The things we do for a smilie

During our last hunt we ended up searching for a cache that was located in a childrens park. If you were unable to get the cache due to children (there were a million of them!) you could take a certain picture in order to claim the find.

So here is that picture lol
I SWEAR TO YOU SAZ YOU DO THE NEXT ONE OF THESE!

Two Weekends Two Hides Part two

After moving the cache to the back of the sign in our middle finger move we decided it was time to go caching some more.

We started off close to home at a park I could have sworn there were no caches in. Reading the description it said the cache was magnetic. So that of course sends your mind and eyes looking for metal right? Well we learned a lesson on this cache. Just because the description says magnetic the cache may not be stuck to metal. After walking around a light pole for a few minutes and probably looking like crazy women we found the darn thing in a tree. *rolls eyes

The log was completely full. So we wrote as small as possible to sign.

Now can I just throw a complaint out here. These tiny tiny logs that are smaller then the tip of a pen are a pain in the rear end. You try to sign as small as possible but sheesh!

The next cache we set off for said it was in plain sight to a geocacher but a muggle wouldn't see it. So we end up at this pretty little bridge and proceed to look for something in plain sight. Of course we don't see anything. So we start looking like the geocachers we are. And we find it.

How anyone can say that a cache hid under a bridge is in plain sight I am not sure.

We hopped in the car and went for the next one. So there we are standing on a sidewalk looking around for something we should be able to see since we are not suppose to step off the sidewalk and of course we see nothing. This in case you were wondering is a cactus hide. Originally it was not in a cactus but over time the cactus grew. Plants do that you know... Something to remember when placing hides lol. We spent WAY longer looking for this thing then we should have.
You would laugh at Saz and I. We just have not got stealthy down at all. Here we are on the sidewalk trying to move prickly plants around and here comes a muggle. So what do we do in our attempt to look like we are doing nothing? We sit down on the sidewalk. OK two random women sitting on the sidewalk is perfectly normal right. *rolls eyes again

We did end up finding a great camoed hide. Of course the top was no longer connected to the box. We left a note saying this and I noticed a few other notes saying the same thing. That is to bad it is a good camo job.

We hop back in the car and drive to this cute little random park. Isn't it great how geocaching shows us all of these little out of the way places!
We get out and start looking for a "easy micro"
Right! We search and search and search. Nothing. Not even a wiff. Is there a clue? Nope. More searching. Did I mention that we had to tromp through freaking ivy to do this search? We hate ivy!!

Needless to say this was our first DNF of the day. Sigh. And on an "easy micro" UGH

After a short drive we came to our next cache location. What a cute park! We started to walk into it and watched so many cute little squirrels playing in the middle of the field. There were tons and tons of them. So of course I have to go try to see if one will come up to me. There was this bushy black one that was way to cute.
Suddenly a totally camoed cat leaps up and runs away.
Saz and I saved the squirrels today!! LMAO!!!
We did end up finding a camoed cache too. But I think the fun for us was walking through the field with tons of squirrels.

Our next search had a mystery involved. It talked about a lady. Here let me get you the search page....

After finding the cache, look for the Lady. I see her as I drive to the freeway and wonder why she is there. From the cache site you can ponder her existence. Feel free to tell us in your log why you think she is there or what purpose she is serving. I placed the cache across the street from her so that we don’t bother the nearby business.

After searching in circles... we seem to be doing that lately lol... we found a great cache. This sucker was in plain sight. Seriously. This cache was right there in the open but your eyes would just pass over it. We were amazed at the almost perfect camo job on this one.
Here is the story I came up with about the lady lol
So once there was a woman named Ann. She lived back in the days when there were no asphalt roads only dirt. Her fiance was to meet her at this very spot in a stagecoach. Ann waited patiently all that day. But he never showed. Ann being in love and patient and understanding that stagecoaches cannot be hurried if they have a broken axle or something like that came out every day for the week after he was to arrive. He never came. Ann became increasingly worried and continued to come out every day at the same time. Months would go by before word came that her fiance had died in a accident in route to her. Ann continued to come and wait every day after the news much to the dismay of her family. She refused to eat and after a month or so died herself.
This is a tribute to her love.
(totally made up but what I saw when I saw the lady lol)

By now it is getting dark. DARN these short days!! Totally messing with our geocaching mojo.

We decide to go look again for a micro we had previously DNF on. We knew exactly where it was suppose to be but couldn't find it the last time. This time however we had it within 2 minutes. We walked over and watched the dogs playing in the dog park and called it a day.

ARGH moving one of the hides

We placed this really neat cache in an alley in town. There are high fenced yards on either side with power lines above. It's a utility type space. The bigger ones are filled with nice grass and trees for park use. This one is small, a walkway really from one neighborhood to the next. It has no trespassing signs but I'm sure it gets regular foot traffic. There is a bus stop at one end and a grassy park at the other. I think these signs have more to do with limiting liability than keeping people from walking through. We hid a cache in there just beyond this sign:


One cacher bitched about it being in a no trespass area. Others said it was fine anyway and most didn't even mention it. It's up to the searcher to decide if they want to go in after a cache anyway. If you don't feel comfortable, you don't go. Everyone is responsible for him or her self. Well this one nagging guy wouldn't let it go. So we agreed to move it. What do you suppose he thinks about it now?

Here are the caches we hid. CLICK pictures to see full view

I can't get the stupid pictures to post the whole thing. Click on them to see the whole view

Two Weekends Two Hides Part one

Saz and I started out the first day hiding two caches. One was a log that we made and the other was a real root ball that we drilled a hole in and put a micro container inside. We then proceeded to go on a hunt! We started out at a pretty school that had a exercise area and that is where we were heading. Seems my gps is a little grumpy with me lately so she wouldn't get the correct coordinates. We ended up looking at the clue and still searching for quite a while. But find it we did!

As we placed the second hide in it's location there was a cache we have tried to get to twice all ready. For some reason muggles love to sit right where we needed to go. BUT!!! Saz and I have discovered we have super powers. A sort of anti muggle device I guess you could call it. We walk over and loiter. The muggles seem to scatter fast when we do that LMAO!!!

Today though we didn't need to do that. The park was empty. After many comments about the young police officer that lost his life and the statue was dedicated to we found the cache. This thing was in plain sight!

It amazes Saz and I how many of these things are honestly in plain sight but people don't see them. That hidden around everywhere are these tiny treasures just waiting to be found. Amazing.

We tried to hide it a tad better but it was kind of hard to do.
The next cache we tried again had my gps fighting with me. We ended up walking in some kind of giant circle before we found the cache. At one point Saz was under a tree and she pointed down and said look at this bug. I came over to look and they were freaking EVERYWHERE. Needless to say we took off quick since these weren't your average bugs!

We sometimes don't look before we leap. So I had printed off a bunch of caches for us to go to without looking at difficulty or terrain. Lucky for us the next cache was easy on the terrain!!!
So there we are standing in the middle of a beautiful tree minding our own business getting frustrated when we hear "Find it yet?" I yell back "no!" Then he said something along the lines of this being a difficult one about a three rating.
Saz and I looked at each other and went oh crud.
Then the gentleman left for a run up the pretty mountain. Leaving Saz and I wondering what in the heck.
After searching for a while longer we decided we needed the clue. *shakes fist* Some clue.

Regardless we did find it. It was one of those things where you are looking at something else when an item comes into focus. A freaking pine cone in a pine tree. UGH
We ended up leaving a note on the guys window. LMAO

After I got home I logged our finds for the day and proceeded to enter in the coordinates for the two new caches we placed. They were accepted right away!! It was a shock. Not only were they accepted right away someone found the first one within a little while! It was kind of exciting because it was his FTF.

Then the trouble started with that cache. To far past a no trespassing sign. Saz and I wondered what they were talking about since we had only seen a no vehicle trespassing sign. So we hopped in the truck and drove over to the site.

You know having Saz live closer to me is freaking GREAT!!!

We drove over in the dark and pulled out our flashlights and of course there is a no trespassing sign. UGH!!!! Turns out the people part had been spraypainted over. So we disabled the cache and decided to move it. Then changed our mind and undisabled it. Got more complaints so we decided to disable it and this time really move it.

However both of us were a little pissed off at this point. Here are these people complaining but they still signed the log. Sigh.

After getting back to the house after having Thanksgiving at grandma's house Saz and I decided to go move the No Trespassing cache and hunt up a few caches for the day. Due to the fact that we were both a little pissy we planned a in your face type of hide. I had the idea to use a magnet to stick to the back of the no trespassing sign. Saz went a little farther and camoed a magnetic key box silver. Turns out the sign wasn't magnetic. But the pole was. I will post pictures in the next post so you can see. We even put a thank you for the hide button inside it to further the thumb against the nose potential. LMAO we are horrible!

Oh are we evil

*rubs hands together in glee

Today Saz and I hid two VERY evil hides!!! We will post pictures as soon as a few people have found them. OH EVIL EVIL girls we are! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Meeting a fellow cacher in the wild

Here are few pictures from when we met Foghead in the wild.

Been a while!

Wow. We hadn't been caching in a month. That stinks, but I moved and spent a whole weekend with that, and I live nearer Hello now so maybe we'll get some spur of the moment caching opportunities.

So she picked me up and off we went. We scouted an area we want to hide one in. We're pretty sure it's far enough away from the cute green snail one we found before. And then we started caching. We spent most of the day in pretty little neighborhood parks. We also found two along a busy street that used to be a creek. The first one was easy to find, so I hid it a little better. The second one was not easy to find. We parked the car and walked to the coordinates. We both knew where it should be, but didn't see it. I forgot to carry the printout with the hint along so Hello had to go get it from the car when we couldn't find it. Still couldn't find it. Darn thing. We turned away from the search spot to ogle this mansion on the other side of the fence. They had a huge pool surrounded by what looked like terra cotta tile, a colorful tennis court....we turned our attention back to the cache and then Hello found it. I swear, it wasn't there a minute ago lol.

We found a good size cache hidden in garlic plants. It was full of tiny crappy things so we filled it up with good toys. Another was hidden near a very nice community pool. It was very hot this day, and not a soul was using the pool. Too bad. Hello spotted the cache right off, but there were two boys hanging out at the nearby picnic table. So we decided to wait them out. It didn't take but a minute or two before they decided to get away from the weird women. I grabbed it down and we filled that one up with good toys, too.

The next coordinates took us to a park with a sculpture. I suppose it's hidden on that sculpture? The one with little girls hanging all over it, playing with their little dolls? Yep. So we plopped down to wait the little girls out, and they ran off away from the two weird women after a minute or two. So we got that one. Poor kids.

We went to a sports park to find a sign only cache. Not my favorite, but a cache is a cache. The coordinates took us to a bench, right next to a green wall, against which a man was kicking a soccer ball as hard as he could. *careful search* WHAM! *cringe* *careful search* WHAM! *cringe*. We gave it a good try but didn't find it. I pulled some garbage out of a bush and threw it out and we went to look for something else.

Okay, you cache hiders you. If you say your cache is not hidden in junipers, but the searcher has to plow through junipers to get to it, you're just plain mean! I got lots of scratches, but I found it. I also hid it much better. The next searcher might lose an eye MWAHAHAHAHA. Oh, excuse me. Ahem. This park did have lots of nice trees. We were a little worried for the cache's safety at first, because the park had been recently attended to and there was a very deep layer of wood chips. If the cache wasn't in the juniper, it may have been woodchipped. But it was in the juniper. Liar.

The last we found was a micro in another neighborhood park, and this one had a playground in it. As we entered, a large flock of geese flew over our heads. They were pretty, and we could hear scads of hummingbirds in the high treetops. They were not bottle brush trees, but it looked like bottle brush blossoms way up there. Whatever it was, the hummingbirds are big fans. The cache was easily found, but not easily replaced. It was one of those tiny little things with a long thin log rolled up inside. Then we played on the swings. Holy crap! After I got going I was afraid I wouldn't stop. I had a lot more momentum working for me now than I did when I was 10. Eventually, I did get off without puking. We played there a bit more, but left when a group of actual children turned up to play.

The last one we tried to find was hard. Walking in, we saw several men walking out, carrying soccer goals. A cute little boy was reaching up as high as he could to get his little fingers under the goal. "I'm helping!" Cute little guy. There were many nearby structures to search, including bleachers. We looked over everything, but were running out of light. So we decrypted the hint and know what to search, but we just couldn't find it. It was getting dark. So, we'll have to go back for that one.

I'm already looking forward to longer days. Darkness at 5pm sucks.

Our first Event of Terror!!

Saz and I planned a busy day for ourselves on Saturday. We had a workshop we were going to where we would meet some fellow cachers for the first time. We were both pretty nervous about it. We both made excuse after excuse as to why we weren't going to go even though we knew we were going to.
We decided to start the day with a cache we have looked for 4 times already. This one was a 4 difficulty so we didn't feel to stupid not finding it but let me tell you we were getting very frustrated. We pulled up with high hopes. We stood there for a second and looked around the same area we had looked at so many times before. We even walked up a hill to see if we could get a different view. Nothing. I had brought a little mirror and started looking in holes. In one I saw something but moved on for some stupid reason. A little later I decided to go back to where I had seen something. I fiddled around with all kinds of things and nothing. UGH. Then I pulled out this little screw that didn't look like you should be able to pull it out and PLUNK there fell the cache at my feet. Saz and I looked at each other with big eyes and then got a big old grin on our faces. Then I had a moment of panic. How in the hell am I going to put it back. Saz of course came to the rescue and figured it out. We walked away feeling like queens. Now we didn't have to ask for clues at the workshop!!
Our next stop was Child of the Flame Station. That's right!! One of our caches we hid had a baby! Someone who found our cache wanted something in it and the only thing they had was a little camoed container. So they took it and hid it. Sniff I am so proud of our little child lol. Anyway, we followed this pretty trail that had a cute little creek running by it. We got to the location and started looking. Saz was on one side of the creek and I was on the other when I hear "Did you find it yet?" in a man's voice. We said no and introduced ourselves to a fellow cacher named Fogheads and his friend Fran. We got to meet a cacher in the wild!!! A real live cacher whose name we have seen on logs and whose caches we have found. We were actually thrilled. They were super nice people. He found it first and then let us hunt for it. After I found it he pointed out poison oak to us. We hadn't seen it without leaves so we would have ended up grabbing it at some point. Thank God for The Fogheads!!
He also let us know about a archived cache in a old stump that Saz found with no problem!! Go Saz!! Then we parted ways and we headed back to the car. As we got in here comes Foghead telling us to come over here. He had found a letter box cache. We looked at the stamps and signed our names. We then found out we were actually going to the same workshop later. We said our goodbyes and left for the next cache.
This one was closer to home. In fact I had seen it pop up right when it was activated and had Saz lived closer to me I would have made her go with me to get it. It would have been our first FTF hunt. But she doesn't. YET!!! Saz is moving closer to me! I cannot tell you how freaking happy I was as we drove to her new apartment to put the down payment on it. I swear it is less then 10 minutes from me. WATCH OUT CACHES!!!
The cache we drove to was actually between our houses. As we drove up we saw a man in a worker's vest and a hard hat. We snickered a bit because it was totally obvious to us that he was looking for the cache. What are the odds of seeing two people in one day at two seperate caches. But he left before we got to it. After a little searching around we finally found it. We giggled at the fact that we did since it was a little bit harder then normal. We hopped in the car and drove to the bank for that downpayment and as we drove back by that cache we just found there were three people looking for it. I had to honk the horn because I am bratty that way lol.
Now it was time for the workshop! This was our first event. It was a workshop to teach us how to build sneaky caches. We drove up and noticed that there was no parking. That is when we started to get a little nervous. Then we saw the house. OMG we almost had a fit. There were tons and tons and tons of freaking people standing all over that yard. We drove by still looking for a parking space and looked at each other in horror. I guess neither one of us is into crowds. We gave ourselves a pep talk as we got out of the car and headed towards the big group. As we walked up I told Saz that she was doing the talking. Now... normally I can't shut up and Saz doesn't do a lot of talking. That totally works for us. However when I told her I wasn't talking she didn't take me serious until about 20 feet from the event when she asked me a question and I said nothing. She gave me a look that would have peeled off my skin. I laughed and told her not to worry...sort of. Why? Because as soon as we got in that group of people I turned shy and quiet. Abnormal for me but that is exactly what happened.
We took the sodas we brought to the backyard and started to try to mingle. We kept sneaking peeks at everyones name tags. Oh didn't I mention that we had to wear name tags? It was kind of nice to put faces to names we have only seen on logs or caches we hunt for. Saz ended up buying me a really cool flashlight that has this long antenna like thing with a magnet on the end. She got herself one too. We also got a few little cache containers and a few garbage bag things. After about a hour we decided to sneak the heck out of there. I couldn't handle not talking and Saz probably didn't no how to handle me not talking lol.
Then we were off for the next cache. They had set up a few caches around the area for people to find during the event. We went to the closest one and it took us way to long to find. And of course while we were searching a cacher and his daughter walked by to go to the store. Lucky for us we found it super fast after that. Off for the next hidden one for the event.
We parked the car and started looking around this electrical box. So we searched and searched and looked and finally found it. We signed the log and got in the car to go. As we pulled away a group of about 15 people from the event come around the corner. We were so damn happy that we found that before getting busted by all these people who have like 5,000 or 7,000 finds. We would have been mortified. We did wave to The Fogheads in that group as we drove away.
We then headed back to a cache that had been muggled the last time we looked for it. Although we knew this time it was there. Can I tell you what an easy find that was LMAO!! After we found it we walked across the park to get another one in the area only to have a group of hoodlum teenagers sitting exactly where we needed to go. So we left that one for later.
We then headed to another area of the park that we needed to drive to. This one we searched high and low for. We couldn't find that one to save our lives. Turns out it was not there. *mental note to self: read farther down then one log to see what's up
Another cache we went to we ended up in a neighborhood that had a fence. Of course it was on the other side of the fence so we had to drive around the street and pull into a store. Once there we had to shhhhhh break into a giant fence only to figure out it was on the other side. We decided it was in the bushes and started to hunt. Nope.. then we decided it was on the fence and even though it was it still took us way to long to find that darn thing!
Our next cache led us to a beautiful rose garden. It was that beginning of twilight time so everything was so darn beautiful. We walked up to this old closed down building. Not a run down building but a building you almost would expect them to open the doors wide open and invite you in. We searched for a bit and then found it. It was a wonderful peaceful place.
The next one was a little different. We walked into a large grove of trees and had to search through there. Harder then it sounds. We LOVED the container though. It was a bell pepper made of ceramic I think. But it was totally clever and it gave us a laugh.
We thought we could squeeze one more in before dark. But when we got there it was almost full dark. And we were blocked by a stupid fence. That didn't stop Super Saz though. She actually got down on her belly and shimmied under and through a fence with her new super flashlight. She gave it a great effort but searching in the dark with a flashlight just didn't work this time. We have to wait two weeks until we can go again. I am looking forward to it.
Look for pictures tomorrow!

A geocaching milestone

Hello and I want to place some really evil and clever hides. There's a masterful hider here we are going to visit next month to learn some cammo tricks, and there's a trailhead micro we've tried to spot three or four times already and we just can't see it. So this day's hunt was all about micros. We found a whole pile of them and learned about some new containers and placements. We have a big tackle box full of fun swag and, even though we were going for micros today, we filled our packs up with trade goodies. Mine was completely empty and that just doesn't feel right, so I crammed in as much as I could. It was as full as it could be and it turned out to be very naughty swag.

Neither of us are morning people, so we only catch a couple before we are ready for lunch. We hunted for one in a huge empty parking lot, empty except for a cop sitting in his car smack in the middle of the lot. We print out the hides we are looking for, and I had it in hand while Hello worked the GPS, so we were prepared to explain ourselves. Despite lurking in and out of the bushes (and getting poked in the eye) he paid us no mind and Hello found it as I rubbed at my eyeball. I forgot my sunglasses and haven't found the safety glasses I want for my pack yet. It was a funny hide, under a cammo'ed container and set in a rat trap! We went for another and didn't look long before I had to pee. So I went to use the bathroom and Hello found the cache. Oh good, says I upon returning, where is it? She made me look for it. Mean thing. So I found it for myself and we chatted with a cute little black squirrel and then we went to find one placed in memory of a fellow who passed away this year. I read the hide description as Hello drove, and we park and (of course) hunt in entirely the wrong area. A young family walks by. "Mommy, what are they doing in the bushes?" asks the little girl. "Looking for their ball", answers mom without missing a beat. I bet that little one asks LOTS of questions. We got covered in ants and spent several minutes ewwwwwing and brushing them off each other. Hello tried to get a butterfly to sit on her finger, but they all had attitudes and wouldn't cooperate. There were about a hundred of them, and one fully grown muggle hopping up and down like a kangaroo. What the hell? Dork. We eventually find the cache. Rest in peace, Fred. Then we head off for lunch. We have japanese food and lavendar tea, use the tree filled bathroom and off we go again.

We found many clever hides, new styles, and as we hunt I am thinking up evil hides with my newfound knowledge. I haven't come up with anything really horrible yet, but I will. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Hello has two evil ideas already, but it's a secret. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! We want to stump one of our longtime local cachers, who hasn't been impressed at all with the few hides we've placed and leaves us teasing logs. In fact, we were going for our 100th find today and we wanted to make it one of his so we could tell him how boring it is in the log to commemorate it. We're a bit snarky. LOL.

A cute green snail was sitting on a cloaked cache stuffed into the bark of a redwood tree. There were many cute snails in there, so I carefully removed and replaced the tiny cache. We also visited another local cacher's house. We're not crazy about residential hides. Whispering, quiet voices, eyes darting around, peering into the yard of the wrong house, quick grab and replace and then getting the hell out of there. I act and feel like a creep. I can see why the burly men who cache alone make some folks nervous. We're not even a little bit scary looking, crazy maybe with leaves and twigs in our hair, but we laughed about what the neighbors must be thinking. Peeking through their curtains, dialing 9 1 and waiting for us to do something before pressing 1 again. We finally find the clever hide, admire a yard full of birdhouses, and get the hell out of there. As we're driving along to the next, I pull my cell phone out. Mostly to make sure I still have it. I forgot to move it out of the meshy front pocket to an inside zipper pocket and as I have it in hand to move it, I realize it's making a call. In fact, it's calling Hello!

"I'm calling you."

"You are?" She pulls out her phone. Ring ring. "You are! Hello?", she answers. Ha ha.

I hang up the phone and it immediately calls her again. Ring ring. I hang it up and it calls her again. Ring ring. WTF? My phone is haunted. Then I realize what's happening. My ear piece is somewhere in the swag stuffed pack, and something has pressed the on button long enough to connect it, and now it is repeatedly dialing the last number I called with it. Ring ring. I hang it up. Ring ring. We're cracking up as we make our way to the next hide. Ring ring. I'm poking at my pack to try and move the naughty bit of swag that's pressing on the autodial button. Ring ring. Holding the phone so I can hang it up. Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring. We get to the next spot and I dump out my pack, find and disconnect the ear piece and place it in it's own little pocket, and off we march to catch our next find. Woo hoo! A creek trail. Do you know you just called me twelve times? Ha! Oh shit, it's directly on the other side of the creek. Wait. We've been over there. We climbed on that brown grate thing, didn't we? We already got that one! Crap. How did that happen? Oh well. The next cache we try is near the same creek, and Hello is triumphantly waving it over her head almost before I've unassed the car. I did the same thing at a large parking lot for commuters. I grabbed something funny and there it was and got a look as I held it up for her to see. Of course a bus came in right then and 40 people got off. Another sent us to "where the old people live". I thought the "old" was a trifle unnecessary....until we got there. Now we think it should be changed to "where the grumpy old people live". I don't think we've ever been scowled at so much.

It's getting late in the day and some clouds have moved in to filter out much of our sunlight, so it's time to get that 100th and we're composing the teasing log we are going to post and giggling on the way there. As soon as we reach the trail entrance, we suspect that we've found this one already, too. Hoping it's only familiar as part of a series in this large hilly park, we head in, but nope. We hunt it down and we did already find it. Crap. Well, we saw two black tail deer and got a mini hike and we've got just enough light to hunt the nearby trailhead micro we've had trouble with. It's rated a four difficulty, so not finding it doesn't make me feel stupid, but I sure would like to get it. All we learned this day about micros did not help, so we gave it up and debated whether to ask for a hint, or try again when we've got more experience. I vote for a hint. Damn thing. I wonder what it is?

101 FINDS! WOO HOO!!

Pictures Pictures Pictures

A hunt and a Hide

Saz and I decided to go geocaching Saturday. We also decided to hide another cache. So while I was waiting for her I loaded up the ammo can and got everything ready for our trip.
Sazy came over and we hopped in the car with the ammo can and drove off to where we did the death hike the last time we went out. I had printed out all of the other caches around it so we would have an idea of where they were so we wouldn't have the you are to close to another cache problem again.
We hiked up the side of a mountain in between two caches, climbed up below a huge tree and climbed a steep incline to put the cache up on a ledge. As we walked back down all covered in dirt and leaves we looked at each other and decided that we were going to be told to move it again. But we kept on going and found a tiny little cache at the front gate.
This time we took lots and lots of pictures.
We were off then to find one right by it in a park that we thought was called Miracle Mountain. Up we climbed thinking we were going the right way only to find out we weren't. So down the hill we went seeing what has become a staple of our caching days. A kitty. This time the kitty wanted nothing to do with us. To bad because I love a good kitty lol.
We finally arrived at the spot and started looking. And Looking. And looking. We decided we needed to look at the clue. Not a live oak. What? Saz and I looked at each other and thought we have no idea what a live oak is. We poked around a bit more in the multitude of different oak trees and got pretty frustrated. At one point I got a long stick and started pointing at trees. Is this a live oak? Saz say I have no idea maybe it is a scrub oak. Is this a live oak? While pointing at another tree. I have no idea. Is THIS a live oak? While pointing the stick up in the air at yet another kind of oak tree. Then Saz goes HEY there it is! Take a look a the picture. We were darn lucky to find that guy. We opened it up and had to remove some crud. Like a splenda packet and a golf ball with a gouge out of it. Who puts stuff like that in a cache?
We hopped back in the car and headed back over towards the cache we had tried to find when I lost my cell phone the last caching trip or so. It had been almost dark when we started searching and our minds weren't on the hunt so we had to take a do not find. This time however we found it! Along with tons of cute squirrels playing "OH my god I hope I don't die when I make this jump" at the very tip tops of these giant redwood trees.
We felt much better after finding it!
The next stop was Vasona park. Of course the stupid lady in my GPS thought that we should be searching on the freeway but we drove around and around until we figured out that it was in the park. We paid our six bucks to get in, parked and set off on foot. There were two in the park so we carried our little packs.
Did I mention we look cute with our little backpacks?
On the way to the first one we heard an ice cream man. There is something about Ice Cream Man music that brings out the little kid in people. Before I knew what had happened I was happily walking along with a missle pop lol.
Pretty soon after getting the ice cream we found the first cache tucked away behind a tree. By now we are pretty happy with ourselves since we have found all of the caches we have searched for. We then headed off towards the next one in the park.
We had to cross over this pretty bridge and then hike around the lake a bit. We found the spot and started searching. This should be easy after all it is a ammo can. Well we searched and searched and searched. Finally we found it under a pile of pine needles. Sneaky caches today YAHOO!
Inside that cache I found the best gargoyle statue. I was freaking excited since I collect them. LOVED IT!!! We filled the cache back up and put it back.
We tend to do that. Take a empty cache and fill it back up with goodies. We figure we would want to find a full cache why not let the next person be happy. We are happy cache fillers lol.
After heading back to the car we came across a whole bunch of geese. Of course I wanted to pet them and Saz wanted to take pictures. She even snapped a picture right before one bit me lol.
We hopped in the car and drove up up up up this windy road to find the next cache. We parked the car in a very expensive area and started down a lovely paved walking path. Nothing at all like we are used to. We are use to gravel or dirt. I guess having money has it's perks. We ended up at this beautiful little bridge with a tiny bit of water running under it. A nice surprise since it is high summer. It took just a few minutes to find the cache. We had a good laugh reading the log book since it said things like.. "there was five of us and it took us over 30 minutes to find it". We wandered back up the pretty trail to the car and headed out for the next one.
We had to sneak through a fence and wander around under power lines to make the next find. We have decided we hate power lines with their crackle and snapping and buzzing. At one point on the trail two huge dogs come out of no where towards us. We had that moment of OMG run before we saw the owner. Like Saz and I could out run dogs LMAO!! We found it inside a fence pole. We have found a few of these but we were kind of shocked when we pulled it out and it was HUGE. Filled with aliens.
By now it was getting to that stage where it is almost dark. Where you are not sure if another hide will put you in full dark or if you can make it. We decided to go for it.
Again we ended up in a fairly affluant neighborhood with a pretty little paved trail. Of course off of the paved trail was a not paved trail where we found the cache. We then decided to go to the next one which was only .1 miles up the road. After getting that one we hopped back in the car to go home but instead ended up at a party store buying more swag to fill our cache bags and cache tackle box up. Yes we have a tackle box filled with swag.
When we got home I entered in the new cache and logged our day's finds. We waited for a little while and then BAM DENIED!!
ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
You are 37 feet to close to another cache.
Funny thing though this time we were ok with it. The next day we made a quick run back and climbed our butts up a rock cliff thing and up a mountain and moved that sucker.
Got home and put it back in with the new coordinates. It was accepted and posted!!! We have our first finder who seemed to like it a lot too.
I am going to post pictures from our outing in the next post since I can't figure out how to put them in where I want them.
I am looking forward to our next cache hunt and hide!!!

Went for a Cache ended up at a Willie Nelson Concert

Hellolost's version:
After spending all day in a seminar I arrived home early. It was 103 so I changed into a tank top and a pair of capri style pants for the concert. I was getting pretty darn excited even though it was only 3:45 and the concert didn't start until 7:30.
At around 4:15ish Sazy calls me and tells me she is only 15 minutes away
She comes in and we leave pretty much right after. We even printed a cache to go visit. Of course on the way to the concert we notice that the terrain is a 3 which would include climbing up a hill in a 103 degree heat so we think forget it.
Saz drove since we would be going home in the dark on a windy road and I don't see very well in the dark. As we drove up the hill I was turning into fan girl. You know those screaming crazy girls.. I have that potential when it comes to Willie Nelson.

The first thing we decide to do is eat. We walk up a tall set of stairs and decide on what we want. I send Saz to go get us a seat in the shade while I order. Two sandwiches, 2 bottles of diet coke and a piece of cheesecake cost $41 In line though there was a semi friendly man in a giant cowboy hat to chit chat with.
After sitting down who should come sit at our table? Our new little buddy Mr. Cowboy hat. We struck up a conversation for a while and then Sazy looks right at him and asks......."Couldn't you find anyone to talk into coming with you?"

He looks at her and points at her.

The rest of dinner goes pretty well and then his phone rings at which point I (miss PMS) say "hey that must be the girlfriend calling bummed out and wanting you to come get her right?
My turn to get pointed at.
We leave the restuarant and head down to the smoking section where we proceed to laugh ourselves silly over people. People in santa hats. People in bright green socks. A woman carrying a 5 year old in a baby carrier on her back. Hats. boobs. shoes. Anything and everything including security guards. I had tears in my eyes from being such a world class bitch.
Then who should we see walking down from the restuarant? Our new little buddy Mr. Cowboy hat.
He points at both of us and says. "hey! there are the troublemakers."
We decide we should go potty at this point and walk through the crowd of people. All kinds of people. All walks of life. We spent a lot of time showing each other our types.
<---likes vampires
Saz----> likes wrestlers
After we found the bathrooms we decided to look at our seats. At which point I was going into excitement overload. We were sitting so close!!!!! CLOSE!!!!!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
The opening act was a little girl ok ok she was about 20 or so in a little yellow dress and a man on a two necked guitar. She had a pretty voice but please shut the hell up. At one point I turned to Saz and told her I had a mental image of her accidently swallowing a fuzzy. A little while later she accidently swallowed a bug LMAO!!!
After she sang there was a brief intermission where we ran up the mountain of stairs and bought a cup of wine for me. $8 Then we went and had another smoke and bashed more people. The bell rang and we went back down the stairs and to our seats to see Willie.
When he came on stage I was so freaking thrilled. He looked good. He sounded good. I wanted to dance. The woman in front of me wanted to dance. We did dance a few times. I made Saz dance too lol.
At one point in the concert the guy in front of us lit the biggest joint I have ever seen in my life. He would blow the smoke straight up but it would come straight back down and go down his aisle of people. The lady three seats down ended up with her head on her honey's shoulder after a while lol.
There was a point in the concert where a disabled man walked down to the stage and put his hat down in front of Willie. Willie took off his bandana and gave it to him and put his hat on and sang two songs wearing this guys hat. They then returned it to him a few songs later. me----> boooooo hoooooo
Also at one point they had people going up to get autographs. Sazy is like "let's go you know you want one."
Me----> :O I will pass out.
Sazy grabs me and we start going down at which point of course the autograph session was over
After the show we waited for the mad rush to be over and I bought a willie shirt Whiskey River with his autograph.. well not a real one but still
We hopped in the car and I didn't get home until about 11:20. I couldn't sleep at all!!!
It was the best good time

Sazy's version
It was great. We got everything we went for.

Found it easy, parked easy, and were in line to enter just before the doors opened. Then we walked around the arena and looked at the food carts and t-shirt shack and then headed up to the grill to have dinner. We had italian panini sandwiches and onion rings and cokes at a large table. A dude joined us, sitting all alone. He heard us talking and joined in. He was nice. I asked him, "Couldn't you talk someone into coming with you?" He said nope. The woman wouldn't come. About the time we finished eating his cell phone rang. Hello says, that's her! Tell her she should have come. I said, tell her you just had dinner with two hot women. We left the grill and when we ran into him later, he said "There are the troublemakers!" We laughed at ourselves quite a bit over that guy. I don't know why, a tad giddy maybe. We were at the Willie Nelson concert! We watched people for a bit too. There was one guy in the shiniest flashiest clothes I'd ever seen on a man, with his goatee dyed to match his shiny flashy yellowy orange shirt. Then I think we went to go pee.

We went to our seats, which were awesome. The warm up chick was a slip of a 20 year old girl named Pricilla on acoustic guitar with a very bored looking Gus on the double neck. He really only chirked up when they played a song they wrote together. She also played a harmonica or kazoo, both of which I would have gladly stuffed up her ass if we were just a tad bit closer. She was a bit annoying with banter that everyone laughed at, I think, because it was just silly. I don't know. We abused her a bit to ourselves because it was fun LOL. After she finished her little set of love songs from a 20 year old's point of view (something about how her boobs are poems - I don't know) they asked her to play two more. Oh no! Willie's dead! SHUT UP! LOL Hello was afraid he'd die before he got on stage. I liked both of these last songs better than her actual set. The first was funny (elephants don't associate with fish, just in case you didn't know) and the second was a simple ballad that really showed off her pretty voice and didn't have any squaking in it.

Hello usually has to be the driver to things like this, so she doesn't get to have a drink. Since I was driving, part of the plan was for her to have a glass of nice wine for Willie (hell, we were at a winery). She sampled the offerings and chose one. I'm one of those, not having a drink is easy. No problemo. Not having a second one is hard. So I stuck to coke so I didn't have to tell myself "no" all night long. Then we hung out until the bell rang, which I think was a 10 minute warning but I'm not sure about that. Then it was Willie time.

He was fantastic. He looks great, he sounds great. We were close enough to see exactly what each musician was doing. I spent time watching their hands, watching the bass player shake his ass, the flashing lights, the lights and shadows zinging on the cut stone and vine covered building they played against and the craziness of the crowd and being surrounded by the good honest music. Willie on his guitar, a bass guitar, a piano, and a snare drum. And of course the obligatory guy who shakes a tambourine and whacks sticks together. He went from one song to another without hardly a breath in between. I was in complete sensory overload. It was surreal. I thought concerts affected me that way because I was always stoned before. Guess not. Huh. There again, a guy in the row in front of us sparked the biggest doob I've ever seen and sent billowing clouds of it over the section. Hello and I sniff at it hopefully, and laughed at the older lady who ducked her head.

He really, really was good. His sister played piano, his daughter joined in on an encore and she really, really sucks.

We spent what we brought to spend and still had a few bucks left. It took hours for me to key down to sleep.
Leaving the venue, we got lucky I think. Our line was the only one moving. There was a bus a few cars back and it might have been Willie's. Anyway, getting out was no trouble and it's usually a lot of angry people just sitting around.

We get to the bottom of the winery and I can't remember whether to go left or right. I decide to follow the guy ahead who goes left. Two other idiots follow me. Everyone else goes right.

So, we are in the mountains, right? No street lights, cannibals and coyotes and shit out there in the total darkness. There's woods out there, but I can't see them. It's dark. Darker than dark, but we are driving downhill, not up and over, so I think we'll come down into one of the funny little towns squished up against the foothills. The GPS won't talk to me. I think she lost me. We know very well by now we made a mistake, nothing is familiar. The guy ahead of me knows he blew it too and keeps putting on his left turn signal. Um, there's a canyon there. He does it again. Um, there's woods there. Braking, signaling, I suspect a small amount of panic up there, but I'm not worried yet. We are still going down. We arrive in the same teeny town we entered to go up, but in a different section. Now I am feeling smart about not getting stuck in the middle of hundreds of cars trying to inch through the tiny downtown. Don't feel too smart, Saz. You followed an idiot and got lucky.

Finally we go again! A new hide and a death hike

Hello took me geocaching yesterday! Yay! I had started threatening to go without her, and I knew she wouldn't stand for that. So off we went.

Hello had a cache in the car ready to hide, and an idea where to put it, so that's what we did first. It was a funny bushy parking lot, sort of odd and all alone. We looked over all of it. One corner kind of stunk, another was full of thorny blackberry bushes, a dog turd guarded a likely spot. At least I hope it was a dog turd. That was the best spot, though, so the turd wary will just have to deal with it.

We went to a historical part of the big park-like cemetary to grab a cache. We had explored this part before without coordinates, just because we were already there. Hiding a cache. Poor little cache. Anyway, Hello found it pretty fast and then we went to lunch.

I'm not real adventurous about food. I'll try almost anything once, though, and we decided on dim sum. I was warned that I might be offered a chicken foot, but that I didn't have to take it. You know, if I were really hungry, and that's what I had, I would eat the chicken foot. But the truth is I've got a few extra meals stored around my middle and I can get along really well without it. Chicken feet are totally unnecessary, and I can't tell you how grateful I am for that. The GPS says the nearest dim sum place is 40 miles away. Awwwwwwwwwwww. We went to The Elephant Bar instead and had an awesome lunch. Later we were caching in the downtown area. We had to give up on one after the other because of events at the college and an art show and $20 parking fees. Kind of frustrating. Then we spotted a dim sum place. Awwwwwwwwwwwww. Too late, we're already full of sweet and sour and teriyaki chicken. Maybe next time.

The next few caches we found, no problemo. We started beating each other up a little bit though. I accidentaly got Hello with a stick, she accidentally got me with another, a bush took a bite out of her foot. I dropped a cache in between a chain link fence and a wooden fence. Things weren't going so well. I was wondering to myself if I could get over the chain link fence and stuff myself down there to retrieve the cache. Hello took the more sensible approach and was able to bring it up by reaching her fingers through the links. She's so clever. We parked near a very pretty small residential park and were accosted by a bossy smart mouthed teen holding an ugly little dog. I had just opened the door when she stalked up and informed us that we were not allowed to park there. It's their house and that's where her mother parks. I informed her that we were not on private property, she does not own the street in front of her house. I didn't get hot, but she had a snotty little attitude and I had a few extra hormones I had to hold on to, so I stopped after making my point. I was sorely tempted to tell her to call the cops to complain if she didn't like it and let them tell her a few things. After she finished and stalked off we just sat there wondering how long we should let her stew. I left the door sitting open. Nope, not moving. HA! Take that, snottty little shit. Hello had a few extra cranky hormones, too, so we sat there and let her fuss and fume a bit before moving to a better, closer spot a short ways up. I didn't want to move, but I didn't want the car to get damaged while we were searching out the cache. So we found a pretty pregnant momma cat and the cache, then we got our first little bit of nature.

The next cache was hidden above a little creek. We could hear it gurgling below the bush and tree we were searching. We could see little shadowy fishes and I was thinking about going down there, but it was a sheer drop of something like 20 feet and I had a cache to find. So I stayed put and looked for the stupid nut jar, for about three minutes, then I wandered off to look for a way down to the creek. I can't help it. I was surveying the only likely spot, wondering if it was too steep and too loose to risk a broken arm when Hello came to find me. She decided it was okay and went off down to the creek. I love Hello LOL. So I followed her down and looked all around while she cooled her tootsies in the creek and pointed things out to me. There were many little fishies, a cat in a tree, a rooster was crowing somewhere nearby (keep an eye on your feet dude!), cute little pot plants, old gross socks, a perfectly good garden hose nozzle. Some day I'll remember a trash bag and take the garbage out with me. We didn't get the cache, we wanted the creek more I guess. It was a cute one.

We cached in front of geocacher's houses a bit. I think we've visited three or four of our compatriots. It still creeps me out to poke around in someone's yard, though. It's probably the only type of cache where I truly remember to be stealthy. We had a couple of other things to do, like finding some place to pee and getting into the Hallmark store before closing. So we took care of that and then it was six o'clock. We figured we had at least two hours of daylight left and headed off to see how many more caches we could pack in. Just one, it turned out, as it turned out to be the death hike. Don't get me wrong, I like the caches planted along a game trail on a high hill. I really do, for the sights and the exercise (I'm a little bit stiff today), and we always end up on a least one of these heart pounders. So, we got our death hike at the end of the day. On our way up we saw an old quicksilver mine, two bunnies, some joggers, a bear cave, sweated a lot, appreciated a stray seabreeze that managed to get over the coastal hills, wondered if we would ever remember to carry some water on a death hike. We got to the cache just as the sun went down. After walking about 100 yards way off trail and through a field of big rocks. Rocks that have been soaking up sunlight all day long. You know who likes warm rocks? Cold snakes. I reminded Hello to watch for snakes. We sat to paw through the ammo can (our favorite!), enjoyed the view as long as we dared and then started down while the sky still held some light. There were a few more joggers in the area so I was convinced we had enough light to get back down. Losing light. Is that a snake or a stick? The bear cave is coming up. Losing light. I've got a flashlight. Should we peek in that cave? Um, no. Hello says, if a bear eats her, I should go ahead and run away. Um, no. Did you know we have a serial killer on the loose? WHAT! Well, I don't know where he is but I saw a link this morning that says there is a serial killer in California. Losing light. Crickets singing from every leaf and golden blade of grass. The killer probably isn't up here, but I didn't open the link so I don't know that for sure. How can you not open a serial killer link? I was late for geocaching!

We're half way down and the light is pretty much gone. The sky is a really pretty deep and dark purple and the trail is still visible under it, so I don't bother with the flashlight. I don't want to draw the attention of a ranger who might give me hell for being in the park past sunset. Nor serial killers. Nor mountain lions or bears. It was completely fully inky dark before we got all the way down, and as we were coming down, a young guy was pushing his bicycle up. I thought, what a dork. If his car is on the other side, he should ride around the mountain, not over, in the dark, where there are animals that would like to eat him. Hello says, watch out now. He'll be coming back down really fast. He did. He was just playing, racing down mountain trails in the dark where he knows people are walking. What a dork. We survived the rest of the walk and we were completely used up and pretty dirty. That's how I know I had a good geocaching day, by the amount of dirt I wash off. Frankly, I was kind of dirty before lunch. Hello had to pull some leaves off me before we went in the restaurant, so it was a great geocaching day and our hide was approved and published. A couple of people ran off this morning to try to be the first. One of them was a little concerned about the turd, but went for it anyway. Because geocaching is awesome!

Saz is real too lol

Here is a quick picture of Saz to prove she is real too. She is standing in front of the easy path of death mountain. Trust me that it is NOT as easy as it looks. About half way up your heart is pounding and you are seeing little spots in front of your eyes.

Our first hide!! SUCCESS Finally

After the 4th refusal of our hide Saz and I were a little frustrated. Actually Saz was turning into a cranky pants LMAO!

Yesterday after work Saz came back over and we drove to DEATH mountain again to move our cache AGAIN. Now I am Miss Cranky Pants and Saz is fine. We start tromping around the mountain to go do the retrieval. After we had the cache in hand we started walking back to the car when this random man in his backyard proceeds to tell us we are not walking on a path. Umm dude I totally am aware that I am not walking on a path. I think I must have given him the look of death or maybe he heard me call him a fuck head because he never said another word to us.

That did not stop me from pretty much demeaning his manhood for the rest of the walk to the car. At this point Saz is laughing at me…

Seems like when Saz is mad I laugh and when I am mad she laughs. That works!

We hopped back into the car and proceeded to drive to a second published cache on the other side of the mountain in the flat part of the park. We wanted to make 100% sure that we were NOT within .1 miles when we hid this one. Of course we couldn’t check on any mystery caches but we had a tiny glimmer of hope this time.

After judging the distance we hopped out of the car and proceeded to walk around this part of the park trying to find a good location. We scoped out quite a few likely locations and decided on hiding it under this oak tree that is probably over 100 years old. After we placed it we both took steps back and eyeballed our hiding spots for any tell tell signs that we hid the cache. It looked good to go! We took the coordinates. Then turned off the gps and turned it back on and took the coordinates again. See.. we learned from our last time lol. We wrote them down and started walking back down to our car.

At this point we decided to take a few pictures of Saz in front of death mountain since we haven’t shown her yet. Of course after a few pictures the camera dies. When the pictures are downloaded I will add them to the blog.

We drove home and entered the new coordinates along with a OMG PLEASE POST THIS note. Ok it wasn’t as bad as that but it should have been lol. We waited for a while to see if it would be approved but it never happened so we decided to go eat and then come home and check to see if it had been reviewed and rejected YET again.

SUCCESS!!!!!!! WOO HOO!!!! Saz and I actually were so freaking happy we hugged each other. I think we might have actually squeaked out a tear lol.

Saz went home and about a hour later I get a text that says Woo Hoo. We were so freaking happy.

We have had two finds since it was posted. Both happened today. I am so happy that our journey with that cache is over!

Our first hide part 3

Boy, we had a busy weekend! With a mixed bag of successes and failures.

You may remember what happened to our first hide (disgusting!). The second had to be moved because it was too close to a published cache. No problemo! We measured more carefully and moved the sucker further down the trail. Then it was too close to an unpublished secret cache. So (sigh) we hauled ourselves up the mountain trail again and moved it down the hillside and much further off the trail and crossed our fingers. Then it got rejected for being too close to the first cache we crowded. Actually, we were right on top of it. Oops! We gave the guy the coordinates to the micro we first crowded! LOL

Hello had a family event on Saturday in a community rose garden and I went along, then we went caching afterwards. We found one in a cute neighborhood park, at the far end where there were some christmassy looking pine trees and an awesome cat. We petted the cat and found the cache, petted the cat, petted the cat some more. Hello would have liked to take that cat home but he was collared and tagged and obviously well taken care of, just enjoying some "me" time in the park. We went back up the mountain to retake the coordinates of this stubborn second hide and to try to find another before dark, but had to quit on it for the night. Soon, Hello realized her cell phone was missing. Crap. Could be anywhere. A phone call to the family didn't pan out, we hurried back to the rose garden, no phone there. Now it was full dark and we had to call it an evening and get some food. Hoping for some good news, we checked on our hide. It was STILL too close to that secret puzzle cache. CRAP! It wasn't our best caching day. So, we decided that Sunday would be our day. We'd find the phone, move our cache to just the right spot, and a stubborn Hello baby would be born. His poor momma had been trying to evict him for two days. We were exhausted, so we vegged in front of Finding Nemo and then called it a day.

Sunday we raced off to undo all our failures. No one reported kidnapping Hello's phone from the rose garden. We checked the christmas tree/cat park, no luck. We went to retrieve our second hide and hopefully get far enough away from the secret one (seriously, is this guy hiding his allowance in there or what?). So we haul ourselves up there and retrieve our cache, and what do you suppose is lying right on top of a field of golden leaves, glinting silver in the sun? Hello's phone! I swear to God, it winked at me. Does it work? Yes! HA! Here we go now. Everything is going to be alright. We are going to walk far away from this crappy hillside and plant this cache just right. A woman helpfully let us know there was a five foot snake in the area earlier in the day. "Thank you", I call back. I'm thinking, there's 10,000 snakes in here. Thanks a whole frackin' lot. You've saved my life, seriously. A snake was on the mountain? Did you call SWAT? The National Guard? Hello, get your mace out! Oh yes, I'm getting testy, knock it off. It's going to be approved today and we can spend the last part of the day watching to see if the first to finders come a-runnin' and see if we hid it well enough for the old timers to look confuzzled once or twice. We hide it really well, simply setting it among the natural landscape and camo'd with natural materials. The old timers will be all over it but someone like me is going to curse a little (or a lot) before they end up hands and knees in the dirt and simply pull it out with a relieved grin lol. We send in the new coordinates and go caching. When we come in later to check, we have no approval but we do have a baby! YES! Everything is going to be alright. We go caching, come back to check and, we are still too close to the super secret puzzle cache. Mother........let's say I hit the end of my patience with this cache I have to stay away from but it's location is a secret. What the fudge? We were finally advised just to avoid that whole mountain. Thanks guys.

As I rinsed off a serious amount of dirt, muttering about how this is supposed to be a game and why be so serious and closed mouth about this cache I can't get away from that must contain state secrets or a Honus Wagner card or SOMETHING just too frackin' special to tell me about, I finally remembered to tell myself the same. It's a game. Don't like the rules? Don't play. You don't complain about not being able to find a cache because you like to be in the park anyway. Go get your cache off the mountain and try somewhere else. Enjoy the scenery, fill your shoes with foxtails, be happy.

Meatloaf says "two out of three ain't bad". That was okay for Sunday, but we are going to find the perfect spot tonight. I know it.

The hide part 2

Saz and I were so excited about our first hides! I wish you could have seen us giggling as we hid both hides. We were so sure that we had to wait 72 hours before they published them and allowed people to look. The website says it can take up to 72 hours.

Imagine our surprise when in the morning we woke up, drove to work and found out that our cemetery cache had been published!! Not only had it been published but someone had already found it!! That started an email campaign back and forth.
“Did you see Rocket girl found it?”
“Yes!!!”

We were thrilled. Refreshing over and over just to see if someone else had come. I told my coworker Tyler about how our cache was published. He has just started caching due to me lol. About 15 minutes after I told him I went looking for him to ask a question. He wasn’t there. I looked for his car and it was in the parking lot so he hadn’t left. I figured he was just in someone else’s office. I sat back at my desk and opened an email from him. The picture you see…That’s Tyler. He snuck out of work to go find our cache. LMAO!!

On and on it went all day. “Did you see!” “Yes!!” We felt like proud parents. I had to go to an offsite meeting and when I finally got home I sat down at my computer and started to read my emails. I was horrified. This is the email I got!
We went to your geocache at the cemetery today. When we got there someone was already signing the log so we drove on and parked a discreet distance away. We saw him signing, and saw him go over to the tree two times...once with the cache (we think). The second time he went to his camper and then returned to the tree. We couldn't see if he had anything in his hands. After he left we drove to the obvious nearest parking location. Before we could get out of the truck a maintenance guy in a white truck drove up behind us, up the curb, and across the graves to the tree. It looked like he has a GPS device. He walked right over to the tree, fumbled around in the large partially covered hole, and seem to hide something in his jacket as he went back to his truck. He drove off, but only far enough away to watch my family wander around looking at headstones. He actually moved his truck, every 5-10 minutes, but was always obviously watching us (not working or anything like that).
Eventually he left. My grandkids went over to the tree to look for the cache. My grandson pulled out a container, thinking it was the cache.
It was about a quart sized jar filled with liquid and brown solids.
It smelled really bad. He immediately put it back, came back to the truck, and we loaded up and left. I don't know if you need to check this one. I don't know if the maintenance guy was just waiting for us to leave so he could return the cache to the location. I have only bad ideas about the contents of the jar. Even if the cache is in the same hole as the jar of putrid smelling stuff I wouldn't dare to put my hands anywhere near it. I don't want to post a public log with this information. I would appreciate some feedback from you to know if we're being duped, or stupid, or not very savvy. I honestly hope the maintenance guy was just waiting for a chance to put the cache/log back in place and our presence stopped him. Wish he had just initiated some conversation so we could have figured it out while there.

OMG!

So I had Tyler run and go check on it. I asked him to email me as soon as possible. Of course the Mr. came home and wanted to go to Walmart. So there I am fretting while in Walmart. I finally couldn’t stand it anymore and called Tyler. He told me it was missing. CRAP! So I told the Mr. that I had to go to the cemetery. That I needed to see. Inside the tree was a “new” container filled with human waste. Someone took our cache and replaced it with human waste! What kind of person does that?

Saz and I were horrified. We also laughed. A lot. I think it was either laugh or cry. .. OR get angry. We decided to be horrified. We also decided that was NOT going to stop us from hiding our next cache.

Did I mention that we were 138 feet to close to a micro to place our giant ammo can? Did I mention that we have to haul ourselves back up a huge mountain to move it a little over 138 feet? UGH.

BUT… we can’t wait to see what happens with our next one. We are excited still. If something does happen to this one though we will turn all the rest of our caches into members only!

Our First Hides!! part one

After lots of careful planning we were ready to plant some caches. How exciting! I couldn't wait to get one out there so I could watch the seeker's logs. I'll tell you about the hide. Hello will tell you about the "logs". :|

We've been shopping for and planning out our Lost themed caches almost since we started geocaching. We wanted to rack up some experience first so we would have fun and exciting finds for our fellow cachers to enjoy. We finally had all we needed, chose two good spots and got two boxes ready to go, each packed with a travel bug (sending John Locke on his Walkabout was first), an unactivated geocoin for the first to find, lots of cute little toys and games and colorful trinkets. We couldn't wait for the weekend so we ran out after work to hide them.

The first one we placed in a cemetary that Hello visits almost daily for her afternoon walk. We each went back and forth about whether it was okay to plant one there or not, but not for long. It's a really big place, full of huge old trees, beautiful statuary sprinkled throughout, memorials for all faiths, a memorial for the victims of 9-11. You might not expect it to be so, but it really is a nice place to spend some time. Very peaceful, pretty, and park like. There is an older section that is seldom visited. The grave markers from that time period can be ornately carved or serenely simple. I looked them all over, but what's really special about this part of the cemetary is a huge old old tree with a huge hole in it. A really big hole, so big you could climb through it and sit inside that tree if you wanted to. That's where we planned to leave our hide and, after dismissing any misgivings we decided to go ahead with it. We both really like finding ammo cans and we have those ready for our Lost "hatches", but that didn't suit this hide, too heavy, so we packed a tupperware with goodies instead and hung it inside the tree. We also got the coordinates of a spot with a spectacular view and those of the 9-11 memorial to add to our hide announcement and we were very excited about it. Any cachers who weren't turned off by a cemetary hide would enjoy visiting this one.

Then we had a gross Jamba juice. It was advertised as an orange delight, or something similar, but tasted like bananas, which neither of us like. Yucky.

The next hatch was going on a hiking trail we went hunting on a couple of weeks ago. At the time, we both remarked how pretty the area was and how nice the trail was to walk on, so we wanted to plant a hide there. It turns out there are only a few caches here and plenty of room, and there was a micro already hidden near the entrance. When we were here before, we weren't up to hunting micros yet. We've gotten a few now, so we were going to find that little sucker on our way out. We entered the trail lugging our ammo can hatch, hoped the muggles wouldn't call in the bomb squad due to the can, picked a trail and walked off to find the perfect spot. After hauling ourselves up a very steep path, we found the perfect spot just off the path. There were muggles offroading on the other side of the trail but they weren't paying us any attention. So we planted the can, stuffed with Desmond's travel bug (he's searching for Penny), an unactivated geocoin for the first to find, lots of toys, games, colorful trinkets, and pennies. This is another type of hide that I really enjoy, being in little wild spots just steps from civilization. So we left the park very pleased with the placement. We spent maybe half a minute looking for the micro before Hello just walked up and plucked it out of a hinge on the fence. Sometimes I could kick her. Just kidding!

Then we headed back to Hello's house to activate the caches and settled into impatient waiting. We didn't have to wait long. The cemetary cache was approved that night, but the hatch on the trail needs to be moved. It's too close to the micro, so we'll go move it this evening and hope it's approved for the weekend cachers.

And that is the tale of our first hide.

Our first Micro hunt

Saz and I have spent all of our time hunting larger containers. We were afraid to look for micros I think. And the idea of some super tiny thing with just a log didn't sound appealing. Where was the fun in something that you can't paw through tiny treasures?

Since we are in the process of creating our own geocaches to hide, we only had a half day to search. So we decided to try a few micros and go look at a potential hiding spot for one of our caches. I found it during my daily walk and wanted Saz's approval on it.

Saz printed out a few caches to seek and showed up around 2 on Saturday. We stopped off to get something to eat and then set out on our very first micro hunt. We stopped at a tiny little itty bitty park and began searching. Funny how we noticed two homeless people sleeping away and were still stealthy enough to find the cache shaped like a fish and sign the log without being noticed. Because I live down the street I was kind of disturbed that this little childs park had homeless people in it. If they sleep there during the day every day it finally explained to me why I never ever see children in there when I drive by. That is just to bad.

Then Saz said... Micro's aren't hard. UGH shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh don't jinx us Saz!!

Our second cache was at a library. This one was a little tougher. Thanks Saz! After a bit of searching we finally found it up in a tree. Here is the problem though. We are short! It took some fancy ummm reaching to finally get it down and sign it.

We went to the next one at a school and after searching through bushes for over 20 minutes we realized that we were totally in the wrong place. After moving to the proper area we finally found the cache. Man this one was smaller then the other two but still not what we were expecting.

The next one however knocked our socks off. After walking back and forth along a fence line I spotted this tiny pokadot on the fence. It was the size of a thumbnail. Tiny. Somehow they were able to put this freaking tiny tiny little rolled up paper inside that I was worried to death we would not be able to roll back up after signing. I have tiny hands and this thing was tiny in my hands. Unreal! I hope we don't find to many more of those.

We found another that was just a log sheet attached to a magnet stuck under a bench. We had to wait until a woman got up and left before we could get to it. Not to thrilled with micros....

The last one we found was actually in a playground. I found that kind of odd. How do lone men look when they are searching inside a playground. It was weird enough two grown women searching but I feel sorry for men. It took us playing on the teeter totter and grabbing our inner child for us to be able to find this cache.

So we found all the micros we went looking for. I like the bigger ones better. I like the opening of the container and the excitement of looking at the stuff inside. Micros are fun to hunt but they are missing something.

Did I mention that Saz and I walked through a masoleum? Kind of creepy but fun too.

A dirty sweaty day

WOW!

We haven’t spent a full day caching like this in awhile. At the end of the day, we were as filthy and worn out as we could be, and Hello brought home a nasty hitchhiker. A TICK! Gross! I’ve been told a large tan tick is a wood tick, and they are not dangerous, but the little dark ones are deer ticks and can make you sick. I don’t want to cover myself in poison, but I don’t want a tick either. I’ll have to think about this.

We missed finding two caches pretty early in the day (found some blackberry bushes and a prickly pear cactus instead), so we had a slower than usual start. We’ll go back to those, but we did find one down a path that used to be a railway. I think my favorite part of caching is finding these funny little areas I’ve only driven past without even noticing. We walked down the old rocky railway bed and Hello found the cache. We took two travel bugs and left a travel bug. We like travel bugs. We also found an apple, but no apple tree, so methinks a cacher left this area a little hungrier than he/she entered it.

We got another one at an ancient entrance to the city college. Parts of the college have been updated to look very modern, but this out of the way area made me remember what it was like when I was a kid. A woman wandered by and offered us some religious pamphlets. She was nice and went on her way pretty quickly. Hello found this cache, too, a really clever hide. She knew where to look as soon as we drove up, but patiently worked the numbers until she got there. We got two more travel bugs. Woo hoo!

We had a nice sushi lunch. Er, Hello had a nice sushi lunch, I had a bento box. They had a strange bathroom, a couple of big fake trees filling the little room and a huge wall mirror facing the toilet. I’ve never watched myself pee while nestled among leaves and branches, so that was something.

I was looking forward to one cache that had birdhouses nearby. It was at one end of a really long, long, grassy park. It was a beautiful, completely empty park. We walked along with our GPSes, marveling that no one was in the park when Hello suddenly stopped. “Listen”, she said. I listened. This park was making use of the strip of land beneath power wires. Those wires were humming and buzzzzzzzzzing in a really unnerving way right over our heads. We got the cache and moved along, and completely forgot to look for the birdhouses. The buzzzzzzzzzzzzzing was really creepy. So we ran off to the next one, which was also under the power lines! This was harder to find. We ended up visiting three different parts of this large park, sort of a giant triangle. The GPS was all over the place. I blamed the buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing power lines for my trouble. We found half of the cache container, the other half and the contents had been kidnapped. This was a really clever cache container. Too bad someone ruined it. But we did see a sculpture with creepy eyes and a nice dog park with a very happy dog galloping along, and another dog had stationed himself outside a hole in the ground and was extremely focused on it.

Then we got into some serious offroading along a hiking trail. We were up and down the trail, up the hill on one side of the trail, down the hill on the other side of the trail, looking for game trails in the long dry grass, collecting foxtails in the shoes and sticker balls on the clothes. A tree grabbed Hello by the head and tried to rip her hair off. I was having trouble picking up any coordinate anywhere and was all over with this one. I really like hunting along the hiking trails and big trees and bushes, but this was a toughie, and we were hot, sweaty, and dirty when we finally emerged with swag in hand. Well, we proclaimed, we got our workout. Then we returned to a previous cache that we missed because it had been muggled the first time. We like to go back for the ones we missed for one reason or another, and then we hit the drive through for giant sodas.

We looked for one near the entrance to my favorite creek trail. It was not on the trail, but on the sidewalk outside it along a very busy street. I climbed over the railing to check the wild side of the wall, but it wasn’t there. Stealth was not possible on the street side so we just gave the whole wall a good looking over, found a benchmark, but could not find the cache or a shred of evidence of one. It’s a really good hide or it got muggled, so this will be visited again another time.

Someone forgot to bring the park pass (that would be me, forgot the camera, too) so we parked outside and walked into a lake park full of BBQing families. How can we cache in here? It’s slam full of people! Following the numbers, we enter the park and then walk quite a ways past the lake, then headed up into the hilly walking trails. Ah ha! We were certainly getting our exercise today! Hello’s GPS took her in one direction and mine took me in another. She was up the trail on one side and I was down the trail on the other side when my giant soda insisted on leaving, immediately. So I moved a little further out of sight of the trail and hunkered down to pee in some long dry golden grass. It tickled lol. I heard Hello holler out so I went back her way and we sorted through the nicely hidden cache she found. On the way down the hill I managed to remove a small stick from my underwear without Hello noticing. She managed to find us a short cut back to the car through a hole in the perimeter fence. She’s my hero.

We ended up on one more hilly park walk. It was beautiful, but I was running out of steam, to be perfectly frank, so I didn’t do much offroading, lol. We got the cache, and it was lovely up there. The valleys are full of smoke from all our wildfires so the view was a bit spoiled. I’d like to go back this fall when a little rain will clean the air up. I’m sure it’s stunning, and the walking paths are in excellent shape. For our final hunt we went back to one we missed before near a music store. We still couldn’t find it. The GPS was having more issues with me. Hello was in one area consistently, and I was walking along one side, then it changed and I ended up on the other, then it seemed to want to go in the store, so I circled around to the front of the building and then it was happy, then the numbers changed again and FRACK I don’t know. I went back to where Hello was searching and before much longer we quit on it. It was getting dark, and we were filthy and tired out. So we went home, showed Mr. Hello our new travel bugs and made a plan to move them along.

I think the power lines scrambled the handheld GPS’s brain a bit, so next time it wants me to wander off I’ll just put it in my pocket and stay near Hello instead. Unless I have to pee.

The rest of the Grandma Trip

After we found the beautiful winery and grandma got her applause we decided it was time for the second cache. Of course grandma was all fired up now. She figured she could find anything. Saz and I kept quiet because we have learned the hard way that right after you start boasting you have a string of not found caches.
Due to the fact that we were in the mountains right next to a freeway we had a interesting journey. We would be traveling along and it would tell you to make a left... well kind of hard to make a left where a center divider is. But we finally made it to our second cache location.
There was this long winding sidewalk that led down into an old abandoned golf course. There were giant blackberry bushes along the side and every once in a while we would find a yummy ripe one. We walked all the way down hill to the bottom and started our search. Saz found it under a tree under a piece of concrete. Grandma had to hold the container and read the log. She told Saz that she had LET her find it LMAO!!! Then we turned to walk back to the car.
I have no idea how this happens. We walk a leisurely walk and then end up with a monster hill to climb to get back to the car. Grandma, Saz and I looked up and I know all of us thought oh crap! We truded up the hill in the boiling heat and were all tomatoes by the time we finally reached the car. Needless to say we needed full blast air conditioning to become human again.
After a wonderful lunch we continued on to the next one. By now the temperature was soaring. After truding along through mountains of poision oak on every side of us we decided to not look for that one anymore. We were all wearing shorter pants and none of us wanted to catch poison oak lol.
The next one was better. Grandma wanted to stay leaning against a tree in the shade while saz and I wandered down this bike trail in the middle of no where. We were searching for a ammo can. One of our favorite type hides. They hold so much stuff lol. I noticed the GPS said it was up the side of this hill. Well I am deathly afraid of heights so poor Saz had to climb. I'm pointing to areas and she is the mountain goat. When we found it it was so full! So there I am at the bottom wishing I was at the top stareing longingly at Saz with her hands in the Cache. We ended up rescuing a dinosaur TB and a boyscout travel bug and leaving a firefighting travel bug there. It seemed fitting since California is on fire lol.
After taking a while to see if Saz could get down the hill without killing herself we headed our sweaty dirty selves off to the last one for the day. You could see that Grandma was tired. We thought we were going to another winery. Start the day wine tasting end the day wine tasting. Nope. We ended up in a vineyard. I ended up scrabbling along the side of this cliff thing while Saz ended up in some drainage ditch and grandma sat in the car with the air conditioning. The cache ended up being on the guardrail between Saz and I so neither of us actually had to do the mountain climbing in the first place lol.
When we got back in the car grandma kept talking about how she stayed in the car to let us have a chance to find some caches since if she went looking we wouldn't have found any lol.
We had a blast and will be going again down here soon.
Saz just bought her new cache bag so we need to fill that up with stuff and we will be ready. Now... if we could just remember to bring some water lol

Saz and I decided to take a trip up to Placerville to show my grandmother what "all this caching business" was about. I went through caches within 3 miles of her house and printed out a few that looked fairly easy on terrain and larger cache sizes. Didn't want to bum her out if we couldn't find one lol.
We got up Saturday morning and bundled grandma in the car and entered our first coordinates. She asked question after question. What are we looking for was one of them. How to explain that every one we have found has pretty much been different. So we told her that it will probably look out of place. Quick and easy answer.
What a surprise it was for us to end up on a road neither of us has ever been on before. After all she has lived in Placerville almost 20 years now and I visit her at least once a month.
We followed a small side road and came to a beautiful winery. After Saz and I admired one of the more perfect areas for a cache we started looking with grandma. We got the general area with the car garmin and started searching. There goes Saz off in the distance. Why? no idea. She was no where near the search area.
With grandma and I in the general area we started looking around. Grandma turned to me at one point and said this is frustrating why do you like it. lol. Then she headed off to the other side of the area we were searching. Not 5 minutes later I hear "is this it? it rattles?" As grandma holds up the cache.
Here is where it got so cute. Up in the window a gentleman starts applauding. Congratulating her on the find.
Saz and I never got applauded before lol.
We took the container around a corner and I showed grandma how to open it. She was sooooo thrilled. Talked about how clever it was. I let her take the stuff out of it to look at. I told her she could pick an item to keep. She got a big smile and took a quarter. I put in a geocoin and handed her the bag of goodies we keep with us when we cache and told her to pick something to put in to replace what she took. Now it was my turn to laugh. She had to put a few things in. She was so proud.
We then let her put the container back and walked into the winery where we tasted a few wines. YUMMMMMMM I have got to go back and get that desert wine. Grandma bought a bottle that she said was for celebrating her first cache.
Here are a few pictures.
Grandma first Cache and Grandma and I looking at the log

It's a turtle!!

Just thought I would share the picture of myself (Hellolost) and a weary traveler we found... And yes it was hot outside.

The hunt of death lol

There is this hide we’ve spent hours looking for in a very pretty urban park. The dirt ground is swept clean, the redwood trees are awesome, lots of grass – nice park. With a horrible hide in it. We’ve hunted and hunted and left dejected and low so many times. You see, almost immediately after we give it up as impossible, another cacher would find and log about how easy it was. “Walked right up – maybe 30 seconds of looking – thanks for the easy hide!” Yeah yeah. So back we’d go. I find myself pacing the fence line, scanning every square inch of ground, glancing at Hello, hoping for a gesture of excitement. She often had her arms wrapped completely around the pretty redwoods, praying to the tree spirit for help I assume, or weeping quietly to herself. I couldn’t quite tell through my own tears of frustration.
So that’s how we started the day.
Spent an hour with more of the above. Giving each other grim looks as we passed by one another. Lots of innocent muggles in the park today, playing basketball, throwing horseshoes, running on the grass.
Hello says we need a cover story, so we are looking for a tag that fell off the dog’s collar. Okay, works for me! So I am staring up into an oak tree when a man asks me what I am doing. So much for the cover story. I tell him we are playing a game, like a scavenger hunt, and something has been hidden for us to find. He was interested, asked some questions and told me how he came across one in another park. He didn’t know what it was, but he signed the log and put it back. Nice fellow. One muggle educated! That’s a first for us.
An hour later, CRAP! I quit. Let’s go find something else and come back with a fresh point of view. So off we go.
A couple of our hunts today included solving puzzles, which we aced because we are fabulous. We got a couple of hides in town, one of them in a cacher’s front yard! We sat down in his driveway to dig through it. Stealth, thy name is not Hellolost nor Saz. Have to work on that. There was one in a strange rocky park across the street from a garage band. They did not entertain us for very long, maybe a minute or so before they stopped playing some fast metal music that had me bobbing my head. Maybe they were watching us. We got this one after a bit of searching. I got a tiny thorn in my finger, too, that is starting to blister up. It still kind of hurts.
But that was nothing compared to what happened at the bomb site. This cache site really did look like a bomb went off. There was a crater and huge chunks of concrete and twisted metal things and some nice soft looking green plants. Stinging nettles and Hello in open topped shoes!
Ouch!
Ouch!
ACK!
Get some real shoes!
Okay!
Ouch ouch ouch.
In the car and wiping feet with antibacterial wipes. I shouldn’t have laughed, but it was kind of funny.
There is a walking trail near eBay where we found one. Tree cover made nailing down the coordinates hard, but the area was not very large and we got it. We walked around the water district's perc ponds, some we hadn’t been to yet, so that was good. This was a small walk and a clever hide. We saw a lizard here that was about 18 inches long. I thought he was icky – too snakelike. So of course, Hello adored him and wanted to pet him. He ran for it, lol.
Another clever hide was found along one of the prettier urban trails beside a clear and free flowing creek. We’ve been along this creek many times already and it’s one of the nicer places to have a walk to see what you can see. There were two pretty mallards floating in a peaceful tree covered spot, and that’s about all I saw besides hordes of muggles enjoying the trail as well. In fact, as we stood beside the trail to check our location, two bicycles went by and one definitely said “geocachers”.
Gotta work on that stealth bit. Honestly.
We did some hunting up near the famed albino colony of Shannon Road. They may also have been murderous cannibals. There are stories. We looked for three caches along the hilly dirt trail, possibly amongst poisonous snakes and plants. My favorite! The first near the trail head has likely been muggled. We found a movable brick in a retaining wall, behind which was a hollowed out spot that must have been made for a cache. So we went down the trail to catch the second one. We had to leave the trail and Hello spotted the poison plants, so we managed to avoid those. I made some noise with my feet and kicked pinecones and stuff around, no rattling rattlesnake, so we felt free to examine the off trail area and it was found fairly quickly. We were on the upper part of the trail and the view of the south valley below us was gorgeous. We also saw a few lizards, the ordinary short ones that I think are cute, poppies and pink flowers, but no albinos.
The next one was at the bottom of the trail, likely an hour walk down the mountainside, so we hiked back up to the car. Which was parked on top of a steep hill about 300 feet from the trail entrance below. Again. Why do we keep doing that to ourselves? I think it’s a subconscious quest for exercise. So we hauled ourselves up the hill and drove off in search of refreshment. We headed into a rustic area with no water.
Again.
A couple of Big Gulps and we were off. The third cache near the bottom of this trail, we didn’t get it. We might have, we were absolutely in the right spot, but it was also directly on the trail head on a residential street. A woman suddenly appeared in front of a house. When she was not staring at us, she was staring at a bright yellow fire hydrant.
Just absolutely studying it.
It is either the most interesting and coolest fire hydrant in town and she was afraid we’d steal it, or she was keeping an eye on us. Likely the latter, so a bit creeped out, we left this one for another day.
We finished the day with our old nemesis amongst the redwood trees. Pacing, muttering the hider’s verses, hoping for a lightening bolt of inspiration, cursing him and his evil hide anyway.
Crap crap crap.
No friggin’ idea.
We have to ask for a hint. Done for the day.
Mr. Hello took us out to eat as we brooded over that darn hide that every cacher but us has found so easily. We part company and Hello logs our finds and begs for a clue. We were happily obliged the next day and we ran over there to try, try again. We had a smaller location to search and the approximate cache size. I swear, we spent another hour combing through just ONE CORNER of this park and if you don’t think I felt dumber than a block of concrete, you’re wrong! I did find an arrow, which I thought would be fun to poke Dr. Jekyll with if I ever met him. It’s in the car just in case. Then…then…we found it! We both went right through this spot so many times. ARGH! It was very anticlimactic. We should have had the sucker four searches ago. Oh well. We went and spent some money on swag and felt better. I might not poke Dr. Jekyll afterall.