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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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!

Downtown LA - Park Street -- UPDATE: FOUND

CODE: GCQFJF
COORDINATES: N 44° 05.841 W 070° 12.989
HINT: It is within 5 or 6 feet of a permanent 15 minute parking sign.
CACHE SIZE: Micro
DIFFICULTY: 4
TERRAIN: 1
FIND #: 2

went with my co-worker miranda on our morning stretch break. we work less than a block away at sun journal and every morning and afternoon a nice lady comes over the intercom letting us know that it is time for our morning/afternoon stretch. we try to take advantage of these with walking around a few blocks. however today we used our stretch break for a little neighborhood geocaching...


this was the second cache i went to find, or should i say attempted to find. we were equipped with a google maps street view and miranda's droid that was downloading a program for entering in long/lat coordinates (which only started working after we gave up and went back to work). needless to say we didn't find it.

looked in the sewers to see if something was tied to the grates hanging down into the abyss below. looked up in the near by tree, saw a bunch of leaves and a birds nest. wanted to inspect the 15 min parking spot a bit more but didn't want to look like i was trying to break into the little old lady's car that was parked there. was half tempted to open up the mcdonalds chicken nugget box on the side of the road but figured that it wouldn't be in something that could so easily be thrown out. examined the "15 minute parking sign" as if i was a doctor giving it a physical. saw a beer can crunched up and shoved into the sewer grate, thought maybe, but how would you get it out w/o it falling in?? no luck.

here were some of the "hints" we got from reading the log on geocaching.com:
• no need to tear anything up. it's there. the container is smaller than a film canister.
• talk about TINY, we took a pic of the cache next to a nickel
• it was the recovery of the cache which gave us fits.
• i was right on top of it before without even knowing it!
• there is nice stone landscaping around a nearby tree. the cache is not there and there is no need to lift up or dig up any of the rocks.
• you don't have to disturb anything for this very clever hide.
• this cache is one of a kind.
• the shadow tipped me off to the cache.
• this was perhaps the coolest I have found to date. very nicely put in a location most passersby wouldn't think of looking.
• please read the clues carefully, there is only one place it can be.
• bringing little hands sure helped on this one

my thought is that is may actually be in the beer can, or maybe in a crack in the granite curb... we will check back on our afternoon stretch break. until then...

UPDATE 1:59 PM -- FOUND
miranda and i went back on our afternoon stretch break, okay a few minutes before... this time equipped with more log reading and a gps that worked. we let it settle then walked to where the gps said the coordinates were and let it settle again. there was only one place for it to be, after looking for a few minutes i spotted it! and pulled out the tiny capsule.

it's downtown lewiston, and there are some real shady people in the area, and its probably one of the only place where suspicious looking geocachers look like they actually fit in (as prostitutes, drug dealers/addicts, or petty thieves). this said we tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, we even saved the excitement of finding it and the hi-five until we were back in the safety of our office.

this was a great find, what a creative place to hide it, miranda and i talked on the way back of how the person hiding it actually got it in there! amazing! 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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