Cup of Joe event and caching after

Tbone and I decided that we wanted to go to the Cup Of Joe event organized by Fireman121 and Skatergirl today. It was a small gathering but we had lots of good conversation and then headed off for some caching. At the event Bus&Betty talked about their first WhereIGo cache and it made me want to find one, but even more I want to make a fun one. So that may be in the works sometime... It was also good to meet FlagFinder for the first time. Minnesotabrad rounded out the group and also brought his Cache-A-Maniac's guest coin for people to see (I left my coin at home in my coin book).

Part of our conversation at Cup of Joe was about a cache only about 1 1/2 miles from the event put out by Grey Wolf and Wild Rice called Jambro Hates . It's been DNF'ed a ton so we all thought it would be a good idea for all of us to go and look for it together. Luck for us we did. It was a bugger of a find. One of those that is right there all along and when you find it you do the famous forehead slap and "Duh!!"

Afterward Tbone and I did some more caching in the area. We ended up grabbing 7 caches and one DNF.

We spent over an hour at Centerville's 150 cache and didn't come up with the find - another DNF for us. There really aren't that many hiding spots so I hope to find that the cache is missing so we don't look so bad.

Overall it was a great day of caching. Tbone and I had a great time. Next time maybe we'll have a few more Sokratz kidlets along, too.

Holiday Caching and an FTF

My sister-in-law and her family are here visiting for the holiday. We just got cleaned up from a morning of paintball fun (but that's a different story all together) and I sat down to check email. While I'm sitting there two new caches pop up. One puzzle and one regular. Our visitors have only been caching once before - when they visited last time - and they've never done a puzzle cache before.

I printed the cache page out and handed it to my brother-in-law. After a few minutes he had it solved. Then I explained that these two caches had just popped up and that if we left now we might be able to get the coveted "first to find" honors (I explained what that was, too).

After a few minutes we had a group of six of us who wanted to go and a list of 10 caches that we might be able to grab - including the two FTF's. Of course each kid that came wanted to have a GPS so I had to load 4 other GPS's with waypoints (and charge the batteries that were dead). Loading only takes a few seconds with GSAK but charging took 15 minutes - and every minute counts when hunting FTF's in this area.

We headed straight for the first FTF attempt. ROCKIN' by KC0TWB. By the time we made it to the cache site the listing had been published for around an hour. The group was hopeful that the FTF might still be possible but I wasn't so sure. An hour is a long time in these parts.

After some hunting the kids finally found it (only a couple of small hints to get them going in the right direction). They were impressed by the container and the work put into it. I think they're beginning to like this game!! We opened the log and, yep, we were too late. We were 3rd to find. The kids wanted to trade all the SWAG so I pulled out the SWAG Bag and added a bunch of trinkets to the cache.

That one didn't result in an FTF but we had one more chance - the puzzle that my brother-in-law solved. We all piled back into the car and headed straight to that one (passing some other caches along the way in hopes of an FTF).

The next one was TXT4FUN by meralgia. When we pulled up I thought to myself another one of these (no, not an LPC but another popular hide in parks). As we approached I thought, yep it should be over there. The kids thought so, too, and started searching the area. I stood there watching the other five search and noticed something just a little different. Humm, that looks interesting. I meandered over and took a look - trying not to get the attention of the other five. Yep that's it - very cool! My sister-in-law saw me look at it and now we're playing the waiting game - giving hints every so often to get the group in the right spot. One of them even said, "What's a _____ doing there?" (sorry can't give too much away) But he didn't go check it out. We finally gave enough hints so the kids all found it.

We opened the container hoping that the log book might be blank. Slowly we opened the log book and VIOLA! A blank log book. WooHoo! We were first to find!

That was a fun find and now they're hooked. We continued the day finding more caches in the area, including the ones we passed on our way to the FTF. In all we nabbed 7 before heading home for dinner.

That night my brother-in-law ordered a Garmin Colorado 400t from Amazon. It will be here on Tuesday so we can play with it.

Note: the pictures are not from the caches mentioned in this posting so they are not spoilers for those caches. They are other caches we found today.

Back in the Saddle

Wow, it's been a while since I've been able to get out and do some geocaching. I've been dealing with pneumonia for the past couple of weeks and am finally well enough to get out there. So TBone and I decided to take our bikes and go ride some trails. Of course the trails we picked were loaded with caches, too. We ended up grabbing 13 today - just enough for day 13 of King Boreas' Minnesota Bakers Dozen Challenge. I still have a few more day's to fill in but I'm getting there.

Tbone and I had a great day. We found some pretty tough caches, Tbone found some fun SWAG, and we traded a few Travel Bug's and Geocoins. We scared up 5 or 6 deer - got to within about 30 -40 feet of a couple of them before they ran off. The mosquitoes were out in full force! I think they almost carried us away a few times. The worst part is when you're stopped to sign the log - the mosquitoes are relentless when your not moving!!

Then of course there were the tics. Ton's of them. As you can see from the pics we were in grassy areas so I went first to try and break the path for Tbone. That also meant that I got most of the tics. I think we pulled 15-18 tics off of my clothes. Tbone had about 4 or 5 during the day. None of them bit us, though, so it looks like we found them all.

All in all, we had a great day finding 13 caches, 5 or 6 deer, a few ducks, and lots of dragon flys - and doing it all from our bikes. Thanks for going with me today, Tbone. I had a great time!!