PapaNonny Reach 2500 Geocaches

Last week my parents reached a new geocaching milestone - 2500 geocaches!

We were in Kentucky and mom chose Last One Standing  for their milestone cache.

St. Stephen's Church was originally built in 1900 and served the community until 1945.

It was empty and ignored for years and was then overlooked when the Land Between The Lakes Area was formed in 1963.

The Church stood vacant and deteriorating until 2000, when volunteers donated over 3800 hours of their time to restore the church to its original design and construction.

Today the doors remain unlocked so anyone can enter and visit.

We had to travel down an old winding, rarely used road for over a mile in order to reach the church.

Let's just say I'm glad I have a truck with 4 wheel drive!

But the jolting ride was well worth the effort.

The geocache was hidden down the hill near the church....

I think it was a fitting cache for mom and dad's 2500th milestone, don't you?

Mom and Dad Hit 2200 Geocaches

Last weekend we took my mom and dad geocaching so they could hit a new milestone -2200 geocaches found!

Louie and I tried doing this cache a couple of weeks ago and had a DNF (Did Not Find) on it.  It was hidden in a tunnel underneath the railroad tracks.   We brought reinforcements this time and with 4 of us searching, we found it this time around...

I promise the cache is someplace in this photo....

I enjoyed this easy find - it was placed on the porch of the VFW Hall (with permission)....

The cache is a travel bug hotel, so we were thrilled to find some travel bugs inside.  I dropped off a TB I picked up last week....

This cache was mom and dad's 2200th cache - congrats!!

Looking through the travel bugs and signing the log book....

Sammy's Snack Shack was closed and empty that day.  Good thing because I'm sure this would be a hard cache to find once the  weather gets warmer and kids are using the nearby pool....

The cache was hidden someplace around this phone booth....

Mom and dad searching for the cache.....

....and signing the log sheet.....

This was another cache that Louie and I had a DNF on a few weeks ago.  No wonder, it was hidden under 2 foot of snow when we were there last....

No problem today and Dad made the grab....

We enjoyed this cache so much when we did it that I wanted my parents to see it.  It was a favorite of theirs as well...

And finally we took them to grab this cache that we had found a few weeks ago.

Dad found it a lot quicker than we did....  "Hello, can you hear me now?"

I think we found 12 caches in all that morning.  Now that the snow is about gone we're ready to get out and cache again.

Geocache Number 3000

Finally....  We found our 3000th geocache!  And we slid it in just before the end of the year.  I was determined to hit 3000 caches in 2014 and I felt like everything was working against us.  Since we started geocaching in 2009, this was actually our worst year ever, with the least amount of finds for the year.  So hitting 3000 was a big deal for me.

We took my mom and dad with us and headed out to Bolingbrook, Illinois for a morning of caching....

As you can see, we haven't been getting a lot of snow this year.   This cache was a fake apple hidden in a pine tree, hence the cache name "Pineapple."  How funny is that??

Mom and dad enjoyed being about to look for geocaches without trampling through the snow...

Montana Charlies is a famous area landmark and it's been there for years.  I remember going there with my grandparents when I was a kid.  It's not open this time of year, but I thought it was the perfect place to find my milestone geocache.......

Afterwards we went to White Fence Farm for a delicious chicken lunch.

The restaurant still had all of their Christmas decorations up.  It was just beautiful with the lights twinkling and decorations every place you looked...

White Fence Farm is famous for their mouth watering chicken.  One of the things I like about this place is the appetizers they bring to the table while you're waiting for your meal - fresh beets, cottage cheese, coleslaw, kidney bean salad and the best corn fritters in the world.  They sprinkle them with powder sugar and they are  soooo good!

 Now I call that a great day!

Cool Cache Containers and a Milestone

I wanted to share some of the cool cache containers we've been finding lately.  Lamp skirt caches are fine for upping your numbers, but I really prefer to find clever or different geocaches.  I'm not sharing geocache numbers on any of them in order to protect their identity.  Sorry.  LOL!

Clever micro hidden in a faucet...

Loved this one.  Once we found it we had to figure out how to twist and lift the PVC pipe in order to release the cache....

Cache hidden somewhere in this vicinity.  We looked for quite some time and it eluded us.  Mom finally deciphered the clue on the cache page and after that we quickly had the cache in hand....

Good camouflaged cache hidden in plain sight....

Do you see the cache here?  I had a good idea of where it was as we approached and I was right!

You had to pull a chain to get the cache to rise up and pop out of the pipe....

 We always enjoy finding larger cache containers so we can drop off TB's....

A cache was hidden in this woman's front yard, someplace among the flowers.  Geocachers are invited to look and then ring the doorbell and say hello to the home owner.  We did, but she wasn't home...

Mousetrap anyone??

Super clever cache and Louie made the find on this one....

The clue on this one was misleading, but we managed to figure it out....

Another cache hidden in plain sight.  Makes you look at electrical boxes in a whole new way, doesn't it?

I love the use of magnetic strips.  You peel them away and a waterproof log sheet is hidden on the back of the magnet....

 Cute use of a bat - the geocache container was stuck in it's mouth....

Tribute cache to my buddy Wheels00.  Wheels has over 11,000 finds.  Yes,  eleven thousand. 

I always enjoy bird house caches....

Mom and dad playing in the playground.   Not really, they were just finding their last cache of the day and completing a record breaking day for both them and us - 27 geocaches found in one day.  Woo-hoo!!

Believe me, we all went home and took naps after that!