Tree Hunnerd

Sunday, November 15, 2009

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!!

Saturday, November 14, 2009

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?

Saturday, November 7, 2009

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!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

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!