Adventuring Elf Sisters

Finally got some daytime caching in- and that means pictures! This past weekend my fiancé Josh (he signs logs as JoC) and I decided to test out the GPS feature on his new fancy phone; I think it was called GeoBeagle and it seemed to work pretty well since we found six out of the seven we looked for. :)

Since it was a gorgeous day (finally been warm enough to cache!), on Saturday we decided to head to a local park near Josh's house to find the two located there. First we searched for Broad Run Park. Since this was our first time using that GPS, we had some difficulty at first. I thought I was where the cache would be, but couldn't find it, so wandered away with the GPS to test the accuracy and see what kind of numbers I could narrow it down to.

Unfortunately, while I was wandering away and spinning in circles, Josh located the cache. Exactly where I'd been looking, but I was too short to see it. Bah, tall people, getting all the luck. ;)

Here he is hamming it up while he riffled through the cache:

As you can see from the view near the cache, early March in Pennsylvania is still pretty ... brown. Things aren't blooming yet:


And as you can notice from the logbook, not a lot of caching going on in the winter:

And since Josh was with me this weekend, "Taurandirath" got a drawing of his signature goblin next to it. Say hi to Igik!

After pausing to take a picture:


We headed onto the next cache in the park, Stumped On The Run. We hunted around for this and once again Josh made the find:


While signing the log, a lady walking a dog said "Hey, are you guys geocaching? I think my husband's found that one", which was neat! I'm always afraid we look suspicious while caching, so I'm happy when we come across non-muggles. ;)

After strolling back to the car, passing more people with dogs (gotta have my dad stop by this park to cache- we have two dogs who'd love the trip!), we headed off to find some park and grab caches.

I'm not entirely sure if this order is correct, but I think first we found Wile E. Coyote Can Do It in Less Than 30 Minutes.

I snagged this one with some help from a dude working at the nearby store (who was taller than me; this is not a day to be short, as the cache was pretty high up)- he knew exactly where it was, and, judging from other comments on that geocaching page, has helped others find it. Yay, helpful people! :D Josh had taken a phone call right as we got out of the car, so that was tying up the GPS anyway. Even though I had help, I considered this a find for me and my only one of the day. Darn Josh, being so good at this! ;)

Here's the view at the cache:

Lots of geese were milling around, wading around in the flooded ground (we'd gotten a lot of rain recently).

I mention all that rain because the next cache? Well, we pretty much had to cross a swamp to get to Caln School House Cache. I should have gotten better pictures because these two don't even begin to describe the mud and sand we had to cross to get over to the cache:



This time I was distracted by a phone call (not that I minded- it was my best friend saying she was coming over that evening) and Josh snagged it. The location of this one surprised me when he pointed it out- I was expecting it to be ... well, not where it was. This wasn't technically a park and grab, but it wasn't a lot of walking, either. Or, rather, it wouldn't have been a lot of walking if we'd been able to take the direct route, which would have involved swimming through a temporary swamp.

Oh! And when we pulled up in the parking lot, we saw someone come walking out of the direction of the cache. We'd assumed he must have been looking for it (not much other reason to be out that way in the mud!), but when we got to the log the last visit was a month ago, so either he didn't want to cross the mud and gave up or wasn't actually a cacher. Who knows?

After acquiring more mud (I was beginning to feel like Pigpen), we headed off to the next cache across the street, Go Sit in the Corner - Again!

I have no idea what this had to do with a corner since it was in a tree, but Josh put my elf-ness to shame and found it before I could:

What can I say, the boy was on a roll. I honestly have no idea how he found this itty one so quickly:


Hoping that we were going to be lucky, and having a bit more time before our friends would arrive at Josh's house, we tried to find one more: Don't Take The Speaker!

And here's where our luck failed. Twice. We came back on Sunday to find this and still couldn't, so I have no idea where this one is. Arg. We'll find it at some point! Not sure how it's had 65 finds and only one other DNF. Alas, we are baffled.

On Sunday we also searched for another cache (Trackside near Thorndale) and- tada!- found that one. Or, rather, I finally found one. Yay! I seem to be good at finding shiny green things in trees; I'd found another one like this recently, too.


Honestly, though, if it hadn't been for the sun glinting through the trees reflecting off the cache, I don't think I would have found this nearly as easily. Still, I would have kept looking because we wouldn't have caught the eye of anyone; it was the parking lot of a train station and since it was a Sunday there weren't any cars in the parking lot- and we were sheltered by the pine trees anyway. :)

Although I am realizing that "Taurandirath" was probably a poor choice in name:

It's so long that it's sometimes longer than the logbooks, and forget writing in "Meri and JoC" with it at times like that. And have I mentioned that I'm rather dyslexic? Yeah, half the time I spend too long muttering the letters trying to figure out the order they go in. Ah, Elvish, making things complicated. ;)

Edit: Eep, and forgot to post the picture of me and Josh caching Sunday- I'm using that as our profile picture on geocaching.com now. :)


So all in all a great caching weekend! Fingers crossed I'm up to going again this weekend and the weather holds out. :D

Since the weather has gotten nicer (meaning it's still cold, but at least the snow's mostly gone), my dad and I decided to try caching again today, with some luck. We managed to find 3 out of the 6 park and grabs (parking lot and easy terrain caches) we looked for. Unfortunately, since it's still winter that means it gets dark stupid early, so I wasn't able to get many pictures. Sorry about that!

First we hit A giant cache, located in the parking lot of a Giant. Obviously. No luck here- both of our GPSs were bouncing us all over the place. I finally got mine to settle down, but it told me the cache was in the middle of the parking lot. The middle- where the cars turn in. Umm... no. It's obviously on one of the grassy islands where cachers won't become pancakes, but we couldn't figure out which, so we'll have to come back later.

Next stop- Play Ball or Die. I really liked this one, but it was too dark to get a picture- dark enough that I told dad "There's no way we'll be able to find this". He turned to walk back to the car for a flashlight when I said "Wait, no, there it is!". Yup, I found a tiny, well-hidden green cache in a tree. What can I say, my Elf-instincts must have kicked in. That and the cache was shiny and my favorite color. ;)

1 for 2, we headed to the next cache: Phobia #5. This is one we'd looked for back in September, but couldn't find. This time around we still couldn't find it. I emailed the cache owner for another hint, so maybe next time!

Now 1 out of 3- not very good odds- we drove off to the next one: The Coop's Warning. Which meant another tree- and not just any tree. A sign-eating tree! Really!

I wish I'd gotten a better picture, but the metal pole of the sign? It was inside the tree! If it'll let me link directly to an image on geocaching.com, you can see a much better picture taken during the daytime here.

Onwards to the next one! Feeling better at 2 finds to 2 nots, we headed to Got Pizza?. I'm really glad I went with dad on this one because he wanted to look on completely the wrong side of the row of stores. I pointed out that the parking lot probably went behind them because the GPS was telling me it was about 600 feet away (and pointing towards the buildings), and sure enough, we were able to drive behind them. We poked around a lamppost (think it was a lamppost, anyway) and I felt something stick to my glove. Pulling it out, I found the cache now velcroed to my hand. (Note to self: if I wear gloves, I attract caches. Probably not a helpful note come summer, though.)
Got a picture of this one, although it's blurry:

Or maybe I just attract green things? ;) Still not sure why this had velcro on it in the first place...

Feeling quite proud of ourselves at finding 3 out of 5 caches, dad and I decided to try our luck and look for What was it? again. You know, the weird building Plurkfish and I visited in October. Alas, this time we still couldn't find it. *grumble grumble* People have found it since we last looked, but in that time it was found wedged in the mud, so I'm wondering if it got knocked loose again. Dad and I poked everywhere. Sigh, guess we'll just have to keep looking for this one!

Final score for the day: 3 finds, 3 did not finds. Well, at least we found some. :)