It statrted with one goal in mind. We ended with two goals achieved. What a great time we had reaching these goals.
We 've been geocaching since March 29th. Less than 30 days, but we are so addicted. Our first goal for this weekend was to hit fifty caches. We started the weekend with thitry- three found caches so we felt this goal was within our grasp but we expected it to be a challenge. Our plan was to geocache as we headed north to our cabin, stay the night, then geocache our way back home.
First I researched and found caches along our route. Sandie organized the information around different towns along the way. We started out around 8 am. The first caches were located near St Francis, MN. near highway 47. We found our first cache with little problem, signed the log and moved on. By noon we had ten of the seventeen caches we needed to hit our goal of 50. Suddenly the goal seemed very attainable. The cache at this site was hidden in a birdhouse. We both walked by this cache several times before we decided to look in the house. HA there it was!
It was early, but we had to cover some miles before we could rest. Three hours later we were on the road into the cabin. This is where our plans started to fall apart. The road was still covered with snow! Not just a trace of snow but several feet of deep, wheel catching snow. So we let discretion be the better part of valor and turned back. We were 250 miles from home and didn't relish shelling out motel bucks, so we decided to have some dinner and geocache our way back home.
We spent most of the evening geocaching the Grand Rapids area. Lots of fun here. Sandie found a tiny cache hidden inside a breath strips container that was then hidden inside a power pole cable cover. By the way that was our forty- ninth cache. One away from fifty but getting dark fast. A quick search of local caches left us nothing nearby so we decided to head back to the Twin Cities. Due to an ongoing medical condition I can't help with the driving, so poor Sandie had to continue the drive home almost another five hours. We desperatly wanted to get that last cache, but caching along the route in the dark just wasn't safe.
About 10 O'clock I remembered that there was a cache at a boat ramp on Lake Mille Lacs. This would be far enough from the road that getting run over was no longer a concern. We arrived at the very dark boat ramp to the still frozen lake. King Boreas, a locally famous geocache hider had hidden the cache. I got out of the car with my Maglight and proceeded to stumble through the darkened woods. My GPS indicated the cache was only about 150 feet away. I took a bearing and off I went. Sandie kept track of my progress in the headlights. At 10:28 we found our 50th cache!! It was dark and chilly but our spirits were warm and high.
We didn't get home until 12:45 Sunday AM but gosh we had a great time!
Sunday morning we slept in until 8 am. Late for us, we were sore from the walking the day before but we decided to cache locally. I found an area nearby that had more challenging terrain than we've had in the past. We located and logged five more caches! One of the caches here was the best we had seen so far. The hider had taken a rubber mask, injected foam into it, and put sealed PVC pipe inside. The result was when you turned the corner to look inside this tree trunk a face was staring back at you! WOW that was very startling but really fun. We had quite an odessey ahead of us back to the SUV. I could barely walk after the hike out of the valley. When we got home we were exhausted.
To geocachers it is a big deal to be the "First to Find" (FTF) a cache. I was checking my E-mail when I noticed that a nearby geocache had been published just three minutes earlier. I told Sandie if we hurried we had an opportunity to be FTF. We jumped in the SUV and headed for the bearings. Along the way we were looking around for our competition headed that way too. In this area there are two geocachers that race to be FTF. We arrived at the coordinates and appeared to be FTF. Only trouble was, after ten minutes we hadn't found the cache yet! Guess who showed up? Yup the "Collector" one of the FTF demons. Minutes later the second one, MSPMatt showwd up. The race was on!
The "collector" was covering ground we had already dissected. MSP Matt was right behind him. We were desperate. The "collector " noticed a likely spot high up on a tree, a tree that I kept coming back to, but failed to notice the hole. Collector couldn't reach the hole as it was too high up for him. He had me reach inside and there it was! The four of us shared FTF!
We reached our second big goal for the weekend, we finally had a FTF, and met some nice people along the way.
We 've been geocaching since March 29th. Less than 30 days, but we are so addicted. Our first goal for this weekend was to hit fifty caches. We started the weekend with thitry- three found caches so we felt this goal was within our grasp but we expected it to be a challenge. Our plan was to geocache as we headed north to our cabin, stay the night, then geocache our way back home.
First I researched and found caches along our route. Sandie organized the information around different towns along the way. We started out around 8 am. The first caches were located near St Francis, MN. near highway 47. We found our first cache with little problem, signed the log and moved on. By noon we had ten of the seventeen caches we needed to hit our goal of 50. Suddenly the goal seemed very attainable. The cache at this site was hidden in a birdhouse. We both walked by this cache several times before we decided to look in the house. HA there it was!
It was early, but we had to cover some miles before we could rest. Three hours later we were on the road into the cabin. This is where our plans started to fall apart. The road was still covered with snow! Not just a trace of snow but several feet of deep, wheel catching snow. So we let discretion be the better part of valor and turned back. We were 250 miles from home and didn't relish shelling out motel bucks, so we decided to have some dinner and geocache our way back home.
We spent most of the evening geocaching the Grand Rapids area. Lots of fun here. Sandie found a tiny cache hidden inside a breath strips container that was then hidden inside a power pole cable cover. By the way that was our forty- ninth cache. One away from fifty but getting dark fast. A quick search of local caches left us nothing nearby so we decided to head back to the Twin Cities. Due to an ongoing medical condition I can't help with the driving, so poor Sandie had to continue the drive home almost another five hours. We desperatly wanted to get that last cache, but caching along the route in the dark just wasn't safe.
About 10 O'clock I remembered that there was a cache at a boat ramp on Lake Mille Lacs. This would be far enough from the road that getting run over was no longer a concern. We arrived at the very dark boat ramp to the still frozen lake. King Boreas, a locally famous geocache hider had hidden the cache. I got out of the car with my Maglight and proceeded to stumble through the darkened woods. My GPS indicated the cache was only about 150 feet away. I took a bearing and off I went. Sandie kept track of my progress in the headlights. At 10:28 we found our 50th cache!! It was dark and chilly but our spirits were warm and high.
We didn't get home until 12:45 Sunday AM but gosh we had a great time!
Sunday morning we slept in until 8 am. Late for us, we were sore from the walking the day before but we decided to cache locally. I found an area nearby that had more challenging terrain than we've had in the past. We located and logged five more caches! One of the caches here was the best we had seen so far. The hider had taken a rubber mask, injected foam into it, and put sealed PVC pipe inside. The result was when you turned the corner to look inside this tree trunk a face was staring back at you! WOW that was very startling but really fun. We had quite an odessey ahead of us back to the SUV. I could barely walk after the hike out of the valley. When we got home we were exhausted.
To geocachers it is a big deal to be the "First to Find" (FTF) a cache. I was checking my E-mail when I noticed that a nearby geocache had been published just three minutes earlier. I told Sandie if we hurried we had an opportunity to be FTF. We jumped in the SUV and headed for the bearings. Along the way we were looking around for our competition headed that way too. In this area there are two geocachers that race to be FTF. We arrived at the coordinates and appeared to be FTF. Only trouble was, after ten minutes we hadn't found the cache yet! Guess who showed up? Yup the "Collector" one of the FTF demons. Minutes later the second one, MSPMatt showwd up. The race was on!
The "collector" was covering ground we had already dissected. MSP Matt was right behind him. We were desperate. The "collector " noticed a likely spot high up on a tree, a tree that I kept coming back to, but failed to notice the hole. Collector couldn't reach the hole as it was too high up for him. He had me reach inside and there it was! The four of us shared FTF!
We reached our second big goal for the weekend, we finally had a FTF, and met some nice people along the way.
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