There Are Good Geocaching Days and Then.................

My geocaching weekend started off well enough with my FTF on Friday. Saturday went pretty well and Sunday was, well, not so great.

Saturday was beautiful. It was in the upper 80's and I went out in the evening for a little fun. I needed to replace my Buff Cache because the landscapers took it when they trimmed the tree it was in. I made a new container and headed out. I stopped by another one of my caches to rescue a really cool geocoin.

My first stop was to redeem a DNF from a couple weeks ago. The cache owner actually sent me a note so I knew right where to look. Have you ever tried to sign a log right next to the front doors of a supermarket on a Saturday afternoon? I used my "skills" to look natural and did just fine. I'm starting to notice that people don't really pay attention to what's going on around them. Muggles just seem to wander around and never look at anything.

The next three caches were Mystery Caches. The idea was that you are playing a game of Geo-Golf. You are given the coordinates of where to start and then the direction and distance to the hole. There is a chain link fence that borders a trail for a couple miles. The geocaches were each under a fence post lid. Once you get to where you think the cache is, you start checking under the lids. However many tries it takes for you to find the cache is how many strokes you take for that hole. The first cache was a par 4 and I found it on my 5th try so for that hole I was one over par. I scored a hole in one on the next two thanks to some crooked fitting post lids. That was fun.

I DNF'd a cache that is supposed to be really tricky. It's rated 3.5 stars for difficulty and there were just too many hiding places for me to lock onto it. I found a couple more including one that is called 3900-Temecula. This cache was on a bench that had been made out of recycled grocery bags. That's pretty cool. They took 3900 old grocery bags and made the plastic for a bench.

I liked it so much that I went over to 3900-Murrieta. This time there was a muggle on his break sitting on the bench talking on his cell phone. I thought if I sat next to him, he would get annoyed and go somewhere else to talk. No such luck. He just turned his head and kept talking. I thought it would be funny to hold my camera off to the side and snap a picture of the two of us. He never even noticed. I took a look behind the bench to see if it was the same type of hide as the other. I didn't see it so I claimed the DNF and went home. (Looking at the picture of me from the side reveals facial wrinkles that I don't normally get to see. Bummer.)

Sunday was a different story. It was 95 degrees today so that added to the fun. I started off by returning to 3900-Murrieta for a better look. This time I had the freedom to look really well. I found nothing. I looked all over that bench. After giving up, I was driving away and wondering if maybe it was one of those little nano capsules and not a hide a key like the other. If it's a hide a key, it's gone. If it's a nano, I could have easily missed it because my mind was focused on the hide a key.

Next I headed over to a cache in a Temecula park with views of Palomar Mountain. You can actually see the observatory from way down in Temecula. This one I knew was one of those nasty little nano geocaches. I looked all over the bench at ground zero. It was hot and kneeling on the ground was not comfortable. The only thing I found was a big old black widow. I messed with that for a while trying to get a good picture. Keep in mind that the green stuff in the spider picture is the part of a park bench where your butt goes. Makes you want to check before you sit doesn't it?

I headed to another park and made my only find of the day. My GPSr had me about 15 feet away from the cache. No one else had mentioned the coordinates in their logs and I was beginning to question my Garmin. I guess 15 feet isn't bad, but I like when it hits zero and I look down and there's a geocache. Call me spoiled.

Next I went to a cache that is along a small pond. I took the wrong trail and ended up on the other side of the water, 150 feet from the cache. I walked forward to see if it was a loop trail but it seemed to go on for as long as I felt like looking. I turned around and headed down the other side of the pond. I was walking along a concrete drainage ditch and the cache listing said there was no need to leave the concrete "trail" to retrieve the cache. The GPS was pointing 25 feet straight down a hill towards the water. I looked around but came up empty. Now that I go back and read the logs, it sounds like the cache is down that hill. No thanks. I spent an hour walking in the 95 degree heat around that so called pond.

I had three DNF's and I was getting hot. When I got back to the car and saw the info for a nearby multi cache looking at me, I thought that I'd had enough and headed back home. I never found a suitable cache to put that geocoin in. There's one near work in San Diego that I might put it in next week.

The day ended up good in the end because we all went to Ruby's Diner and got fat on some good old diner food. I finished my fish and chips off with a nice root beer float and life is good.

Watch where you sit!