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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I Wonder...

if anyone has found every single cache out there...

probably not. but i wonder who has found the most caches? and if there is anyone out there that has found all the caches in a certain region, or area? or if there is anyone out there who has found a cache in every country that there is one to be found in? i wonder if anyone has found all the caches in maine, new england, the east coast, this side of the mississippi, the usa, ect? i wonder how many geocaches are in maine? i may just have to look on geocaching.com to see if there are any sort of stats like this. i'll keep you posted if i find anything. who knows, maybe i'll be the first person to find all caches in maine. Read more!

Funny Bulgarian Geocaching Commercial

found this while reading geocache: i'm not obsessed... right? and just had to share it.

too funny!

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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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The PM Part of AM & PM Caching

woohooo! geocaching both in the morning and the evening! can a day get any better? with gipper's it can, and it did...
so after the bike riding/geocaching adventure in the morning kevin and i stayed in out of the heat staying cool with kc & dexter (season 1). hurricane earl was headed our way so by the time steph got home at 4 it had cooled down quite a bit outside. steph asked if i wanted to go hiking, and i was planning on hitting mt. apatite soon anyway so i was in! what surprised me though was that kevin was in as well! so the three of us went up in search of 11 caches, GC1VD47, GC1VD3N, GC1VD4Q, GC1VD52, GC1VD5J, GCHXNY, GC1VD5D, GC13NRQ, GC1VD5A, GC1CWY9, and GC1V25H. it was a 3 mile loop and took us about two hours from start to finish.

most were micros but the first two we found were small/regular sized so had some tradable items in them! in the first cache, GC1VD47, we left the small compass in exchange for a small tupperware key chain.

there was a red carabiner in the second one and kevin was just talking the other day about how he needed a new one. so we switched his green one for the red one in GC1VD3N.

like i said a lot of the others were micros with just the log, but still fun to find anyway! two of them, GC2VD4Q and GC1VD52 were supposed to be "hanging out" but they had both fallen either by the force of nature, animals or humans. on GC1VD52 it actually looked like the hook used to hang the cache up had been broken off.

mt. apatite was so named because of the

apatite that used to be mined there. other minerals such as feldspar, quartz and mica were also mined for. you can even find trade amounts of garnet and even tourmaline! very cool! one of the 11 that we were searching for, GC1CWY9, gem trackers, was an earthcache. this was the first earthcache i had come to. i don't know about other earthcaches but there wasn't an actual cache per say to go along with this one. it brought you to this great hill where you could actually mine for, and keep, the different gems & minerals as long as you didn't go any deeper than 2 feet. you could log a find for this earth cache by taking the picture of three different minerals and identifying them correctly.

we didn't "mine" for long as it was getting later, but kevin did climb up to the top of the pile and found some cool rocks. also from where i was at the bottom of the mound i was able to spot some heart rocks for mom, including one of all quartz! i had the backpack, so i didn't let kevin bring back the huge piece of quartz he found unless he wanted to carry it himself, he decided to leave it. i would like to go back and mine some more, it would be really cool to find a nice garnet (mom's birthstone) or a nice piece of tourmaline and have it made into a cool piece of jewelry. we weren't able to log this cache as a find as i'm not very familiar with minerals/rocks, even after a geology course in college. but i am willing to go back and try again!

because of time constraints--it was getting dark awful quick, and threatening to storm--we didn't get GC13NRQ, GC1VD5D, GCHXNY, or GC1V25H. which isn't too bad, found 6/11, and mt. apatite is close enough that i can go back on my own to find the other caches. should be easiest if i just go the opposite direction that we went today.

we finished up the day with a yummy meal, and a few beers, at our favorite neighborhood sports bar, gipper's.

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It's REALLY Too Bad...

that you can't swim in lake auburn. went for a good long bike ride this morning and decided to go down whitman spring road in search of caches GCY6DN & GC1C0PW...

the first cache, GCY6DN, life's a beach, was just down a ways from where i got on to whitman spring road. i rested on a rock looking out at the quite lake while letting the gps lock in to some satellites. followed a nice path down to a beautiful beach where I quickly located the cache! signed the log and sat there a while admiring the view.

then it was back on my bike and further down the road. which is more like a trail because unauthorized vehicles are not allowed on it, which is nice for bikers, walkers, runners, and taking the dog for a jaunt. there are a few gates shutting the road off to car traffic.

couldn't find GC1C0PW, corner rock, wasn't on any sort of trail at all, just in the middle of nowhere, at least that's what my gps said.

it looked like someone or something had maybe bushwacked in the area but couldn't really tell. no one has actually found the cache since may 2nd so i am wondering if its still actually there. i went through the logs on my cell and most of them commented on the

poor shape of the cache, waterlogged and all. one also said that they bushwacked around a bit then looked at the name of the cache, corner rock, and was able to find it. i went to pretty much the only rock in the area but couldn't find it. i did see an empty zip lock baggie though. my thought is that the cache was there but has since been destroyed, why else would there be a ziplock baggie in the middle of nowhere? so i couldn't find the cache but i did find this cool old wine (?) bottle on my way to the area.

1 for 2 kinda stinks, but at least the logs for the second one weren't really positive so i didn't feel that it was too bad. it was a nice 2 hours of biking and caching.

some more photos from my am adventure:

reflections

now this is a real "corner rock" however nowhere near the cache so named

rays of early sunlight

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Withdrawal Pains

i'm going through some withdrawal pains not having gone geocaching since my stay-cation started :-(. would have loved to get some caches out of the state when kev & i took a mini trip to ct & ny. 2 days, 16 hours of driving, for 3.5 hours of entertainment. but our schedule was quite filled (with driving) but we did go to the occ (orange county choppers) headquarters in montgomery, ny then headed over to foxwoods in ct for a cirque de soleil show which was AMAZING!!! i knew that there was a cache just down the road from where we stayed at my aunts but after all that driving I was not quite up for it.

but i have good news!!! i am going to take a nice bike ride in the morning (hopefully nice with how hot it's been lately!) and try to get two caches along whitman spring road, GCY6DN & GC1C0PW. i am also planning/hoping to take kc on a nice walk through the trails on mt. apatite just down the road where there are 11, count it, 11 caches!

for now its time to ease these awful pains by researching the caches i am going to look for tomorrow and maybe some trackable items to purchase. any suggestions? Read more!