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 :)
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
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