Hiding, Finding, and Maintaining

Sunday, March 21, 2010

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.