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.

Read more!

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

Read more!

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!

Not the Right Shoes

even though they are awful cute, these are not the right shoes for geocaching...
actually besides making my feet look good i can't think of one thing that these shoes are actually good for. well maybe creating sore, sweaty feet, and getting all sorts of wizard of oz comments out of the guys at work.

went looking for GCXZ99 after work today but the shoes and nature took over, i really had to pee which the water lapping up on the shore of lake auburn didn't help much. i also was terribly hungry and the alluring smell of the pizza that i had picked up on the way home wafting from my car made this a limited search.

the hint was "rotten stump" and i was again w/o a gps and just using my memory of what i saw on google maps to find this cache. at least i know the area and it's another one that is quite close to home (and go figure on one of my bike routes) i'm sure i can find this one at some point.

looks like kevin & i are going to take the wheeler to oxford and explore some trails out there after i get out of work around 2. maybe i can look up some caches in the area -- don't know if any will be on the trails, but its worth a look right?? addicted? maybe. Read more!

The Search for Fluffy Continutes (with Updates)

i wanted to stop to find cache #GCW085 on my way home from work. but the search for fluffy continues...
too many fishing muggles to stop and look for fluffy. maybe i will have better luck tomorrow morning on my bike ride. fishermen don't get up early do they??

UPDATE 8.19.10 7:52am
went looking again for fluffy this morning on my bike ride. no muggles out at the butt crack of dawn today, but no fluffy either.

i don't know if my inability to locate fluffy is due to my lack of experience geocaching, lack of a good, working gps, or just because i'm not looking hard enough in the right places.

i am going to look into the reviews of different gps's and gps enabled devices and see what i can find out, i may just have to suck it up and make a purchase anyway :-(

UPDATE 8.19.10 5:04pm
i looked up the original cache site for all the dalmatians (GCVQ1D) and found this little tidbit of information: "you can hide your puppy under a lamppost, behind a guardrail, or anywhere that you feel it would be safe and dry. you cannot hide it in the woods, because they are too small to take care of themselves. All the puppies in this cache have rolled in soot to help them hide better, and all are numbered."

perhaps i'll stop by on my way home from work, i'll also check out the two others that are on lakeshore drive. i just hope the construction that they are doing on the road won't disrupt any of the caches. Read more!

No Purchase Necessary

without fail it is raining this morning. i say "without fail" because it seems that every time i plan on taking a bike ride in the morning it rains.

but it wasn't a total waste of a morning, kevin found his old garmin geko 201 gps and this morning i downloaded the manual and found out how to use it! which means i don't need to buy my own seeing as my phone won't work as a gps...


its pretty much a perfect fit for me to, IT HAS A GECKO ON IT! those of you who don't know me, geckos are my favorite animal, i actually have 3 tattooed on my body and many trinkets, shot glasses, artwork featuring geckos.

so this morning i am going to spend the few minutes i have before i have to get ready for work programing in the 10 geocaches i have listed on the right side of this blog. and maybe today if it stops raining i'll check out the cache that is a few feet from my work. Read more!

Basin Micro

CACHE INFO
CODE: GCXYZY
COORDINATES: N 44º 10.619 W 070º 16.962
HINT: Hidden not buried, no need to disturb anything to find it.
CACHE SIZE: Micro
DIFFICULTY: 2
TERRAIN: 1.5
FIND #: 1
(image: it wasn't totally dark out yet...)

first cache ever! and so close to home (1.4 miles, but went through 3 towns, turner, auburn & minot)! it's actually on my "hilly" bike route. no gps required, just google maps w/ street view...


muggles (that's what they are called right??) were there fishing when we first got there so we decided to go have dinner at davinci's first then check on the way back. it was just after sunset so we made it a quick search, kevin found it (he says i was scared to go into the woods—more like he had the flashlight and i couldn't see to even begin to look).

honestly him finding it first kind of took some of the thrill out of it for me, i was so excited about this new hobby. but it is fun to share it with him, it'll give us something to do together! he did have a good idea on the way out though, with so many in the vicinity of the house i can ride my bike to each one, looks like there are some on my bike route that takes me down lake shore drive. hopefully early tomorrow morning no muggles will be around when i go for a ride.

here are some images of the evening:

dinner out

view of the old mill buildings from our seats

another view from our seats, through the umbrellas to the brick

we found it!!!

"don't take a picture of me with it" okay, i won't...

Read more!