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.
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!!
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.
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!!
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.
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!
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.
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!
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!!
