Adventuring Elf Sisters

Today was another gorgeous spring day spent geocaching with my dad! My injured foot has finally gotten to the point where I can hike on it again, so today's caching took us through some trails in the woods- my favorite kind of geocaching. :)

Once again we found some pretty unique caches. Despite being in a location where you'd think this would be an easy cache, the hint was "Not a bison tube in a pine tree". Nope, it was a golf ball under the pine tree. ;)

I wish I'd gotten a picture of this one where it was: up on top of a tree branch. You tugged the piece of wood under it in this photo and it pulled the fishing line, releasing the actual cache from the tree. I'm short, so I needed my dad's help in grabbing this one, though. (That happens a lot- caches aren't always placed for short people.)

I absolutely loved this cache. The hint was "This one is for the birds!" so my dad and I both spotted this one at the same time:

This one was the black letters on the white background (turned out to be a magnet).

And this one was the last part of a pirate-themed multi. This was definitely my favorite of the day! The logbook was a map.

We also came across some neat architecture. This was what was left of a manor:

And this is the tiniest church I've ever seen. (The sweet story behind it can be found here.)

It also had a guard dog:

Along the way I made friends with a frog (toad?) and an inchworm. Here are both saying "hi":

And here are some pictures I took throughout the day.

(I love the "Please keep off tree limbs" sign. I know why it was there, though- I wanted to climb on those old, huge tree limbs!)
I'm trying to learn how to use my husband's camera, so I'm hoping to get better at photography as I go. Everything was so green and pretty that I wish I could share that!

I decided to steal my husband's camera instead of using my crummy old one, so hopefully my photos will start being a bit clearer. :)

Since the weather has been so nice, my husband, dad, and I have found quite a few caches this month. I think out of the 33 I looked for, there was only one I couldn't find. (Oddly enough, that was one my dad had already found but couldn't remember the precise location to give me a hint, lol.)

We found some really interesting cache containers this month, too! I won't link to them because I don't want to give away where/what they are, but these were too fun to not share.

This one looks like a simple fireplug, right?

Nope!

This is just a bunch of wire things coming off of the electric box unit thing, right?

Actually, I fell for that one. I poked at it, thought it was something I'd either break or get electrocuted by, then started to walk away before my dad told me I was on to something with it. Sure enough, that little box thing opened:

Hey, look- an apple in a tree! Wait, that's not the right tree for an apple!

Nothing odd about a pinecone in an evergreen tree, right?

I told my dad "Hey, look, a pinecone out of season! That must be the cache!" Except, according to my dad, this type of tree doesn't grow pinecones. XD

Hey, look- piles of rocks and a stone wall!

Er... except that middle, somewhat wonky rock was the cache, as was that rectangular stone in the center of the wall. If you weren't looking, you'd never have noticed either of those as being out of place. I was especially impressed by that stone; it was hollowed out to hold a small geocache tube, but the stone was exactly the same as what the wall was made from.

This isn't the cache itself, but the cache was under this weird square thing:

And it wasn't just the caches that were awesome- I also found some fun swag! First was this adorable little sculpted birdy:

Then I found a rubber duckie. I'm slowly collecting a pile of rubber ducks that I find in caches- this is my third.

And here I am showing off my favorite swag from that particular day: snakes in the peanut brittle! (Well, mixed nuts can, but same thing.)

It's an ongoing joke that snakes in the peanut brittle keeps me occupied for hours, so I definitely had to snag this one!

And since I posted a goofy picture of me, may as well share a few others of us:

Not done with the photos yet! During the last caching trip, we got to explore around an old spring house, which was in surprisingly good shape. The roof even appeared to have been retiled recently:

Speaking of ducks, on the way back to the car I made friends with a real one:

I love finding fun caches and fun swag!

For father's day I had a note in my dad's card saying "I owe you a geocaching day". Unfortunately I worked all weekend, but today he cashed in that cache day. We had a lot of fun geocaching around Downingtown, PA- and since I'd found a few of these and my dad hadn't, I was able to be his "phone a friend" of sorts. ("Ask a daughter"?)

There are some spoilers in this post if you happen to be local.

First we set out to find West Bradford Multi. It had been a long time since I'd had a chance to do a multi-stage cache and today I was also my dad's lucky rabbit's foot; he'd looked for the first stage before with no luck, but now was able to find it. We tag-teamed finding the rest and reached the final cache- this can be a rare thing with a multi, to find it all in one trip!

Here are a picture of my dad nearing the final stage and one of me along the way:

And the bits that made up the caches on this were really unique! I mean, this pen contained a log with the coordinates for the next one:

What amused me most on this one, though, was my squirrel friend: As we neared the rest area, he popped his head out of the trashcan and all I could think was him saying "Hi!! I'm a squirrel! I like cupcakes!". I was busy going "awww!" but my dad thought he was a fake (what, like a game of whack-a-mole?). The little guy darted behind the building, munching on the cupcake wrapper he'd stolen, and as I walked around he did the squirrel equivalent of "Crap! There she is again!" and darted a few fence posts over where apparently he was magically safe. I snapped a picture, he realized I was still there and did the "Eep! She's back!" before finally running away. I seem to have met a fuzzy creature with ADD- or possibly one too obsessed with cupcakes to notice that silly human was still there. ;)

We looked for a few that were essentially park and grabs, then headed for one called It's not magic. This one was also too good to not be spoiler-y! At first I didn't get what this strange cache had to do with "magic" so my dad explained. Sheesh, I felt like an idiot. (In case you couldn't tell from my crummy picture, that's a fake mushroom on top.)

Then we headed to look for a cache my fiancé and I have tried to find at least three times, Wascally Wabbit. Now I know why we couldn't find it before: the GPS on our phone had us looking 75 feet away! Traded a toy bug for a cute cow on this one:

And here are pictures to prove to said fiancé that I did find that specific cache and that I'm not making this up, I swear! I really was there! The cow did come from there!

While at Kerr Park, we looked for the one my dad hadn't found yet, Downingtown Log House. For all the times that I've been there, I'd never gotten pictures! Here we are in front of the old log house:

While caching around there, my dad kept remarking that the old stone bridges had to have been built around the 1930's- he was really close, since a sign we found said it was established in 1927!

And speaking of old stone things, how did I never notice this fountain with what appears to be a greenman bit in the center?

All in all, a great caching day! The weather was nice and had a lovely breeze and we managed to find all but one of the ones we looked for (I think I had seven finds). Once again, though, I did find that my geocaching handle is way too friggin' long: It's rare when I can fit all of "Taurandirath" onto one line!