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 :)

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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