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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Can you have a more perfect Sunday?

baseball, sea dog biscuits, beer & geocaching, can you really have a more perfect sunday?

when you add in bugaboo and christmas tree shop, i don't think you can! plus, the peep hit 10000 miles!! go peep go!

the sun journal, where i work, has season tickets for the sea dogs. and when they are not given to advertisers to use the tickets get raffled off to employees. i have won tickets one other time but the game was the day after i had an awful bout with food poisoning so i gave up those tickets. right before i went on vacation there was a raffle at work for a lot of the end of the season games. like i usually do, i said i was up for any of them! and i won the 4 pack for today's game!

last friday when we had kevin's birthday i gave two of the tickets away to my friend kim. i didn't know if kev and i were going to make it to the game anyway, but wanted to save two tickets just in case. it all depended on if that was his first night back to work or not (they just switched him from days to nights, midnight to 9am and that would be his first day back after vacation). if he was working than we would go to the game. if he wasn't working we would go to the pig roast upta camp. it turns out that he was working, but still didn't want to go to the game, so christy and moxie came with me!

as i usually do now, i looked up what caches were in the area of where we were headed. believe it or not there were two right on the grounds of the sports complex! we wanted to get in and get our seats so we decided to hit up the caches after the game.

it was the 2nd to last game of the regular season, field of dreams day and fan appreciation day! this was the first time i had ever been to a sea dogs game--surprising since they are the farm team for my beloved red sox and they are just 40 mins away! even so, i felt a little awkward wearing some of the many many many many many (shall i go on) articles of red sox clothing that fill my wardrobe, so decided on a sam adams hat and a tee fury shirt, with my red sox pull over just in case i got cold.

in my opinion, you can't have a baseball game with out beer. so chris & i picked up some shocktop from the vendors before heading to our seats. the season ticket seats that sun journal has are AWESOME! we were 10 rows back from home plate! 2 rows back from the clock that registers how fast the pitches go!

we weren't there long before moxie found some friends -- everyone loves her. i can only imagine how kc would do in such a situation, we would surely be asked to leave lol. almost right as we got there stuff started happening on the field. the announcer came out in an all argyle get up, oh how i love argyle! and then the team started coming out of the corn field they had set up in far center field, it was field of dreams day after all! once all the players got up to the home plate area we found out that it was also fan appreciation day! all the players came out into the stands and shook our hands! i tried to get a picture of one of the players, #29 i believe, shaking christy's hand but didn't have such luck. the player who shook my hand--didn't see his number--was quite the looker!

a few innings in we indulged ourselves with a sea dogs must have, a sea dog biscuit. basically a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich. what better lunch than cookies, ice cream and beer? the sea dogs were playing the new hampshire fisher cats and beat them 9 to 2! they were off to a slow start with the fisher cats in the lead for the first few issues. but dogs always prevail over cats don't they?

but this is a blog about geocaching, not baseball, right? so after the game we went to where thefirst cache, GC23M89, original six number 6 montreal canadians, was located. there were a few muggles around but they were all worried about getting to their cars to see if any of the foul balls did any damage (that's what you get for parking right next to the ball park!). we got in the general area and chris found it right away! it looked like it had fallen from its original position, which may have helped. chris spotted the dip can and commented on how usually she wouldn't have thought it could be it but she thought it was funny that it was just black with no label on it. bingo! signed the log and we were on to the next one, GC143X6, the atlanta braves, on the opposite side of the ball park. as we were leaving i said "well that's a cool building", i guess it used to be the stables for the police horses. chris remembered them actually being there when she was younger, but they have since moved them to a less noisy area.

this one took a little while to locate, the gps was bouncing a bit but i knew we were in the rightarea thanks to the satellite view from google of the location. we looked and looked, and looked again. we had some muggles who had parked right near there and asked what we were up to. christy explained that we were on a sort of scavenger hunt. they then assumed that we were training moxie, and christy explained that mox was actually her service dog. i wonder if she ever gets tired of explaining that service dogs are not only for the blind. i was just about to give up from looking, but at the same time didn't want to seeing as we rarely got down toportland. i was looking over by a light post in the area, on it, under it. chris came over and lifted up a part of the base and BINGO! "i didn't even know that could lift up!" there was a jr. portland police badge sticker inside with the log even though it was a micro. it would just about fit this tiny "homies" figurine i had found while cleaning out the office. i have no clue where it came from, but it's a good little cache item for sure!

after finding the two caches it was time to head back to the car. we stopped at mcdonalds to get moxie some chicken nuggets and chris a small burger. then we headed over to bugaboo. chris didn't realize it was a restaurant or otherwise wouldn't have eaten, but that just meant more leftovers to eat the next day. of course we had my sister, mara, as a waitress, that's pretty much the only reason i go there :-)

our thoughts were, why not make a full day out of it? so we headed over to the christmas tree shop after dinner. i had been in one only once ever before and it was to walk in and walk out. mara needed a shaker, we were short on time and she knew exactly where it was. if you have ever been in a christmas tree shop, you know what an amazing experience your first time can be. they have SO MUCH STUFF! and it's SOOOOO CHEAP!!!!!! i got this awesome red sox puzzle that is in the shape of a pennant -- that will get put together and go into the red sox room (aka office, aka craft room, aka monster mess) for sure!

last year i was looking for orange vests for kc for her to wear during hunting season but the cheapest i found was $30 and where she was still growing i didn't want to get something that she would grow out of in a few months, so i passed on it. fortunately she made it through hunting season without any incidents. while we were at the christmas tree shop, i was an isle or so behind chris, she came to the pet section where they had costumes for cats and dogs and held one out questioning if i thought moxie would tolerate such an outfit. i don't remember what it was that she was holding because when i looked that direction i zoned in on the orange mesh vests with yellow reflective tape and zoned everything else out. right on top was a large, and for.... get this..... ONLY $2.99!!! we tried the large on moxie and it was a bit snug, which worried me because kc is a bit bigger and has a TON more fur than moxie does. fortunately, wayyyyy in the back there was an xxl! perfect!

i also picked up a small non-stick frying pan for making omelets (when i make them in the big pans they always turn out a scramble as opposed to an omelet), some silly bands for geocaching trade items, some argyle pens (i told you i loved argyle), and a baseball plush toy for kc girl. after looking at most every single item in the christmas tree shop we checked out and headed to the car. can you believe that we were in there for 2 hours??

we had such a good time, as we usually do when we hang out. it was a great sunday for sure.

what's your favorite sunday?
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Over the river and through the woods, to grandmothers house we go, with some geocaching along the way

kevin's sister, christy, her dog moxie and i took a trip from l/a to arundel today to pick up her trike, visit my grandparents, and find some caches...

we started out in search of GC1FGCQ, troop 160 we were trying out her blackberry and my garmin geko gps to find this cache and see which was more accurate. after mine actually picked up some satellites it was pretty much right on (7 ft), her phone however sent her in the opposite direction.

next it was on to GC1B8GP, webster st. wetland. parked in a little pull off and hit, most likely the only, bumps on the pull off, and hit them hard! chris found this one, well found the onsite clue at first then we spotted the actual cache out of the corner of our eyes. chris went for it and pretty much summed it up with "ewwwww, bugs!" and they were pretty gross, i don't know what type they were but they looked like there were a few in every stage of their life cycle, gross. gotta say i'm glad she got and replaced this cache :-) left a "support our troops" pin and took a little toy compass, which to my great disappointment didn't work, but cool anyway, will have to find a home for it somewhere cool.

GC1GT40, gamble gold was next on the list. the gps led us to this one quite well, was a ways off of the overgrown snowmobile trail but was able to find it with the help of the clue. on our way in, however, moxie found some bushes that had pickeys on them and proceeded to tromp right through them. so once we found the cache we spent some time picking the pickeys off of mox. chris was impressed with this cache, an ammo container of some sort. she wondered out loud what was originally housed in the container due to the imprint on top talking about "toxic continents".

pink flamngos?, GC1BYDZ next. for thisone we parked at a business of some sort, and at the top of their drive i saw a sign for snowmobile crossing so we walked down the road to where the trail started. this one took us down the overgrown trail about two tenths of a mile before it met up with another trail (the trail that the cache was located off from and the trail that was much closer to where we parked the car). oh well, we got some good exercise out of it and saw some deer tracks in the mud. when we got to this cache the contents were all strewn across the forrest floor and the cache container was sealed next to the contents. this makes me think that it wasn't a curious animals doing, but a disrespectful human :-/ we signed the log, packed everything back in the cache and hid it where we thought it was supposed to go, then found a much easier way out then we went in.

a little further down the road and around the corner we came to the cache, 9 ladies dancing - 12 days of christmas, GC1JRPA. this one was right out in the open so stealth had to be used. but fortunately for us it was a gray sunday morning, no one was at the little business center where we were, we made quick work of looking for the cache, and we had not one but two cover stories! cover story 1: we were letting the dog out to do her business (at least that's probably what it looked like from the road); cover story 2: we were sign inspectors. these people who hide all these caches, they can be quite clever! quick park and grab and we were off again!

drove past GCVX2F, 101 dalmatians #11- jenny at first, pulled a u-e and headed back to the location. made quick work of it thanks to the google maps satellite view i pulled up before we left. found it, signed it, and jumped onto 95. at least now i know what i am looking for with the other 100 dalmatians, including fluffy just down the road from me who keeps running off, he must be scared of me.

just because we're on the highway doesn't mean we can't still geocache. stopped at the new rest area in gray/cumberland and went in to get some food before hunting down the cache. both chris and i were dissapointed when we found out that the uno's pizzarea that was listed on the sign wasn't the full resturant but instead about 6 pizzas in cardboard boxes under a heat lamp. we oppted to try somewhere else for lunch. bummed about the uno's (or lack there of) we went in search of GC14B7Z, 88 piano keys note c2 "deep c" #16. we went over to the area where it was supposed to be and christy asked if there was a clue, there was, gr. had to think for a second before i got it, guard rail. too bad there were about 400 feet of them in such a small area. fortunately my pre-caching research payed off and i remembered it being right near the third parking spot in from one area. bingo, got it! signed it and were off in search of real food.

we were thinking of going to this one biker bar in arundel that i knew of, had never been to but it seemed intriguing. until we got there and saw the insane number of harley's out side and figured the two of us, the dog and the peep (that's what we call my car, i'll have to get a picture soon) would be WAAAAAYYYY out of place. so we kept driving, went right past my grandparents and headed on to federal jack's restaurant and brew pub in kennebunkport. this is where all the shipyard beers are brewed, too bad pumpkin head wasn't on draft yet, mmmmm pumpkin head. but we did have some good seasonal peach wheat beer and nachos. christy had a sweet pepper relish burger and i ended up with haddock tacos. a very yummy meal overall.

we finished up just in time to make it to the trike shop (a.k.a. some dudes garage) for christy's appointment. he gave us the low down on the bike and how to adjust it, chris rode it around a bit and we loaded it up into my car. as we were driving away we noticed that we seemed to match quite well, yellow trike, yellow car, her in a yellow shirt, me in a brown shirt with yellow graphic on it. funny how things work out that way.

after picking up the bike we stopped in to see my grandparents. we sat with them for a while and they were quite impressed with christy, her story and with moxie. and as we left chris shared that she enjoyed spending some time with them as well. my grandparents are awesome, they aren't so old and stuffy that you feel like you have to be proper and not touch anything in their house. you can just sit there. have a beer and shoot the shit with them, they rock!

some pics from the day:

moxie with troop 160

troop 160 w/ pin

gps with webster st. wetland onsite clue

webster st. wetland onsite clue & cache

christy w/ gamble gold

deer tracks on the way to pink flamingos

the busted up pink flamingos

9 ladies dancing Read more!