Back in the Saddle

Long time, no see

How've you been? Life got very hectic towards the end of Feb. and into March, continuing into April. Then it was just a matter of being out of the habit of keeping this blog up and I let it slide and slide and slide into home! So here we are--the end of August and I'm finally doing another update.

Wow. So much has happened, both in caching and in the rest of life. I'll just cover the caching stuff ;) 

Going backwards in time, I placed my third cache finally! The two very industrious local cache-hiders said they were taking a break from placing hides, so I figured that was the cue for me to get off my butt and get some of my ideas finished. I have a list of cache titles, A-Z of Babylon 5 quotes. "A Shining Beacon in Space" was my first hide. Then I tried to place "Currents in the Universe", but I need to apply for a permit from the Gainesville City Parks Division for the location I want. I'm still procrastinating on that. I instead went for a new one closer to the neighborhood, "How Will This End? ~In Fire~ ". It was approved with no issues, which was a nice change of pace ;)

It's in there, somewhere ;)

I was so encouraged, I spent another week putting the finishing touches on three more caches around the neighborhood that I thought were a nice little mini-tour of the place. I created a puzzle cache, a 2-stage multi-cache, and another traditional cache. When I submitted them, the reviewer came back with the comment that I needed permission from the Homeowners' Association Board. I thought it would be a rubber stamp thing, but instead they denied permission :( I'm disappointed at that outcome, though I understand the reason (insurance, of course). I had such nice spots picked out. My favorite was a "trail tree", which I hadn't heard of before I started geocaching. There are historic trails of these in the Great Lakes region, made by native americans. The one in the neighborhood is not historic (too recent), and I don't know who did it or why, but it's still neat and I wanted to share it with other cachers. Oh well.

It points to the exit ;)

Well, I'm on the lookout for new locations that will match the titles. Two of them are flexible: "Be Somewhere Else!" and "My Second Most Favorite Thing in the Universe" (as I type that right now I thought of the perfect spot for it!). The one that was to go by the trail tree was "Dreamers, Shapers, Singers, and Makers". I can think of possible generic spots, but nothing specific, available, and of the right size to hide the container. I already filled out the label on the lid with the cache name, so I'd like to use the same one, though rubbing alcohol will work to remove the Sharpie ink if need be.

There's a new challenge cache in town to find caches that begin with A-Z and 1-9 all in the county, so even though I'd like to place the ones that are now listed in my profile as "disabled", maybe I should jump to the less frequently used letters and do those. Eh, I'll get to them eventually. I really want to clear out my backlog.

Cache Count: 550

First CITO

Your mission, should you choose to accept it...

Yesterday I attended my first CITO event--cache in, trash out. A local geocacher coordinated with the group Alachua County Forever to have a workday clearing out invasive species from the Sweetwater Preserve.

It was kind of amusing that we were working to undo what humans have been working to achieve for thousands of years. The sandy soil was being turned into richer soil due to the detritus from the oak trees that have invaded the sandhill. This was ruining the habitat for animals like the gopher tortoise who rely on burrowing into the soil. The roots from the oaks are too dense for the tortoises to dig their burrows, so our assignment was to cut out one particular species of oak tree--the laurel oak.

Public Enemy #1--the dreaded laurel oak

There were 2 Alachua County Forever employees there to give us our marching orders--Sandra and Kevin. Sandra showed us the leaves of the laurel oak so we knew what to look for, and Kevin laid out the procedure. We were to saw or clip the small oak trees, mark the "stump" with a flag, and drag the cuttings to a collection spot where another group would be throwing them into a wood chipper in a few days. Sandra had some herbicide she was spraying on the stumps, to ensure they would be killed. She would look for the flags, spray, pull up the flag and move on to the next. The people cutting would then get a restock of flags so they could continue marking their progress.

Seek and Destroy!

Getting final instructions

 Fun with flags

More fun with saws ;)

I started out with a pair of clippers, but quickly ran out of flags. The kids in the group were either setting flags or dragging smaller cuttings to the collection pile, but about the same time I ran out of flags was when the sawyers were getting to larger trees that the kids couldn't handle. I returned my pair of clippers and started dragging cut trees to the collection site as well. There were 4 main sites where people were cutting and I moved around between them. Others were also trading off between cutting and dragging. It all worked out fairly well.

 Haul 'n' Oaks, what a band ;)

 Collection pile

Along with water breaks, I stopped to take some photos periodically--of people as well as scenery.

I don't like mushrooms, but these little guys just caught my eye

We were scheduled to work from 9 am until noon, but around 11 am, Kevin called it a day because Sandra had run out of pesticide to spray on the stumps--the 2nd time that had happened with the geocaching group. The group gathered around the water jug on the truck and wound down while waiting to carpool back to our starting point.

Hydrate!

Ft. Flag :)

Back at our starting point, another local cacher who couldn't join us in the clearing met us and handed out some rewards to the rest of us. I got my first geocoin from her and I will need to think about when and where to send it out into the wide world :)

It was an educational, exhausting morning, but it was worth it for the experience. Late April will be global CITO day and there are two events in the planning stages. I hope to participate in at least one of them.

Cache count:  236

Boiling Point

212

The other day I found my 200th cache and made the following post on geocaching.com:

This was one of the first caches I tried to find back in August when I started geocaching after a 7 year gap. I didn't even get to GZ due to mosquitos, fear of snakes ( no poky stick at that time), and generally 'FL woods in Aug.' stuff. Soon after, I met Doggymama at a caching get-together and she told me this cache was a special one to her. I began to plan a way to honor that which involved waiting for colder weather :)

One of my sons was going to visit for Thanksgiving, and the other for Christmas. I thought it would be nice to make the find with one of them. I did scout it out a bit when Nov. came around and thought I spotted it, so I was ready. I also intended on leaving something meaningful, but that would survive in a cache. My mom died of cancer when she was 37, so I found something of hers I thought would be suitable.

Well, Thanksgiving and my son arrived when we all promptly got very very sick. No go.

Christmas came around and with it the nice cold weather. My other son wasn't as into caching as his brother, but I still dragged him to a few. I was waiting for Christmas to take him here...when I promptly got very very sick...again :(

We did try once before he had to go back to school, but there had been a lot of rain and the area was pretty swamped. No go.

At this point I decided I wasn't going to wait for any special occasion and I was just going to fill in this part of my map when I had the chance. The water level kept up for a few weeks so I waited. As I waited I was working on a cache streak for January. I made it--yay! Then it seemed plausible to keep going and try for 100 days in a row. I was also closing in on 200 cache finds.

I flip-flopped on 2 things. 1) I wanted this to be my 200th find and 2) I found I couldn't leave the object I had initially thought to drop in the cache.

Today worked out to be #200 and of course it poured down rain at lunchtime. Sigh. After lunch I shook my fist at the rain, put on my lousy boots and went for it. To my surprise the ground was only a little muddy and squishy. The cache was high and dry! I was able to get right to it and sign the log. I left 4 rolls of pennies to celebrate my 200th find, and when I find something I can bear to part with that reminds me of my mom I'll add that.

Thank you for the cache and for your time reading my saga :)

=============

I love how the tree is cradling the cache. "It's mine!" it seems to say :)

So that was my 200th.

Tonight was a different kind of experience. There is a puzzle cache near my house that's been on my "find nearest geocaches" list ever since I was aware of such a thing. This one is intended to be done at night. The coordinates take you to the starting point of the trail and from there on, you need a very bright flashlight that will catch the reflective tacks placed along the route.

I dragged my son out for this one, because I knew my husband wouldn't be interested, and I didn't want to do this alone. We made a good team, keeping to the trail and finding the markers and eventually the final cache. After almost an hour of carefully walking through the woods we followed the clues to the culmination of the quest :)  We had a good chuckle at one of the items that had been left in the cache. It was a little doo-dad with "Beet Teacher" written on it. I figured it was supposed to be "Best Teacher" but it clearly says Beet. So we had a fun time riffing on what a Beet Teacher would be :) 

The trail markers

Blinding my son with the flash on my camera as he holds up the log on the find :)

Cache count:  212

31 and Not Done :)

Let's Go For 100?

I finished 31 Days of Geocaching...in January, not August :)  It's nice to see the calendar page of my user profile on the geocaching site filling in with green (cache found!) instead of white (nadda). I'm really glad I did some of those caches when I did. The decreased vegetation helps a lot, and there were many days out there with zero mosquitos--so awesome! Though just the other day we were having lows in the 20's but one day back in the 70's and the bugs are back. Sigh.

There's a challenge cache out there that requires finding caches 100 days in a row--as well as finding that cache. I'm not sure I can achieve it this year with my schedule about to get crazy, but since I'm 1/3 of the way there, might as well try and see how far I get. Every find is one added to my other goal of 558 by the end of the year, so it's all good :)

Oh yeah, if I remember, I'm going to add the updated totals to my posts:

Cache count:  198

Sore Feet

And Allergies :(

Today was disappointing. I still made 1 find and kept my streak going, but I looked for 9 caches and only found 1. I'm glad the 1 happened, but it's still a bummer to be home with my knees creaking, my feet throbbing, and my back aching and only getting the one find.

Since my abundance of free time is about to come to an end, I took advantage of today and drove to the southeast side of town, where I don't normally get to lately. I saw on the geocache map that there were a good number of caches on SE 15th St. and a couple just a little ways off of that road, so I wanted to get at least a few of them.

I used to go this way semi-regularly when I first started scrapbooking. The lady that organized scrapbooking days lived down here and she would set up her house for the day with plenty of table space and supplies laid out for everyone who came. When she stopped hosting these events I stopped driving to this part of town--and I had never gone beyond her street anyway, so some of this route was brand-new to me.

The first stop was the TB McPherson Recreational Complex. There are two caches here. One is fairly close to the parking lot, so I grabbed my caching backpack, my sturdy poky stick, and my gps to hunt it down. The signal sent me to the far side of a retention pond that looked straight out of Land of the Lost--lots of trees, water, ferns and Sleestaks (ok, kidding on that last one).

Once on the far side, the needle pointed straight into the middle of the pond. Well that was out of the question so I sighed and went to look for the other one. It was in the far corner of the park, beyond the baseball field. Once the gps told me I was within 50 feet I gave up on this one. The route was across a creek and up a very steep bank. I didn't see the cache or I might have attempted this, but as it stood, I wasn't going to try that much craziness for a potential DNF (did not find). So back to the parking lot it was. Doublechecking the coordinates for the first cache showed the near side of the pond this time so I wandered over. I was able to get quite close to where the gps said Ground Zero was, but I couldn't fully investigate. There was a guy with a camper nearby just hanging out and I didn't want to look suspicious. Moving on...

I decided to skip to the farthest southeast cache on my short list for the day. It was called SRD and part of the description was that it would be easy to find because the name gave it away. Well, I had no idea what SRD meant, but wanted to give it a shot anyway. I was able to park fairly close and did make the find quickly. I didn't realize until I signed the log how new of a cache this was; I think I was the third person to sign. This was a pretty little spot and I'm glad I came out here today.

There was another cache just around the bend from here. I grabbed a plastic bag from my car to do some trash pickup while I walked to the second site. My bag was mostly full before I got halfway *chuckle* One good thing was noticing this:

There was a sign next to this saying it was a FL Dept. of Transportation Survey Marker. Now I know what an SRD is ;)

I wasn't able to find the other cache. I think the power line overhead was confusing my gps, but still thought I'd be able to find it based on the hint on the cache page. No such luck. I turned around to go back to my car and finished filling the trash bag.

I had another failure on the way to Boulware Springs Park. My gps pointed into a sludge pond and there were several middle schoolers walking home from school, so between those two things I figured discretion was the better part of valor.

There were 3 caches in the front part of the park, before the Hawthorn Trail. The first one I looked for was a no-go, but I spotted the landmark needed for the second cache which was a puzzle cache. I came up with an answer and headed off to the new coordinates. After a bit of a search I couldn't find anything. I finally gave up yet again and headed for the third one, but by the time I got to Ground Zero I was exhausted. It was a micro-sized cache which means it's the size of a 35-mm film canister or smaller, and the likely spots were large trees with saplings surrounding them and the whole lot covered in Spanish moss. Forget that. Time to call it a day on the southeast, but I held out hope for one last attempt nearer to home. Well, I'll spare the details for now, but I came up empty-handed one last time and went home. 1-for-9. Bah.

31 Days of Geocaching

31 Days My Way

I don't remember when I first jokingly mentioned this idea, but after I said it I started liking it more and more. Geocaching.com did their big promotion "31 Days of Geocaching" in August of 2013. I tried but couldn't quite manage it. A couple of reasons (but by no means all) were the heat and the mosquitos. Sometime late last year I said to someone that I was going to do 31 Days of Geocaching in January instead, because in Florida that's more enjoyable.

So far it's going well. I've gotten at least 1 find every day of the month and have surpassed my streak of 19 days from Aug. Things are about to get very busy in my life, so I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this up, but I'm going to try to keep it going. It would be nice to get 100 days in a row since I think there's a Challenge Cache out there for that achievement, but...one day at a time :)

Weird Wood

The theme of the year so far seems to be "Weird Wood". I keep seeing weird/cool formations in trees and roots, which is a great cover for looking for a geocache. "What am I doing? I'm just out taking pictures of stuff!"

Northside Park

Glen Springs Blvd.

 The 'Leaning Tower of Treesa' near Holy Faith

On the description page of the geocache near here there's a great story told about this tree. Back in the day when the power company was first coming through putting in power lines, they were going to cut this tree down. The current homeowner ran out and threatened to chain herself to the tree to save it. She was successful and I don't think she had to resort to chains ;)  In the logs of people who have found the geocache, there's someone that said they used to live there and they were pretty sure the woman from the story was their grandmother!

NW 7th Ave.

Waterford Park

Near Main and 10th

I've never seen a 'fingerprint' pattern in a tree root--still not sure if this is natural or someone was really bored and carved it. It's pretty either way.

Goals

New Year's Resolutions

This year I have 3 goals:

1) lose weight. I've been having some success with the "Metabolic Precision" program. The main idea is to build muscle mass to increase your metabolism. It combines eating more protein, reasonable carbs, and omega-3 as well as doing resistance training. It's working for me even though I'm not a hardcore adherent. I hope to continue the success throughout the year.

2) reach a total of 558 geocache finds by the end of the year. I was at 139 finds when the year began, so this is still more than 1 per day on average which is going to be a challenge. People ask "Why 558? Why not 500?" It's an inside joke from the online game I play. The crossover between the players there and the geocaching community is 3, so not many people will get the joke. That's ok, I do ;) 

3) write at least once a week on this blog. So...it's been 10 days since my last post. Oh well. Still going to try to keep at it. I had some positive feedback on my picture-a-day blog. This one won't be quite the same, but I do tend to take a lot of pictures. I'll be posting a lot of them, especially when I see something cool while geocaching. There is a lot of hidden beauty out there that you'd never know about until you go looking for a random piece of tupperware ;)

This is one of my recent favorites. I was looking for caches on the south side of San Felasco (city park, not state park). The trail led past this gorgeous swamp. I'm usually not a big swamp fan--I don't like mosquitos, or snakes, or gators (the real ones--big fan of the team ;)  ) but this was just so....green! Plus, it was one of those super cold days we've been having lately; no mosquitos, snakes, or gators to be seen. I went 3-for-3 caching there that day :)

Our New Family Member

In all this excitement I kind of lost track myself...

Back in June we received Mike's medical alert service dog, Titus. Titus was only 5 months old but already trained to do his job. He will give a signal when Mike's blood sugar drops too low, and he has a different signal for high blood sugar. Mike rarely goes very high, so we mostly see the low signal. It's pretty amazing and he's already made a huge difference by detecting lows when we wouldn't have expected them.

It's very different having a puppy again :) And we've never had one like this before. It's an entirely new learning experience!

Here are some of my favorite shots of Titus :)

Stay still for a second!

Ok

I'm the King of the Dog Park!

Too late to model for the Sistine Chapel ceiling, guys

I found it!

Go Gators!

Geocaching buddy :) He's better at finding lizards than caches

Why can't we go to the National Park, Mom? :(

A STICK! A STICK!

A Salty Dog

Titus is pretty cool :)

Happy New Year :)

The story thus far...

When I last blogged, I was trying to do the "31 days of Geocaching" challenge.

Short version: I failed.

Long version: I was up north in Troy, NY getting Seth settled at college. I was able to find caches the first 2 days. The first was the Travel Bug hotel I mentioned in the last post. The other 2 were on the next day. One was a 'Virtual' cache. Virtuals are usually places that are historically significant, or there is some kind of marker or plaque telling about the location or a person, or something like that. The cache owner poses questions on the cache page. You go to the spot, read the material and find the answers. You send e-mail through the Geocaching.com site to the owner with your answers and claim a Find on the cache page. This particular find was a plaque honoring a WWII veteran that became a local congressman after the war.

The other find was a 'Mystery' cache, also called 'Puzzle' caches or 'Unknowns'. There are a variety of these kinds of caches. This one involved finding the first stage--a normal container. In the container were coordinates for the second stage, and once at that location, you had to answer some questions based on the information available there. This cache was at a Shaker site and was about the figure of Mother Lee. Basically, all I know about Shakers I learned from looking for this cache *chuckle* I had a great time and had a nice walk, but I was a little nervous that I would take too long and the site would close before I could return to my car. It all worked out though, and I had another day down in my quest for the 31-day streak.

Not much shakin' here

The next day however, the dream came to an end :(  Seth and I finished up some last-minute shopping and went to his dorm. It was much busier! This was the day the majority of students were moving in and things were pretty crazy. We met all the RA's and the RD and Seth went up and down every hallway looking for fellow Slytherins (the dorm was Hogwarts themed, where all the students were divided into the 4 houses and Seth and his roommate were Slytherins). I had to drive back to Boston, so I didn't want to stay too late but I didn't want to leave either :( I used the excuse of wanting to meet his roommate (and I did actually want to meet him), so I stuck around until about noon. But the roommate didn't show up by then and I really did need to get going. I said my goodbyes and tried not to cry (too much). By the way, we still have yet to meet "John". I'm halfway convinced he doesn't exist :p

I had found a cache listing at a small park not too far from the campus so I thought I'd give it a shot and see a little of Troy besides RPI. The park was very pretty, with a waterfall spilling into a gorge. The cache was supposed to be just off the trail that led down to the bottom. I couldn't find it and couldn't stay too long to search, so I headed to the highway. There was a series of caches at every rest stop on the Mass Pike, so I planned on looking for those. I attempted 3 of them and came up empty handed each time. By the 3rd one I was getting frustrated and also anxious about the time. I didn't want to be driving after dark--I can get lost enough in the daytime! So I drove on through without any further stops until I reached my hotel in Quincy. Once there I called Zach and Des to let them know I had arrived, and looked for listings of nearby caches :)  There was one not too far away and when they showed up we all went looking for it. Zach was ready to get all hardcore and go climbing in the trees, but the difficulty and terrain level on the listing didn't seem to require that much effort, and from the hedge at Ground Zero (the spot where the GPS coordinates match up with the cache listing) I was pretty sure it was something small hidden in the bushes. After 10 minutes or so, and the light fading fast, I abandoned the search--streak over :(

The waterfall is hiding behind the trees

I had a great visit with Zach and Des, and I was able to find another Virtual the next day at a very nice park on the waterfront.

The next day I was flying home, and I had a list ready for the drive from JAX to Gainesville. The morning started out fine--I woke up on time, got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Then I got to airport security and found my iPad was missing! Ack! I came this close --> <-- to accusing the TSA of stealing it when they reminded me of the app that lets you find your iPad from your iPhone and vice-versa. When I used that I found that I had left it at the hotel. Doh! I was so embarrassed/relieved/mad at myself. The manager at the hotel was great though and shipped it back to me. I got it about a week later.

The flight was uneventful, but when I landed in Jacksonville it was raining. I took my time at the airport retrieving my luggage and had some lunch, but it was still raining when I went to get on the road home. I tried for some caches anyway on the drive, but I found that the geocaching app on my phone really doesn't like rain or even heavy clouds. The coordinates were bouncing all over, and the one I thought for sure I'd find due to the description was also a DNF (did not find).

I ended up back at the house 0-for-5.

I did get some finds the next couple of days, but at that point the 31-days was a bust and I gave up on the remainder of the month. I was ready to give it a rest for the time being until the weather cooled off and the mosquitos died down.

To be continued...