Monday, December 31, 2012

Finding my 500th cache

Today was all about getting to the magic number 500, and I made it. My 500th cache was a fantastic hide, and I was way excited once it was located!

The End is Near

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Snow and caching for Jason's birthday

Today, we drove to see snow and celebrate Jason's birthday. Only found one cache today (Family Series: Sundae), but we had a great time, including a impromptu birthday feast for Jason in the trunk of the rental car.


Saturday, December 29, 2012

Caching by the car musuem

Evan and I drove up Muont Diablo and then ended up near a car museum. I'm not a huge fan of cars or museums, so this was not my cup of tea. But Evan loves both, and I'm a nice wife, so we went. It was a pretty nice museum, really. But when we were done, time to do something for me. So, I open the geocaching app, and not even 200 feet away is a cache. So, we find it and take a few pics nearby.





Ducks and Fountains

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

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)

Sunday, December 16, 2012

More PNGs to help me to 500 this year

Since I know now that I won't be getting my 300 caches this year, I decided to definitely hit that 500th cache overall. It seems very reasonable, so today I set out to get a few caches nearby. Found a few PNGs, some with muggles, and by far the best:

Just For You My Friend

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Out and about in Garland

We headed out today to take our friends to find the cache next to Stanley the llama - only to discover Stanley was gone!!! They still found the cache, but what a bummer way to start the day off.

Instead, when they left to visit other friends in the area, we grabbed several PNGs nearby. Pretty easy, other than navigating the parking lot and waiting out muggles.

By far one of the most disappointing trips I've made, since I really liked taking my friends, especially my geocaching friends, to visit Stanley. Bummer!

Friday, December 14, 2012

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.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Friday, December 7, 2012

Lazy urban caching

Well, I had planned for this to be lazy, but thankfully, today I had someone slightly taller than me around. Found a couple of easy caches and called it a day.

What's YOUR New Year's Resolution?
Second Time Around

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Caching with Evan, Fred, and Zinny in Oak Point Park

A while back, Evan, James, Lisa and I spent most of an afternoon walking through this park and finding most of the caches on one side of the park. There are few others dispersed in other areas that I've been wanting to get back and find, so we set out (Evan, Fred, Zinny, and I) to find a few of those today.

The first we got fairly close to, but then determined we'd have to cross the creek to find. Since we had the dog and clumsy me, we decided to wait on that one, and found two others that weren't too far from parking (light fading fast at this point). The second of these had great hiding ability:







Red Wood
The Perfect Cut

Cemetery caches on the way from Houston to Dallas

We left Houston to head home early, and on the way, since traffic wasn't so great, we hit the back roads and stopped by for some of my favorite caches - cemetery caches. I still find them peaceful and they were a welcome break today.

Our very first stop was not at a cemetery, but a cool art park, Metal Art Park. This place had some neat statues and art and such and was a neat stop. Not even that far off the main highway, so might be a future pit stop.

The rest of the caches really were in cemeteries, each slightly different than the other. On the way to the last, we got a little mixed up in our out-of-date maps, so the local gas company security officer stopped us and asked questions. Once we told him where we were headed, he gave great instructions to get there and what to look out for on the way (high speed trains that don't have signaled crossings). That one was trickier to get to, but very easy to find the cache inside.









I was surprised how quiet these places were today. Normally we run into other people, but these were smaller and not on high-traffic roads. There was definitely a demarcation between the old and new parts of the cemetery.

Mom's Watching You
Tombstones of Freestone County-Wilson Chapel
Post Oak

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Night time caching in Houston

Following our successful day caching with burrowfamily, we headed back towards the hotel and I realized that I am very close to 500 caches. So, we decided to find a few before heading to sleepy time. These were all very easy finds. A few that I liked a little more than the others:
Wakey Juice #2 - Chai Tea Latte
Jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge

Caching with Burrowfamily

My cousin, his wife, and their kids started geocaching recently, and since we were in town for Thanksgiving, we got together and did some geocaching. The kids had a great time finding, signing, and generally having a good time. Good thing we picked places there weren't a lot of people to cache today.

We met in the Wal-Mart parking lot, so the first cache was right near where we parked. Then we headed of around Sugarland and grabbed some neat caches:
The Geometric Garden
Trekin' to Work
C is for...

It was fun to see the kids find things, I got very excited when I found it first.




Saturday, November 17, 2012

Caching in Breckenridge Park with Fred and Zinny

Fred is back in town (yeah!), so we went out caching for the afternoon with a short walk. Since we have the puppy, I made a nice little path in the park and we had a nice and relaxed afternoon. All of these caches were quick finds once we approached from the correct side, and it was a nice day to be out.







Caches for today that we liked:
See Dar Dropoff?
If you gotta go in the woods

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Caching with my mom

So that I could keep up with the progress I've made toward goals over the vacation, once back home, my mom and I went out with Zinny to find a couple of caches near her house. Both were easy, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the nice weather had followed me home to Texas. We headed to Ponds of Lucas # 16 - Rock Ridge before wrapping it up at OFTN - Exchange.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Caching in Seattle, WA

Seeing as we spent most nights of the trip at a hotel in Seattle, it is odd that we only ended up finding one cache there. We decided to meet up with a couple of friends for dinner, and on the way, we stopped for Les' Home-made Jiffy Taco. This was a really easy cache, and the main reason we stopped was because the name was funny.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Caching in Portland, OR

Since we didn't make it on the first try, and we wanted to spend more time with Jen, we decided to try again for caching in Portland. Along the way, we stopped for a few caches, mostly in cemeteries since those are my favorite.

The first stop was Twin Cities Cemetery Series-Greenwood, which right away gave me a creepy vibe (see picture below as to why). However, it was thankfully easy to locate so we didn't have to explore too long. On the way out, I was saddened to see all the child-sized graves together.



We then headed to the next cemetery cache, Twin Cities Cemetery Series-Mountain View. This one took some patience with a gentleman mowing the area, but wasn't hard to find. I was curious why some many of these had bushes growing over them, so that unless you were standing in the bushes, you couldn't read them.

After that, Evan had to stop for gas, and I noticed another cache very near. So, we decided to stop and look for it: Cousin's Cat. OMG. We were there forever, and still no luck. However, we did meet a fellow cacher who was supposed to meet his girlfriend for breakfast nearby, and he joined us in the search. Although not successful, still interesting, and I'm sure Jen got a lot of neat photos.

For our last cemetery on the way, we then headed to Twin Cities Cemetery Series-Fern Hill, which was also a quick find in a quiet place.

After grabbing lunch, and visiting yet another REI, we headed out for caching in downtown Portland. I love the cooler weather, makes it possible to enjoy the time outside, and we did. We found several caches on the walk around town:

Reappearing RR Smiles: Portland Streetcar
Squeezed In
Above the Lake
Grimm 20 Happily Ever Aftermath
15th Guardian
Level 4

We then heading away a bit to get a photo of a Volvo parts distributor for Justin, and grabbed this nearby cache: BLACK CHERRY # 15.

For our very last cache of the day before heading back to Yelm, we went to the first geocache ever hidden: Original Stash Tribute Plaque and spent quite a bit of time there. Very glad to have found that one, and I'm glad Jen made it happen for us. Picked up several travel bugs, which I'll be placing soon.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Caching in Vancouver, BC

Since it wasn't too much of a drive, we headed north to Vancouver today. A quiet drive, and once there, we decided to take one of the hop-on/hop-off tours since we had a limited amount of time to spend in the city. This turned out very great, since it gave us an easy way to get around, see the sites, and find a few caches.

After spending a little time getting familiar with things, we took our first chance to hop-off of the bus at Granville Island. There, less than 500ft away from the stop, was our first cache of the day, Rocky Railway. A pretty quick find, even with the dog walkers in the area.

After a short walk from there, we grabbed lunch on the island, and then headed to our next cache, Island Oasis. Even though the area gave the GPS a headache, it was a beautiful place to relax and enjoy the space. We sat in a corner and relaxed a bit before it was muggle-free enough to grab the cache. Then, we went into a few of the surrounding shops and got gifts for my brother and sister. For my sister, we decided to mail hers, since it was a pretty card and her birthday was coming up quickly, so next stop was a post office. Oddly enough, we ended up seeing her yesterday, and the card still hasn't arrived.

We got on and off of a bus a few more times, and found ourselves back at the start and near another cache. So, we walked around and located Canada Place 2 before hoping on the other bus to see the other side of the city and, most notably, Stanley Park. A very neat park, and I would have loved to spend more time exploring, but it was reaching the end of the bus routes, and it was all we could do to spend a little time there and find a cache, Behind Theater Under the Stars in Stanley Park. This turned out to be a little more difficult, since a previous cacher moved it from its final location, but we did locate, sign, and put back just in time to hop the last bus of the day back to the beginning.

Monday, September 3, 2012

Interesting caching day...

Ideally, we would have spent the day caching in Portland, OR, but that was not meant to be. Car difficulties necessitated our stopping on the side of the road and waiting for AAA to come tow the car. But, never fear, the handy dandy geocaching app says there is a cache...135 feet from us? My, isn't that convenient?

So, anyways, after finding ourselves in this predicament, we decided there probably wasn't much else to do to kill the time waiting, so we did what any other geocacher would do (at least, I hope that is true) and found the cache. Thank you, Cedar Falls Hunt for making the afternoon stuck in the sun waiting more interesting.



After the tow truck arrived and we were once again safely in Yelm, we did venture out for a fewmore caches in the rental car Evan and I had (5 seats, so use your imagination on how this worked out). We ended up finding a cache surrounded by bees (at least according to the logs of others, which we missed), G&E'S FIRST CACHE, and the other cache at the Wal-Mart, Yelm has Joined the Ranks, before deciding to locate a more interesting cache.

So, we then headed over to And Itty-Bitty Citty Park for the first puzzle cache for many in the group. After running around the park, we came up with the coordinates for the final, and made our walk there. We did find a cache at the final, although we were confused by the log book and golf things inside. Either way, a neat experience.

Last once for the day was Don't Drink the Water!, which happens to be hidden where Seth's 1st birthday party was held and where Sophie took her first steps. Pretty easy to find, but neat to think about other things as well.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

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 in Olympia, WA

After our busy morning caching around Yelm, we met up with Jen, Justin, Seth, and Sophie to head to Olympia. The main reason for the destination was the awesomeness of REI, but we of course took some time for caching.

First stop after the REI stop (as always, longer than necessary so we could play with the goodies) was Pretty. Odd. Oly. They had previously searched with no luck, but more patience has us finding this fairly quickly once in the right location. We then headed over to Rockin', a fairly similar find made by Sophie.

Next up was probably the easiest of the day, by far. I spotted it while we were still driving to the location: The Office Cache!.

Decided to try a slightly more difficult one next, although in truth, what made it difficult was the inaccuracy of the GPS units under the trees. Once approached from the correct direction, this wasn't too bad. Again, made it harder than necessary: What I grow up I wanna be a park.

We got tired of getting in and out of the car, so Justin headed over to a park he knew in the area, with a walking path around a lake. This park also happened to have great views of the capital.



As we headed to the first cache, Attack of the Micro's #3, we noticed someone else there who also, it seemed, was looking for something. So, we asked, and then joined forces. There were muggles everywhere, so it was hard to keep from being obvious, but after we got away from our initial hunch, Evan and the kids were able to spot the cache. We parted ways from our geocaching buddy, and headed on to the next target.

If we thought the previous spot was busy, this was even more so. Luckily, there were benches nearby to relax at until the worst of it cleared up.







Once we were more muggle free, Justin and I headed over to search for The End of Puget Sound, while Evan, Jen, Seth, and Sophie kept enjoying the shade of the trees. We got to meet up with the same geocaching buddy here, with her husband, and search together. After our friend's husband found (where Justin had stuck his hand without success), we signed, put away, and Evan and Jen brought the kids over. This was a neat place to look at wildlife, with a few seals (or otters, we fought and gave up trying to decide).



We then made our way to the next cache Dancing Waters, also with our new geocaching friends. He found it very quickly, but was kind enough to make the kids think they had spotted it first.

Last one before heading back to Yelm was Percival Bridge. Also not too difficult, and a fun little walk.


Caching in Yelm, WA

Over Labor Day weekend, Evan and I went out of town to spend to time with our bud Jen, her boyfriend Justin, and his kids, Seth (9) and Sophie (7). This took us to many different places in the Pacific Northwest, starting in Yelm, WA. This is the first of many blog posts about this trip.

Evan and I got into Seattle late on Saturday, and drove out to the hotel in Yelm and crashed for the night. Not used to the time change of two hours at all, I was up bright and early on Sunday and ready to cache until Jen and crew were ready to join us after church. So, I made a list of all of jenden1978's finds and Evan and I set out to find any of those located in Yelm.

First was a little fun and we made it a LOT harder than necessary. Mainly because I headed under the bridge and said, "hey, Evan, check here," and he looked all but where the cache was. After some spider webs, splinters, and a lot of searching, we found in 30 minutes what should have been less than 5. But a fun start to the day, and at least it wasn't 100 degrees like back home! If anyone is in Yelm, my favorite we found there was Yelm Prairie Line Trail.



After that, we headed nearby to High Water?. I found this before Evan even made it all the way across the street with the pen, but was later surprised to learn that Justin hasn't yet found it, and it took Jen a couple of tries. I am guessing that this is where experience pays off!

We took a little break and the local Wal-Mart for drinks and jackets, then noticed there was a cache (two actually...more on the second in a later post), and decided to find Little Lighthouse on the Prairie. Admittedly, I was a little disappointed as we drove up to it, because it was so much like so many back home. But, as hubby was replacing it, and gentleman in a minivan drove by on the nearby road, honk, and gave him a thumbs up. Yes, it is still there and not muggled, as others have logged it since. Whew.

Headed a bit away and over to The Five One Zero Loop. When I saw where this one was, I was not to keen on going to find it. Too much traffic and a little nerve wracking. However, we were there, so I went and looked while Evan enjoyed using the circle. Was easy to find once I pushed past my nerves.

Since Jen was up, we decided to head to her hide next, Light, Hearted. Very neat hide, and it gave us a few minutes to chat in the morning as well. While there, she recommended our next couple of finds as well, so we went off in search of Bypass to...Nowhere.. and Apple of My Eye.

My two favorite of the morning:
Light, Hearted
Yelm Prairie Line Trail

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Geocaching with my new puppy

So, we figured it was about time to introduce our new puppy, Zinny, to geocaching. I mean, we've let her arrival impact our goals enough now :-) So, we went for an easy nearby PNG first, and quickly determined that she (like most geocachers) has very little interest in these. She tried, but failed, to get back into the car. The next one she showed much more interest in, even though it was also a PNG. But this was a PNG 100 feet from the entrance of a dog park. Since our ultimate goal was to let her play there for a while, this was a quick and easy diversion. So, not a bad day for getting back into the swing of things, but next weekend we'll have to find some in a park for walking her.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Lazy day for caching

Today was mostly a relaxing day, which was much needed after the business of this past week. Hung out with my friends before heading to the airport to pick up my hubby. Got a text after I headed out that there was a delay, so I had a little spare time out and about with my handy dandy GPS. I found a few easy PNGs before getting the call that he was ready to be picked up. One of these was a little messed up, as someone had stuck food in it and drawn very inappropriate things in the log. I cleaned up the food mess and left a note for the cache owner.

Caching in New York

Well, the reason you see Judy doing a lot of lone caching last week is because I have been doing my yearly service project, taking my brother on vacation for a week.

I usually don't buy the wifi on flights, but writing this post seemed like a reasonable thing to do with the time. My brother is trying to sleep in the seat next to me, but every 5 minutes waking up to see how long he had been asleep.

Anyway, oddly enough, there are not a huge number of caches in Manhattan proper. I did want to find at least one though, so we found the virtual cache in front of the Met. I still need to email the maintainer with the number of stone faces (also the name of the cache).

Random cache to share

Quite by accident last night, while logging my finds, I stumbled across this cache listing: Jarosovsky pivovar II. Turns out, this is what happens when you get one letter wrong in the GC code. However, this random cache struck me as...odd. When you look at it, you will see what I mean. At the very least, look at the photo in the cache listing.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

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

Friday, July 6, 2012

Great log on my cache

As a cache owner, it is great to get the emails letting me know that folks have found my caches. Most of the time, these are short little "TFTC" notes, but occasionally I get something that makes me smile. Today is one of those days.

The log below was posted on my cache Stop! in the name of geocaching. They say TFTC; I say TFTL!

"Enjoyed the challenge on this one. Got to the location with limited tools. Checked the truck for what may work to snag this one and came up empty. Then the lightbulb went off. I disassembled my log pen and used the spring to pull in the prize! The next challenge was putting the pen back together so I could sign it. All the while dodging muggles like crazy. Had fun with this one while AC and DC stayed in the truck and kept cool. SL TFTC."

Ranked 1987 in Texas

Haven't been checking this much, but today I went there on a whim. I'm currently listed at #1987 in the listing of Texas geocachers. Who knows, maybe one day I'll get in the top 1000 (maybe next year?)

Rankings for Geocachers Located in Texas

Additionally, I have modified my goals for the year and removed the benchmarks and challenges. All of the challenges seem really...lame, and the benchmarks in the area have mostly already been marked as missing either by a fellow cacher or the people maintaining the listings.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

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

Monday, July 2, 2012

Caching on my own

Usually when I go out caching, someone else is there with me. Sometimes its my whole team (lysax13, stargazer216 and eolyn), sometimes its my parents, and sometimes just my hubby. So, its been quite a while since I've been out caching without anyone else there, and it makes me a little nervous now.

On Sunday, I decided to give it a shot on the way to help some friends unpack their boxes after a recent move. Since its been a while, I stuck to some caches that seemed fairly easy on paper, and for the most part they were easy in real life, with one exception - I'm short! This was a complication not in finding one of the caches (it was fairly easy to spot once I got out of the car), but in reaching it. I am so glad that for once, I had my handy dandy tool set with me. Yeah extendable thing with a magnet on the end (although the magnet seemed to want to stick more to the pole than the cache).

Coolest cache of the day:
Door #1, #2, #3 or #4

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Father's day cache

Okay, so this wasn't specifically for Father's Day, but it was found on Father's Day, so perhaps that counts for something.

We were visiting friends near our old house, and decided to stop by a cache on the way home. It ended up being a very quick find, but unfortunately the log was completely missing, so I initialed the outside of the container. A neat idea for a hide, but perhaps it needs to be better implemented.

SLOW DOWN!

Caching with my parents

This Saturday, I needed a bit of a relaxing day in order to bring a good close to the hectic previous week. My parents came over for a good lunch and a few games, then we decided to get out of the house for some geocaching. My parents are pretty good at this, I'll have to admit, even though I know it isn't their favorite thing; they go because I like it.

First stop of the day my hubby and I made before my parents joined us for the day in downtown Carrollton. I had previous found it, but muggles nearby made it impossible to grab and sign. Early on a Saturday, the place was empty, so this was a much better time for us. Picked it up, signed it, and put it back with no prying eyes.

After my parents got in on the fun, we aimed for caches around the house we'd previously stopped at, but for one reason or another, had to abandon. Turns out today was a muggle free day all around and we got very lucky.

First in that set of caches was actually pretty easy to pin point and find, a good hide near a few local businesses. Next couple were along fences, and for one I was quite glad to have my taller dad along with me (or else I'd have found it but not have been able to grab it). Another was a pretty easy to spot cache (even with the geocaching logo embedded on the top). Yet another was full of water, and I drained it but didn't even want to think about taking things out or trying to sign it.

Probably my favorite was hidden pretty well, but honestly shouldn't have been so hard to find. My dad and I searched for about 10 minutes before my mom joined us, while hubby waited in the car (he has an injured foot so I cut him some slack). We looked quite a while where the GPS pointed us, then moved a little farther away. And just like that, I saw the top of the container. I tried to direct my dad to grab it since I wasn't in a position to do so, but it was cabled something nearby, so I ended up having to crawl in a odd position while my mom asked me "Is this really worth it?" My answer, "Of course, especially after looking for it that long!"

After grabbing dinner with my parents, we made a quick stop to round it out to 10 for the day, then headed home for some much needed rest.

Top three caches of the day:
CacheWork
On Broadway
GGWP

Also, a little bad news for the weekend. One of my caches has gone missing, and after reviewing the area, I've determined I cannot replace it. So, good bye What do wasps love?

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Cache maintenance day

I had gotten some reports of things not being quite right on two of my caches, so today we headed out to make repairs.

On the first cache (Where have all the RVs gone?), we stopped by and although not how I had originally placed the cache, someone had taken time to repair and put it in okay order.

For the second, Making the grade, this was definitely wrong. No sign of my cache anywhere! I don't have a similar cache available, so I replaced this temporarily with a much easier find (but it is at least something). I'll have to head back soon to replace it with something more like what it should be. My guess is that someone dropped it and it is hiding in the grass somewhere.

Good to know that they are still okay and folks are still trying to find them.

Monday, May 28, 2012

Caching our way back home

Had an early start today since it is a pretty long drive back to Dallas (especially since we plan to stop and find caches along the way). We decided to pick up a few more caches in the series we found last night, since they were scattered along the way back to our route home. We headed a *little* out of the way to a cache with Evan's name in it (Pitches -- Evan). It wasn't really any different than the others, but still kinda neat that it had his name. It also ended up on a pretty neat college campus, so it was neat to explore that one.

Heading south, once we were on the road in Kansas, there wasn't much opportunity to exit without paying a toll, so we were pretty happy when we found a cache just ahead of us on the road and a log that said free exit and great view. So, we took the exit and took a quick break. The cache was pretty easy to find, but the view was awesome (photo below taken on a bridge going over the highway.



We continued south and decided to grab some dinner in Oklahoma City. Pulled up Yelp and found a place with a good rating and headed that way. The area was packed; turns out there was an art fair setup and tons of folks around. We got a table fairly quickly at the restaraunt and peeked out the window into the booths setup around us. I decided to see if there were any nearby caches that might not be blocked off or surrounded by people. To my surprise, there were two less than 200 feet from me (with the .1 mile rule, I'm not sure how this was possible). We headed to one (stopping at booths along the way), and were glad to see there weren't any folks around. Grabbed the cache quickly and put it back just as it was. Walked over to the other cache, but it was in the middle of a group of people, so we skipped on that one.

Neat caches for the day:
Pitches -- Evan
Bazaar Cattle?
Que Paseo, Hombre

Sunday, May 27, 2012

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

Saturday, May 26, 2012

First caches in Kansas

Evan and I are on our second "Geocaching over Memorial Day Weekend" trip, this time landing us in Kansas City.  We are staying in a hotel near the plaza in the MO side, but our first caches of the took place in KS while driving about exploring the area.  We decided to dedicated the first day to touristy things, since so many of those places are closed Sundays and holidays.

A first, and very necessary, stop was at the car wash.  The drive from Dallas to KC left us with barely any area of the front of the car not covered in bugs.  Unfortunately, we took the vinyl travel bug logo off my car and when we came back hours later to look for it, no sign it was ever there.  Guess it is finally time for us to splurge on getting this permanently adhered.

Our next stop was a visit (and guided tour) of the Toy & Miniature Museum.  This place is fantastic!  Lots of old toys, dollhouses, and little furniture.  I think I enjoyed the marble room the most (they said there are over 1,000,000 million marbles in there.  I'd recommended trying to catch a tour through - they give a lot of details (especially about the dollhouses) that I never would have gotten on my own.  I could have spent probably the whole day there.  When we left, a little girl (not with us) exclaimed "we were only supposed to be there for 30 minutes but we were there for hours!"  I totally agree with her.

Found a very neat little store called Mash with lots of handmade and interesting things inside.  The owner (mom and daughter, mom was there) was very nice.  We picked up a housewarming present for a friend as well as some cards for special events (if you are the first of our friends to become pregnant in the near future, funny card coming your way).  The owner suggested a place for us to grab lunch, which was a short walk down the street.

We headed to the hotel to rest and decide what to do next.  There are a ton of museums here, many of which I visited in college and others that on normal weekends we'd probably visit.  For example, there is a flight history museum, but we elected not to go because we went last weekend to the 1940's terminal at the Houston airport, which is a museum.  Too much flight history for me for one...year (Evan, on the other hand, would likely have enjoyed it anyways).

Since we forgot to pack shorts, headed to grab some, and grabbed a couple of caches on the way back.  The first was way cute and one I found it the description made sense.  It was also my first cache in Kansas, which is great cause the second was so boring :-)

Notable cache of the day:
Grasshopper Pie

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Driving around Belt Line for April Fool's Day

For the longest time, we've been thinking about driving the full length of Belt Line around Dallas. So, today, we just made it happen! Of course, what lengthy drive would be complete without geocaching? (No answer required; that was a rhetorical question.)

It was a great day, about 4 hours of driving to make it around. There were some interesting parts and some interesting caches. One of my fave pics of the day (although it has little to do with geocaching, made me smile).



Some fun caches:
View of a Landing (will go back here when I want to watch a plane land)
Pole Cat #1 (the cache itself was pretty normal, but we liked the location)

Listing of top Texas geocachers

I used to check this more, so I was pleasantly surprised when I peeked this morning. 2276! I know that doesn't seem so awesome at first glance, but it's the whole state of Texas.

Rankings for Geocachers Located in Texas

Take a look at chemqueen on the list.

Also, a peek at Evan, (eolyn).

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Lazy PNG Saturday

Evan and I stopped by for some caches today after visiting my parents. We mainly picked up a few park and grabs before going out furniture shopping with some friends.

I grew up in Allen so am pretty familiar at the area. I was still surprised by some of the changes that have taken place. New parking lot, wave board company - whole places that I've never seen.

Looked for three, found three. But nothing very exciting. All lamp posts today.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

More after work caching

Second time out with co-workers, and this time started out fairly similarly, even though the group was slightly different. This time around, it was Dhawal's second trip with me. Vincent and his dog Blanche joined us for their first time out. Hubby Evan still has the boot on his foot, so he opted to not join us.

The first part again was to go under the highway, then we made through the nearby park to head to the first cache. After walking through tall grass, we eventually found an old dirt path that went right by the first cache. I've been to this spot before, and I'm fairly certain this is the first geocache I ever found. I still love how the dog was buried with the family and has its own headstone. Grabbed a bat for a friend and leave some art pieces a different friend made.



On the way to the next cache, we crossed a creek on foot and made pretty good time along a narrow path. I ended up eating a bug when we arrived - there were bugs all around. Thankfully, even though there were vines everywhere, no PI yet.

Headed out and continued along the dirt path until we reached the concrete trail. Followed this to the last cache of the day, which was a breeze compared to the first two.

Back to the office, but this was a very successful trip out.

Jacob Routh's Other Haunt
Tree of Gondor

Monday, March 26, 2012

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.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Caching on Leap Day

One of my goals for caching over the next couple of years (and likely to make it onto my sidebar shortly) is to fill out the "Finds for Each Day of the Year". And since Leap Day only happens once every four years, even though I felt like crap and kinda like just falling asleep, I managed to make it out for on cache to celebrate the day. It was a quick grab, really, but a lot better than a silly lamp post find at least!

It Was A Theatre, For Heaven's Sake

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Sunday cachers

To say that I'm behind on my goals for the year is an understatement. But, I am getting there, and this weekend was a good start on playing catch up.

We started by performing maintenance on one of my caches. I hopped over to check and found it in a few minutes. Not exactly where I placed it, but looks like there were some changes in the trees and it is going to stay in its new home.

Next, we headed east quite a ways to find a few in the Math School series. But...I left the GPS at home and my phone wasn't cooperating at this point, so we didn't have too much luck. Out of the three we looked for, we found one before deciding to come back another day with the GPS.

Since we had plans to go caching with Dan in the afternoon, we made a leisurely drive towards home and cached along the way. Several PNGs, some of them were quite interesting.

After catching up with Dan, we found some caches along a very nice park in Addison. This is going to become a good place for me to get my walking in. Plus, there is a community garden, and I found the environment very pleasant.

All in all, found 11 on Sunday, and though I wish that were a higher number, I'm happy to at least be that much further along.

Some of the more fun ones on Sunday:
Over and Out at CBC - AWESOME!
Haunted Series - Herman's Sporting Goods - the story is interesting and I may do this whole series soon.
Math School - Algebra I - only four more left to find in this series!
Yaupon Railroad - nice location.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

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

Monday, January 23, 2012

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

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Caching on a cruise

My husband and I recently took a cruise to St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and the Bahamas. It was a great, relaxing getaway, and now we are back and blogging about it.

We've been on several cruises in the past, but never (for some off reason) combined geocaching and cruising. Well, why not? Seems others are doing it, so it can't be that hard, right? Well, right! It was just as easy as at home, and in some ways, even easier because people just think you are a silly tourist and ignore you. We also took this trip to complete our first virtual caches as well. So, a trip of many firsts for us.

At our first stop, St. Maarten, we actually skipped the caching and went on an ATV tour. A great adventure and I really do recommend this if you get the chance - you see parts of the island you wouldn't on a normal bus tour and it was a great change in pace to what we're used to.

In St. Thomas, we got off the boat specifically to find a cache and walk around the surrounding area. The cache, honestly, was a let down. You go to a new place and you want something new and exciting, and instead it was the same, stupid light post find that I'm tired of finding at home, too. And it was on the pier, so super busy. After finding the cache, we walked around a bit and considered riding the tram up the side of one of the hills, but instead were talked into a tour. It was well worth it - got better views than could have been expected on the tram, and had the best banana daquari ever.

We had no particular plans in the Bahamas, so we just got off of the boat and made our way through the crowds at the pier. Walked toward Parliament Square and were pleased to see that there was a cache nearby. This would be my first virtual cache, as well. It was nice area, and a short walk from there are two other caches - Queen's Staircase and Water Tower. So, we headed that way. At the Water Tower, there were also some nice shops and we got a few gifts for the nieces and nephews back home - embroidered with their name, too. A little cheesy, but I'm sure they will like them, so I guess that is what really matters anyways :-) While talking with the vendor, she recommended going to the top of the nearby fort, Fort Fincastle, before heading to the staircase, so we did. What an amazing view of the pier and the island in general. A short walk to the staircase, then headed back to the pier. A GREAT visit to the island, very recommended.

Then, sadly, we had to head back to the US. Instead of going straight from the boat to the airport (our flight didn't leave for Dallas until after 6pm), we decided to go for a tour of the Everglades. It was very cold, but otherwise beautiful. There were a lot of gators around, and I want to go back and visit Miami again in the future. After the tour, we had some time before the boat headed to the airport, so we checked for nearby caches. 182 feet away? Well, how fantastic was that? So, another virtual cache for us. Admittedly, we didn't have all the tools needed to answer the questions, but we can guess lengths with piece of paper. Hope that is close enough...



Caches for this trip:
Parliament Square
The Water Tower
Everglades Safari Park

Sunday, January 1, 2012

2012 caching goals

I've been considering my goals for this year, and based on how well I did last year, I've made some changes and added some new goals.

Recap of 2011 Goals
  • Find 250 caches - check, I actually found 275 caches.
  • Find caches in 5 states - narrowly made this one, with a last minute trip in the middle of December.
  • Find cache in 1 other country - I didn't make this one, but will make it up this year.

2012 Goals
  • Find 300 caches
  • Find caches in 5 states
  • Find caches in 2 other countries (to make up for the one I missed last year)
  • Complete 3 challenges
  • Find 3 benchmarks