The Dry Spell is Over...

ended this long dry spell of no geocaching finally yesterday. have been looking at doing the bear mountain series for about a month now and finally went yesterday with christy & moxie. yes i had other things i should have been doing, like looking for a job, but getting out on a good hike to just clear my head was just what i needed! (image: bear mountain from across bear pond)

we were in search of 13 caches total on the bear mountain trail, GC29H6J, GC29H6Z, GC29H78, GC29H7F, GC29H7N, GC29H7T, GC29H80, GC29H8M, GC29H8Y, GC29H90, GC29H95, GC2B6C3 & GC2B6C5.

after picking chris & mox up, doing some grocery shopping and throwing the ingredients of a beef & beer stew into the crock-pot we headed up rt. 4 to bear mountain. we started with the most obvious cache to begin with, GC29H6J, bear mountain gateway, we were searching in all the likely spots within the rock wall that was there along the road, me on one side and chris & mox on the other. all of a sudden i hear christy yell "mox, no, leave it". this peaked my interest and diverted me from finding the cache for a brief time. looks like moxie found a friend, a little raccoon that was sneaking its head out of the culvert that was either its home, or resting place for the day.

on a closer examination it looks like the little guys left eye was either missing, or had been severely hurt somehow. we fed him some of our granola bar before getting back to geocaching.

after our little wildlife adventure we found the cache quite quickly. the camo on the container was quite creative, with leaves and bark stuck to it so that it would blend in. the creativity of some of the people who place the caches never ceases to amaze me. chris found this one, we signed the log and continued on to the bear mountain trail.

past by the houses on the road before it turned into the trail and shortly came upon the gz for GC29H6Z, bear trail 1. chris was holding the gps for this one and she sent me off in one direction, i looked and looked and looked. then the gps said to go in a different direction, again i looked and looked. chris handed the gps over and i was able to give her the direction and feet within two minutes, this is all it took for an "i found it" cry from chris. we decided on a new rule, i hold the gps while chris goes to find the cache.

in this cache we found a travel bug, the first for both of us. a travel bug is "a trackable tag that you attach to an item. this allows you to track your item on geocaching.com. the item becomes a hitchhiker that is carried from cache to cache (or person to person) in the real world and you can follow its progress online." (from geocaching.com)

this travel bug is TB33843, 45th Anniversary. chris currently has it, so we will either drop it off somewhere together or she will drop it of on her own. i logged the tb's page with the following:

"picked it up from bear trail 1 on a cool, fall, maine day. once we got further up the mountain we even saw some snowflakes! was out caching with my sister-in-law christy & her service dog, moxie. this was each of our first trackable that we came across. i was just going to discover it, but after seeing that it was an anniversary tb i thought i would retrieve it, see, christy is only recently my sister-in-law as her brother and i just got married a little over two weeks ago not far from where we stood on bear mountain either. so i now have a new anniversary, 10.5.10, and thought i'd pass some newlywed love along with this very special anniversary tb!"

i was so wrapped up in the tb that i didn't write down if we took or left anything else.

on to GC29H78, bear trail 2, or the "military issue toothpick container" as christy called it. this was a quick micro find for chris and we were soon on to GC29H7F, bear trail 3. another quick find for chris! she's really good at this, must be all the military training. i took two wheat pennies from this cache and left a 10¢ euro. i collect wheat pennies and try to pick them up wherever i can. christy found this really cool looking gem stone, it looks maybe like smoky quartz. she wasn't going to take it because she didn't have anything to leave. i told her not to worry and i would find something for her to leave. this is when she first saw the contents of my new geocaching backpack (awesome l.l. bean bag i got as a fundraising incentive for the dempsey challenge). i recently did some house cleaning and found a bunch of random items that i don't need/use but that were worth more than a indefinite detention in the trash can -- worth more to a geocacher that is! she was able to take the stone and i left in its place a glass star gem.

next was on to our most time consuming cache of the day, GC29H7N, bear trail 4. with a difficulty & terrain rating right around where all the others were listed i have no idea why it took us so long to locate this one! oh, wait, yes i do... the gps was going CRAZY! i don't know if it was the tree cover or the clouds or perhaps even the snow, but the gps kept pointing in one general direction from the trail, but once i started going in that direction it would get all screwy and point us all over the place. i don't know how many times i tried to reset the navigation by going back to the trail or how many places christy looked but it took us forever to find this one! but christy doesn't like to give up, as she put it, "i want to win, although geocaching isn't really a winning sport, i still want to win!" she definately won this one.

after looking and looking and looking in so many possible hiding spaces chris was admiring the surroundings, "i really like this rock foundations, awww.... fuckers!" she had found it! the killer of it was that it wasn't really hidden that much at all, just in a spot we hadn't looked at and that the gps wasn't near pointing to in the least! after some more cursing, and having moxie help in retrieving the cache it was on to our next cache.

i was getting a bit worried that we wouldn't finish the series as the battery was getting lower and lower on the gps. next we traveled on to GC29H7T, bear trail 5. chris found this one while talking on the phone, it was a relatively quick find, any would be really compared to the last cache! knowing that our gps live time was limited i decided to leave my

own tb, KC's Dog Tag in this cache. i originally wanted to drop it off when i had kc with me but her best buddy, moxie, was a worthy stand in today. i am excited to see where the mini kc travels! the goal for my tb is for it to travel to every us state with other doggie friends to other pup friendly caches. i know that this specific of a goal may limit how often the tb is picked up and moved, but it's all in the story, there is no time limit for this little guy!

after saying goodbye to the mini kc, we were off to find GC29H80, bear trail 6. the coords were right on for this one and guess what..... I ACTUALLY FOUND THE CACHE! it was another matchstick container, so we signed the log and we were off.

unfortunately when i looked down to set the gps towards the next cache the screen was blank. buh-bye batteries. chris thought it would be easy enough to try to find the caches with out the gps, we tried by counting our strides, but that didn't really work, so we decided to just go to the top of the mountain anyway and comeback another day and finish up the series. 7 caches in one day, not too shabby! may be a record for me! actually, i just checked and it ties the total of caches in one day to the other day that chris & i went caching while on our way to arundel.

i am certainly glad we decided to go to the top, as the views were absolutely stunning! a bit cold and windy up top, but again worth it! i doubt these pictures do the views any justice, but enjoy them anyway.

Moxie

something was melted onto the rock, can you spot the footprint?

christy giving moxie a drink

moxie is the same colors as the trees!

some rock sculpture at the top of the mountain

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Too Tired & Hot to Cache, Damnit!

i was so excited for this saturday—had a whole day planned with my cousin veronica, including introducing her to geocaching...
but once it was time to go, i was tired and hot, and didn't know how kevin would handle watching our 3 month old nephew for a few hours by himself...

friday night i headed down to somerville, ma (right outside boston) with my sister and our friend kim. our close family friend, chris, is in this really great band, bronze radio return, they are from hartford, ct and don't make it up to maine very often, so we took the opportunity to go see them! half way down my mom called, she, chris's mom and another teacher had been at a conference about 40 minutes away from the venue and said, why not go?? we met up with them at the venue, johnny d's. had dinner then danced (and drank) the night away! after dancing all night and then driving home i pulled in around 4:15am, only to wake up about 3 1/2 hours later to get ready to drive up to farmington to pick up veronica.

wasn't feeling too bad on the ride up. we went to breakfast at the homestead -- yum! then it was time to head back to my house. but only for long enough so that veronica can throw in a load of laundry. as a recent (okay maybe not so recent) college graduate, i understand what a pain in the ass it is to do laundry at school! after the load was in and running we headed out to the lewiston athletic park for batting practice for my softball team. it was probably around 80º–82º out, and with the lack of sleep & surplus of beer the night before i was moving kinda slow!

after batting practice is when we were supposed to go geocaching, had planned on going to bear mountain in north turner where there was a series of 12 caches. but with the heat and lack of sleep we decided to stay inside where it was cool. kevin's sister, sonia, had brought the baby, liam, over for us to watch for a few hours anyway, so that kept us busy and it allowed veronica to finish up her laundry.

i hope to check out bear mountain sometime soon, maybe this afternoon if it's not too hot again—although i doubt it, yesterday was 18º cooler than it was on saturday—you never know what you're going to get for weather in maine in the fall!

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Caching with Mom!

friday night my mom asked, "what are you doing tomorrow, want to go shopping?" in a past life i would have said, "yeah, let's go shopping!" instead i said "how about going geocaching?"...

so the plan was to meet up in augusta around 11:30 at the state house then head to hallowell for lunch and geocaching at "hobbit land". i think i had around 27 caches listed for on the way there, while there, and on the way back, i got 2 on the way there, and 2 with mom, none on the way back. so much for 27 caches.

but i got to spend the day with mom and introduce her to geocaching!

picked up GC12EQX, seven of hearts, just as i got off the exit in augusta. quick easy find. took a glass nugget and left a 10¢ euro.

my next stop was at GC1VTHP, a great beginning to a geoday, a few blocks down the road from the first cache. it was a guard rail cache so i thought it would be a quick, easy one, but there were so many guard rails it could be in! still found it quickly and signed the log.

then it was off to the capitol building to meet up with mom and oakley (mom and dads cocka-poo, or as i like to call him the vibrating bath matt). i bought kc, kevin & my 70lb, 2 year old, not very socialized akita. kc & oakley do very well together, but oakley is VERY well trained, so much so that he doesn't do well on a leash because he is always off leash. so mom let him off leash as long as we were away from the road, which basically turned kc into a 70lb weight that i constantly had to pull on to keep her somewhat behaving on her leash. needless to say my arm was super sore the next day!

at the capitol building there was the beginning to a four part, puzzle cache, GCR9K0, capitol idea. what better way to introduce mom to geocaching by a puzzle cache! this took us to a few different statues/monuments around the capitol building and in capitol park. it was a beautiful day, with a hint of fall in the air. once we figured where the actual cache was i went down the gully to get it and left mom with both dogs, it was kind of funny to watch what happened when they both saw a squirrel, arms outstretched in either direction with a dog pulling at the end of each leash. there were few things of interest in the cache that were tradable, but we settled on trading the glass nugget that i found at GC12EQX with a glass star, mom left a shell, and took... hmm, i can't remember, maybe she can fill in the blank in a comment... one cool thing that i found about this cache was that it had a disposable camera inside of it and the owner would develop the film and post them to the caches site. very cool, too bad the camera was full though! here are some pictures of places where the puzzle cache took us:

next on mom's maiden geocaching voyage was down the road a bit to the town of hallowell. we've visited here in the past and i think it is such a cute little town! lots of unique restaurants, antique shops, and old old buildings! usually we go to this local favorite, slates, but today my mom suggested we check out the menu at the liberal cup, no menu needed, i saw the sign which was a carvedhand pulling on a beer tap and i was game! not only was it an old style pub, it was a microbrewery, right up my alley! all of their draft beers were house beers, and how could i decide on what to get? what better way than getting a paddle of beer?? which is exactly what mom and i both got to start. we split two sandwiches, a cuban, and a haddock reuben, which was more of a haddock rachel (made with coleslaw instead of sauerkraut).

after our beer lunch, i went back to the car to check on kc, we thought it was her we heard barking from around the corner, but it wasn't. it was this poor angry poodle with a broken jaw. no matter how loud and viscious he barked i just couldn't take him seriously with his bottom jaw so crooked from his top. just looked like it hurt! mom wentto a little general store to get us some waters for the hike in hobbit land. she apparently got side tract and went into some antique shops because she was gone for quite a while and came back with an old game that she got for my dad's birthday. meanwhile i was waiting at the cars, really having to pee, she finally got back and we saw that this old church turned library had an outhouse behind it. i'm glad we went, not only to get relief from all the beer we had at lunch, but because i got a really cool picture (too bad it was with my phone) of the sun coming over the roof of the church/library.

once our business was all taken care it was off to hobbit land. there was a cache right at the start of it, but with all the muggles around, kc pulling on her leash this way and that, and the gps jumping due to lots of tree cover we weren't able to find it. so it was on to the next one, GC1X5FO, fish the kennebec, #15 smelt. i was able to find this micro while mom was off chasing after oakley, he was on the leash but mom had let go of it while we were searching for the cache and he had run down the trail and gotten the leash caught on something so he couldn't come back when he was called. signed the log, left nothing, took nothing.

as we were going along the trail we got to this really cool old stone arch bridge with a waterfall beneath it. mom suggested we let the pups get a drink of water, i agreed. oakley booked it right for the water and ended up falling in the pool at the base of the little waterfall. i was still up on the trail and it was a bit of a steap hill down to the water. as soon as kc saw oakley in the water she started to pull on her leash. lets just say with the hill and her pulling i ended up going halfway down the hill on my butt and we hadn't even hit the steepest part yet. that's when i decided it would be safer for both of us if i just let her off leash until i could safely get down to the water. as soon as she knew she was free she booked it to the water, nearly knocking mom over. mom asks "does she know how to swim?", my response "she's been once or twice". after having a drink she answered moms question by jumping/falling into the same pool oakley fell into. great, now i have a 70lb, excited, wet dog to put back on the leash...

we let the dogs play around a bit in the water and on the rocks before heading back on the trail. we then went in search of GC1F17X, my last hobbit cache but with the steady flow of muggle traffic and jumpy gps readings due to the tree cover we looked for a bit before i called it. i was getting tired of pulling on kc and was ready to call it a day.

it was such a cool place though, i am determined to be back and find the caches that i had left behind! here are some pictures of our adventures in hobbit land:

kc wondering if she should go in again

hobbit artwork?

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