Geocaching

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My 100th find!

After the nightmare of Punto del Norte this was a nice change of pace. I walked right up to this one and found it in a matter of seconds.

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My brother and I had time for one last cache before we had to get back to our day so we decided to go for this one. This is one that I had driven under many times. There is a tunnel near my house and this cache is up on top of the tunnel area. We walked on over and found the pathway that the cache was hidden on. I got lucky and found the cache quite quickly. After that my brother and I decided to head over to Gordo’s and get a burrito.

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I grabbed this one as I was making my way around some local caches. This is a nice easy drive up cache that brings you to a trail that I am going to have to check out at some point. When I found the cache and went to sign the log I was quite surprised to find that I was the first person to sign it. Turns out that the cache had gone missing and I was just the first person to find it since it had been replaced.

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This cache was hidden in a rather unspectacular area. It was near some really nice areas but the area of the cache itself is like a storage area for the parks and rec guys. Oh well. When I arrived at the cache spot I actually found the cache very quickly. The camo that was used to hide the cache had fallen away so the cache itself was totally exposed. The exposure seemed to have had a negative effect on the cache as well, the cache container was melted and had a huge dent in the side of it. The top no longer fit on well and it was just generally speaking in bad shape. After I signed the log I tried to hide it a bit better than I found it since it was totally exposed.

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When I arrived at this little park in the Berkeley hills that I didn’t even know existed there really wasn’t any parking. There was some parking on the street but the curb was red. Looking around though I noticed that there were at least a half dozen cars parked in the red. I figured I wouldn’t be there for very long and if everyone else is parking in the red I might as well as well. I made my way over to the cache site, there were some young muggles hanging out nearby which at first I thought was going to make my search difficult but as it turned out I was hidden from view down a hill.

This was a tough hide. I was sticking my hands in all sorts of places that I wouldn’t have stuck my hand in prior to starting caching, I had my trusty flashlight looking in all the nooks and crannies. In fact, I was so caught up in looking that I didn’t even notice the family of muggles who had snuck up on me. Here I was sticking my head in between rocks, shining my flashlight around, I figured I must have looked a bit funny so I took the time to explain to them what I was doing. They ended up being a very nice couple who had just moved to the area and we chatted for a bit.

They left and I resumed my hunt. I finally spotted it shortly after they left, this was a tough one. As I was leaving the park I saw the couple so I called out and told them I found it and the man gave me a thumbs up. I was a little surprised when I got back out of the park and I could see my car. Every other car that had been parked illegally was now gone so there was my car, parked right in the middle of a red zone. I felt kind of bad but I wasn’t there for very long and I got away without getting a ticket.

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This was a really fun “armchair cache”. The idea was simple, go to this site which has a bunch of webcams in the Dresden area. Watch these webcams and when you “Trabi” (a Trabant actually), which is a type of car, take a screen shot of it and post it on the cache page.

As silly as it may sound, I really enjoyed hunting around looking for my Trabi. When I first tried the sun was going down in Dresden and it was quickly too dark for me to continue the hunt. I tried again about 12 hours later when the sun was back out. There were several times where I thought I have may have caught a Trabi but I wasn’t positive and I really wanted to catch a nice clear shot. There are many pictures listed on the cache page where there is no obvious Trabi and to me, they are cheating.

I spent about a couple hours looking while I was doing other stuff on my computer (the webcams only update every 30 seconds or so) and then I finally spotted one. You can see my Trabi below! Very cool idea for a cache!

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By the time we were done looking for A Quiet Corner it was pretty much time for me to get headed home. My brother told me about this one and told me that it was really easy and we would be driving right past it.

He was right, he pulled up to the spot and I had the cache in my hand in under 30 seconds. I quickly signed the log and we were headed off. This was a pretty boring cache, the area that the cache is hidden is definitely nothing to write home about but sometimes it’s nice to get a nice easy find.

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This was one of those caches I just had a sixth sense about. As I was driving up to the Bart station, watching my GPS to get a general area of where it would be so I would where to park my car I said to myself “I bet the cache is hidden right there.” I parked my car and followed my GPS to cache. The GPS led me right to where I had thought it would and I reached my hand to where I was expecting to find the cache there it was! I love when that happens.

I signed the log and decided it was time to head home and call it a day.

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After nearly pulling my hair out at Up the Down Staircase I headed home defeated and decided to pick this one up as it was on the way. I was able to find nice easy parking and headed down into the well hidden, but very nice little park here. This cache was super easy for me to find. My GPS led me directly to the spot and I didn’t even break stride walking up to the cache. The logbook was a bit damp and needed some maintenance but it was still signable so I did so.

While I was here I had spoken to my brother about Up the Down Staircase and I decided to head back and look again.

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Ugh, this was one of the most frustrating caches I have had found. I had to run out to Sears to pick up a weight bench that I had ordered and I decided I would bring my GPS along with so I could do some caching on the way home. I noticed that there was this cache right in the parking lot of the mall so I drove on over and went to pick it up. At the time that I went looking for it, it was listed as a 2 star difficulty, it has since been upped to a 3 star which is a good thing because this definitely wasn’t a 2 star difficulty.

I looked and looked and just wasn’t having any luck. As the name would suggest you are looking around a staircase, so there are plenty of little nooks and crannies to look in. I scoured the area and then, as I was walking up the stairs I noticed something. Relieved that I had finally located it I take the cache and open it up… DAMMIT!! it’s a decoy cache, the first one of those I had ever found.

I had been looking for at least a half hour at this point and decided to call my brother, unfortunately he missed my call. I spent another ten minutes or so looking and then finally gave up and headed to Hey, there’s a park down here!.

When I got to Hey, there’s a park down here! I pulled out my Treo to read the details of the cache and noticed that I had my message from my brother. I called him back and he gave me another hint to find this one. I went and quickly grabbed “Hey, there’s a park down here!” and then turned around and headed back to “Up the Down Staircase”. Armed with my brothers hint I resumed my search. After about twenty minutes I was utterly frustrated. As a two star hide this shouldn’t have been so damn hard. I finally called my brother and asked him for a very blunt “hint” he pretty much told me where it was and I found the damn thing.

I was very happy to finally find it and just move on. This was frustrating.

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This was a nice short little mystery cache. The posted coordinated bring your to a rather large sculpture, I wish I had brought my camera for this one because the sculpture was quite large and impressive. By looking at the sculpture you will be able to answer the question “which came first?”. My brother saw the sculpture and then quickly figured out the puzzle before I was even sure what we were looking for. With the answer in hand we pulled over quickly and worked out the final coordinates.

The final location was very close so we went on over and started looking. From what the actual final location was we figured it would be a very easy quick find but that proved to not be the case. We looked and looked, Charley who had found this one previously was waiting in the car. When he saw that we were taking a really long time finding one that should be easy to find he came out and tried to help. In the end it turned out that the cache was no longer there, it had been muggled.

When we got home that night I emailed the owner and she confirmed a couple days later that it was gone.

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This cache was a bit different from anything I had ever seen before. This was another candcfamily cache and one of the more interesting ones we did today. The name of the cache probably tells you how it works. They posted some coordinates that were with two miles of the actual cache location and then allowed readers of Geocaching.com to ask them questions to help narrow down where the cache is.

I hadn’t looked at the puzzle before we left but Charley had. From the questions that had been asked Charley was able to draw up a map of a few blocks where the cache was known to be located. We also had a hint that told us that the cache was near a large landmark that was made out of earth and rock. Armed with Charley’s map we started driving up and down the blocks, we had gone up and down a few times, looking for something that fit the hints description when I looked over and saw it. I brought it to everyone’s attention and they agreed that it definitely had potential. We parked the car and started looking, remember, we had no GPS coordinates to work off, we were flying by the seat of our pants. Surprisingly, my brother made the find not too long after we started looking. He got a bit lucky with the find but he found it.

This was one of the more rewarding caches of the day and it was a real team effort between the three of us to find it.

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This was a short little multi fairly close to µ $ that we decided to hit up. This one was a bit tricky at first. The first stage is to find a brass plaque which you have to get information off of that will give you the final coords. My GPS was bringing me to a place that was the logical place for a plaque to be found but we couldn’t find one anywhere. We searched all around and just couldn’t find it. I followed my GPS again and it brought me to the first place we looked and I decided to have a second look, AHA! there it is.

With the plaque in hand we quickly figured out the location of the second stage and before I knew it, my brother had it in hand. We all signed the log and headed off to the next cache.

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This was a puzzle that I had just briefly looked at about week before we went out caching. There is a caching family who goes by candcfamily over at Geocaching.com who make some of the most creative puzzles around, they also make some of the most difficult ones. Anyway, I saw this one briefly as I was checking out some of their puzzles but never sat down and tried to figure it out.

My brother had figured this one out though, he noticed something a bit odd about this cache when he went to look at in GSAK and that was enough to get him started on solving it. I have since gone back and looked at the puzzle and it’s actually not too hard once you know what to look for.

So, my brother and I believe Charley had figured this one out so we headed on over to pick it up. I found out something weird about my GPSr (a Garmin Legend C) on this cache. They were giving me the corrected coordinates and I was trying to enter them into my GPS. No matter what I would do the GPS would reject them. Because this cache uses an unusual character (mu) in the name my GPS was showing it as having no name. Once I gave the cache a name in my GPSr it was able to save the corrected coords.

So we got to the final location and commenced the hunt. Man, this one was tough, we looked and looked and we just couldn’t find it. I was about ready to give up when Charley finally made the find. It was a quite the spot and I don’t know if I would have ever found it on my own.

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This was a nice little walk up cache that showed me my first benchmark. I had never seen one before and I still haven’t logged this one as I am not sure how to do it but it was neat to see one. This cache is very exposed, it’s right on a busy street and there are houses not far away so stealth was a bit required to make the find. We didn’t notice any of the people in the houses looking at us, so hopefully we were discreet.

My brother and I were looking at a large metal object at the final location (we hadn’t read the hint) and Charley was looking on the pole. Needless to say, Charley made the grab.

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This was probably my least favorite cache of the day. There was nothing really worth seeing in the area. Before we even stopped the car we figured where it would be hidden and we were right. The parking lot was full and I was driving so I didn’t even bother getting out of the car for this one.

I like when people show a bit more creativity with their caches than this one displayed. I have a feeling that the hider probably works in the strip mall or makes visits often so it’s easy for him to check in on it.

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As it turned out, spotting this object from Can I Have Your Autograph? was the key to solving this puzzle. As the all the cache page does is tell you approximately where to look and then to locate this object. So since we had spotted the object we had solved the puzzle.

We pulled up to the giant metal ball and started hunting. It didn’t take long before my brother came up with the cache.

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As I have stated earlier I had never been to this part of town so I was very pleasantly surprised at what was waiting for us when we got to this cache, a genuine aircraft carrier! The GPSr brought us very close to the actual hiding location and then we commenced the hunt. The posted hint narrowed down where to look.

I saw my brother check a likely spot while I was looking somewhere else and when I worked my way over to where he had looked I decided a second look may be worth it. Sure enough, there it was! We signed the log, checked out the boat a bit from the shore and then moved on. I’d love to go back and go check out the boat in more detail.

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I hadn’t seen too many different cache containers before we got to this one. I had seen my fair share of film canisters, tupperware and other generic containers but the only real clever container prior to this one was Resurrection of Pokey which I had found four years ago. So I was very pleasantly surprised when we found this cache. Well, I can’t take credit, my brother is the one who actually found it.

It’s ideas like this one that really get me excited about Geocaching. Sure, the hunt for a film canister can be fun but I love seeing the creativity that people put into their hides as well.