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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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!

One Lost, One Found

well the first one wasn't really lost, i just couldn't find it. went geocaching near the house on my way to running errands yesterday morning...
CACHE INFO:
CODE: GCWO85
NAME: 101 Dalmantions #62 Fluffy
COORDINATES: N 44° 10.528 W 070° 16.466
HINT: None
CACHE SIZE: Micro
DIFFICULTY: 1
TERRAIN: 1

this was the first cache that i took the geko gps to. it was also the first cache that i had to log a DNF (did not find) on :-(. i got to the area and let the gps settle in for about 5 minutes. went to the proposed location, let the gps settle again and it said to go 60' in the opposite direction, went there, let it settle and then it was 80' in a totally direction. i didn't look very closely at google maps when i was at the house and now i am wishing i did because after 20 or so minutes of searching to find what area it was actually in i gave up and went on to do my errands.

had i looked closer at google maps with the satellite view i am pretty sure i would have been able to find the cache! fortunately i live less than 2 miles down the road and can go back, maybe i'll even stop on my way back from work this evening, or better yet, go on a bike ride (this cache is also on one of my routes) tonight to retrieve it and a few others that are along my route.

fortunately the second cache i looked for that day was found.

CACHE INFO
CODE: GC1GGCB
NAME: Dam No Good Name for This
COORDINATES: N 44° 07.957 W 070° 27.741
HINT: Retaining
CACHE SIZE: Small
DIFFICULTY: 1.5
TERRAIN: 1.5

Hundreds pay last respects to Theodore
"Ted" Heidrich
Photo courtesy of Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

kevin's step-grandfather passed away last week and yesterday was his funeral. it was a beautiful service held in the apple orchard of his own farm. kevin's dad & step-mom live right across the street from where the funeral was held, and right on the little androscoggin river, and guess what was right across the river on the other side? that's right a cache!

told the "kids" about it and christy, her service dog moxie, jake & heidi all came along with me to look for it. we used steve (kevin's dad's) gps and it did the same thing that mine was doing earlier in the morning -- maybe they are used to get someone in the general area then you have to use what you saw on google maps and your eyes to search for the cache... but on the other hand the app that miranda had on her smart phone the other day got us right to the cache... it'll be something to look into.

anyway we were searching for about 10 minutes then we had jake look up the clue on his phone, i had looked at it earlier but couldn't remember what it was, well once we found that it took jake about 2 minutes before he found it! there were a bunch of trinkets in it and the log was just about full! we all wished we had brought something to put in there but none of us had anything. we also forgot to get a picture -- oh well we now know where it is, had a blast looking for it, and i think i may have made 3.5 more geocache addicts :-) lets just hope we didn't get any poison ivy while searching around! 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...

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