Cache Bar

More NoDak caches bite the dust!

2011-04-17T11:06:00.001-05:00

Now that I have my lovely bride all moved in with me here in Williston, we decided to grab a few of her first North Dakota caches yesterday. We managed to find 8 more local caches, and had to DNF two that we were unable to locate. There seems to be very few active cachers up here, as many of the caches we have found were not previously found since last October.

There are still about 30 caches just within a twenty minute drive from us. We also plan on hiding a few of our own now that we are permanent residents. We are also going to be sending a few travel bugs out into the world, we are tossing a few ideas around for a theme, and a goal.

Stay tuned, now that our lives have seemed to settle down a bit, we should be a little more active in the caching world again.

Log signed, after sitting six months under the snow since its last find...it was in great shape!

Cache replaced, another one that lasted well through the long winter....Little Muddy River in the background.

Back Home Caching

2011-03-28T17:39:00.000-05:00

I have been home since Thursday morning, and have really enjoyed being home for a little break. I have been eating way to much. But it has been great hanging out at my normal places, and seeing some regular faces.

Ruth and I finally headed out for some caching this morning...it has been so long since we have done some serious caching. We found all 17 caches we set after, so it was a very successful, very beautiful spring caching day.

Here are a few pictures taken on our journeys today.

This was a great cache in an area that recently became public property, it had a nice boardwalk, and a great view.

Heading in!

Are there boards on the boardwalk?

The view of Big Green Lake in the background, you can see Sugarloaf behind us at the southern edge of Norwegian Bay. Perfect Day!!

Yup, there are boards.

Another view of the bay

Closeup taken with the Ipod...awesome caching tool!!!

This is a picture of a log in a cache that we were unable to sign due to us stupidly forgetting the pen in the truck. Will be sent to the owner, hoping they do not delete our log.

Now that the weather is getting better in North Dakota, and the snow is melting, I hope to finally get some caching done over there. Keep posted!

Finally, my first ND Cache!

2011-02-27T09:53:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I finally got my first cache while out here in ND...instead of typing the story over, I said it pretty well in my log...here it is.

----This is my first ND cache!! I am living here in Williston temporarily from work, I am from Wisconsin. I have been in town a little over a month, and have been wanting to cache since day one. While at work today I started to talk about caching with my boss, and he said "lets go find one" he downloaded the app for his IPhone and off we went. This was the closest cache to work. I quickly started using the title as the hint like was stated in the description. With my boss's help we were able to make the find pretty quickly. He would have had no idea how to find it, but I have found this style before, and it caught my eye right away. I just looked at him and said "I see it" he was blown away and said where. I snagged it and he was amazed. Great cache, and great container...thanks for my first ND cache....many more to come.

He will be setting up an account and going back to sign and log this cache! Another member of the caching community!----

Now that he is hooked on caching already, he said we need to go out today again after we get a little work done at the shop. So maybe I will get a few more caches today, but not sure.

It felt good to get a find after such a long dry steak.

Still No Caching

2011-02-19T19:43:00.000-06:00

Well, I have been here in ND for over a month now, and I still have not gotten a cache. I have been working allot of hours, and for being so far from my routine, have stayed pretty busy. I will be flying to Kansas in a few weeks for some training. I will definitely be sure to get at least one cache near the hotel so I can add Kansas to my list of states.

As for now, I have basically come to the conclusion that I will just wait until spring before I do any caching around here.

Keep in touch everybody, I miss WI and the abundance of caches there. There are caches over here, but the area is so un-populated with caches, and cachers. Many of the caches up here have not been found for months.

New Life Out West

2011-01-23T08:00:00.000-06:00

Just to let all of you in blog land know, I have recently moved to North Dakota for work. I will be here at least 4-6 months, with the possibility of moving out here permanently. My company is paying all of my living expenses, including housing, food cable, internet, everything! It really is a great deal, I also got a huge raise, monthly bonuses, and they pay for me to fly home every four weeks.

Now that I am here, and settled in, I am hoping to do a little caching. There is a allot of snow on the ground here in Williston ND, but I think I can find a few caches if I try.

Here are a few pictures of my house, the area, and things I have seen out here in my first week.

Me and my new truck, about 5 minutes before I pulled out of the driveway.

My view for most of the trip.

My home away from home, its older, but the price is right, and its warm and cozy.

This is the reason I am here...ND Oil Fields.

The bridge over Lake Sakakawea...beautiful area!

On day one, the boss hands us the company credit card and says, "go get whatever you need for your house", so we did. Notice the flat screen! He will also be getting us an xbox if we want it. Really nice to be taken care of!

Stay tuned, hopefully I will find some time for caching this next weekend.

Happy New Year.

2011-01-02T01:53:00.000-06:00

I have not faded away into cyberspace, I am still alive.

We would like to wish everybody a happy, safe, and successful new year. May 2011 be better than 2010 in every way.

We have been so busy in the shop working on Chistmas gifts for friends and family that we have not had any time to go caching, or even do any blogging. Now that the holidays are over we might find a little time to get out into the woods again.

We will be sure to post pictures and stories of our next adventure.

Still Alive

2010-11-24T21:03:00.000-06:00

Just letting everybody out there in blog land that I am still alive and kicking. I have been super busy lately in the wood shop making gifts and other projects. Its too bad, because this is my favorite time of year for caching. I am hoping to be able to do some caching after this deer season is over. I already have my two deer, but I still like to go out and help my group fill their tags as well. Keep stopping back!

10-10-10 Caching Run.

2010-10-10T20:18:00.000-05:00

We decided at about 1:30 this afternoon that we should probably make a quick run to put our name on the list of cachers that logged at least one find on 10-10-10. I am so glad that we did, because it was a perfect weather day, we found an awesome cache, and we picked up our first souvenir icon in the process.

We threw together a quick 5 cache run in Brandon, which is only about 10 miles from home. There were some new caches that we figured would be great for a fast run.

One cache called "When Hemp Was King" was particularly great for many reasons. First off, it involved a scenic hike on well defined trails. Second, it was a fun offset cache. Third, it was well hidden and a challenge to find. And finally, it was in one of the coolest ruined building sites we have ever seen.

This cache was placed at the site of a former hemp mill. Hemp was king of this area, and this mill started it all.

Check out some of the pictures below.

Geo Beacon Ahead!

The long and winding trail...beautiful hike.

The base of the stack

The cache in hand.

Not sure..water retention area?

The view up the smokestack.

Roller for the hemp rope?

It was so fun to explore. No matter where you looked, there was more to explore. This cache has been added to our top-5 list.

Another Milestone Today!!

2010-10-03T21:10:00.000-05:00

Today I went caching with my parents who were only a few finds away from reaching #200. I recommended a cache for them which we had found over a year ago. I offered absolutely no help, as I feel they needed to find the milestone on their own. I walked behind them the whole way, and they did a great job. "Fox Proposal Point" is an excellent cache that still remains on our top 5 list of all time caches. It is a somewhat strenuous hike, and a little of a "which way do we go" type of cache. The views are great, and it fit the bill for their milestone perfectly.

It was an absolutely perfect day for caching, sunny, cool and just enough breeze to make it comfy.

Here they are with #200 in hand. Well done team "OldyWeds"

The view from the cache. They main river heads to the right where there used to be a dam. The dam was removed in 2003 as it was no longer needed, and blocked any fish from moving up-river. The channel to the left was where the locks were. No dam, no need for a lock system.

With the milestone cache, which obviously was not logged by us, we ended the day with 7 finds which is good considering a few of them were longer hikes. What a great day, I love caching in the fall.

Skeet and Caching Saturday.

2010-09-27T20:01:00.003-05:00

Saturday was a perfect day, for a few reasons...one, the weather was beautiful, two, I shot some skeet, and three, we did some caching.

We started the morning off with some breakfast at our favorite local cafe, we go to Kristinas every weekend. It is the place where everybody knows your name, and the cooks come out to say hi to us every time. We love living in a small town.

After breakfast we headed to Oshkosh to shoot a few rounds of skeet at the gun club we are members at. I am pretty new to skeet shooting, I shot my first round in June. I have not shot a 25 yet, but I do have a 24, and shot 17,19 & a 23 on Saturday. I absolutely love skeet shooting, it is such a challenge, and every shot poses a different challenge.

Here I am about to shoot the high house bird on station two. The bird in the picture is moving away, and requires about a 2 foot lead.

In this picture I just shot high house station 8. This bird literally passes right past the barrel, and you shoot it from about 10 feet away. You have to be super super fast, and lead the bird by only a few inches. I dusted this one pretty good, you can see the dust cloud, and most of the right side of the picture is filled with chips. I love station 8. If you have never shot skeet, or any clay target, do yourself a favor and give it a try.

After the skeet range we headed out to do some caching. Our first few caches were DNF's, we are sure the caches were missing. They were caches along a "rails to trails" abandoned railroad bed. It seems the DNR did some major tree trimming because GZ for the first two caches was completely leveled, and the took down some pretty substantially large trees.

After the two missed caches we were able to find 7 caches. A few nice walks, and few cemeteries, and a couple nice multi caches.

Here Ruth is looking for stage three on "Flat Jack Goes For a Nature Walk".

Here is a view from the same cache. It was a great walk.

The leaves are sure changing color, and actually starting to fall from the underbrush and smaller trees. What a great day!

This is what a freshly trimmed ground zero looks like. Not a friendly sight when looking for a cache!

We are hoping to get out again this weekend, and hopefully I will have more to post about, and more pictures of the changing fall scenery.

#600 and The Tunnel Of Terror

2010-09-19T13:20:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we finally made the drive southwest to grab our 600th cache. It was an absolutely perfect day for caching...low 60's, and sunny. We started the day with 583 finds, which meant we had to find 16 caches to reach 599 and set ourselves up for #600. It was a fun trip with a great mixture of cemetery hides, park hides, a few guardrails, and a few hikes. We usually aren't big fans of these park and grabs, but when we have a milestone in sight, and shorter days, we do what we have to, and a numbers run is always fun.

We finally got ourselves to 599 and headed our way to New Glarus for #600. Finally after watching the cache for a long time, waiting for the time we could make the trip we pulled up to the parking coordinates for "The Tunnel of Terror". We love the hikes on the old railroad bed trails, and this one happens to run through a tunnel built in the 1860's. This will go down as one of our favorite caches, and will be added to our top 5 list here on the blog! We spent over an hour exploring the tunnel, and the area around and above it. What a perfect setting for a cache!

Enjoy some pictures taken throughout our day of caching!

Just after we started the hike, a sign lets us know we are not far!

We are just about to hit the entrance as a few bikers make their way out.

Throughout the tunnel there is allot of brickwork and repair jobs that have been performed through the years.

#600

This picture was taken in the very center of the tunnel. There was just a shade of light from behind us. We put the camera on the tripod, and set the shutter speed very slow. Just enough light got through to make a pretty sweet picture. You can actually see our shadows while standing behind the camera. We could see absolutely nothing, it was pitch black, but obviously enough light made it through...good stuff!

The view from the top of the tunnel.

Here is a plague at a site of an earth cache we did later in the day. If you can't read it, this spot was washed away during a flood. The breach allowed Lake Delton to completely empty into the Wisconsin River. Homes were destroyed, a highway washed away, and a lake was emptied to just a muddy hole. It was interesting to watch this unfold on the news. A great earthcache!

The grassy area where the deer are standing is the new fill added when the breech was filled. In the background is the Wisconsin River Lower Dells area where the lake emptied into. The water carved a 300 foot wide, 700 foot long, and 30 food deep gorge. The lake took only hours to empty its over 600 million gallons of water. This is one of the most beautiful areas of the state.

Adult Novelties and Bakery??? Really??? Only in Wisconsin!

Finally a little caching.

2010-09-11T23:08:00.000-05:00

Right now I am sitting in a hotel in Marshfield WI, we attended a birthday party today, and Ruth's grandparents are celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary tomorrow. Today after the party and after checking in we were able to go out and grab 3 quick caches. It is not much, I know, but we have not gotten any caches in the last two months, well besides the one across the street from my buddies house. It felt great to sign a log again.

Both of us really hate hot weather, so, I am sure we will get much more caching done from now until next summer. It was a busy summer, that is for sure, but every time we had a little free time, walking in the woods with the bugs and the heat did not sound like a good idea.

We were already talking today about finally, after flirting with the idea all summer, of getting out next weekend to knock out our 600th cache. We really want to work our way down to New Glarus to find the Tunnel Of Terror. With the nice weather, and some free time next weekend, I think it is finally going to happen.

Stay tuned, as we are sure to grab some great pictures in the next month of caching...the colors are really going to start to pop soon.

Still Slow

2010-08-27T22:24:00.000-05:00

Still not much going on in our world when it comes to caching. We are hoping to get out on Sunday, but if it is too hot we will stay home. We are still so close to 600, and really want to get there.

Hopefully we can post some finds were made, and maybe snap a few pictures on Sunday. Stay tuned.

Slow Going in MuddyBottoms Land.

2010-07-20T19:39:00.000-05:00

It has been pretty slow around here when it comes to caching. We have just plain been too busy to get out like we want to. We did go last weekend and grab a few, but no pictures were taken. It was nice, we were able to grab 17 caches without going to far from home. That shows for sure that it has been a while since we have been out. New cachers are placing caches in the area quicker than we are able to find them

I also have some long overdue maintenance to complete. I have a cache that I adopted a few months ago and has not been found since because I made it unavailable since it is missing. I still have yet to get that one going. I really need to, not good!

We do not have too much planned for this weekend, maybe we can plan a run to get our 600th knocked out. We really want to head south to the New Glarus area to grab a cache on our watch list. It would make a perfect cache for a milestone. Check this one out. Tunnel of Terror!!! Hopefully we can make this happen soon.

New Poll Question.....also, we are actually going caching!!!

2010-07-10T21:27:00.000-05:00

Check back tomorrow night, as we are actually going caching tomorrow. Ruth and I will be going on a small 22 cache run with my parents. It has been so long since we have been out, that there are actually quite a few new caches in the area. There have been some new cachers that have popped up in the area, and it has introduced some great new caches, and great new cache ideas.

So, hopefully we will have some stories to tell, and some pictures to share!

Don't forget to vote on the poll question for July.

Where has the time gone.

2010-06-26T15:53:00.000-05:00

I would like to apologize to everyone for not making any posts recently!! I have been so busy with work, working in the woodshop, and our new membership at the local gun-gun club, that we have not had any time to go caching lately. We plan on going out a little of the fourth of July weekend. Please don't give up on us!!! LOL. I will have a new poll question up and hopefully a post with some usefull content soon!

Keep on Caching!!!

Happy Memorial Day!!

2010-05-31T12:11:00.000-05:00

I would like to wish all of you out in BlogLand a happy Memorial Day. Do not forget the reason for the day, and be sure to think of the ones that have given us our freedom. Without the sacrifices made by our veterans we would not be able to enjoy the life we live every day.

Thank you to all who have given so much!

To everyone, have a safe, and enjoyable day!!

Caching weekend up nort

2010-05-16T20:07:00.000-05:00

We had an excellent time caching on our trip to the Hazelhurst/Minocqua area this weekend. We managed to find 18 caches during the day on Saturday, and a few on the way home today. Not only did we find a few great caches, we also dropped of 3 travel bugs, and one geocoin.

The main goal of the weekend was not really to find a bunch of caches, but mostly just to get away and relax a little bit. We stayed at a resort we have stayed at many times in the past. Blacks Cliff Resort is a perfect resort for rest and relaxation. As always we enjoyed the cabin, the lake and the general relaxing atmosphere that only northern Wisconsin can offer. Thanks to the owners Jenny and Troy...who are also cachers(The Gibbers). They may not know it, but they are responsible for getting us started in geocaching. Since our first trip to the resort, I have been following their Birch Bark Blog. In the blog about a year ago they posted about one of their caching excursions and it prompted me to check out caching. The rest is history!

Check out some of the pictures captured throughout the weekend.

This was the first picture taken of the weekend. Ruth and I decided to get up early Saturday a.m. to go have a cup of coffee down by the lake. The loons were talking(insert sound) and the fog was slowly moving to the center of the lake. My favorite time of the day...god I love it up here.

Our favorite cache of the weekend was called "Arthur Stevenson's Homestead". The history of the old house is so neat, and the area was a blast to explore. If you are in the Boulder Junction area, do yourself a favor and find this cache(premium member cache).

When we were exploring the homestead cache we also happened upon our very first Letterbox...we were looking for the cache. We thought we found the cache, but quickly learned that we in fact had our first letterbox in hand. We obviously did not have a stamp made, or with us, so we just made our mark in the log book, and put it back. SWEET!

Here is the whole crew at another cache located on Lost Canoe Lake. The water up north is so low, that this root system would normally be underwater.

Team MuddyBottoms...such posers.

Here we are this morning before we left for home. We are holding the two travel bugs we picked up during our journeys. Thanks to Jenny at the resort for taking this picture and posting it on her blog as well. Our mansion for the weekend was behind us...it was so hard to leave. We will most likely make our fall caching trip back up to the cliff. We better dedicate that trip to finding the rest of the Gibbers caches!!

T.F.T.C.(cabin)

Stay Tuned

2010-05-14T06:25:00.000-05:00

I will not be posting again until Sunday night. Ruth, my parents, and I are heading up to Minocqua, WI for an all weekend caching excursion. We are heading up after I am done with work tonight. We have a nice cozy cabin in the woods, and we are going up just to cache. The truck is full of gas, the Lowrance, Nuvi, and I-pod are packed full of caches, and we are packed full of enthusiasm. Stay tuned, as I most likely will have a few stories, and pictures to share!

Have a great weekend!

Weekend Caching...and Cache-Bag Additions

2010-05-10T21:20:00.002-05:00

Weekend Caching

We were able to do a small amount of geocaching this weekend, not much, but it was kind of nice to take it easy. Its not always about doing as many as possible.

A new series was just published in our area before the weekend, and we decided to give that one a go. It sure was nice to find some caches close to home once again, as a few new cachers have popped up, and are placing some nice new caches. SWEET!!! The name of the Series is "Town of Nepeuskun Series". Nepeuskun is a local township just a few miles to the north of our town of Ripon. This series was made to highlight a few of the historical areas around the area. The series was very well done, and the cache pages include a great amount of history for each area. If anyone is in the area make sure to hit this series...right after you hit our Mascoutin Valley Trail series of course. Well done Skunk & Tarz!!!

We ended up running into another group of cachers while finding one of the caches for the series. Pictured here is: Sweech(Lower Left) Blondie BloodHound(Lower Right), and your authors standing behind them. Not pictured is the talented photographer- Sparse Grey Hackle. Thanks for taking the picture, it was nice running into you guys!

Here I am right after breaking the brand new cache!! We were the second to find the series final, and I already broke it.....oh wait, you cant really break an ammo box. See what I mean about the non-photogenic comment made earlier!

Wee-ner mobile travel bug taken, and ready to move up-north this coming weekend.

Above the series we were able to throw another 6 caches in the mix while we were between the series caches.

Cache-Bag Additions

Ruth and I have always enjoyed trying to identify different plants, trees, and birds while out caching and hiking. We will always make bets on what we think a particular plant or animal might be, but would have to wait to get home to settle the score. We finally found a great set of small, color pictured books to take along with us. Now when we have a bet placed we can settle the score immediately. These books are great to have along, and we have pulled them out a few times already. I would recommend anybody get a set like this for their local area, and you would be surprised how much you open them up.

The color pictures are great for quick identification. Also the way they are listed-Trees By leaf type & Birds and flowers by color makes it very easy to find exactly what you are looking for.

Here are the three books we have purchased so far, next we will be getting..Mammals, Insects, and Mushrooms.

I know a little about most trees from my woodworking experience, but there is so much more to know.

The birds I know the least about, this one gets allot of use!

Just a little piece of info I thought you fellow cachers would like!

Please, please post a comment if you have any tips like this to make the caching experience even richer than it already is!! Or, you could even post to the blog directly if you would like, I am always open to more authors than just myself!

Happy Mothers Day!!

2010-05-09T10:34:00.000-05:00

We would like to extend a HAPPY MOTHERS DAY shout out to all of you caching moms out there! We hope you have a wonderful day, filled with family, and the things you love the most. We will be spending the day with Kevin's parents, hanging out and cooking Mom(team OldyWeds) a great dinner.

Enjoy your special day, you have earned it!

Here is a picture of me with my Mom...this was taken while caching on our Mother/Son weekend. Every year, my brother and I each dedicate a seperate weekend to just hang out with Mom. Last year we went on an all caching weekend to up-north Wisconsin. The year before that we went to the Lakewood/Mountain area with the ATV's to ride the trails all weekend!

Love ya Mom!!!

One Cache

2010-05-05T23:21:00.001-05:00

Last night we did go out and snag one cache to celebrate our one year caching anniversary. Nice and close to home, and an easy walk, thankfully because there was a big storm on the horizon. The storm happened to drop a few small tornadoes near the fox valley, nothing that hit the ground though.

Here I am with the goods, right before dark, sky even darker because of the storm.

Barrel O' Monkeys Travel bug was picked up to be moved along.

The happy couple, she always has a great smile, and I...well don't. I am not photogenic.

We look forward to our next year of caching fun.

One Year Anniversary

2010-05-04T16:58:00.002-05:00

Today marks our one year anniversary of finding our first geocache. It all started because one of our favorite up-north resorts mentioned geocaching in its photo blog, The BirchBark Blog. We had read this blog for years, and always had seen their occasional posts about caching, so finally one night I decided to create an account, and the very next day we were on our first hunts. The account was under the name "Stobber", we only had 7 finds under that name until we realized we needed a more plural name to represent us as a team. That was when MuddyBottoms was born.

I am hoping to go out and get an anniversary cache when Ruth gets home from work.

Here are a few pictures from our first cache, and some memorable ones we found along the way.

Our very first cache was a lengthy multi-cache called Rush Lake View. Here I am plugging in the coordinates for the final at WP1.

Here is our first cache...a lock-n-lock hiding in its place! Success! We were hooked.

Here we are after finding Fox Proposal Point. This was our last cache as Stobber, and the one that inspired the name MuddyBottoms. As we stood up from taking this exact picture the name popped into our heads, well because we had muddy bottoms. This cache still resides on our top 5 list, an awesome cache that helped fuel our addiction.

Here I am standing next to our 100th milestone cache! Kind of a spoiler, so I will not list the cache name. But it was concealed underground, about 300' into a culvert, directly above us is home plate for the local little league field. As we stood there wondering where a large container could be hidden on a baseball field, I instantly knew it was below us, and the adventure began. Thank god we had the mag-lite along...the camera flash makes it seem comfy, but you literally could see nothing. Awesome!

Here we are with our 200th cache, called Old School | Playin Hooky in a HOLE!

Here Ruth is signing our 300th log, this one was called Seldom Entered|Often Seen

Here we stand with our 400th cache. This was called Walk On The Wild Side #4. This was part of a series with 6 Walk on the wild side caches. The final happens to be our next milestone.

As mentioned above this cache was a final location for a series, this was called Ryan's Rebus, and it happened to be our 500th cache.

So, there you have it, one year down, and hopefully many more to come. We have really enjoyed caching, and have gotten so much more out of it than just signing logs and counting our caches. We cannot say enough how appreciative we are to our fellow cachers for placing caches in such wonderful places we would have never seen if it were not for caching!

Caches, Mushrooms, and Ten Years!

2010-05-03T10:43:00.003-05:00

Yesterday Ruth and I decided to head out for a quick 10 cache run. We decided to pick off a few that have been on our list, and a few new local caches. Unfortunately we forgot the camera, so there are no cache pictures. We did go 10/10 and threw in a few that were a bit of a hike, and it was a perfect day for those.

The best find of the day was not any of the caches, but it was the Morel Mushrooms we found while out caching. We have always kept an eye out for them, but before today had never run across an amount large enough to pick. We stumbled upon these and had to take advantage. If you know anything about morels, you know they are a prize to be found. They rarely grow in the same spot 2 years in a row, and are almost impossible to farm on a consistent basis. They are referred to as the million dollar crop, this is because if you could successfully grow one full acre of them it would be worth around one million dollars. There are websites, and clubs dedicated to hunting for morel mushrooms. They only grow in the spring, and can pop up overnight. I think we will keep looking around in the next week or two, and then the season will be done.

Here is a picture of our small take. We soaked them in salt water to clean out the pores, and to kill off any bacteria. The mushrooms were then cut into halves the long way to make sure nothing was inside. Simply sauteed in a cast iron pan with a little butter and seasoning salt...they are really delicious! If you run across a few of these, do yourself a favor and give them a try. Go to The Great Morel Home Page to learn about where to find them, and which ones not to pick.

Video Of The Week...10 Year Style.

The video of the week is dedicated to the ten year anniversary of caching that happened in April/May of 2000. This video contains some home footage of Dave putting together the first ever geocache. With all of the ten year events going on, I figured this would be a good video to show.

Really???

2010-05-01T11:58:00.000-05:00

I stumbled across this blog in the Groundspeak forums...Letterbox and Geocache Abuse
This person thinks that geocaches and letterboxes are trash hidden in the environment, trash that is supposedly causing damage to our sensitive ecosystems. I agree we need to watch out for our wild areas, but I think this person may be over-reacting a little. The way I see it, geocaching causes the exact opposite effect on our wild areas. I know that when we go caching we always bring out as much trash as we can carry. To solve this supposed problem, this blogger is stealing the caches that he/she believes are causing the problem...not sure that is an effective solution, but the one they have chosen. Check out the link, and like I did, leave a comment and let this person know that geocachers make up a great community of nature loving freaks!!

Finally A New Post

2010-04-26T22:07:00.000-05:00

It has been a-while since my last post with any substance, so I figured I better get back on track.

Here are a few pictures of our caching excursions since our last post.

There is also a video of the week to check out.

A new poll question has also been posted, since we are so close to May, I just skipped the April poll question.

Here Mrs. MuddyBottoms looks through the swag, while Mrs. OldyWeds is taking a very important phone call. This was a beautiful cache perched right on a ledge in the woods.

This "fort" was just down the ledge...not sure how comfy the rock bed, or the stone pillow would be, but probably slightly better than no bed or pillow!

Here we are at the floating boardwalk in the Horicon Marsh. This was a great earthcache in an beautiful Federal nature preserve.

We did recently pick up our 500th milestone cache. Ryans Rebus was its name, the final for the awesome "Walk on the Wild Side" series. We had a blast with this one!!

While on a caching run we noticed this HUGE water tower...it looked like an eyedropper. We had to take a picture.

Just down the road from the eyedropper we noticed this very interesting Cadillac. The inspiration for the escalade?? Maybe!

This was a log in a cache dedicated to the now extinct kodak 35mm film. A very interesting log, pull out the film and wind it back in when you are done.

Video of the Week

This one looks like it would be a blast!! Where are the caches like this in my area??
Its kind of long, and bad video quality, but you can still appreciate the adventure.

Update

2010-04-11T20:45:00.000-05:00

I have to apologize to all of you guys that have been waiting for me to post, or update the poll, or post some videos. I have been super busy, and will be back online tomorrow to get everything caught back up. Stay tuned!!

Video's of the week.

2010-03-22T21:24:00.000-05:00

Since I forgot a video last week, I will post two tonight. These I thought were cool, it just shows what people will do to find a cache.

Wow...I would love to do a cache like this!!!! I am jealous

Hiding, Finding, and Maintaining

2010-03-21T20:32:00.000-05:00

This weekend was an all caching weekend, well except for the four hours I worked Saturday morning. When I got done with work we headed out to research a large state owned marsh near here for cache hiding spots. These hides will be a part of a 26 cache series that is being put together by 5 fellow caching groups from the central WI area. So, look for that to be published right around Easter weekend. After we found the spots we headed to Fond Du Lac to get some dinner, and the few things we needed for the cache containers.

Today, we headed out on a small run and grabbed 16 caches around the French Creek Wildlife area. What an awesome area, it is basically a huge public property that is a mixture of marshes and hardwood ridges, we really enjoyed the area, and will be back again. Here are a few pictures that we took today.

Success....the French Creek Wildlife area is my background while I retrieve the log. This cache had not been found since last fall, it was still nice and dry!!

Here is another shot of the same body of water, not a stitch of wind today. The ice is holding out as long as it can. It is amazing how two feet of ice can melt in just over a week, when it took all winter to form.

This has to be the biggest cottonwood tree I have ever seen, maybe even the largest tree in general. You could wrap a 25' tape measure around this bad boy, and still be about a foot short of touching ends. There is a chain grown into one of the larger upper branches. By my calculations, that chain was probably enveloped by the tree over 80 years ago! I wonder if it was for a swing, or something like that. It is pictures like this that we are glad we have a timer on our camera, and that we make sure we have the tripod before we leave.

When we got back from our caching run, we decided to make a run to perform some maintenance on our caches, and make sure they are all good for spring. One of ours we had disabled due to the first waypoint being missing, and we finally got that one back up and running. Also, one of our parks tour caches was missing due to the fact that the pay-phone it was stuck to had been removed. So we have a little work to do again, but for the most part, our caches are ready for the busy non-snowy Wisconsin caching season.

I forgot the video of the week this last Monday, so I will be sure to post two tomorrow when I get home from our ritual Monday all you can eat wing-night run to the local establishment.

New Job=Less caching

2010-03-10T19:02:00.000-06:00

I have been on unemployment and looking for a job since December 1st. Although it is very conducive to caching, it is not good for the wallet or the self-esteem. This last Wednesday I got a call while ice fishing with a fellow cacher(Scrappy Scout) from the owner of Ripon Truck Repair. He said he had a job available and was wondering if I would be interested. We set up an interview for the very next day. When I got there on Thursday I had a talk with him and I was offered the job, and I started the very next day.

I am so glad to be working again, especially at a place to close to home...it has been 10 years since I have had to drive less than 45 minutes to get to work, and the gas savings is a nice bonus as well. I now spend all day sandblasting frames and crane kits off of military vehicles that have been in action and need to be re-furbished. I love sandblasting, but it has been years, and involves stretching muscles that have not been stretched in years. I now get home and want to kick up my feet and rest.

Now caching will have to wait for the weekends only, oh well!!

Keep checking back, I am hoping to do some caching this weekend!

Don't forget to enter the chat room when you can!

Too Many things for one title

2010-03-01T18:32:00.003-06:00

2010 WGA Winter Bonfire & Chili Feed

On Saturday we did a little caching on our way to our first Wisconsin Geocaching Association event. The Bonfire and Chili Feed was a huge success, and we had a blast. We met many new cachers, and talked to many more familiar faces. The chili was excellent, and so were the many many dishes brought by fellow members. It was nice to swap a few stories around the fire, and check out some cool coins and bugs around the table inside the field house. Click HERE to go to the WGA picture page for this event. I will definitely be going again next year, maybe it will even be closer to home. We ended up grabbing ten caches before the event, making it a total of 11 for the day, a good winter caching day.

Sunday Cache Run

Saturdays ten caches and an event were not enough, on the way home we were already planning our full day of caching for sunday. We figured we would invite our friends who are new to caching along with us, so we sent them a text on our way home from the event. After some talking they decided it would be easier for one of them to cache, and the other to stay home with the kids. It was decided that Jackie, 1/2 of the TrollPatrol team would be joining us.

We headed out at 8 a.m. and headed once again to the Wild Rose area. We had 35 caches on our to-do-list and ended up finding 19 of them. We started the day with a series of pretty tough winter hikes, so that slowed our day down quite a bit right off the bat. Who cares though? I love the great caches that we did, the numbers will always be there, it is hard to pass up so many quality caches. We completed another 3 of the Walk on the Wild Series by labrat wr, who placed this great series. We only have one of those left to find which contains the last code needed to find the series final "Ryan's Rebus". We look forward to finishing this very well done cache series!

We also did a couple of terrain five caches on islands, but we must admit, we cheated a little and drove the truck right on the ice, right out to the islands. They were still some very fun caches.

Here I am signing a log on an island, you can see the truck in the background.

One of the caches we found was called Graffiti Bridge, I wonder why?

Here is Jackie of "TrollPatrol" in the green taking their first trackable.

Here we are at one of the Walk on the Wild Side caches, camera perched in a tree to get a group shot.

Monday Cache Run

Today, Scrappy Scout, a Milwaukee area cacher, and I decided to meet up half way and do some caching in the Slinger, Mayville area. We managed to find eleven pretty easy caches on a nice relaxed easy going day of caching. I had a really great time with Kevin(scout) today, and I am sure he will have something to say about it on his blog as well, which is in my list of watched blogs.

One of my favorite pieces of history are old mills, either sawmills or grain mills. This was the site of an old grain mill in Mayville Wi. I love these sights. This one was just the old race(waterway), but it was still fun to explore.

New Poll, Weekly Caching Video, and What Not.

The March Caching poll is now up, so please cast your vote on your perfect day of caching....don't worry, you can be honest, nobody will know it was you!!

Here is the video of the week!! This video is so stupid and cheesy that it is absolutely hilarious....enjoy!!

If you get a minute, hop in the LIVE CHAT...ANYONE is welcome, and we would love to talk with some of you cachers that are from outside the Wisconsin border as well...we don't bite, honestly. Take a minute, pop in and see what the topic of discussion may be.

A few funny caching videos...Enjoy

2010-02-25T15:03:00.001-06:00

I love their celebrations when they find it!!!

Wisconsin cachers...if you are, or know these guys, I want to meet them...hilarious!!!

The good ole FTF race!

I plan on having a weekly caching video every Monday from here on out...but I had to post these three right away. Check back, hopefully I can find some good ones for the future!

Travel Bug Saved

2010-02-25T11:41:00.001-06:00

This morning we pulled the travel bug from the current owners inventory. Now that we are currently the owners of the travel bug, we fixed it up and gave it a new dollar bill to share its journey with. It feels good to save a travel bug that has been out of circulation for 3 1/2 years. We hear all of the stories about long lost bugs and coins, it is nice to resurrect one and keep it going.

Here is the bug page where you can read the log I posted for getting it back in circulation.

This Saturday it will make its re-debut at the 2010 WGA Winter Bonfire & Chili Feed . I am hoping someone will snatch it up and move it along, or at least discover it.

I plan on doing some major caching soon, so it will get some mileage no matter what!

Here is the bug all ready to go, I figured the tag would be safer by just taping it right to the bill. I hope it has another log journey, and I am considering myself the new owner!!! LOL, it will be going on my watch list for sure!!

Lost Travel Bug Found!!

2010-02-24T13:00:00.000-06:00

In June of 09, when my caching career was only one month old I went on a caching trip up to the Minocqua WI area. On one of the finds I noticed a travel bug dog tag in the cache, nothing but the tag. I was a total newbie, but I knew that I should not be finding just a tag in a cache that supposedly has no inventory. As soon as we got back to the hotel I looked up the travel bug, and it was not found..so I thought, I must have typed in the number wrong or something.

So yesterday when cleaning out the truck and looking through some caching memorabilia we have I came across this tag again. Once again I went online to look it up, sure enough, I must have typed in the correct number, becuase this time I successfully found the travel bug page. This particular bug has not been logged since August of 2006, and is still supposedly in the possession of a WI cacher. This cacher had never visited the cache I found it in, but did find a cache a few miles away around the same time that it went missing. I am sure it was an honest mistake, I am hoping we can reverse it and fix it up again.

I have sent an e-mail to the T.B. owner, and the cacher with this bug in their inventory. I am hoping to get in contact with both people and resurrect this long lost bug.

Here is the travel bug page!

It sure would be nice to get it fixed up and back in circulation.

Check back to see how I end up with this situation, I hope it works out.

Group Caching and a Milestone

2010-02-21T22:12:00.000-06:00

A few days ago we got an invite from a local caching friend to join him and some other cachers on a run for some harder caches. BakRdz sent out an e-mail inviting Jstajlr(Cocoa), Stubbs13, CodeJunkie and ourselves on this little power run. We set out on our first cache at about noon. The day included a few adventures and more than a few laughs. We ended up finding six caches with the group before we had to break away and head for home. Thanks BakRdz for inviting us on the adventure. If you are interested in reading about our journeys a little more, I will attach a list of the caches we did, just click and read the logs placed by all of us.

Walk on the Wild Side #4
Walk on the Wild Side #5
WSQ 967 Visitor (Wild Rose)
Take a Hike!!
The Lake That Rushed Away
WSQ Grandma and Grandpa G*Force

Below are some pictures taken throughout they day., and even a video of Jstajlr making the river crossing after grabbing Walk on the Wild Side 5 cache. Does he get wet???

Does he make it??

The boat Landing that leads to Our 400th Find!!

"NO LAKE" Walk on the Wild Side #4

The Bridge to #5 Attack of the Labrat!!! The cache owner
labrat wr, knew we were attempting this cache
so he made this on the truck while waiting for us
to return.

A great Friday!

2010-02-19T15:13:00.001-06:00

Last night I decided I would make another run today to try to get as close to 399 as possible. This weekend we are attempting a few higher D/T rated caches that we would like to make our 400th milestone. So, I thought it would be fun to try and get as many of the 27 needed knocked off today. I put 27 on the list knowing I would not go 100%, I figured that I should still be able to get a few. Well I ended up with 17 finds, 4 DNF's and there were 6 that I did not even attempt because there was just too much snow, and too much distance to travel. Those missed caches can always wait until spring. I feel pretty good about that many finds, but I feel stupid because I forgot the camera today, and many were picture worthy caches.

When I was setting up the run last night, I came across one cache that was just published. I never thought I would have a chance at being the first to find, because it was one of my last caches of the day. But much to my surprise I climbed the tree out over open, swift moving, very cold water and found a nice clean log to sign. I only have a few FTF's so, it was nice to get this one even though I was not even trying. I can now add "Mecan River Beauty-Cumberland Rd" to my F.T.F. list....oh wait, I don't track my stats anywhere...oh well!

Stay tuned...we are hoping to get #400 this weekend, and there is no way I will forget the camera this time.

Leprechauns Outing

2010-02-15T18:26:00.000-06:00

Saturday was the day that our group of local cachers came out to find the "Green Lake Leprechauns". We had 13 people including myself looking for the cache. It was a perfect day, temps near 30, absolutely no wind, and not a cloud in the sky. It did not take long to do at all, it was a four part multi, but all of the stages were very close to each other. I think we spent more time talking afterward than we did seeking the cache. Click HERE to be sent to the picture gallery. Thanks to Jim from "JimandLinda" for taking the pictures, I hoped to have the pictures to put right on the blog, but technical difficulties have prevented the pictures from getting from Jim's computer to mine. Thanks go to: BakRdz, JimandLinda, sloughfoot, amita17, marc 54140, benny7210, 2boyz, jstajlr, Digital Dan, and wywrdsn for joining in on the fun.

I hope to hold many more events like this over the years, it really is fun to casually cache with other people. There are so many stories to be shared, and allot of knowledge to be gained.

Numbers Run Canceled

2010-02-11T11:15:00.000-06:00

Last night I got everything loaded up and ready for todays run to reach 399. Well, when I woke up I was not feeling to well. I figured if I was going to be able to attend my own little cache event on Saturday, I should probably not spend the day out in the cold and wind. So I decided that the milestone will have to wait for another day, and I am sure we can find another great and deserving cache for our 400th find. So today will be spent inside preparing my tax stuff so I can give it to Mr. Taxman.

Numbers Run Planned

2010-02-10T19:32:00.000-06:00

As previously posted, I am hosting a mini-event this weekend to find a local cache that is on and island(sort of, it is landlocked) and needs to be accessed by water. I really want to make this cache our next milestone of 400. To do this we need to find 28 more caches to be poised at 399. I have a list of 35 caches all planned out for tomorrow, hopefully that will be enough. I say this because we just received 6 more inches of snow last night, so I may have a few DNF's.

Be sure to check back tomorrow to see if I was able to do it, if not, I have Friday as a make-up day. I will be sure to post some pictures of my journey tomorrow.

Introducing new cachers to the hobby.

2010-02-08T22:34:00.000-06:00

This last Sunday we took our friends out geocaching, it was their first time going after hearing us talk about it so many times. They always said they wanted to join us, and finally this weekend the stars aligned and we were able to make it happen. With all of the hype we gave the hobby, I knew we would have to really do a great job introducing the hobby to them, and I think we did exactly that. This was going to be a challenge for a couple of reasons. First off, it is winter in Wisconsin, and there is a pretty good amount of snow on the ground. Second off, they were bringing their one year old daughter and their three year old son.
The best part of the whole equation is… all you have to tell a three year old boy(Bob) to get him motivated is that he is going to find treasure! He was on-board, and we could not leave fast enough. As for the one year old daughter(Kristin)…well that’s easy too, just make sure she is warm and not hungry and she is good to go as well. The age of the children is not the issue, it is the burden they put on mom and dad. The burden comes from having to carry Kristen wherever we needed to go, and making sure Bob did not lose his focus, as 3 year olds have very short attention spans.

The challenge for us was choosing caches that were not too much of a hike, not too much of a challenge, or in an area too public where we would draw allot of attention to our activities. What sounds like the perfect cache type to you????? You guessed it…WSQ caches!!! That’s right, cemetery hides.
It worked perfectly…we picked out ten caches, six of which were cemeteries and the other four were ones we had also had done, and knew would work perfectly. We even threw in a few puzzles just to expose them to as many aspects of the hobby as we could. We even picked up a T.B. so they could see how that works as well.

The real enjoyment of the day was watching Bob run around ground zero looking for the “treasure”. We told him that if he took something he had to leave some treasure for the next person, he was surprisingly willing to trade items, instead of keeping it all for himself. A great life lesson learned, and he had a smile on his face the whole time.

All in all, the whole family really had a good time, and I know we will definitely have partners to come along on many of our caching excursions. I do know for a fact that they will enjoy it more in the warmer months when they can take the kids along without bundling them up and needing a sled to go anywhere of any distance. The fact that they enjoyed themselves so much on the few cemetery caches that we did, it shows how much potential this hobby offers them as a family. They can only go up from here, and we look forward to joining them.

To sum it up, we were very happy to have introduced a family to a new pastime that they can all enjoy as a family. A hobby that brings the whole family together, while at the same time introduces them to some great areas that they normally would have never seen…that’s what it’s all about. Glad we were able to bring it to them.

This was our first time exposing complete rookies to geocaching, and we hope to be able to do it many, many times. I am not sure who had more fun, us, or them! Who cares, we all had a great day, and hopefully many more to come. Stay tuned, and watch out for logs by the “TrollPatrol”, I love their caching name, which was inspired by Bob on their very first cache. As he was crossing a small footbridge, I told him to watch out for the troll, and that’s when they became the TrollPatrol.

Names & Faces....and a full day of caching.

2010-02-06T20:50:00.000-06:00

Today we attended our second caching event. This one was called Names & Faces, Part V. We obviously spent the rest of the day caching both before and after the event. We had a great time, and ended up finding 17 caches, which is not a ton, but we had some very enjoyable hikes mixed it. Here are a bunch of random pictures taken throughout the day.

We plan on going out caching tomorrow for most of the day as well, our goal is to get to 399 by next Saturday...that way our Leprechauns outing will be our 400th find.

Cache Run, More Cops, and Leprechauns

2010-02-04T18:07:00.002-06:00

Today I went on another caching run, what a perfect day to be outside!!! I chose to do a few caches that were a little bit more of a hike than the normal park and go. I took just a few pictures of the winter scenery, enjoy.

Once again I had another run-in with the police...this time no tickets were written, and I did not get in any trouble. Once again I will post what I wrote in the cache log instead of typing it all over again.

-----When I got back to the truck, things got a little more interesting. I just got back in and was plugging the next set of coordinates into the nuvi, and the lowrance. I look in the mirror, and there are the familiar cherries and berries flashing behind me(just got pulled over on Monday while caching). The officer walked up to my window and smiled.....this is different I thought to myself! He said, "we received a call, and you are suspicious". I said "well, I am geocaching", and he smiled again, I asked "have you heard of it". He replied right away, "oh yes, a friend of mine is a geocacher". He asked if I was able to find the cache and if I knew the person that placed this cache. I told him, I have never met the cache owner, but I believe they are from the area. He was just wondering if the cache owner was a member of the school district. or not. He then asked me if I had found the one on the south shore of Big Green Lake at Dodge County park. I said yes I had, he said he had found that one with his buddy. He wished me luck on the rest of my searches and we were both on our separate ways. It was very cool to see a police officer that had been geocaching, and I thought it was funny he would bring up a certain cache that I had done before. It was nice talking to him, and to prove that I really was not suspicious.-----

It was definitely an interesting day. One of my favorite days of caching yet, nice and relaxed.

I am setting up a small outing to go get "The Green Lake Leprechauns" cache, we will be going after it on the 13th of this month. If you are in the area, stop out and join the fun. There will be food and drink to be had by all after the cache is logged. I will be sure to post pictures on the blog after the outing is complete. Get the details at the WGA Forum Page for this outing.

Caching in outer space?

2010-02-03T17:26:00.000-06:00

I was reading through the WGA Forums(Wisconsin Geocaching Association) and saw a post under the "recommended caches" for this cache. It is placed on the International Space Station! There is actually a travel bug there as well. As you would expect, it is still awaiting for its first to find. Check out the main cache page HERE.

I think it is pretty cool, and expect it will be successfully logged in the near future, as in this year. I think it is going to be fun to watch this cache, I have added it to my watch list, just to see what happens.

This one might have the best view possible for any cache that exists.

Monday Cache Run

2010-02-02T10:43:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, Ruth had the day off so we decided to run some errands in Fond Du Lac and do a little caching after we were done. We were able to find 14 caches, every one that we went after, which was nice.

We did have a run in with the cops yesterday, but nothing cache related or anything cool like that. Here is the post from the log.....

"Found this cache today right after our run-in with the State Trooper...nothing cache related, or cool like that. We were pulled over just before finding this for not having our seat-belts on...which is rare. Our Nuvi took us in off of Rolling Meadows drive, we got out at the gate to check things out, and figured out we had to drive around and search this one from the other end of the road. We needed gas, so why put on the seat-belts for the .3 mile drive to the BP station?? Well, in that .3 miles of road there happens to be a State Trooper headquarters...he literally pulled out of his lot, flipped on his lights and pulled us over within feet of the BP station we were headed to. After all of that we found the cache, right next to a nice little creek, which happened to be flowing pretty swiftly today. TFTC!!!"

Thankfully we have not gotten any fines lately, so the seat-belt fine was only 10 bucks.

Keep posted, I am hoping to make a few runs yet this week, and we might be taking our friends out caching this weekend, they are rookies and seem really interested in trying it out.

Should have cached!

2010-01-31T21:03:00.000-06:00

Well after my complete weekend of ice fishing, I realize I should have gone caching. I spent a total of 20 hours on the ice this weekend and had exactly 0(zero) tip-ups. Not even a nibble. We did have fun playing cards though, I did manage to win a few bucks playing 31. Today we also watched a recovery team pull an ice-shack out of the water that fell through a little while ago during the warm weather/rainstorms we had. It was very interesting to see them do it, I did take some pictures, but the camera is still in the ice-shack on the lake. I will post if I think of it.

The whole weekend I was within a mile of the great 4/4 cache on Big Green Lake called "The Green Lake Leprechauns". This is a cache I have wanted to do since day one, which is landlocked and can only be reached by water. The ice as good as it is, I might have to knock this one off of the to-do-list this week maybe.

Don't forget to vote for the February Poll question!!! Also, please check out the chat room whenever you can, you could possibly be the first person to actually chat with me!! Not to popular yet, but I am hoping everyone gets some use out of it.

The battle for MuddyBottoms's time.

2010-01-29T17:21:00.000-06:00

During the winter there is nothing I love to do more than ice-fish. So, this weekend instead of geocaching, which I really want to do, I will be spending both days in the confines of the heated ice shack. I would not say much fishing goes on, technically we have our 3 tip ups out per person, but that's about it. We do, on the other hand, play lots of cards, shake lots of dice, eat lots of food, and of course drink lots of beersoda...yeah soda.

I have all the necessities loaded up. I have the beer, venison, snacks, propane, and I even have the auger and the rest of the fishing gear. Oh yeah, and a roll of quarters which I am sure to lose playing ship, captain, crew. I LOVE IT!!

This is exactly what I am after!!! Wish me luck!!

Mini Cache Run

2010-01-27T15:36:00.002-06:00

Today I went on a short little run for 9 caches in the Randolph, Cambria, Dalton area. I had a great time finding a few more winter caches. The wind was brutaly cold, but it was definitely a fun time. I had 12 caches on the list but did not even attempt 3 of them due to roads being plowed in, or muggles in the area.

I did a few cemetery caches, one of which was a multi and a few traditionals on public land and in parks.

Paperless...I thought it would never happen to me.

2010-01-26T11:26:00.001-06:00

Well, if you have read the blog in the past you remember my post about how I like to cache at a low-tech level. I used custom made paper sheets to write down every cache and its details. I also use a paper map book to lay out the caches in order so we can easily drive to each one.

Those days are gone, but purely by accident. This year I bought my wife an Ipod Nano for Christmas. While on the WGA Forums, I realized there was a program designed just for nano's to go paperless. This program is called CacheMagnet, and I had to try it. It is a totally free download, and it works absolutely flawlessly.

I thought I would never go paperless, but the fact that I already had the Ipod, and the program is free, I had to make the switch. I will be the first to admit that it is really nice to have all of that information at my fingertips.

The program loads all of the information about the cache, size, D/T, cache owner, coordinates, even the hint and a few previous logs. All of this information is great to have with you at ground zero, especially if you are having trouble finding the cache. There is usually great information to be had in the last few logs, and that is nice to have. It is so easy to load, even for a technology illiterate person like me. What I do is make a bookmark list of all of the caches I want to hunt in a day, then create a pocket query out of the bookmark list. When you open the PQ, CacheMagnet automatically opens the zipped file and it is as simple as sending it to your Ipod.

Here are a few screen shots of our Ipod running CacheMagnet.

Here is a list of all of the caches I put into this PQ'ed bookmark list. I think you can put up to like 400 caches in at once, and the clicker wheel lets you move up and down on any screen.

When you click on the cache you wish, you can from there look at the description(main page), look at the hint(if available) or check out the last 5 logs.

Here is what the main page looks like, it has every bit of info you need.

What a great tool, I am glad I took the time to check it out, and glad I let my stubbornness go for a second to give it a chance.

First Winter Caching

2010-01-25T16:20:00.001-06:00

Today I finally got out to find my first two winter caches. With it being warmer the last couple of days, I figured that most of the snow was melted. It was also very comfortable outside for caching. It is also supposed to get rather cold in the next few days, and those are the days I like to retreat to the ice shack, so I figured today was the day. My plan was to knock out a cache that I would not be able to get to in the summer months...and the perfect candidate was "Wet Maze". This cache has a stout reputation as being a winter only cache, and I quickly figured out why. Lets just say that it really is wet, and it really is a maze. I was super glad I had on my new waterproof boots, because the whole time I was walking through 3 inches of water on top of glare, super slippery ice. I made the find and really enjoyed myself on a great day to be caching.

This was my first obstacle, this ice was covered by 3 inches of water and it was super slippery, and thin. I waddled my way across it while it was cracking the whole way. The cache was located on "the island" in the background. If it was easy everyone would do it!

This was the trail I followed the whole way..."the island" is in the background.

This was the view from the cache looking back toward where the journey started.

I then stopped at another cache in the Eldorado Marsh called Slips Cache. This one took me on a much easier hike though an open grassy field. This cache had no attributes and the hint was "one odd rock", so I figured it would be in a rock pile and very much not winter friendly. I was correct, it is definitely not winter friendly, but with the recent snow melt, I was able to see the container nice and easy with no snow cover.

Although it was only two caches, it felt great to get out again. Tomorrow I will most likely spend the day in the heated shack watching my tip-ups not go up.

Welcome 2010!!

2010-01-02T20:58:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year to all of you blog readers! It is crazy how busy I am, you would think unemployment would be boring! I have been super busy in the woodshop, and really need to get out caching. The worse thing is that we are totally winter people, and have all of the gear to get us to just about any geocache. I am hoping to get out soon! Keep checking back, and vote on the poll question.

Slow going, and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

2009-12-21T17:01:00.000-06:00

In refference to geocaching it has been very slow around here for us lately. I have been busy with other stuff..moving snow, working in the woodshop etc etc etc. We are hoping to get out and find some our first winter caches. Very inconvieneintly we will be recieving another very large snowfall later this week, which is sure to make our eventuall cache run even harder. Oh well, it would not be any fun if they were all easy to find. Maybe Santa will even bring us some snowshoes. Keep posted, after the Christmas wave passes over I am sure we will make some finds.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Team MuddyBottoms would like to wish everybody a safe, enjoyable Christmas Season. We hope you have the time and the ability to share the season with the people you love, and enjoy every minute you have. If you cannot be with your favorite people, plesase let them know in any way possible that you care.

Enjoy the season, and the caching!!

May visions of FTF's and full ammo boxes dance through your heads!!

Mini Cache Run....W/ Spoilers!

2009-12-06T18:36:00.000-06:00

Today my Dad and I (oldyweds) decided to make a quick 15 cache run while the ladies prepared Christmas such things. We decided to head to the Waukau area. We managed to find all 15 caches we set out after. We had some easy ones and some not so easy ones, but none proved to be hard enough for the powerhouse dynamic duo!

One of the caches was near the Eureka locks. A great cache in a great area, we have spent countless hours just below the dam in search of the illusive walleye. We have shared many successful days fishing, as well as many more unsuccessful days. It was nice to see ice forming, as I love to ice-fish more than open water fishing.

One of the caches had a much harder difficulty rating of a four, but with the help of our F-150 ladder, it was not a problem. We stood under it, looking at the tree we would have to climb,and then hit hit us...use the truck!! heheheehe, such cheaters we are.

We did not take any more pictures than that, but we had a blast on our few hour cache run. One of the caches we did at the Waukau dam area took us across the creek and up a pretty steep incline, I wish we would have taken the camera, because the sun was bouncing off of the winding creek, a great picture it would have made!

Check out the scrolling picture slide show that I put up, if you have any interesting pictures of your caching adventures I will gladly post them. I will also post your caching name on the picture if you wish. muddybottoms@live.com is the e-mail addy if you are interested.

Tree Hunnerd

2009-11-15T18:02:00.002-06:00

Today we were successful in reaching our 300th find. We left the house this morning at 6:30 with 38 finds needed to reach 300. We found our milestone cache at 2:45 this afternoon. What a day, we had a blast, and wish we could cache like this every day. We did have some trouble on our final which was Seldom Entered / Often Seen. We had to call our Geobuddy CodeJunkie who I knew had done this cache before us. Although we found the cache container, it sounds like it is not in the condition it was supposed to be. We contacted the owner just to let him know that things may be a little out of place.

With deer hunting coming up, we both hunt, so it may be a while till we get any more finds, but that is just fine, there is little we love more than the gun-deer season.

Here is Ruth signing our 300th log.

Numbers Run and a Toga Party!!

2009-11-14T21:06:00.001-06:00

Another #'s Run

In my last post we talked about finding 30 caches in one day to get us to 200 finds and beyond. Well, exactly one week later we went on another numbers run with my parents, the OldyWeds. We found 28 caches on 11-8-09 and had an absolute blast around the Wautoma/Wild Rose/Neshkoro area. Here are a few pictures of our day.

Here is a fancy picture of Mr Oldyweds, and me, Mr. MuddyBottoms enjoying a great covered bridge cache.

Here are the OldyWeds walking back to the truck after taking a walk along the pines. We really enjoyed this nice little walk.

This tree felt a little out of place amongst all of the towering pine trees. This was another cache that we enjoyed, we took the wrong way to the cache, but it still was a great hike. We found the Billy Goat Gruff, but the troll was not around to visit.

We had a great day enjoying the fall views in a great part of the state.

Toga Party!!

Today we were members of a "World Wide Flash Mob". We attended a great event cache put on by fellow cachers JimandLinda. A group of cachers assembled in a Fond Du Lac park, all of which were dressed in togas. We all arrived at exactly 11:00 a.m. signed log, won prizes, ate a feast(grapes/dehydrated), took a group picture, and completely dispersed at exactly 11:15. We did get a few strange looks by by passers, as would be expected.

After the quick mob takeover we quickly retreated to the Coliseum sports bar right down the street. At that point we all enjoyed a great lunch of all you could eat pizza and wings, while watching the Badgers kill Michigan. We had an absolute blast, thanks to the much appreciated work of JimandLinda! Unfortunately we did not bring our camera, but there are plenty of great pictures on the cache page, which I linked to above.

Yet another #'s run is planned for tomorrow. We are hoping to find 38 plus caches tomorrow to get us to #300. Wish us luck, I will have pictures and details to post tomorrow evening.

insignificant numbers?

2009-11-07T08:13:00.002-06:00

Okay, we all know that it is not all about the numbers, right?? Yeah, Right! While the adventure and locations we arrive at tend to be the big draw for us to go there, the number of those little smileys we tally up can attest to the number of adventures we have had.

But what about numbers in general? lets look at the number 1.... one, not much. More than Zero but less than two. A single penny does not get you much, in fact, nearly every store has a penny tray that people drop these insignificant little pieces of copper (okay, copper plated zinc) in case someone need it to pay tax or the cashier wants to round off the transaction to make things easier when they count the tray. How about one second, seems even more insignificant as you can barely take a breath in second. A single heartbeat is about a second. A fleeting moment in time. Even in geocaching, a second is only about 6 feet. How about one minute? 60 of those single seconds. Not a lot of time but enough to get something done. When you are waiting for something, a minute can seem like a long, long time. When out hunting, an entire day of seeing nothing can change in a minute. I guess that is why I sit out there all day, waiting for that minute.
Now, on the other hand, looking at 1 minute, in coordinate terms, can, and did, make a lot of difference for me November 6, 2009 as I chased my 1500th cache! A nifty little multi that I have looked to do for a year now. It Wäre Me, I Shét Em! took me quickly to the first two waypoints where I collected the coordinates for the final. Off I go, As I am walking through the prarie grass I finally get close to GroundZero. Start looking around for something that might hide the final, not much around, just a few small bushes and a lot of marsh grass here. Knowing the owner has used the vast isolation in these marshes before, I figured that it was a plausible location. Looked around for a little longer and then opted to use my Phone-a-Friend to query if I was where I should be. NOT! Immediate response was, no, you should be at ABC. Then it sank in quickly. Bets are that I missed the Minutes on the second waypoint. Okay, so now I trek back .35 miles through the marsh/prairie grass back to the car. Quick stop back at WP2 to confirm that I did make the mistake, and off to the correct coords for the final.

So, yeah, there are times when a single something is insignificant but other times, it can mean the difference between success and failure. Moral of the story, Always check ALL the numbers.

30/30 With a Milestone!

2009-11-01T21:08:00.001-06:00

Today we planned a full day of caching. We started the day off at 199 finds, and knew our first cache of the day was going to be our milestone, so we had to choose wisely. We are choosing not to say which caches we did today, because we don't want to spoil any caching for anybody else, but as you all know, it would be pretty easy to figure out! Check out some of the pictures of the more memorable caches of the day. We were perfect today, we went 30 for 30 without a single DNF, and we did our first virtual cache.

Here we are with our 200th cache, if you notice the hole to the right of the picture, well, the cache was at the bottom of the 8' deep casement. We had to use some smarts to raise this one up to our level.

This one was really interesting to us, and the first cache we had done on private property. Being on private property, the worry of muggles is non-existent. This allows for quite elaborate hide containers. This one consisted of two large coffee cans hidden inside of the computer tower. Very fun, very clever!

This hide was posted as very wet, and rather difficult. We are not sure if we were supposed to, but we ran across this bridge laying in the weeds. We had to pull it out of the weeds and actually place it across the creek, but it worked out perfectly. After we were done, we placed the bridge back where we found it, and laughed our way back to the car. We almost felt as though we cheated. Very fun cache!

Here we are at an EartheCache, at this one we learned about the different types of granite, and how hard or soft rocks can be. Great area!

Yet again, another very creative cache placement on private property. This one was actually hidden in a car! More laughing!

With a total of 30 caches, we could not talk about them all. We did some very cool, very different WSQ cemetery caches. We also did some easy park and grabs, and some nice 1.6 mile hikes on rails to trails land. A great day filled with a great variety of caches, that to us, is what it is all about!

Next weekend we are planning another very cache-rich weekend! If I can do enough caches during the week after work, I am sure we could even hit # 300 next weekend!! I hope, I hope!! Stay tuned!

Stuck at 199...not by choice

2009-10-26T18:52:00.000-05:00

As of Saturday morning we had been in quite a slump lately when it came to cache finds(only one all month). So Saturday we decided we would make a quick local run to knock out 7 caches to get us to exactly 200...a great milestone!

Well, we headed in the Berlin direction to check out some cool caches, with #200 set to be found in the White River Marsh. The first 6 were all great caches, all was going good, no DNF's and no problems. Now we were all set up to find #200!!

We pulled into the parking area in the marsh, and immediately two more trucks pulled up. Uh-oh! There were a total of four bow-hunters in those two trucks. Being an avid deer hunter myself, I knew instantly that if they were hunting the area that the cache was in, there was no way I was going to walk right through their hunting grounds. I decided to let the guys go their own ways, and luckily they all crossed the road.

Now that I did not have to worry about ruining anybodies hunt we headed out for the White River Marsh Cache. We walked down the nice trail that had been recently cut, gps working great, there was no stopping us now! Well to make a long story short....we found the supposed ground zero with no problem. Unfortunately there was no cache to be found. Our GPS seemed to be working just fine, and was not jumpy at all. We had read on previous logs that the coordinates seemed to be off, and reception might be lacking. So, we started to work our way outward in a huge circle, at points I was more than 300' from GZ. We struck out on this one. Our 200th find will have to wait until this weekend.

Team MuddyBottoms is planning an all weekend cache excursion. We are hoping to pass up #200 and possibly get to 250 this weekend as well. Stay tuned to see how that goes!

High Tech vs. Low Tech

2009-10-15T21:39:00.001-05:00

Hand held electronic devises that can pinpoint your location anywhere on the globe with the aid of billion dollar government satellites?...sounds pretty high tech to me. Well, that is very true, but, on the other hand, how high tech is too high tech?

Recently, I have been tossing around the idea of updating my geocaching tactics and the gadgets I use to find Tupperware hidden in the woods. I have contemplated getting a fancy new gps. I have contemplated installing GSAK on my computer to help load up my new gps. I have contemplated getting mapping software for my gps...I have thought about it all. The more I thought about all of this I realized that I was worrying more about the technology involved with high tech caching, than the sport itself. The more I thought, the more I realized that my very first caching excursion brought me to a whole new place, a place I would have never visited before. While doing the cache called Rush Lake View (under original name of Stobber) I never once thought about why my gps was not more accurate or how I could make caching easier or faster...all I thought about was, where next?? I loved the fact that I could hike around these cool places and look for the geocache at the same time. I remember writing down the coordinates that morning and making sure I knew were to park, and making sure my geo-pack was all full of things I thought I might need( I did not need half of what was packed).

Still to this day I use sheets that I made myself on word to write down the cache details for each cache. I also get out my trusty gazetter and draw an arrow on the page as to where each cache of the day is going to be, I number them in order so we can make the drive easier. When the cache is found we write comments down on that same sheet of paper so we know what to write down later when we log our finds.

To me, this is still a huge part of the fun. I relate it personally to hunting. Doing the set up work is part of the experience. When I deer hunt I like to do a little scouting and make sure my stands are in the right spot. To me mapping out my day, and handwriting down cache details is part of the caching fun. I am usually not in a huge hurry to get to the next cache, so why download 500 caches to my gps? I am usually spending most of my time enjoying the area that caching has brought me to, and not worrying about how many I can find in a day. I usually map out 3 or 4 real quality caches that I want to do in a day, and hit all of the others in-between along the way. The great thing about that is...what looks like a boring cache on paper sometimes turns out to be a great cache.

Basically to sum it all up, the other day when I was trying to figure out GSAK, and trying to find the best place to get a map chip for my Lowrance gps, it dawned on me. Why do I need all of these gadgets? I usually only find a few caches each time I go out. My gps works perfectly. I just got so frustrated trying to make everything work, why go through this just to save a few minutes? I like my old school tactics, I think I am going to stick with them!

I do realize that my opinions are definitely not shared by everybody, but that is the beauty of the whole situation...everybody caches the way they enjoy! Someday I may even change my mind, I cannot say that I wont, but for right now its low tech, if there is such a thing in geocaching.

Here is a picture of what I am talking about, the sheet that I used sitting on the gazetter map. These are from the trip that we took to the U.P. You can see the small numbers circled on the map. The battle plan, all layed out!!

Ceresco Prairie Conservancy....more hides.

2009-10-13T20:21:00.000-05:00

I guess I figured that placing eleven new hides on Saturday was not enough....today I hid some more. Today I completed a 6 stage multi-cache in the Ceresco Prairie Conservancy. Well before I was introduced to geocaching I have enjoyed this great area. I knew right after finding out about geocaching that I would have to do some hides in this area. It has so many different terrain types, and awesome sights to see. There is also an abundance of wildlife to watch.

Hiding this cache was really fun for me, because of the amount of traffic on the trail. While I was doing the hides, the college mountain biking team was out using the trail to practice for nationals coming up soon in California. So, every time they came by I had to either try to hide, or look totally innocent, which in turn made me look even more suspicious. They had to have been wondering what I was up to. Not only were there the bikers, but also the normal amount of people just out for a walk. It was very fun to try and make the hides without being noticed. It sure would be bad if any of the hides were muggled before the cache was even made public.

The hide took me a few hours to complete, and I think it turned out pretty well. I am not totally sure about some of my hides being muggle proof, while still staying winter friendly. I will check them often and make sure they stick around.

So to any fellow cachers reading this...you have a heads up that this cache should go live in the next day or two...I am hoping tonight.

Here is the map of the trail system...my hides encompass the part of the trail to the east of the "you are here" star. Ups and downs...woods...prairie...ponds....rock ledges its all there.

Let me know what you think of the cache!!

Mascoutin Valley Trail....New Hides Complete!!

2009-10-12T21:53:00.002-05:00

This last Saturday I hooked up with a fellow geocacher from Berlin to do a cool series of caches. His name is CodeJunkie, and he is a great guy with great geo-instincts. We successfully hid a total of eleven new caches along the section of the Mascoutin Valley Trail that runs between Ripon and Berlin. Ten of the caches contain a clue that you need to pair up to get the coordinates for the final. The five hides on the Berlin half of the trail are owned by "CodeJunkie", the other five + the final on the Ripon side are owned by me,"MuddyBottoms". These caches just went live this afternoon, and already they have all been found by two cachers by the names of "BakRdz" & "jstajlr". These two gentleman unknowingly each completed half of the caches, and teamed up to get a CO-First To Find on the final...well done. Not only did they find them fast, they did it in the rain, and a few of them in the dark! That's what its all about!

I hope everyone enjoys this series, and takes in all that the great trail system has to offer.

My new hide spot was too "weedy"

2009-10-04T16:03:00.001-05:00

Not your normal C.I.T.O. event

I was out this afternoon checking out an area where I am going to place another hide. While I was walking through the woods I spotted a ziplock bag, which I picked up as usual. Normally I just throw them in the pack to be thrown out later, but this one was a little heavier than the usual. The contents of this bag were not at all normal. This bag contained a glass pipe, a bic lighter and another smaller bag containing remnants of marijuana.

When I got back to the truck I immediately called the Police Dept. When officer Henke arrived he jokingly asked if I was trying to do his job. Officer Henke is in charge of the drug dog in Ripon, so this is his forte. I told him no, only when I have to. I showed him the bag and he said "uh-oh, somebody is upset that they lost this." He thanked me and we were both on our separate ways.

Speaking of new cache hides

I am working on 3 separate caches here in Ripon. Keep your eyes out for 3 new Multi-Caches. Each one will accent a different nature trail system in the Ripon area. I expect to be done with these in the next one to two weeks. My goal for these is not for difficult finds, or super tricky puzzles, I just want to show people the great places to check out other views of Ripon.

Back in Cookie Town

2009-09-28T18:21:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Fellow Cachers

We are back at home, what a weekend! We had an absolute blast up in Michigan. After finding all of the great caches up there, we realized why we love geocaching so much. These are sights and areas we would have most likely never visited without the help of geocaching. Without fellow geocachers placing these caches many many more people, even locals probably would not know about these places. So, thank you to all of the cachers out there who do the work and put in the time to make this such a rewarding hobby.

Iron Mine Tour

Today was a totally cache free day, which is fine, because we did the great iron mine tour this morning. After that it rained the whole way home anyways. Not that we don't like caching in the rain, but after the long weekend it was nice to just chill out on the way home. The iron mine tour was only about 40 minutes long, but we learned so many things about the history of iron ore mining. I could not believe the things these men and boys did so long ago. If you are ever in the Iron Mountain area, do yourself a favor and visit the Iron Mountain Iron Mine, you will not be disappointed. Here are a few pictures taken on the tour.

Riding the train over 1/4 mile into the hill.

Here is a diagram of the mine we toured. On the diagram we were standing at the observation area. Immediately next to us was a 1,300' deep lake that was formed after mining was done due to ground water filling the void that was formed by removing the ore. The hole is so large it took 2 years to fill it back level with the water column.

This picture contains a rainbow trout...underground you say?? Yes, to monitor oxygen levels while mining, fish, parakeets and rats were used. If the animals became sluggish or died, the miners knew they had to head to the surface. This underground stream had rainbow and brook trout in it, with access to the huge underground lake. It may be hard to see, but you can see the glow of its eyes, it came out real quick when the tour guide tossed in some food.

Milestone not Reached

We ended up not getting our 200th find this weekend, which is totally fine for one main reason. When we arrived in Iron Mountain and started looking for what caches we wanted to do, we realized we had to focus on quality rather than quantity. We knew we could not come this far, and be so close to so many quality caches, and then do a quantity run!! We figured we would be cheating ourselves by driving this far to find a bunch of 1-1 caches. I am glad we made that decision. Now that we are home, we will plan a day real soon to find seven more caches, and then the 200th milestone cache. If you have any recommendations let us know.

2 More Days in Paradise

2009-09-27T23:31:00.002-05:00

After the day of caching we had yesterday I was too tired to make a post so late in the evening. So I will post some pictures from yesterday and today. Check out the pictures! What a blast we have been having.

Saturdays Journeys

This was a wonderful waterfall right by the cache called Back to the Beginning. There used to be a hydro-electric dam on this river, but it was removed years ago, now you can barely see the remnants. Great views.

We did a couple of caches at a very popular spot called Piers Gorge. There were great hiking trails along this stretch of the Menominee River. From one of the cache locations you could see rafters go over the rapids. I was jealous, it looked like a blast.

That was only our favorite two of Saturdays 11 caches, they all were great, just to many to post about.

Sundays Journeys

Here we are(MuddyBottoms), and my parents(OldyWeds) at a cache located at Long Lake Falls. This one was great for a few reasons. First off it required some four wheel drive skills just to reach the cache, the hike was pretty easy, and finally the views and falls were spectacular. We hung out for a while exploring the area.

This cache was called HorseRace Rapids. Another great waterfall. I cannot believe how many great waterfalls and rapids are up here. I only posted pictures of a few, we did many many more and there are countless more that we never even saw. Geocaching is so great, I love the areas it has brought us to, that otherwise we would have never even knew existed.

Today, Sunday, was a great day, we found all 14 caches we set out to find.

Tomorrow we plan on taking a tour of one of the old local iron mines, not sure how much caching we are going to do, but the tour should be really great.

Yoopers for the weekend!!

2009-09-25T22:18:00.001-05:00

This afternoon we arrived in Iron Mountain and we instantly fell in love with the area. After we got all checked in and settled into our hotel rooms we headed out for a few easier caches right here in town. We figured we would take it easy after the long day of travel and what not. We have a nice caching day all laid out for tomorrow, which should prove to be a little more involved, and the scenery should be a step above. One of the caches we did today took us to a great ski-jump. It was called "What goes up....must come down". Here are a few pictures of the ski jump. Trust me, it is much steeper and more intimidating in person, but the view was breathtaking, almost as breathtaking as the thought of actually skiing down that thing!!

Here is the jump from the bottom.....there happened to be a group of teenagers shooting some sort of video as we were there.

A view looking out from a platform equal with the base of the jump....the longest jump at this hill happens to be 468 feet....wow!

Stay tuned each day for updates and pictures of our journeys. Tommorrow we are checking out Piers Gorge and a few other really great waterfalls.

Friday can't come soon enough!

2009-09-21T19:55:00.003-05:00

Well, our plans have changed back to our original plan for this weekend. We will be heading up to the U.P. for a four day all cache weekend. This decision was made by the hotel, as they would not let us cancel our rooms. We were not too happy about that, but we were not too upset either(wink). So, if we are going to pay for the rooms regardless, we might as well head up there. We are getting very exited for this, and cannot wait to get up there. We will be hitting our 200th cache milestone while up there, so we are trying to find the perfect cache for that find. If you have cached in the Iron Mountain area, let us know if you have a cache you would recommend.

Glad to see new cachers joining the game!

2009-09-17T22:46:00.003-05:00

While there are always places to go to find caches, it is nice to see some new cachers in the central Wisconsin area joining in and not only finding those caches that have been waiting for more visitors but placing some real quality caches! It has been some time that my closest to home caches to find were 20-25 miles away, now several have popped up less than 10 miles away. In this area that is just a hop, skip and a jump away. So, I would like to thank Muddy Bottoms, BakRdz, Codejunkie, CamoQueen and Geolivestrong for joining in the finding and hiding game. I know there are others starting out that have some questions about the game so, please don't be shy. Ask away! Check out www.wi-geocaching.com (Wisconsin Geocaching Association) for some good advice, thought provoking questions, or just some good ol' fashioned banter.

In a slump

2009-09-16T22:49:00.001-05:00

We are definitely in a caching slump...we have not logged a find since the 5th. Its amazing how busy you can get with work and other things. We are hoping to mix in some caching with working in the shop this weekend.

Our saving grace is knowing that we have a four day, all caching weekend coming up in a week.

Not only are we patiently waiting until we can find a few, we also have a few caches that we want to place when we have the time. We just recently placed the "Ripon Parks Tour", which it seems people have been enjoying. Hiding to us, is just as much fun as finding. We have a few more caches planned out for here in Ripon, so stay tuned for those.

Not every day is for caching

2009-09-12T09:38:00.003-05:00

As I sit here looking out the window and a great Saturday morning, I wish I was able to go caching. Today I have to work in the woodshop to get a few time sensitive projects done. After that we are heading the Marshfield area for a birthday party. Tomorrow it is back in the woodshop as well.
Caching to us, is a highly addictive hobby, and at times it is hard to get other things done when you know there are caches out there just waiting to be found. When we first started, we would be looking every minute we could. Now that all of the local caches have been found, more planning and time is needed to get the caches that are farther from home. Since we are headed up north tonight, I am sure we will find a few easier ones along the way.
We are learning how to budget our time to make sure we still have time for the other things in life. We were planning to head up the the U.P. in a few weeks to do a cache only trip, but we realized it just will not work financially. So, we are still going to to take the time off, but just make day trips from home. We are hoping to have a couple of 50 cache days, mixed in with some very high quality caches. Right now we are at 160 finds, and we will find our 200th cache during that vacation. So, I am searching for a perfect cache to make #200! Stay tuned!

A few recent arcticles about geocaching.

2009-09-12T00:13:00.002-05:00

The Basics & Quotes from Cachers

We've Been Muggled!

Hello From Ripon WI

2009-09-11T23:57:00.002-05:00

Hello everybody. We are MuddyBottoms, a geocaching team from Ripon WI. We love to both find and hide geocaches. We wanted to start a blog for geocachers that wanted a place to share stories and socialize with fellow cachers. This site was designed to have many contributors, not just one. If you are interested in contributing any content, just shoot us up in the chat box. Geocaching is all about finding great caches, and enjoying the whole process, so don't be afraid to share. We will also be adding links to geocaching news all around the area. Each month we will post a poll that is relevant to caching, and the results will be posted at the end of the month. Please use the chatbox for live discussions, no more e-mailing back and forth. If you need to talk to someone, just invite them over to our blog and hop on the chat. If you have any ideas for the blog, please feel free to pass it on, and we will add it for you. Thanks for checking out the blog, tell your friends and fellow cachers to stop in. Don't forget to become a follower of this blog!

Thanks again,
Team MuddyBottoms.