Adventuring Elf Sisters

Yesterday I got to go geocaching again- hooray! This time I went with both my dad (he made an account on geocaching.com as Gary87) and my fiancé (he's under my account name, but his alias in logs is JoC).

Our travels this time took us to Glen Providence Park in Media. Silly me forgot to get pictures of said park, but I did get one of the sign at the entrance:


Dad had been there earlier in the day to look for caches but only found one of the two and didn't sign the log that he did find, so he let me and Josh use the GPS and navigate to them. The first cache we looked for was THR3E Billy Goats. We got to the location quite easily, then when we climbed under the bridge (because, duh, look at the name of the cache, lol), I knew exactly where it would be. We handed Josh a stick to poke around in the spot I pointed out (he wanted to avoid snakes and things) and sure enough, out popped the tiny cache. I opened it up:


Since this was a micro (yay, we found our first micro!), I couldn't leave anything, but I did sign the log for us:

There was no room on the side of the paper where the 2010 finds were logged, so I had to use the other side. I'm assuming it's out of date because of the way the paper was folded? Ah well, it was neat getting to see all the finds from years ago on there. :D

We got some pictures of Josh, me (ugh, I look terrible in that photo- I'm not that hideous, I swear!), and dad holding the tiny cache:






We rehid this one, climbed back onto the path, and set out to find the next one, From Glen to Glen. This was a larger cache, but as we got close, the GPS started acting wonky and kept telling me it was in different directions. Luckily dad had been there earlier that day and found this one (the satellites must have liked him better earlier, lol), so he brought us to the cache. I opened it up and signed the log, then passed it off to Josh to do (what else?) a drawing of Igik and his club symbol (since JoC stands for "Jack of Clubs").


Then dad and I held the cache so I could get a picture of it:


I took a bouncy ball and left one of my handmade bracelets, then we rehid the cache and trekked back to the car. It was a long trek back- or, rather, very very much uphill, so I was too tired to be able to find the other nearby caches, so we'll get those soon. Amazingly, for all that we had to cross a stream and pass a pond, I didn't fall in. Hooray!

I'm loving geocaching and getting to hike through some gorgeous woods that I'd never been to before- that's one good thing about living in Pennsylvania: we have so many lovely parks and forests! :D And I'll admit, getting to trek through the wilderness makes me feel like my D&D characters; all I'm missing is a fox at my side. ;)

My dad bought a really awesome GPS unit (a Garmin Dakota 20), so today we braved the drizzle and mud to search for our first geocaches- there are two of them down the road from us, so we picked those first.

The first one we went after was Ode to Geoffrey, and this would have been a lot easier to find were it winter. Ye gads, all sorts of thickets and greenery (and I'm hoping I didn't get poison ivy) to search through and move around. My dad found us large sticks, so that helped us to push aside branches and things harmlessly. He was just about to give up when I finally stumbled across our target after about 45 minutes of looking, something kinda yellow hidden under- what else? rocks and leaves and branches.

I opened it up:


Though damp (like everything in the container, which was also covered in ants- fun), the log was dry enough to write in, so I signed my name and username (Taurandirath) and my dad's username, along with the date and what I took and left:

I took a poker chip and left one of my hemp bracelets (it's in a tiny baggie, so I'm hoping it won't get wet).

Amazingly I found our way back to the road (I must be a wood elf! I get lost on streets, but I can find my way out of foresty areas), and we set off to our second destination, Boo!. We searched for about 10-15 minutes (didn't want to stay long because it's right next to the main road and work traffic was starting), but couldn't find it. It's gotta be in the large rock wall, but since the wall is very very long and the GPS was acting sorta screwy (I know we were in the right location, but it was telling me we were 220 feet away), we couldn't find that one. That'll have to be for another day, preferably in the evening so we don't look so suspicious.

Overall a productive day and so much fun! I really felt like a treasure hunter or an elf, trying to locate something in the woods- I can't wait to go on more hunts with my dad. :D Next time I'm going to bring replacement baggies with me, as well as a trash bag to clean up the area; since I'm a noobie, I didn't think of that until we were already there.