WOW. We arrived to the spot around 11:30PM and right away saw the first set of dots. Walked on paths for what seemed like forever before finally hitting the spot to walk into the woods - and then quite a bit more of walking in high grass and broken tree branches. But, find it we did. And get out, clearly, we also did. When we got back to the main road, it was 12:45AM...so this really did take quite a while. But, perhaps my second favorite night cache I've done so far (and that because I still think my first will always be my favorite).

Caches for this outing:
Zippity Do Do Dah
Dreams Turned Nightmare?
Knight Rider Night Cache #3
N8 likes the stars (NIGHT cache!)
Howler II: Night Cache