Woohoo! Winter Caching is back!!

I may be crazy but I really enjoy winter caching. Yes, sometimes it's too cold but for the most part as long as it's above 20 degrees it's the best time to be out.

I suppose some of it has to do with cleanliness. Many of my finds are done at lunch time. That means I'm wearing dress clothes most of the time. In the summer I all too often come back to work with dirt smudges on my pants or leaves on my back. The great thing about winter is that I cover all of those dress clothes up with "winter gear".

So two days ago I dawned my winter coat, snow/wind pants, snow boots and headed out for some caches. Now two day's ago I only needed that because it was cold. No snow on the ground yet but the wind was very cold with temps in the low 30's.

I didn't have much time so I only went after two caches (I'm leaving the names out because of the picture that shows the cache container). I headed out into the woods which soon became a swamp - but it's cold, right. There shouldn't be any water problems in the swamp when it's this cold... Silly me - Soon I stuck my boot into 6 inches of mucky, muddy, swamp water. Duh! it's only been cold for a day. I kept moving forward to find the cache and then on to the next one.

Side note: There you go - another reason winter caching is the best. Even though my foot was 6" under water in the muck, I didn't care! My snow boots are water proof and come up to my calf - see there are many reasons why I like winter caching.

The next cache was a great walk. It was cold outside but it was a clear afternoon which made the 1/3 mile walk each way worth it. After seeing the title I had a good idea what I was looking for but how could it be a regular size cache if it's what I think it is. Humm, maybe the hider messed up....

As the picture shows, nope, he didn't mess up. That's how a shot gun shell can be a regular size cache!! My glove is in the picture to show a relative size. Very cool container. Made finding it even more difficult.

Two days later.... (that would be today).

Today I had time to renew my drivers license which expires in a couple of weeks. I went a little early to miss the lunch traffic and it worked. I got out of there very quickly so off I went to Central Park in Roseville to find the caches - it's only a block away, how could I pass them up? The difference this time is that it snowed last night! Real winter caching today!! I once again dawned my winter gear and headed out to find a few caches.

I was able to nab 5 today, which once again cleared out Central Park for me.

ADAT The picture of the baseball field is close to where this one was hidden.

Fir Protestor by Posen. I love caching in Roseville primarily due to Posen. He has some GREAT containers! This one was near a wasps nest that was nesseled in a pole about 12" in diameter. Yikes! See the log posting for a picture.

Make an ash of yourself more winter fun - climbing a hill.

Fowl Ball This one was starting to make me mad. I can't believe how long it took me to find it!

Girls Scouts are Prepared Another Posen hide - but one that I wasn't expecting. Not his normal type of hide made this one harder that it should have been. Oh well, a find is still a find.

After all of that, my gloves were soaked, my pants and coat were wet, but my work clothes were dry and clean as could be.

Now back to work I go after a most excellent day of winter caching!

FTF, Lunch, and some Dallas Caching

I've been pretty busy at work lately and haven' t been able to do as much lunch caching as I like to - oh, ya, it's been raining, too. So when I saw a new cache pop up only about 6 miles from work (as the crow files, that is) I had to jump on it.


It was about 10AM when I finally got around to checking my email (and forget about checking it on my phone, there just hasn't been time). I noticed a new cache had been published that morning. I didn't really pay attention to the time it was published but I new it was after 7AM 'cause that's when I turned on my phone and there wasn't an email at that time. I pulled up the cache page and it was still blank - no finders yet. Woohoo - maybe a chance at an FTF for October. (It's not official, but I like to grab at least one FTF each month - except for those few months this last summer when Rebelex was gobbling them all up before I could get there).


I checked again around 11:30AM and still no finders. Humm... I might get lucky. There are other caches in the area that I haven't been able to go after (plus one DNF I would certainly like to rectify!) so it looks like this is the place for lunch today. New Road (GC1GXD9) was found at about 11:45AM. See the log for the suspenseful ending to the quest.

The it was off to Childs Play (GC1G7JN) - which I had previously DNF'd on Oct 2, 2008. I had to find that thing! As I approached the parking lot, a city truck loaded with sod turned into the lot just ahead of me. Rats! This may cause some issue since the cache is within view of the parking lot. That thought quickly dissipated as I watched the city worker get out of his car and head to the port-o-potty (see, there is good reason for having an inside job - no portable restrooms). As he went in I quickly headed out to GZ. I scanned the area for places I hadn't searched yet - and there weren't many. I did notice a couple of places, though, and immediately started searching them. In less than 2 minutes I had the cache in hand as was signing the log. I quickly put it back, made it back to my car, and was driving off before the worker finished his business. I don't know how I missed finding that the first time but at least the cache is now off my DNF list. (see the log entry here)

I went on to find two other caches just to the south. I just hadn't spent the time to walk the trails in this area but sine I was here and the first two went so quickly I figured I might as well do it today. Both were fairly quick finds but at noon there are quite a few walkers, runners, bikers, and stroller pushers in the area so I had to time it just right when I decided to leave the trail. Those caches were Beyond Repair (GC1F79E) and Pictureesque (GC1F7A6) - both hidden by TopGear. Thanks for the hides!


As my post below indicated I reached 2000 finds while on a business trip to Dallas, TX. The rest of the pictures in this post are from some pretty interesting caches and places in Dallas.

This was a tough one to get to. Around and around. You'd never know that this was in the middle of 3 major streets just hanging there. As I walked back from getting this cache a person waiting for the light to change asked if I found the cache. He was a cacher, too.







Ok, this isn't a Dallas cache. It's from the Minneapolis area. I can't say much else but the hider put a lot of work into this. No, you're not looking at the container!

This one turned out to be missing. You're looking at the cap of an acorn. The acorn was not a normal acorn size. The cap your looking at was about 1" across. The bottom part is missing - which was the cache container. If you look really close you can see the fishing line it's hanging by.

One Bugger of an FTF

Caching at lunch today wasn't quite what I had intended. I had planned on grabbing 5 new caches in the area - they've been placed in the last couple of days. One was a possible FTF so I went that way first - Calvin Chooses his fathers Nursing Care Facility (no I don't get the name either but that's ok).

Here's the story as it was written in the log on geocaching.com.

WooHoo!! FTF @ 12:58PM. This was actually a co-FTF with __________ (Dang! I didn't write the caching name down and now I've forgotten it - sorry about that)

This was one BUGGER of a find!! I spent about 40 minutes looking at every spot possible. I climbed, poked, prodded, dug, sifted, and moved just about everything. Did you notice that this was hidden BEFORE all the leaves started to fall!! Yes there is a bed of new leaves (with many more to come in the near future).

Then I realized..... the east side of one tree is the west side of another (see the cache page to intrepet what the means)... Yikes, that makes it even harder! So more poking, prodding, and sifting.

You know I have a meeting back at work that I'm supposed to be back for at 1:00. I don't think I'm going to make it...

It's about 5 minutes to 1. If I leave now I'll be about 10 minutes late....

One more try - I usually leave my electronic compass off on my Garmin Vista HCx. I'm going to turn it on and see where it leads me.

Ok, I've been to that tree already. Yep been there too. Humm, I've been here a lot - it's still pointing over there. I've been here before but I'm going to poke around some more.... VIOLA!! There it is!!

That was one bugger of a find, that's for sure!

KB Challenge - Minnesota Bakers Dozen

Last week I spent all of my caching time working on the King Boreas Minnesota Baker's Dozen challenge cache. I've written about this challenge before so you've probably heard about it, but the essence of the challenge is to find 1 cache on day 1, 2 caches on day 2, 3 caches on day 3, all the way to 13 caches on day 13. Now the day's don't have to be consecutive days or that would be impossible for me to complete - I don't cache 13 day's in a row. The other major rule is that at least one of the caches found on a particular day must be either a multi-cache or a puzzle cache. That throws an interesting twist into the whole thing. Visit the cache page for more details.

So last week I found myself ignoring the coveted FTF's just because I've either already hit my number for the day, or the FTF might be a multi or a puzzle and I can't go get it because I already have my multi or puzzle for the day. So I passed on a couple of FTF hunts.

However, last week I was able to complete some of the bigger number day's. Here's my cache bookmark which shows my progress so far. I focused on the bigger number days on the weekends because it's almost impossible to get 12 or 13 caches at lunch. I used to be able to do it but now I have to drive too far because I've cleared out the area close to work. Now just getting 3 or 4 caches takes up the lunch time (and sometimes I'm only able to get 1 or 2).

The progress last week looks something like this:

• Sat June 14 - Day 13 - Tbone and I did this. Another post talked about our adventures on our bikes.
• Mon June 16 - Day 4
• Tue June 17 - Day 7 - This required a longer lunch, though.
• Wed June 18 - Day 2 - The multi I did here was a killer. Took way too long - but fun!!
• Fri June 20 - Day 12 - I was at a baseball tourney and was able to get enough caching in between games to get the full 12 done.
• Sat June 21 - none - I had high hopes of getting day 11 out of the way - but there was no time between baseball games today.

So overall it was a successful week - getting Day 12 and 13 out of the way. Only 4 days left, 5, 9, 10, and 11. I'm afraid it will take a couple of weekends to get 9, 10, and 11 out of the way, though.

Sokratz Lab

I was able to do some lunch caching today. Only had time for three quick grabs but the fun part was solving a puzzle last night. Lost in Minnesota was a fun puzzle cache that took me some time to figure out. I wasn't sure if the cache really was in Minnesota or not but after I solved it I found that it really was in Minnesota - even though a Utah cacher hid it (with help from someone around here). All you puzzle hiders out there, check this one out.

I've spent some time in the Sokratz Lab lately. Now my lab is nothing like the Posen lab, I'm sure, but it still creates some pretty fun containers.

Many of these containers have already been hidden in the last month but there's sill plenty more to be hidden this summer. Of course I can't show you all of them or it would give them away. The picture here shows some of the more "traditional" ones you may find next time you hunt a Sokratz cache.

Springbrook Nature Center

I decided to go after 4 caches today. I've been seeing them on my list for some time but just haven't taken the time to go get them. Well, today is the day.

I started off in a row of pine trees. These type of caches always take me longer than they should (I guess that's why I've hidden a couple of them myself :-) ). Turned out to be a pretty quick find on an excellent hide. I can't say I've seen this before. I'm not going to provide a link or the cache name because some cachers have had trouble with it and I don't want to give too much away. You can find out anyway if you think about it hard enough.

I spent the rest of my lunch time in Springbrook Nature Center. I've been there many times before hunting caches but there were three new ones that I haven't found yet. So I grabbed them - all uneventful - even with all the muggles on the great spring day.

While I was in the area, I decided that Springbrook needed some more caches. I took four new cache containers out of my trunk and started walking the paths. I found places for three of them but the fourth I just wasn't happy with. It's a special container that needed just the right place - and I didn't find that place. Maybe I'll get back there and hide it eventually.

As I was walking the trails looking for a place for hide number two, I was startled by a deer. Ok, not that unusual, I've seen lots of deer while caching in the local parks. So I stopped, and quickly grabbed the camera.

I stood there for only about five seconds and slowly lifted the camera in hopes of getting a couple of pictures. Click - ok that worked great. Click - humm, that one did, too.

The deer continues eating the new green buds on the trees and looks up at me between bites. He keeps walking closer and closer. He sees me but isn't worried in the least about me. He's more concerned with having those fresh green buds for lunch. I keep clicking pictures and he keeps walking closer and closer. He finally stopped about 20 feet from me. I slowly slide out to the middle of the trail to get a good picture. Click - that was a good one.

We just stood there looking at each other for another minute or so.

Ok, Mr deer. I have to get moving, lunch is over. I take a step toward him and he just looks at me. So I slide my foot in the dirt to scare him. He jumps - more like a twitch - and starts to meander off the path. But only about 10 feet and he starts eating again.

I head down the path to finish hiding cache number two.

It was a good day walking the paths of Springbrook. Temperature was in the upper 60's - maybe lower 70's with a slight breeze. Perfect time of year for this!

Spring is here! I think...

I really should be focused on work today but I just had to get out for a quick cache hunt. The temp in the Twin Cities is finally above 70 degrees so it's time to do some spring caching.


Over the past week or so I spent most of my caching time at the University of Minnesota campus just east of downtown Minneapolis. Most of the caches I found were hidden by meralgia. She's got some excellent hides that are not only challenging but the high muggle traffic around the UofM make them plain hard at times.


On "Don't Give Up" (GC1B9KV) I was lucky enough to get the FTF!! WooHoo!! That makes 75 FTF's (I think). I still have 25 more to go before I can log King Boreas' Challenge cache for FTF's.


One interesting find hidden by Wylbur was "Pipeline" (GC1A3HH). Two things made this one fun. First the hide. I spotted it right away but had to find the right time to get it. Again, muggles in the area - and the house construction going on next door - make this one tough. Two, this one had a digital camera and Wylbur asked that you take a picture. So now my mug shot is out there for everyone to see. In taking the picture I couldn't hold the camera up and take a shot. I had to hold it down by the cache (which one on the trunk of my car) and shoot up at me. Hummm, that's one interesting photo.


Also in the UofM area was a puzzle cache called "Where's Yoda?" (GC196CE). firstbass does an excellent job at puzzle caches and this was another fun one (fun because I was able to solve it!!). The find was just as fun as the puzzle. The cache is hidden along the Mississippi river with a very nice view. It'll be even better once the trees and flowers bloom.


Today's caching took me to the White Bear Lake area. Some fun caching near Bald Eagle Lake. Yes, it's spring, but the ice isn't off the lake yet. I'm hoping it will be soon!!