We hadn’t done any geocaching since our stay in Port Townsend. We’d dropped off one of the Travel Bugs we’d picked up that weekend in one of our own caches, but we still had a TB and a geocoin that we’d been holding on to past the accepted 14 days.
I was itchin’ to cache. I wanted to go out after Phillip’s dental appointment this morning, but I was torn between going after another page in the King County Thomas Guide Challenge (I do not want that project to die) and going after some local caches. There were four geocaches hidden recently, by the same cachers, in nearby Genesee Park that interested me, and there was a certain evil cache on the UW campus that has so far stumped us.
Phillip didn’t feel like geocaching, so I went out solo this afternoon. I decided to do those four new caches in Genesee Park. All four caches were listed as small, but that had had TBs and coins in them. I wasn’t sure if the TB we had would fit into any of them, but I brought it and the coin with me.
I asked our TomTom to give me a route to Genesee Park - no specific cache, just the park. It was the first time I had ever used the TomTom without Phillip navigating. It worked perfectly, and guided me to a parking lot in Genesee Park without incident. I love that thing.
After I parked, I turned on the Magellan, and discovered that one of the four caches was less than 300 feet from where I’d parked. I searched around likely spots for a small cache container to be hidden. I couldn’t find it.
I looked at the list of closest caches. Two of the four caches were south of me, one .2 miles away and the other closer than that, and the third was .35 miles north of me. (Genesee is a big park.) I decided to go for the farthest cache - the one to the north. I decided to walk to it, instead of driving. It was a nice day for a walk.
The second cache, the one to the north, was very easy to find. For one thing, it was huge - larger than some large geocaches I’ve seen. For another thing, it wasn’t very well hidden. But I wasn’t entirely sure I’d found the right geocache. The coordinates matched, but it was much too large to be “small” - and the cache owners had neglected to put the cache name on either the container or the log book. I decided to believe I’d found the right cache, and I signed the log. The cache, if it was the right one, had lasted about two weeks, but I was concerned about the longevity of it. It was so large and so out in the open, how long will it be until it gets muggled? Should I risk dropping someone’s Travel Bug in it? (The cache container was certainly big enough for the TB, plus maybe fifty more of the same size.) I was aware, however, that these new caches had been getting a lot of activity since they were published, so I risked dropping the TB. I will be watching the cache until the TB gets picked up.
I returned to the first cache and, guessing that I was looking for something large, I looked in places I hadn’t looked before. I still didn’t find it.
I went after the farther geocache to the south. It was the same size (and same type container) as the second one. It was a little better hidden, but I found it quickly. I knew then that I’d found the correct geocache to the north.
I then went after the other geocache to the south. It was the same size and type of container has the previous two. It took more work to find, but not much more.
I was then convinced, based on the size and accessibility of the other three caches, that the first geocache had been muggled. I had looked everywhere for it, and none of the others had been nearly as difficult to find. The geocache was so close to our car, however, that I decided to look one more time before moving on.
I came at the first cache from a different angle than I had the previous two times I’d looked for it. This time, there was a geocacher, someone known to me, at the cache, signing the log. I signed the log, too. (There are a few sticklers who will argue that I hadn’t actually found the cache - the other geocacher did - and therefore it shouldn’t count. I am not a stickler for the geocaching rules. Besides, I am confident that, coming from the angle I did, I would have soon found the cache myself.)
I decided to do a little more geocaching. I looked at the list of nearest caches, and saw a micro about a mile away. Rather than ask our TomTom to me to the coordinates (which I hadn’t entered into it beforehand), I decided to ask our Magellan eXplorist for a street route. I was feeling a bit nostalgic for the Magellan street routing, for some reason. It got me to the cache, which I found easily, without problem. I remember when the eXplorist street routing was a giant advancement from using our Garmin point-to-point. This afternoon, the eXplorist street routing looked absolutely primitive, compared to the TomTom.
I went after one more micro cache, using the TomTom to guide me. I found the cache quickly, and decided to go home.
Six Finds, no DNFs, an enjoyable level of mishaps, and I met a fellow geocacher in the field. It was a good day.