Just thought I would share the picture of myself (Hellolost) and a weary traveler we found... And yes it was hot outside.
Monday, June 16, 2008
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.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
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.
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.
awwwwwww a turtle
and now the continuation of the Adventures of Saz and Hello
I printed out a bunch of caches for Saz and I to find on Saturday and included one that we didn't find the last time. My anal nature came out and I "borrowed" a tool box from Mr. Hello to put all of our swag and toys in. So by the time she got here I had everything lined up on the table ready for her inspection. We oooed and ahhhhed over what we each had gotten in the mail. Saz got travel bugs and I got two ammo cans and two geocoins. And then we hopped in the car.We pulled up to the first hunt which just happened to be the one that we missed last time we went out. We got out and walked over to the area and started looking. And we looked. And looked. And LOOKED. At one point I could no longer see Saz. Kind of freaked me out a bit. I yelled "SAZ" I hear "over here" coming from a bush. You completely couldn't see her inside that bush. I laughed and we decided we had spent enough time looking. Turns out we spent a hour. So that was Do not find #2. Pissed us both off. We will find that damn thing.
We got back in the car grumbling a bit. We proceeded to find a few and not find a few. At one of our not founds I had to actually laugh out loud when I looked over at Saz as she lay down on the ground in the leaves under a bush Some of the best finds for the day were totally fun. We actually went to a cemetery. Have I told you how much I love cemeteries? We walked around and said hi to the guys relatives. I found the cache inside this wonderful old tree. It was tiny but just the location was great.
One of the locations was in front of a office max. We kept walking back to the light pole where it said it was and then spread out. Turns out it was inside the bottom of the pole. Who knew those things lifted.
We also did a multi. Where we had to go to one location in order to find the cache location. We had to walk a maze on the ground while writing numbers next to the authors names in the order they were on the ground. I did the walk while Sazy did the numbering. I felt like a goon walking in circles but it turned out fun. We then head off to find the cache. After walking around a nice lake I see something on the path up above.
A Turtle!!!
So off I go about a hundred miles an hour. Saz probably thought I was loony. I pick up this cute little water turtle. Saz actually knew the name of it. Red eared..lkfj;kaf;kf;ajs. hell I can't remember. We walked it to the lake and I set it down. You should have seen that sucker move once it realized it was free! Then we walked the rest of the way to the cache. It was in blackberry bushes.
Sorry Saz .
We got a beautiful butterfly geocoin from it. As we are walking back Saz says she almost fell in the lake. I missed that. *snort.
These caches are totally out of order by the way.
We decided to go rescue a trading bug from a cache in a park called Vasona. We pull up and there is this giant party going on. But we seem to be the worlds worst stealth people on the planet so we went for it. Walking through ivy. I hate ivy. walking back and forth across the street. Walking back into the park... walking through the fucking ivy again. Finally saz finds it. No it wasn't in the ivy. We rescued the travel bug and because I had gotten so irritated... errr pissed off... I kept our other travel bug to put somewhere else. Stupid cache UGH.
Another cache we went for was good for some laughs. As we pulled up in the parking lot there was a group of rennisaunce (sp) people.. ok.. err budget rennisaunce (sp) people. I guess they were playing swords in the park We hopped out and walked up this path. As we got to a turning point we saw 5 deer. They were beautiful. The spot was beautiful with little bridges over a trickling creek and a mini waterfall. I loved that spot.
We then had to hike up this little ugly trail where I got my prerequisite ouchy trying to get this cache out of a fence post. The walk back was nice.
OH I almost forgot about the attack of the dead squirrel. Saz scared the hell out of me as she comes running through the ivy (yes more god damn ivy at another cache) with her hand on her heart saying don't go over there.
Me-----> WHAT?
She then tells me it was a dead squirrel..... but see at this point I am thinking homeless man who grabbed her leg. Dead body...I had to try really hard not to laugh.... Saz found that cache.We are becoming cache homing devices I think. We are pretty much getting to the point where one or the other of us knows where something is going to be. For example I walked up to the fence post and just grabbed the lid without looking anywhere else. I just reached in a tree hole. Saz finds things in spots I wouldn't think to look at. I can't wait to go again
When are we going Saz?
ooo Saz took pictures of the turtle
I printed out a bunch of caches for Saz and I to find on Saturday and included one that we didn't find the last time. My anal nature came out and I "borrowed" a tool box from Mr. Hello to put all of our swag and toys in. So by the time she got here I had everything lined up on the table ready for her inspection. We oooed and ahhhhed over what we each had gotten in the mail. Saz got travel bugs and I got two ammo cans and two geocoins. And then we hopped in the car.We pulled up to the first hunt which just happened to be the one that we missed last time we went out. We got out and walked over to the area and started looking. And we looked. And looked. And LOOKED. At one point I could no longer see Saz. Kind of freaked me out a bit. I yelled "SAZ" I hear "over here" coming from a bush. You completely couldn't see her inside that bush. I laughed and we decided we had spent enough time looking. Turns out we spent a hour. So that was Do not find #2. Pissed us both off. We will find that damn thing.
We got back in the car grumbling a bit. We proceeded to find a few and not find a few. At one of our not founds I had to actually laugh out loud when I looked over at Saz as she lay down on the ground in the leaves under a bush Some of the best finds for the day were totally fun. We actually went to a cemetery. Have I told you how much I love cemeteries? We walked around and said hi to the guys relatives. I found the cache inside this wonderful old tree. It was tiny but just the location was great.
One of the locations was in front of a office max. We kept walking back to the light pole where it said it was and then spread out. Turns out it was inside the bottom of the pole. Who knew those things lifted.
We also did a multi. Where we had to go to one location in order to find the cache location. We had to walk a maze on the ground while writing numbers next to the authors names in the order they were on the ground. I did the walk while Sazy did the numbering. I felt like a goon walking in circles but it turned out fun. We then head off to find the cache. After walking around a nice lake I see something on the path up above.
A Turtle!!!
So off I go about a hundred miles an hour. Saz probably thought I was loony. I pick up this cute little water turtle. Saz actually knew the name of it. Red eared..lkfj;kaf;kf;ajs. hell I can't remember. We walked it to the lake and I set it down. You should have seen that sucker move once it realized it was free! Then we walked the rest of the way to the cache. It was in blackberry bushes.
Sorry Saz .
We got a beautiful butterfly geocoin from it. As we are walking back Saz says she almost fell in the lake. I missed that. *snort.
These caches are totally out of order by the way.
We decided to go rescue a trading bug from a cache in a park called Vasona. We pull up and there is this giant party going on. But we seem to be the worlds worst stealth people on the planet so we went for it. Walking through ivy. I hate ivy. walking back and forth across the street. Walking back into the park... walking through the fucking ivy again. Finally saz finds it. No it wasn't in the ivy. We rescued the travel bug and because I had gotten so irritated... errr pissed off... I kept our other travel bug to put somewhere else. Stupid cache UGH.
Another cache we went for was good for some laughs. As we pulled up in the parking lot there was a group of rennisaunce (sp) people.. ok.. err budget rennisaunce (sp) people. I guess they were playing swords in the park We hopped out and walked up this path. As we got to a turning point we saw 5 deer. They were beautiful. The spot was beautiful with little bridges over a trickling creek and a mini waterfall. I loved that spot.
We then had to hike up this little ugly trail where I got my prerequisite ouchy trying to get this cache out of a fence post. The walk back was nice.
OH I almost forgot about the attack of the dead squirrel. Saz scared the hell out of me as she comes running through the ivy (yes more god damn ivy at another cache) with her hand on her heart saying don't go over there.
Me-----> WHAT?
She then tells me it was a dead squirrel..... but see at this point I am thinking homeless man who grabbed her leg. Dead body...I had to try really hard not to laugh.... Saz found that cache.We are becoming cache homing devices I think. We are pretty much getting to the point where one or the other of us knows where something is going to be. For example I walked up to the fence post and just grabbed the lid without looking anywhere else. I just reached in a tree hole. Saz finds things in spots I wouldn't think to look at. I can't wait to go again
When are we going Saz?
ooo Saz took pictures of the turtle
Hunting buddies
Well let's see. What did we do first?
I know I am going to screw up the order, so please feel free to set it straight Ms Hello.
I think it was old Calaveras Road, because I was pretty sure where we were going, but didn't end up there. Now I know how Hello feels, lol. We've mostly been hunting in her area and we'd get there and she'd say, this isn't where I thought we were going lol.
We drove around a bit for this one as the GPS sent us in a wide looping circle around the site before directing us in. Each with a GPS in hand we tracked it down. Mr. H got a handheld eTrex working and it worked pretty good, too, after I got the hang of it. We would miss the turn by turn driving directions without the other, but for the search site itself it was very good. And we found it! Yay us!
Let's go get another!Then I think we went to the park with the tennis balls. It's sort of a long park, with tennis courts on one end and grass and a jogging trail on the other. We were at the grassy end, but there were plenty of tennis balls about anyway. I expected trouble with muggles in this one as the park is usually packed with soccer and football players, but very few folks were around. And we found it! Yay us!
Let's go get another!The next was in a smaller park, with some little kids playing right near the search site. I meant to be stealthy, but it wasn't long before I was on my hands and knees pushing leaves around and poking into tree roots. Not suspicious at all, not me LOL. Anyway, we got it! Yay us!
The next was in juniper bushes. Actually, it was in one juniper all by it's lonesome. We had already searched the sticky pokey clumps of juniper a bit and decided we hate junipers. I was trying to read the cache log again for a clue and my fingers were sticking together and to the paper. Sticky junipers. Anyway, the name of the cache? Uno Juniper. And where did we find it? In the lone juniper. Yay us!
We go back to the car and break out the hand wipes and plot our next victim.This one, okay. I may have mentioned this housing community that I am sure is full of zombies because it was built over an old paint factory, there is a high wall all around it, and only one way in. There is one other entrance, a huge metal gate in the wall, for the fire department's use. This gate is where we were headed. After some looking around we found the hide on the side of the gate in a magnetized container behind some funny clinging plants. Woo hoo! We're awesome!
I'm not sure if we had lunch now or hunted one more. If we ate, it was Taco Bell. It's comical when we see that we are both slightly nuts in similar yet different ways, which is of course so much fun if you like to laugh at yourself. Hello lays out all her sauce packets side by side, those that carry the funniest sayings of course, and I lay out my burrito and break out the spork. If I were at home I'd be using a knife and fork. I know. So we had our Taco Bell our way, with a very tasty apple thing for dessert.
So next, or before that, or later, I don't even know, we went to a water station to notch our next victory. We walked around quite a bit on this one, trying to get in the right spot. None of the usual suspects were right. The trees, the bushes, the large power boxes.....we'd been from one end of the lot to another and, it seemed right, but it wasn't, so we were leaving the lot to try and find one workable coordinate next door when Hello suddenly spotted it. Sitting all alone and in plain site, a water sprinkler with nothing but concrete to sprinkle lol. That was a new container siting for us. Woo hoo!
The next was in a business park next to the railroad tracks. We didn't have to hunt much for this one. I tugged on a strange little post to see if he was hiding something underneath and he was! Somehow this one got water in it. The log book was soaked, but still usable, so I recorded our names, put it back, and off we went.
I believe this was when we got cocky enough to head into the hilly county park. There are some serious hiking trails, but also some nice walking trails, and there were two caches along one of the trails. I hoped it was one of the nice soft lake trails. We, uh, ended up in the friggin' outback. By accident of course. We could see the trail entrance on the right side of the road, so we parked and walked back to the entrance. Along the roadside. Cars whizzing by. Guess what was right beside the trail entrance? A GD parking lot.LOL So we enter the trail, and we've got two choices. A trail to the left and a trail to the right. We are at the junction of two different trails. A woman on a horse was guarding the trail on the right. I guess. Who knows what they were doing. Just standing there being weird. So we went left. We went as maybe as 100 feet, not having any success in picking up a coordinate. It's further along one of these trails. This one or that one?
While we are standing there considering, the woman on the horse comes walking by. "I guess she thinks you need some help", says the woman as they pass by. She attempts to converse with us but the horse has no interest and soon she's out of sight. Before we go any further up a trail following an animal who craps every three minutes, we decide to try our luck on the front part of the other trail.
Nothing. We aren't even close to either coordinate.
We'll walk down the trail a bit. It's rustic but not much work. Pausing every minute or so to check the GPS and hope for something encouraging, we pass a snake's skin lying on the trail. Hello: do you know what a rattlesnake sounds like? Yep, I answer, wondering if the maniacal running screaming from a snake was at hand. This would be a good spot for a serial killer to live, she remarks. Buzzards and vultures and hawks are stalking us. Horse poop everywhere. Now we've got imaginary murderers and rattle snakes to worry about, too. The trail starts uphill. I am fairly sure we have no further to go to get to the car than we've already been, so there's no point to turning back unless the trail is impassable. It's severely rutted but okay for walking, so we haul our asses up a steep climb and when we finally get to the top, my heart is trying to bang straight through my chest and I am so out of breath and I can feel my face flaming.
If we had proper caching packs, we'd have had water with us. We didn't have a frickin' thing. One day we'll get set up right.
The walk is easier now that we've got to the top and I am breathing slow and deep, trying to get back to where I can speak without huffing and puffing. There is a man ahead of us on the trail. He stops to inspect little houses along a fence just off the trail. A cacher! Let's follow him! He inspects every little birdhouse looking thing, and when he's left we check it out. I can find no way to open this box, but up the trail we can see him and it sure looks like he is opening these little houses. I have no idea what he was doing. We come down the trail into the small lake area where we left the car. Guess what's directly on the left? The other trail. The one we left to try the demon trail instead. What must be a shorter and easier walk, a shortcut, if you will, to the loopy piece of shit that we just finished. The caches have to be along this trail, but neither of us have the heart for it right now. We walk into the lake area, take a look at what's going on, take a look at the lake. Hello points out a swirly spot where she says a big fish is. I watch the swirly spot and pretty soon I do see a big fish! Kind of light colored with brown spots in very shallow water. Maybe a catfish?So we get to the car. Admonish ourselves for heading down the trail with no water, even though we had no intention of taking a hike like that, but refuse to call it a failure. It was the horse's fault. We'll take the right trail and outfit for it next time. This is a hold, not a giving up.
We picked up about six more caches after this. One was hanging in a tree, one was in a field under a rusty piece of sheetmetal (must get a tetanus shot), under a bridge, under a giant fake rock.....we got them all.
And here is my take on the "hike"
Welcome to our nightmare cache. This was one of those hunts where everything went wrong. Where you curse the hider while you are hunting but forgive them after you FINALLY reach the car and give yourself a chance to laugh!We didn't see the parking lot at the trail head. Totally missed it. We ended up parking at the park .3 miles up the road and walking down the road to the trail head. That was our first mistake. Cars wizzing by. Ugh. Then we started up the trail and for the life of us couldn't find the coordinates. Of course we were totally distracted by this woman on a horse who kept walking it by us telling us the horse thought we needed help..What? Weird? Finally we figured maybe just maybe we were on the wrong trail since it had split earlier. Off we went around the mountain. Mistake #2 We started walking... and walking... and walking. Then we were walking up a mountain. And UP a mountain. Of course we didn't bring anything with us even though we had promised ourselves we would be bringing water and such. Mistake #3. After some pretty hard core up hill hiking in what we hoped was the direction of the car I turned to Saz and said this is where people make their fatal mistakes right. Then a giant vulchure flew over our heads and we laughed. Then it flew over again and again. I told it that we were not dying even if we looked like it. By this point we were so darn far from the caches on this trail we put the gps away and prayed for the car. We kept going in the same direction and finally emerged at the total back area of the park we had parked in. We were so darn happy. We walked around the lake. Looked at some fish and finally made it back to the car. At this point we pretty much hated the hider lol. Once we got back into the car and got something to drink (almost a hour and a half later) we laughed and decided today was not the day for going back up the other side of the trail. We WILL be back for these two caches... after a while.. Oh and we don't hate you anymore LMAO!!!
I know I am going to screw up the order, so please feel free to set it straight Ms Hello.
I think it was old Calaveras Road, because I was pretty sure where we were going, but didn't end up there. Now I know how Hello feels, lol. We've mostly been hunting in her area and we'd get there and she'd say, this isn't where I thought we were going lol.
We drove around a bit for this one as the GPS sent us in a wide looping circle around the site before directing us in. Each with a GPS in hand we tracked it down. Mr. H got a handheld eTrex working and it worked pretty good, too, after I got the hang of it. We would miss the turn by turn driving directions without the other, but for the search site itself it was very good. And we found it! Yay us!
Let's go get another!Then I think we went to the park with the tennis balls. It's sort of a long park, with tennis courts on one end and grass and a jogging trail on the other. We were at the grassy end, but there were plenty of tennis balls about anyway. I expected trouble with muggles in this one as the park is usually packed with soccer and football players, but very few folks were around. And we found it! Yay us!
Let's go get another!The next was in a smaller park, with some little kids playing right near the search site. I meant to be stealthy, but it wasn't long before I was on my hands and knees pushing leaves around and poking into tree roots. Not suspicious at all, not me LOL. Anyway, we got it! Yay us!
The next was in juniper bushes. Actually, it was in one juniper all by it's lonesome. We had already searched the sticky pokey clumps of juniper a bit and decided we hate junipers. I was trying to read the cache log again for a clue and my fingers were sticking together and to the paper. Sticky junipers. Anyway, the name of the cache? Uno Juniper. And where did we find it? In the lone juniper. Yay us!
We go back to the car and break out the hand wipes and plot our next victim.This one, okay. I may have mentioned this housing community that I am sure is full of zombies because it was built over an old paint factory, there is a high wall all around it, and only one way in. There is one other entrance, a huge metal gate in the wall, for the fire department's use. This gate is where we were headed. After some looking around we found the hide on the side of the gate in a magnetized container behind some funny clinging plants. Woo hoo! We're awesome!
I'm not sure if we had lunch now or hunted one more. If we ate, it was Taco Bell. It's comical when we see that we are both slightly nuts in similar yet different ways, which is of course so much fun if you like to laugh at yourself. Hello lays out all her sauce packets side by side, those that carry the funniest sayings of course, and I lay out my burrito and break out the spork. If I were at home I'd be using a knife and fork. I know. So we had our Taco Bell our way, with a very tasty apple thing for dessert.
So next, or before that, or later, I don't even know, we went to a water station to notch our next victory. We walked around quite a bit on this one, trying to get in the right spot. None of the usual suspects were right. The trees, the bushes, the large power boxes.....we'd been from one end of the lot to another and, it seemed right, but it wasn't, so we were leaving the lot to try and find one workable coordinate next door when Hello suddenly spotted it. Sitting all alone and in plain site, a water sprinkler with nothing but concrete to sprinkle lol. That was a new container siting for us. Woo hoo!
The next was in a business park next to the railroad tracks. We didn't have to hunt much for this one. I tugged on a strange little post to see if he was hiding something underneath and he was! Somehow this one got water in it. The log book was soaked, but still usable, so I recorded our names, put it back, and off we went.
I believe this was when we got cocky enough to head into the hilly county park. There are some serious hiking trails, but also some nice walking trails, and there were two caches along one of the trails. I hoped it was one of the nice soft lake trails. We, uh, ended up in the friggin' outback. By accident of course. We could see the trail entrance on the right side of the road, so we parked and walked back to the entrance. Along the roadside. Cars whizzing by. Guess what was right beside the trail entrance? A GD parking lot.
While we are standing there considering, the woman on the horse comes walking by. "I guess she thinks you need some help", says the woman as they pass by. She attempts to converse with us but the horse has no interest and soon she's out of sight. Before we go any further up a trail following an animal who craps every three minutes, we decide to try our luck on the front part of the other trail.
Nothing. We aren't even close to either coordinate.
We'll walk down the trail a bit. It's rustic but not much work. Pausing every minute or so to check the GPS and hope for something encouraging, we pass a snake's skin lying on the trail. Hello: do you know what a rattlesnake sounds like? Yep, I answer, wondering if the maniacal running screaming from a snake was at hand. This would be a good spot for a serial killer to live, she remarks. Buzzards and vultures and hawks are stalking us. Horse poop everywhere. Now we've got imaginary murderers and rattle snakes to worry about, too. The trail starts uphill. I am fairly sure we have no further to go to get to the car than we've already been, so there's no point to turning back unless the trail is impassable. It's severely rutted but okay for walking, so we haul our asses up a steep climb and when we finally get to the top, my heart is trying to bang straight through my chest and I am so out of breath and I can feel my face flaming.
If we had proper caching packs, we'd have had water with us. We didn't have a frickin' thing. One day we'll get set up right.
The walk is easier now that we've got to the top and I am breathing slow and deep, trying to get back to where I can speak without huffing and puffing. There is a man ahead of us on the trail. He stops to inspect little houses along a fence just off the trail. A cacher! Let's follow him! He inspects every little birdhouse looking thing, and when he's left we check it out. I can find no way to open this box, but up the trail we can see him and it sure looks like he is opening these little houses. I have no idea what he was doing. We come down the trail into the small lake area where we left the car. Guess what's directly on the left? The other trail. The one we left to try the demon trail instead. What must be a shorter and easier walk, a shortcut, if you will, to the loopy piece of shit that we just finished. The caches have to be along this trail, but neither of us have the heart for it right now. We walk into the lake area, take a look at what's going on, take a look at the lake. Hello points out a swirly spot where she says a big fish is. I watch the swirly spot and pretty soon I do see a big fish! Kind of light colored with brown spots in very shallow water. Maybe a catfish?So we get to the car. Admonish ourselves for heading down the trail with no water, even though we had no intention of taking a hike like that, but refuse to call it a failure. It was the horse's fault. We'll take the right trail and outfit for it next time. This is a hold, not a giving up.
We picked up about six more caches after this. One was hanging in a tree, one was in a field under a rusty piece of sheetmetal (must get a tetanus shot), under a bridge, under a giant fake rock.....we got them all.
And here is my take on the "hike"
Welcome to our nightmare cache. This was one of those hunts where everything went wrong. Where you curse the hider while you are hunting but forgive them after you FINALLY reach the car and give yourself a chance to laugh!We didn't see the parking lot at the trail head. Totally missed it. We ended up parking at the park .3 miles up the road and walking down the road to the trail head. That was our first mistake. Cars wizzing by. Ugh. Then we started up the trail and for the life of us couldn't find the coordinates. Of course we were totally distracted by this woman on a horse who kept walking it by us telling us the horse thought we needed help..What? Weird? Finally we figured maybe just maybe we were on the wrong trail since it had split earlier. Off we went around the mountain. Mistake #2 We started walking... and walking... and walking. Then we were walking up a mountain. And UP a mountain. Of course we didn't bring anything with us even though we had promised ourselves we would be bringing water and such. Mistake #3. After some pretty hard core up hill hiking in what we hoped was the direction of the car I turned to Saz and said this is where people make their fatal mistakes right. Then a giant vulchure flew over our heads and we laughed. Then it flew over again and again. I told it that we were not dying even if we looked like it. By this point we were so darn far from the caches on this trail we put the gps away and prayed for the car. We kept going in the same direction and finally emerged at the total back area of the park we had parked in. We were so darn happy. We walked around the lake. Looked at some fish and finally made it back to the car. At this point we pretty much hated the hider lol. Once we got back into the car and got something to drink (almost a hour and a half later) we laughed and decided today was not the day for going back up the other side of the trail. We WILL be back for these two caches... after a while.. Oh and we don't hate you anymore LMAO!!!
Creek walking
Saz and I did it again!
We went back to that cache we hadn't found on Wednesday. The one with the ass bush. This time we found it!!! It is funny how finding a cache that you have previously not found makes you proud while at the same time makes you feel like an idiot lol
We next set off with the intention of starting at a beautiful park with a creek running through it. There were two caches along a trail.. well actually there were three but because I am not a premium member (yet) I couldn't see one. We hopped out of the truck and walked along this wonderful trail filled with flowers. And different beautiful trees. We had a great time. We did run across a few punk children on the trail who barked at us and made me want to turn them over my knee and spank the hell out of them. I hate punk children. I really should have started chasing after them just to scare them lol....
After some searching I found the first container. We logged our find and continued on our way to the second container. What a wonderful walk! I found the second container and we pawed through the stuff and I found a GREAT patch that said Geocachers of the Bay Area. Which of course reminded me that I need to join them!!!
After leaving the trail back to the car we came across a herd? Gaggle? of geese with their babies. There must have been at least 20 babies of various sizes. We stood there for a while and watched. We hopped back in the car and started to pull out when we noticed the coordinates for the next one were for right in the park. We pulled back into the parking space and walked to where the cache was suppose to be. We searched and searched and never found the darn thing :(
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
We hopped back in the car and were off to the next hide. This was a hide on private property. It was one of the best caches we have run across yet. Tacked to a utility wall was a bird house that said it was a cache. However we couldn't open it because it had a lock on it. It took me a few seconds to figure out that the key was inside the hole attached to a string. We opened it and took a signature item that needed to be logged on a seperate website and left a pen and balloon.
The next hide said we had to think out of the box. For some reason when I found the container that was in plain sight I just reached down and picked it up. I would never in a million years have thought I would have picked one of these up. But these hunts have made Saz and I get kind of clever. What a good hide. Plain freaking sight!!
The next cache Saz and I decided to take a DNF.We decided not to try after seeing that it was in a persons yard. Then decided to drive around to the back of it and walked through the park only to have the coordinates show it was on the other side of the fence in that persons yard. Didn't feel comfortable searching private property.
We had a good time searching for the next one. Saz and her eagle eye found this one! I was searching exactly where the coordinates said and she was searching a bit to the left she found it. Signed the log. Took a yoyo and put in a emergency blanket.
The last one was the best though. Here is the log I put for the cache.This one took some fancy driving to find. It wanted me to stop at the freeway. Finally we found our way to where it was suppose to be and there was a family pulling out of the driveway. We waited for them to leave before resuming the search. A little while later I see two men down the street staring at us. I stood up and stared back at which point they both turned around real quick. hmmmmm the hiders? I called Saz over to me and told her to take a peek at the two men.. who then pointed at us. We giggled a little and decided to sit on the ground and wait them out. They left but we both figured they were hiding in the bushes watching us. After some ummm hard ummm searching we found the cache and signed the logbook. I actually hurt myself a bit on this one. GREAT hide.
Trying to pry the top of a pole off killed my arm as it popped off and scraped my arm. I know that those two men knew what we were doing lol.Another perfect day of caching with a great and wonderful friend who gets to write the next adventure.
We went back to that cache we hadn't found on Wednesday. The one with the ass bush. This time we found it!!! It is funny how finding a cache that you have previously not found makes you proud while at the same time makes you feel like an idiot lol
We next set off with the intention of starting at a beautiful park with a creek running through it. There were two caches along a trail.. well actually there were three but because I am not a premium member (yet) I couldn't see one. We hopped out of the truck and walked along this wonderful trail filled with flowers. And different beautiful trees. We had a great time. We did run across a few punk children on the trail who barked at us and made me want to turn them over my knee and spank the hell out of them. I hate punk children. I really should have started chasing after them just to scare them lol....
After some searching I found the first container. We logged our find and continued on our way to the second container. What a wonderful walk! I found the second container and we pawed through the stuff and I found a GREAT patch that said Geocachers of the Bay Area. Which of course reminded me that I need to join them!!!
After leaving the trail back to the car we came across a herd? Gaggle? of geese with their babies. There must have been at least 20 babies of various sizes. We stood there for a while and watched. We hopped back in the car and started to pull out when we noticed the coordinates for the next one were for right in the park. We pulled back into the parking space and walked to where the cache was suppose to be. We searched and searched and never found the darn thing :(
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
We hopped back in the car and were off to the next hide. This was a hide on private property. It was one of the best caches we have run across yet. Tacked to a utility wall was a bird house that said it was a cache. However we couldn't open it because it had a lock on it. It took me a few seconds to figure out that the key was inside the hole attached to a string. We opened it and took a signature item that needed to be logged on a seperate website and left a pen and balloon.
The next hide said we had to think out of the box. For some reason when I found the container that was in plain sight I just reached down and picked it up. I would never in a million years have thought I would have picked one of these up. But these hunts have made Saz and I get kind of clever. What a good hide. Plain freaking sight!!
The next cache Saz and I decided to take a DNF.We decided not to try after seeing that it was in a persons yard. Then decided to drive around to the back of it and walked through the park only to have the coordinates show it was on the other side of the fence in that persons yard. Didn't feel comfortable searching private property.
We had a good time searching for the next one. Saz and her eagle eye found this one! I was searching exactly where the coordinates said and she was searching a bit to the left she found it. Signed the log. Took a yoyo and put in a emergency blanket.
The last one was the best though. Here is the log I put for the cache.This one took some fancy driving to find. It wanted me to stop at the freeway. Finally we found our way to where it was suppose to be and there was a family pulling out of the driveway. We waited for them to leave before resuming the search. A little while later I see two men down the street staring at us. I stood up and stared back at which point they both turned around real quick. hmmmmm the hiders? I called Saz over to me and told her to take a peek at the two men.. who then pointed at us. We giggled a little and decided to sit on the ground and wait them out. They left but we both figured they were hiding in the bushes watching us. After some ummm hard ummm searching we found the cache and signed the logbook. I actually hurt myself a bit on this one. GREAT hide.
Trying to pry the top of a pole off killed my arm as it popped off and scraped my arm. I know that those two men knew what we were doing lol.Another perfect day of caching with a great and wonderful friend who gets to write the next adventure.
The shopping trip that wasn't
If we end up shopping LMAO!!!!
That was the plan. Hunt for one before dark then go buy stuff. We..uh....just hunted. Besides, two car wrecks and a fire along the roadway made me pretty late. We still packed in three hunts.The first one was hidden across the street from the hider's friend Larry's house. "Larry can sit in his easy chair and watch cachers". Great.
The coordinates led us to a school yard and near the center of the lot with a chain link fence. The fence had vines all over it. So we searched the vines and the neighboring trees, all along the ground and looked up where we couldn't reach. We decided being short people will not work to our advantage. Must think what to do about that. There was a guy washing his truck and I wondered if that was Larry. He didn't pay us any mind, certainly didn't tell us where to look.
Larry's a bastard.
We found it anyway. The hider used one of the M&M plastic tube container things, covered it in brown tape, and hung it on the fence in the vines. It was a good hide.
Then we officially blew off shopping, laughed at ourselved a bit, and headed to the next one. This was near a canal, along a chain link fence covered in vines again, and the ground was covered in deep ivy. The coordinates placed the cache either directly on the ivy side of the fence, or directly on the other side where the canal is. For about 1.5 seconds I considered hauling my ass over that fence.But there wasn't much plant life there, bare ground, and I'm not 12, so it had to be on the ivy side. We couldn't find it, but didn't want to quit, so we were both head and shoulders digging in the plants. The clue said something like "you would find this in a leprechaun's mouth", and after all my dirtier thoughts passed (lol ), I suggested we look for a pipe. Hello found it and examined it carefully.
We were head and shoulders in the bushes again. I imagined someone driving by and noticing the asses sticking out of the bushes .
Oh look! An ass bush!
We tried our best, and we were in the right spot, but it wasn't there or we flat couldn't see it. So on we went.Riding in the car to the third, I realize I have little scratches all over my hands and 100 leaves in my hair. I had gloves in the car, but I didn't want to carry them or carry my purse so I've got to get on the cachepack problem.
Hello, didn't we see the little bags we want at Macy's? With a cute little monkey toy grabber thing? I've still got that gift card.
So we get to the third hunt. I figure why bother with gloves now and leave them in the car. We had more trouble finding the search spot this time, but we did get there. It's starting to get dark, and we are head and shoulders in the bushes again. It was a big group of bushes with a trail through them just the right size for a three year old. So I am crawling around on my hands and knees and the bushes are catching at and trying to rip my top off. The flashlight would have come in handy here, but my pockets carried only toys to leave behind. The flashlight was in the car. Must get a damn PACK! Hello finally found it. A green box in a green bush in the near dark! She also got poked in the neck with a stick. :(
Then she pointed out that we were in the same park as one cache we could not previously find, so we decided to see if anything had changed. As we cross the park, half the sprinklers come on and I wonder if we are going to make it. We only take a quick glance because it's pretty dark now, and the spot is still ransacked, and we manage to get back without getting sprinkled.Then we laughed at ourselves all the way back to Hello's and now I've got to comb leaves out of my hair and wash up. I see I picked up some spider webs, too.
That was the plan. Hunt for one before dark then go buy stuff. We..uh....just hunted. Besides, two car wrecks and a fire along the roadway made me pretty late. We still packed in three hunts.The first one was hidden across the street from the hider's friend Larry's house. "Larry can sit in his easy chair and watch cachers". Great.
The coordinates led us to a school yard and near the center of the lot with a chain link fence. The fence had vines all over it. So we searched the vines and the neighboring trees, all along the ground and looked up where we couldn't reach. We decided being short people will not work to our advantage. Must think what to do about that. There was a guy washing his truck and I wondered if that was Larry. He didn't pay us any mind, certainly didn't tell us where to look.
Larry's a bastard.
We found it anyway. The hider used one of the M&M plastic tube container things, covered it in brown tape, and hung it on the fence in the vines. It was a good hide.
Then we officially blew off shopping, laughed at ourselved a bit, and headed to the next one. This was near a canal, along a chain link fence covered in vines again, and the ground was covered in deep ivy. The coordinates placed the cache either directly on the ivy side of the fence, or directly on the other side where the canal is. For about 1.5 seconds I considered hauling my ass over that fence.But there wasn't much plant life there, bare ground, and I'm not 12, so it had to be on the ivy side. We couldn't find it, but didn't want to quit, so we were both head and shoulders digging in the plants. The clue said something like "you would find this in a leprechaun's mouth", and after all my dirtier thoughts passed (lol ), I suggested we look for a pipe. Hello found it and examined it carefully.
We were head and shoulders in the bushes again. I imagined someone driving by and noticing the asses sticking out of the bushes .
Oh look! An ass bush!
We tried our best, and we were in the right spot, but it wasn't there or we flat couldn't see it. So on we went.Riding in the car to the third, I realize I have little scratches all over my hands and 100 leaves in my hair. I had gloves in the car, but I didn't want to carry them or carry my purse so I've got to get on the cachepack problem.
Hello, didn't we see the little bags we want at Macy's? With a cute little monkey toy grabber thing? I've still got that gift card.
So we get to the third hunt. I figure why bother with gloves now and leave them in the car. We had more trouble finding the search spot this time, but we did get there. It's starting to get dark, and we are head and shoulders in the bushes again. It was a big group of bushes with a trail through them just the right size for a three year old. So I am crawling around on my hands and knees and the bushes are catching at and trying to rip my top off. The flashlight would have come in handy here, but my pockets carried only toys to leave behind. The flashlight was in the car. Must get a damn PACK! Hello finally found it. A green box in a green bush in the near dark! She also got poked in the neck with a stick. :(
Then she pointed out that we were in the same park as one cache we could not previously find, so we decided to see if anything had changed. As we cross the park, half the sprinklers come on and I wonder if we are going to make it. We only take a quick glance because it's pretty dark now, and the spot is still ransacked, and we manage to get back without getting sprinkled.Then we laughed at ourselves all the way back to Hello's and now I've got to comb leaves out of my hair and wash up. I see I picked up some spider webs, too.
Our first treasure hunt
So today Saz and I went on our first treasure hunt. It was hot but that didn't stop us. We hopped in the car, entered the first coordinates and were on our way. First stop was a park. As we walked up there were muggles! Lucky for us they left right as we arrived. We walked around for a bit and finally found the area the coordinates said we were suppose to be at. LET the search begin!! There we were searching in bushes and around trees. We were there only about 5 minutes when Saz said "Found it" Hidden under a flower bush was a plastic tuperware container with the words Geocache written on it. We were so freaking excited. We opened it up. Looked around for muggles and then started pawing through the goodies. We signed the log book. We also found a traveling bug (a item with a tag attached to it that likes to move from location to location) We took that and left a wooden fish in it's place.
We hopped back in the car and went to the second location. A park. We were looking through bushes and around trees and not having very much luck. Saz warned me about bees. Then again Saz says "found it!".. Again we got all excited and started looking through the stuff inside. We signed the log book again. "Saz and Hellolost" We put Dill Pickle the traveling bug inside and I got my first swag. A skeleton keychain! Boy were we smug now. We talked about how good we were doing. We put the coordinates in for the third location and went on our way.
When we got where it said we were blocked by a locked fence. We drove around for a while and found a different way in. "in between two trees are six bushes. rear left bush" was the clue. The thing is there was ivy everywhere. We spent quite a while digging through ivy. Getting bushes in our hair. Crawling around on our hands and knees. We finally gave up. We couldn't find it That is what being smug got us. We hopped back in the car sweaty and dirty and disappointed. We decided to stop and get something to eat before we moved on to the next cache.
The next cache was in another park. After searching a while AGAIN Saz says "found it" (I was beginning to wonder if I was blind)This one was a magnetic box that was attached and painted to look like the electrical box it was stuck to. It had been muggled All the stuff was on the ground and there was no log book to enter. We put the stuff back inside and added a dollar coin. I let the owner know it had been muggled when I logged our find when I got home.
Off to the next one!!! First we turned into some industrial area and were blocked by a fence. So we got back in the car and looked for a different way to get in. We found a pathway and started walking for about a mile (if it wasn't a mile it sure felt that way in 99 degree heat). We had to go off road. So there we were walking through tall dry grass getting stickers all over us. Me in flip flops and we come to a creek. YUP coordinates say it is on the other side of the creek. So back we walk to the car in the heat begging the gods for a hole in the fence. We hop in the car and go to Starbuck and get a GIANT iced coffee while picking stickers out of our shoes and pants. Back on the hunt! We drive around to the other side of the creek and walk along a nice path mostly in shade. We find a place where we need to go off road a bit and find the coordinates. We start the hunt. I find it!!!! YAY FINALLY!! It is a ammo box covered in camoflauge. we pull it out and open it. Inside is all kinds of fun stuff. Since it is Sazy's turn to pick something I hand her the box while I am looking through the log book. This cache has been there since 2003!!! There were many many entries. And I found one and Saz found one from other people who accidently went the wrong way too. Saz chose a glass fish bead thingy and we put in a candle. Back to the car we went.
By now we needed gas and another soda to drink. MY GOD it was hot. We put the the next coordinates and off we went. Yup another hike. Sheesh. But it was fun actually. We found the coordinates and started looking... and looking... and looking again. We found the bird cage the person whose cache it was talked about but no cache. There were rocks moved all over the place so you could totally tell that there were people looking for it. We never did find it Off we went for home. In the meantime we started making lists of stuff we needed for our treasure hunting trips. Little back packs, water, bandaids. We also started planning our own caches for the future. I had the best time ever today and can't wait to do it again!!!
We hopped back in the car and went to the second location. A park. We were looking through bushes and around trees and not having very much luck. Saz warned me about bees. Then again Saz says "found it!".. Again we got all excited and started looking through the stuff inside. We signed the log book again. "Saz and Hellolost" We put Dill Pickle the traveling bug inside and I got my first swag. A skeleton keychain! Boy were we smug now. We talked about how good we were doing. We put the coordinates in for the third location and went on our way.
When we got where it said we were blocked by a locked fence. We drove around for a while and found a different way in. "in between two trees are six bushes. rear left bush" was the clue. The thing is there was ivy everywhere. We spent quite a while digging through ivy. Getting bushes in our hair. Crawling around on our hands and knees. We finally gave up. We couldn't find it That is what being smug got us. We hopped back in the car sweaty and dirty and disappointed. We decided to stop and get something to eat before we moved on to the next cache.
The next cache was in another park. After searching a while AGAIN Saz says "found it" (I was beginning to wonder if I was blind)This one was a magnetic box that was attached and painted to look like the electrical box it was stuck to. It had been muggled All the stuff was on the ground and there was no log book to enter. We put the stuff back inside and added a dollar coin. I let the owner know it had been muggled when I logged our find when I got home.
Off to the next one!!! First we turned into some industrial area and were blocked by a fence. So we got back in the car and looked for a different way to get in. We found a pathway and started walking for about a mile (if it wasn't a mile it sure felt that way in 99 degree heat). We had to go off road. So there we were walking through tall dry grass getting stickers all over us. Me in flip flops and we come to a creek. YUP coordinates say it is on the other side of the creek. So back we walk to the car in the heat begging the gods for a hole in the fence. We hop in the car and go to Starbuck and get a GIANT iced coffee while picking stickers out of our shoes and pants. Back on the hunt! We drive around to the other side of the creek and walk along a nice path mostly in shade. We find a place where we need to go off road a bit and find the coordinates. We start the hunt. I find it!!!! YAY FINALLY!! It is a ammo box covered in camoflauge. we pull it out and open it. Inside is all kinds of fun stuff. Since it is Sazy's turn to pick something I hand her the box while I am looking through the log book. This cache has been there since 2003!!! There were many many entries. And I found one and Saz found one from other people who accidently went the wrong way too. Saz chose a glass fish bead thingy and we put in a candle. Back to the car we went.
By now we needed gas and another soda to drink. MY GOD it was hot. We put the the next coordinates and off we went. Yup another hike. Sheesh. But it was fun actually. We found the coordinates and started looking... and looking... and looking again. We found the bird cage the person whose cache it was talked about but no cache. There were rocks moved all over the place so you could totally tell that there were people looking for it. We never did find it Off we went for home. In the meantime we started making lists of stuff we needed for our treasure hunting trips. Little back packs, water, bandaids. We also started planning our own caches for the future. I had the best time ever today and can't wait to do it again!!!
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