100 Finds, The Geocaching Century Mark

The day is upon us. Team Hick@Heart has found 100 geocaches. Today was a beautiful day. Perfect for geocaching. I mapped out some hides and The Boy and I were off.

We started at a cache called Accuracy. It is not really necessary to sign the log. The idea is to put your GPS on a specific spot and log info such as the weather, how many satellites you are receiving, how strong your signal is and what latitude and longitude are you seeing.

Next we hit a relatively simple mathematical mystery cache. It was nice to be out on the rural roads rather than in town. We found one cache that had a pretty fun container. I've seen these on line but this is the first time I found one. It looks just like some poop in the grass but when you turn it over there is a cylinder holding a log. A log within a log if you will! Ah, the things you pick up/reach into while geocaching.

We climbed partway up a hill to find Hillside Hotwheels. Finding an ammo can under a bush just never gets old. We found a nice geocoin in there. A guy called PennyPacker from Etiwanda, California released 18 of these while on a 3400 mile road trip. the coin shows the Western United States. this discovery added a nice new icon to my list of trackables found.

We grabbed a couple more semi urban micros. At least these were in a quiet part of small town Menifee. I also logged two more DNF's while in this area. So here we are sitting at 99 finds. It's time to get the big one.

I had solved Magical Mystery Tour earlier in the week. I had to rely on a hint from the owner. There is no way I would have gotten on the right path. This cache is actually on my front page of caches closest to my house so I had to stare at it all the time. I knew this was the one. The Boy and I headed over to the area and began climbing the rocks. I finally made the find. this cache had not been found in almost a year. Everything looked good however a spider had taken up residence inside. I signed the log and made note of the milestone find. The Boy and I took some pictures tryng to use our hands to make the number one hundred. After 6 or 7 shots I felt I had it. It was only after I got home to look at the pictures that I realized we were holding up the number 001. I guess I'll have to make that up when I reach 200!

I'm happy to have reached 100 geocaches. I'm sure the urge to hunt the parking lot skirt lifters will subside. (For a couple months until I get close to 200!) The boy and I really enjoy geocaching together. Geocaching is all up in his head too. The other day while walking into a store, he stopped to examine a pay phone for geocaches. He said, "No treasure there." and moved on. Good job, The Boy!

Here are some more pictures from today.

Someone Give Me A Geocaching Trail, Please!

I t has been raining pretty steadily and is supposed to continue through the weekend. I wanted grab a few caches but I know the trails are going to be way too sloppy and I had my three year old daughter with me.

I had mapped out some more urban type caches that looked like numbers pay dirt. We got a break in the rain so me and the girl headed out. I picked up a few but nothing very exciting. Some of the caches in the area I was seem like someone just wanted to put a cache somewhere and did just that.

I approached several and did not even attempt them. One was in a Post Office parking lot. I don't like the idea of snooping around federal property. Another was on a guard rail right next to a busy road with a 55 MPH speed limit. No thanks.

I picked up four but my desire for the wilderness only got stronger. I have a geocoin that I scored as an FTF prize a while back. I've been virtually dropping it in all the caches I find. That does a couple of cool things for me. It logs the 'cache to cache mileage' and it generates a map. The map shows all the points I've visited and shows lines connecting them. It's kind of fun to look at every once in a while.

It's raining again. Hopefully we get another break tomorrow. Nine more to reach 100 finds. I already have that special cache picked out for the milestone.

Suddenly, We're Geocaching

Today is President's Day and I took a vacation day from work. I have a new computer desk and chair coming from Office Depot tomorrow so I took tomorrow off too. We ran down to Kohl's to check out the sales and guess what? I was forced to pick up a cache or two along the way.

Some local cachers named Jeepnakd have hidden a series of Nascar themed hides. Each hide is at a place that sponsors a Nascar. So, Nascar #99 is near Office Depot. 99 is the number of the Office Depot race car. Jeepnakd has a bunch more hides than just this. In fact, they own 211 geocaches. They have found 1082. There is a Lowes next to Kohl's with one of these hides. There is also a Best Buy across the street. Are you catching on?

So, after Kohl's, I drove to the nearest cache. It was a skirt lifter. The GPSr says, "Hey, there's another one just a quarter mile from here." Boom, another skirt lifter. "Hey, just an eight of a mile." Boom, electrical box. And so on, and so on, and so on. Just like that, we're geocaching.

After the second find the wife asks how many total finds that is. I tell her it's 80 total. She says, "Oh, you're about to go crazy." Crazy? "You want to reach 100" Mmmmmmmmmm 100. I can almost taste it.

None of these are very spectacular but it is nice to find a series of easy ones. It makes you feel good and is good for the numbers. One cache was a bit more rural. Rocky Gluteus Maximus is off a dirt road on the way home. I had made an attempt at this last night but a couple of muggle mobiles parked on the road and just sat there. I quickly made the find today in a large pile of rocks. I was delighted when I saw the container.

I went to the film developing stand at Wal Mart a couple of months ago and they gave me a bag full of empty film canisters. I took some of that rock texture spray paint and Cammo'd them up. I hid one myself and put a few more into my cache to be traded as swag. I even put logs in them. This was one of my film containers! This cacher had found my cache a month ago, traded for the container and now I found his cache. It's come full circle.

As we were heading home, The Boy asked if we could find one more. No problem, The Boy. I found a cammo'd M&M container in a tree and signed the log. I thought something might have fallen out of it and I was looking around in the wood chips. I nearly picked up an open prophylactic. I don't think it was unfurled or anything, but that is gross! I didn't touch it I swear!

When I got home, I saw that some people had visited my caches and picked up one of my travel bugs, Fish Tank. They are taking him to go visit their fish tank. NICE! We ended up finding nine today. How do you like that? That's California geocaching. I run to the store and accidentally pick up nine smileys. I love this game!

Urban Geocaching, I Know What You Mean

I needed to run down to Temecula to get some printer paper from Office Depot. You know what that means! I loaded up the GPSr with some geocaches and headed off with the entire family. We went a round about way (Shocking!) so we could make an attempt at a multi cache.

There are some local cachers that love to put caches on fountains. Their caches are all titled "Tranquility, something something something." This Multi was pretty simple. You walk along this small strip mall and at each of the fountains you get a number. We visited all 7 fountains plugged in the coordinated for the final cache found where it it supposed to be and then...............Nothing. No cache. I know I was at the right place because if the hint provided but nope, no smiley for me. I couldn't even snap a decent picture of the kids because the sun was in their eyes. I'm not feeling very "tranquil"

Off to Office Depot. I might as well grab the skirt lifter in the parking lot. Man there are a lot of people in this parking lot on a Sunday morning. I finally get a second to safely grab the cache and sign the log. We move on to an Altoid can that is nearly rusted shut. My hand still hurts from trying to open that thing. I sign that log and it's off to another "Tranquility" cache. When we pull up to ground zero, there are 30 Muggles sitting on our tranquil fountain. Never mind.

Man I could use a nice trail in the middle of nowhere right now. Oh well, I did get 5 reams of paper for 20 bucks and I got a 5 dollar off coupon.