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.