A Week Full of Geocaching & Our 150th Find

Where we found our 150th find!

I had my spring break a week ago, but my wife and kids had theirs this past week. The weather wasn't as conducive to geocaching on my break as I would have liked (and I didn't really want to go alone), but I did get some in and took my wife and kids on a few more trips.


During one of my times out, I made the mistake of looking for a cache with a difficulty of 4 (the scale only goes up to 5... with a 5 usually requiring special tools like a canoe or mountain climbing equipment)... I also made the mistake of taking my dog Sadie with me. She was very impatient in the woods. She didn't understand why I was spending 30 minutes in one spot. I wasted two days looking for that cache! It was a nano cache in the middle of the woods!!! A nano cache refers to the size of the cache. Nanos are generally about the size of a thimble or smaller... I'm not really sure what "sick person" thinks it would be a fun challenge to stick something as big as my pinky knuckle in a big forest to find (I did have a few choice words for the owner of the cache though). This only enhanced the sense of accomplishment when I did find it.


Because I'm not one who gives up easily, I took the family one more time into the woods to find it the following week when my wife was having spring break (20 years of marriage and we have never had the same spring break...grrr). After about 15 minutes, the rest of the family was about to give up, but then I had an epiphany to look one more time, focusing on the vines that clung to the trees. In about 5 more minutes, with the pressure of the family telling me to quit, I found it!


Feeling really good about myself, I thought it would be a cool idea to go looking for a 4.5 difficulty cache!!! (I was a little cocky, I know) Do you all remember that old commercial for the PGA tour, where there's this guy hitting the ball all over the place, in the water, in the sand, chipping onto the green and totally missing the ball with much sand hitting him in the face, throwing the club across the pond... then sinking a long putt... the final scene is the guy walking towards the camera saying, "I love this game!"... That's how I feel about geocaching sometimes. I'm not addicted to drugs, I don't smoke, and I'm not an alcoholic, but... geocaching has become my "geo-crack." I can't get enough of it!

Saying goodbye to a travel-bug.

So, for the 4.5 difficulty cache... My wife and I took our friends, 3Snipe Hunters, to help find it and a lot of other caches.

Treelogeo and wife posing at our 150th find!

One of the 3Snipe Hunters, Lynette, and Treelogeo's wife, Ruth at an EarthCache

We found a cool cache at a caboose in the middle of the town that was rated a 3 difficulty for my 150th find, and then came the 4.5! We came up to ground zero for the coordinates and we all thought, "there's no place to hide a cache there." After several minutes of searching my wife pointed out a conspicuous hole in a wooden pole. Everyone dismissed the hole thinking that it was too small, and it was too deep for anything to be in it with a reasonable chance of getting to it. I decided to look in it, nonetheless, because we were getting desperate. Whipping out my flashlight, I shined it down into the hole. Straining to get my head to contort the right direction to peer down, I thought I saw something shiny. I immediately thought that it was just a nail, but looking closer, I realized that it was something totally different. I said out loud, "I think I see it..." Everyone converged on me and looked. We all agreed, it was definitely conspicuous, but we had no way to get at it. Jim, one of the 3Snipe Hunters, being a very handy person, suggested that we go to the auto shop to get a particular tool to try and get the shiny object out. I hesitate to tell you what we went to get, just in case there are geocachers that want to give this cache a try, reading this blog. We returned some time later with a plan and a couple of new tools in hand.

A couple new tools for geocaching.

After some fishing around, we finally were able to get the shiny object out... and sure enough, it was a tiny little cache!!! and there was much rejoicing!


We ended up with 18 caches that day with 2 EarthCaches and 2 Waymarks... all-in-all, another great day and week for geocaching.