KLGeocache: 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: