Geocaching on the Illinois/Wisconsin Border

Friday morning we loaded mom and dad into the car and we took off for the Illinois/Wisconsin border with a list of 17 caches in hand.

Can you spot the hidden cache here?

We did a couple of caches called WSQ, which stands for Wisconsin Spirit Quest and means that the cache is hidden in or near a cemetery.  Spirit Quest caches are hidden all over the United States and are some of my favorite caches.  This one was hidden in the cemetery, next to a stream....

We did a couple of nice little caches....

And we had a DNF (did not find) at this location.  We looked high and low, even dragged our ladder out of the car and Louie climbed up a tree, but we still didn't find the cache.  There was however, quite a bit of ice on the lake here....

But the next cache was a real winner.  Here's where we were looking....

And here's the cache.  It was a container stuck into one end of a branch and the branch was inserted into a hole in the tree....

Pretty clever, huh?

Next we crossed back into Illinois and went to avenge a former DNF at GC2TV8Y.  I swear this cache must have been missing the last time, as we found it almost immediately this time.  It was hidden at Hiram Buttrick Sawmill and there is some interesting history about it here.

We stopped so mom and dad could find the cache that was hidden on this historic tank.  Louie and I had found this one last year, so we wanted them to find it too.  They found it a lot quicker than we originally did.

This next cache was hidden behind an old restaurant.....

Louie finally found it hidden inside the fake sprinkler head that was attached to a hose...

We grabbed a couple more quick caches...

And then the cache of the day!!  I loved this cache - it was SO creative.

It was hidden on this deck....

We looked all over and then dad touched something and it moved slightly.  It was this board.....

That was attached to the deck by a magnet....

And then there was a secret compartment where the cache was hidden inside....

Isn't that wild?  I love, love, loved it!  I purposely didn't give the GC numbers for most of these caches in order to protect their identities.

We ended up finding 15 caches, had 1 DNF and 1 that we couldn't grab because of the multitude of muggles hanging around.  And 3 of the caches were really good ones, don't you agree?