travisl couldn't find Piety Flats Micro Cache (Traditional Cache)
Searched for a few minutes, but there were enough bees around to keep me from searching too thoroughly. After talking to someone about this at the Tri-Cities Cache Machine event, it turns out it was exactly where I figured the bees' nest was, and that there was no bees' nest. Oh well. Maybe next time through.
travisl couldn't find Above the Clouds (Traditional Cache)
Just another sunny day to climb Mount Doom. Me, my brother Trestin Baggins, my daughter's gaffer, and Kevin Gamgee left the shire ''Bivouac'' (where Trestin got soaked in his hammock, Kevin got drenched in his tent, and the gaffer and I stayed mostly warm in the Jimmy Inn) at around 7:30, and began our ascent.
It started innocently enough, a light uphill stroll through the woods. Just after the junction with the road to the legendary hamlet of Loowit, however, I think one of those dementor thingies must've swooped up behind me and started sucking the air out of me.
(Wait, that's a Harry Potter critter. I'm mix master massacring my metaphors. Feh.)
I felt a little dizzy, and a little nauseous, but it went away quickly. By this point, Frodo and Gamgee were already ascending the rocks, I'm sure, but the gaffer and I were taking it slow.
(I should mention that other cachers, like Nolenator the Gray and Hermione Forest Monkey were already way ahead of us; Shunra, son of Mountain Goats, passed us soon thereafter.)
At crossing 1, Baggins and Gamgee were sitting their waiting for us, and we made cell calls home to our loved ones to let them know that we'd started the climb, and that the top of Mount Doom was just a few posts and about 3000 vertical feet to go.
The two of them then vaulted ahead of the gaffer and I, while the two of us slowly, painstakingly, gruelingly made it from post to post to post. Finally, at the spot on the map written in ancient times by the ancient wizard Moun10HorseCart where we clearly should have seen a giant ''C'' on the ground (in the middle of the word ''VOLCANIC''), I called up to the hobbits ahead to go on without me. ''Go for it, Frodo, I'm stayin here. I'm no Samwise.'' My legs were rubber, my head was hurting, and each step I took felt like I was going to collapse.
The gaffer convinced me to climb up two more posts, to about 6075 feet, where I rested behind a wind-breaking large rock for two hours while he made it to cache elevation. I cowered like a mountain troll, frightening climbers who stumbled across me as I stared out over the valley, watching clouds be birthed, swirl in the updrafts, and dissipate. Still hazy from the climb, I did double takes across the valley at rocks that looked like a space alien kid and his mother, a bush that looked like a midget indian medicine man doing jumping jacks on his back, and at two baseball caps that flew off the heads of hikers passing by. I kept expecting to see a nazgul or something rise beside the aptly-named 5994 Peak, but no, just more swirling clouds and illusionary rocks.
Towards the end of my rest, two other travelers stopped for a bit of a chat. They asked if I was a christian, and to keep things simple and avoid being preached to, I said yes. As they left, they asked if I had any extra water, because they'd only packed one quart between the two of them. I gave them the third of my four flasks, and wished them on their way. Soon thereafter, the gaffer returned, and I began my descent down the mountain, my legs shaking with every step down.
We took a few breaks on the way to the forest, and another in the meadow, where Baggins caught up with us. He and the gaffer continued on, and I strolled out on a mental auto-pilot, quaffing down the last of my final flask of water on the way. I made it back to the shire at about 4:00, and Gamgee emerged from the woods soon thereafter.
This was easily the toughest hike I've ever attempted -- and that includes a 50+ mile hike across the north Olympics back when I was eleventy-six years old. This also gave me the greatest feeling of accomplishment of any cache I've hunted, even though I didn't get that far. Thanks for hiding this one.
travisl couldn't find I Believe in Angles (Unknown (Mystery) Cache)
I had to pick Dragonfli and Geogrrrl up at the airport today, and with lots of time to spare, decided to hit this cache. As I got close, the hiding spot was obvious: obviously somewhere my allergic self didn't want to go. I chalked it up as a DBL, decided I'd take another frownie, and headed back to the car.
I drove to the airport, scoped out the area I'd need to pick them up, and wondered what I'd do with the next 45 minutes. Soon, I found myself back at the cache area, on my hands and knees, searching. 60 seconds, no luck. I went back to the car to get a flashlight, and as I approached the cache location again, I was surprised that I'd managed to not step in, kneel in, or set my geopack on the dozens of dog logs scattered around the area. I set my pack down carefully, searched for another two minutes or so, itched and scratched, looked a few seconds more, picked up my left contact lens that had popped out and fallen on the ground, then gave up, went to a nearby water source to wash up, and went back to the car and itched for the next 40 minutes while I listened to some right wing wacko radio talk show host talk about the president's leadership skills. I hate that stuff. The foliage stuff, that is.
The cache is probably still there. I just didn't spend a lot of time looking for it.
Cachers
Meet the cachers
They're the modern geek camraderie
Near the
Town of Adna
We continued down to the quarry
Someday
Maybe Fred is back on site
Then he
Can blast rocks with dynamite
When you're
With the cachers
You'll have a yabba dabba doo time
A Scooby Dooish time
You'll have a gay, old, tiiime.
(Not that there's anything wrong with that.) ;)
travisl found Geocahe Potluck
A slightly smaller crowd than I expected, but all nice folks. I had a good time commisserating about baggies in floating logs, hanging on cliff faces on frayed ropes, and the uncanny ability of spouses to point out the cache after we've searched for 90 minutes.
I'd read in the forums that this was a nice cache, so when I asked Geocaching.com ''well, froggy girl, what caches are closest to our annual summer campout site this year?'', I was very happy to see this one come up as number 2. I met with Ironman on Thursday, and he gave me some tips on getting this one, so on Friday afternoon (August 20), after a very l-o-n-g drawn out game of Battlemist, five of us (Dragonfli, Smokey55, myself, and two neo-cachers) decided to go for it.
Finding the parking spot was a piece o' cake, what with the photo and everything. I let neo-cacher Phil drive little yellow to the pool, and he correctly directed us to the top of the falls. Dragonfli read the hint and spotted the item mentioned. Neo-cacher Roy was the first across the log. I followed, then Phil, Smokey55, and Dragonfli. We all balanced; none of us fell in, yet.
I found the ''trail'' up, Phil found a good direct path once we were up there, and I found the cache container. So much moss and greenery, I joked to Phil, in my absolute worst Irish accent, ''Please be careful, laddy, notta step on the little people.''
I signed the log for the five of us, and we retraced our steps back. Phil, Smokey55, and I took a side trail to look at the falls and held ourselves against a good sized alder for balance, so that we wouldn't plummet into the pool. Soon, we all walked across the log, and none of us fell in, although I had a nervous moment on the large step down next to the MGD can.
We explored the top of the falls, and realized that we were fortunate that Wyle E. Coyote wasn't a member of our search team. You know how in the Road Runner cartoon, the coyote will stand at the edge of a deeply undercut cliff, and the entire end of the cliff will fall out underneath him? When we were looking down at the pool resting against the tree, we were in a similar spot. So that's why the ground was so soft!
The other four decided to go down the falls billy-goat style, while I, being older (not really) and wiser (not really) went down the way we'd come. We all reached the bottom at the same time, no injuries.
It's a very cool spot. Thanks for taking us here.
travisl found Ring of Fire
Eep... it's a two-logger... I'd had plans to camp at Coho Campground for about six months now, and when I saw this cache go disabled, I fired off an e-mail to Ironman to see if I could get special permission to hunt this one. The geocaching gods were smiling on me, as it turned out that he was working and temporarily living less than half a mile from my campsite. I like it when that happens.
We agreed to meet at 5:30 on the 12th. At 6:08 on the 12th, with my brain already on island time, my brother showed up at the site and asked ''So, how'd your 5:30 meeting go?'' I was out of there like a shot, but at 6:15, with Ironman nowhere to be found, I knew I'd stood him up. I hate it when that happens.
About an hour later, though, a strange guy shows up at the campsite, and my ears perk up when I hear him mention my name to one of my 21 camping buddies. We talked for a good 45 minutes about caches, he explained why it was temporarily disabled, and gave me the option of trying to find it anyway. Ironman, you rock. I like it when that happens.
I hit ''Dipping in the Wynoochee'' on the 13th, and decided to go after this one on the 14th. My dad (who's found a few caches with me before), and the two neo-cachers who went with me to ''Dipping'' (Roy and Phil) came along. It took us three wrong turns before we found the right road, and after navigating past an obstacle that was easily bypassed, we parked less than 300 horizontal feet from the cache. Thanks, CCC, for the parking coordinates. I like it when that happens.
A few minutes later, we find the rope, and begin our decent. My dad decides to stay up top, I guess in case he needed to go get rescue helicopters or something, if we were to decide to let go of the rope and land on our heads in the river 140 feet below. I hate it when that happens.
The decent is mildly challenging, although pretty much uneventful, except for the point where I almost swing too far over the edge, where I'd be swaying gently in the breeze like a big flailing piñata. I hate it when that happens.
Fortunately, I found my footing and continued my decent to the train car. Roy arrived shortly after I did, and Phil perched himself just above us, looking out for who-knows-what. Rabid flying wombats, perhaps. Roy and I searched for about 15 minutes, I stood on the very back of the train car and experienced a sense of vertigo like I haven't had in months (I love it when that happens), and after a bit more searching, Roy found it. His first find! There's a bunch of really neat themed items in the cache, but I TNLN and signed the log for the three of us. I like it when that happens.
We then explored the riverbank for a few minutes, and my thoughts turned back to a true story that my late grandfather told me about this very trestle… back in the 40's, he and his buddies were out drinking and hunting and drinking and drinking some more. The sun was beginning to get low in the sky, and it was time to start thinking about heading home.
This canyon is pretty long, and pretty deep, and there's not a lot of ways across. Their car was on one side, and the trip home was a good couple hours drive or more. If they could just get the car to across, it'd save them a bunch of time.
''We could drive across the trestle,'' joked his buddy. They all laughed, and decided that it was a stupid idea. It'd only work if they drank a bit more. So they did, and the sun got lower, and a train went by, and they drank some more, and suddenly the idea didn't seem so stupid. So two guys got behind the car, two got along side, and slowly, they pushed the car bit by bit across the trestle, stopping every now and then to take another drink, listen for the train, or take another drink. They finally made it across, got it to the road, and heard the train go by again shortly thereafter. It's a wonder my dad was ever born :-)
For my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary, my parents gave them a beautiful drawing of a lumber train barreling across the trestle. It was very cool.
And so was this cache. Thanks for bringing me to this neat spot, to my first 5-star terrain cache, and to a piece of family history I'd never seen.
I love it when that happens.
travisl archived Ol' Doc Lilly (Traditional Cache)
Gone it is. Missing it is. Muggled, it has been. Replaced, it will not be.
Five cache containers have lived in this park. Only one remains. Go find ''Acorn for Kids'' GCJ11F instead. It's in the same park, other side.
travisl couldn't find CWB (Traditional Cache)
My company's envelope vendor takes us on a lake or harbor cruise every SeaFair, and this year's was today, leaving from a dock just east of this cache. I had about half an hour to look before the boat left, so decided to hunt this one.
The boats are really neat, including some of them undergoing some extensive work. I had trouble finding the Sharpie, but talked to the cute girl behind the counter, who showed me where it had moved to.
Neat area. Thanks a bunch for getting me out here.
Finding the cache, on the other hand, was something I decided not to put a lot of effort into. I glanced around for a few minutes, checked a couple obvious spots, but really Didn't Bother Looking (DBL), because the area was strewn with trash and spider webs, smelled strongly of creosote, and I wasn't really dressed for a dirty hunt.
Thanks for the hunt!
travisl posted a note for Phatboyz Not Vine Time but Close (Traditional Cache)
The park was wall-to-wall people on this sunny Sunday afternoon. Dragonfli, Geogrrrl, and I stopped here to have a picnic, and afterwards I decided to see if I could find the cache again, without actually touching it, since I didn't want to draw attention to it. I found where the letterbox used to be, but I didn't find the cache container itself. It might still be there, though, 'cause I didn't look really hard.
Log by MarcusArelius for Bird Cage (Multi-cache):
MarcusArelius posted the bomb squad's log for his Bird Cage Multi-cache
7-2-04
Sorry about the damage to the box. Citizen reported it as suspicious and we'd needed to get inside.
Bellevue bomb squad!
Case # 048-7379
travisl found Because there *is* a CITO in 'procrastination!' (Traditional Cache)
My little yellow Etrex was giving me fits, with about 50 foot accuracy (''Bird 11, come in bird 11. Bird 11, where are you?''), so I thank you for the useful hints. I still had a bit of trouble figuring which side of the trail to investigate, and how to get the last 25 feet or so, but managed fairly quickly.
The cache was very obvious to anyone who looked, which also made it an easy find. I normally TNLN, but the poster of the geocats was so cute -- I knew GeoGrrrl would love it -- so I left a package of bicycle spoke beads in exchange for it.
As I hopped back onto the main trail, I scared the bejeebees out of a pink-clad female bicyclist who was zipping downhill. I know I don't understand the physics involved, but somehow a 5'6'' woman was able to jump 10 feet out of her seat while doubling her pedaling rate. I think she might have had mutant stretchy legs or something.
travisl found Cache at Pooh Corner - the Rehide (Multi-cache)
Much like a role playing game (I'm thinking of Neverwinter Nights, but any RPG will do), this cache hunt seemed like the person running the game wanted me to meet fascinating people and either get information from them, have them send me on a quest, or kill them. Fortunately, I suck at RPGs and don't like playing them, and I didn't actually communicate with any of the people along the way. But if I did, it would go something like this:
GM: You are on a road on the outskirts of a grassy park in a residential suburb of anywhere, USA. Although it's hot and sunny, a cool breeze makes it bearable. The sign you are looking for is here. So is your car.
Me: I follow the instructions on the cache page. I approach from the south.
GM: What's your intelligence? OK, no need to roll for this one. You have the next set of coordinates.
Me: I walk through the park to get to the coordinates.
GM: About halfway through the park you see two 12-year-old black kids. They're facing away from you and don't see you. Every few seconds, a cloud of smoke rises from them.
Me: Can I see what they're smoking?
GM: It looks like a fat cigarette.
Me: I warn them of the hazards of smoking. ''Hey, you two! I'm not a cop or anything, but that stuff isn't good for you.''
GM: They're startled to see you. They run into the woods. What do you do?
Me: I continue to the next coordinates.
GM: OK, you continue through the park without incident. You reach another road, turn north, and reach your next waypoint.
Me: I do the math.
GM: No need to roll for this one. You did it and have the final coordinates.
Me: I go to the next waypoint.
GM: The tree cover is making your GPS unreliable, but after overshooting it by a few feet, you find the right spur trail. It's overgrown, but usable.
Me: I go down the trail and try to find the cache.
GM: Roll for initiative.
Me: I rolled a 10.
GM: You go down the trail, but when you're about 20 feet from the cache, you're confronted by a large white guy. Shaved head, gold chain, white T-shirt. He doesn't seem to be doing anything other than standing in the middle of the overgrown trail.
Me: Do I recognize him as a geocacher?
GM: No. He doesn't have paperwork or a GPS visible. He attacks you.
Me: I cast magic missle.
GM: At the darkness?
Me: No, at the guy attacking me.
GM (rolling dice): You've wounded him, and he runs away, the way you came in.
Me: I continue to the cache.
GM: What's your search skill?
Me: It's low. It's at one.
GM (rolls dice): You search for a few minutes, but don't find the cache.
Me: I decode the hint.
GM (rolls dice): OK, you've found the cache.
Me: I sign the log, take nothing and leave nothing, and replace it. I then head back to the car.
GM: OK. As you approach the road again, you encounter the big white guy again. Roll for initiative.
Me: I rolled a 9.
GM: He has the initiative. He swings and misses.
Me: I cast ''hold person''.
GM: It works. He's not moving.
Me: I go back to my car.
GM: As you re-enter the park, you see an old asian woman is sitting on the sidewalk. She has two white plastic grocery bags in front of her. She's rummaging through one of them.
Me: I ask her if she needs any help.
GM: As you approach her, a wide grin spreads across her furrowed face. ''Yes, you may,'' she says in a croaking voice. ''A few months ago, as I was hobbling through this park, a hawk swooped down upon me and took a stuffed duck I was carrying home to my grandaughter. Every day since, I've come here hoping to see the hawk so I could ask him to return it. Could you find him and get my duck back?''
Me: ''Nah, I need to go get lunch.''
GM: The woman reaches into her pocket, pulls out a wand, and points it at you. Make a saving throw against curses.
Me (rolling dice): I roll a 12.
GM: Not good enough. A bolt of crimson light flies out of the tip of her wand. You feel your vision become hazy, then clear up again. Let me see your character sheet. (I hand him my sheet. He erases a number.)
Me: Hey, I've lost my search skill entirely.
GM: Sorry. When you look up, the old woman is gone.
Me: OK, I head back to my car.
GM: When you're almost there, you hear singing through the woods. It sounds like a ten-year-old boy, trying to sing an opera.
Me: Do I recognize the song?
GM: What's your arcane knowledge skill?
Me (grinning): It's at 8.
GM: It's the theme song from Disney's ''Teacher's Pet'' cartoon.
Me (the grin replaced by a look of terror): I run to the car.
GM: OK, you make it. You get 200 XP for this mission. Unfortunately, you also have that song running through your head for the rest of the day.
travisl couldn't find Where is George after all? (Traditional Cache)
No luck here today; add me to the stack of purple frownies. After looking for about 20 minutes, I decided that it probably used to be in the first hidey-hole I looked in, and, having brought a 3-inch-long IKEA pencil to leave in the cache as per Geo Pirate's request, left it in the hiding spot intead. There was also a snail shell in the spot with the pencil.
Interestingly, the coordinates at the top of the page are what my GPS read when I was at the (speculative) cache site for a while; The Jester's coordinates were the ones my GPS pointed to as I approached the cache area. I think there may be some signal reflection going on in there. I'll watch this one to see if anyone else (including the cache owner) is able to find it.
travisl posted a note for Pot o' Gold (Traditional Cache)
Stopped by at lunch time to meet The Leprechauns and do a maintenance run. Daddy Leprechaun and I chatted about his recent adventure in Nashville (240 caches in one 24 hour period? Wow!), our dislike for lame micros, and our gratitude to Criminal for coming up with the legendary Frisbee analogy. Little Lep weaseled a hint out of me, Wander Lost had a bit of trouble re-finding it, and Little Lost One let me hold his gorp.
No cache maintenance was needed; it was well hidden, well stocked, and just where I left it. Cachers around here rock -- the cache was placed in April '03, and I've gone to maintain it three times (August '03, January '04, and today). All three times, no maintenance was needed. No trash. Not out in the open. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Somebody remind me again why we need to maintain these things? ;-)
travisl posted a note for #1 (Traditional Cache)
That's so very cool that my most successful TB ever (Little Bad Blue Hat Duck), whose final goal is to make it back up to his home cache south of Tacoma, is now in a cache that I visited two weeks ago. He's so close!
travisl posted a note for The Day I Went to the Sound and the Water Was Gone (Traditional Cache)
It's back. I replaced the old Lock-N-Lock with a largish ammo can, and stuffed it full of goodies, like a keychain barrel o' monkeys, a ceramic jewelry box, stuffed critters, a whistling keychain finder thing, a baseball cap, and a Where's George dollar.
It's hidden pretty well; please rehide it better than you found it, and check both angles when you leave to be sure it's not visible.
Today was a nice warm blue sky Tuesday lunch hour, although the tide was in fairly far but on its way out. Nobody else in the park today. They missed a gorgeous view of the sound.
travisl posted a note for Seventeen Pedestals (Traditional Cache)
There shouldn't be a bag around the cache container. Thanks, folks, but CUT THAT OUT! Bags -- as is obvious from this one -- get holes in them, and just serve to hold water near the cache container. Could the next person out there trash out the bag? Thanks.
travisl posted a note for The Day I Went to the Sound and the Water Was Gone (Traditional Cache)
Sounds like it's missing, since it should be fairly easy to find. I'll replace it later this week.
