Milestone Event

Friday night we went to a Geocaching Milestone Event.  This particular event was hosted by the caching group collectively known as KUJR Productions.  They host several events each year and they are always well received.  These are the cachers who make up KUJR Productions....

( 2catchick, dnfu,  rikjaxon, KU Jayhawk,  EnPleinAire and BDKnel )


Events are a great way for geocachers to meet up, grab something to eat or drink, and talk about, what else - geocaching. Fridays event theme was "Milestones" and was just a way to celebrate whatever particular milestone anyone wanted to celebrate.  Everyone just posted their current number of finds.  It wasn't like there was a prize or anything for the most finds, it was really just an excuse to get together and have a party.  Nothing wrong with that!

Here's the PapaNonny Clan.  That's what my family is collectively known as in our local circle of cachers.  It consists of my sister, my parents and my daughter, as well as my brother in law and my husband (not pictured).

We see a lot of our usual caching buddies at these events, as well as meet new cachers.  Everyone is welcome and people come from miles around.  If anyone is visiting from out of state, or even from out of the country, its a great way to meet local people and hook up for some geocaching with the area experts.  They even had a raffle and one lucky cacher won a $ 25.00 gift certificate!

After the event a couple of us ran out and did a few caches in the dark.

Can you spot the cache here?

This one was on an embankment in a very nice hidey spot....

This next one was near a waterfall with some adorable children statues....

The geocacher posing with the statue was adorable too....

It was a fun evening and much needed after the long week I had.  It felt good to have dinner and then get out and run around in the dark with flashlights and just have a good time.  Next up will be the annual pre-Christmas event called "Festivus" and that always draws a good crowd.

Lunch Club and Night Caching

In our area we have a lot of geocacher socializing going on, especially in the warmer months.  Cachers put together a lunch event, usually at the forest preserves or an area restaurant.  They publish the event on the geocaching website and any cachers are welcome to show up.  They usually last only about 1 1/2 hr. and its just long enough to stop by, have a burger, catch up with old friends, maybe grab a cache or two, and then head back to work.

This last week some friends of mine decided to host a lunch event in their backyard.  They had about 40 cachers show up, including 2 who were in town from Germany, and 2 more visiting from Texas. 

Everybody donated $ 5.00 at the gate to help pay for the food and a good time was had by all!

Saturday night we decided to go on a night caching run.  Night caching always reminds me of being a kid because we are running around in the dark with flashlights.  We took off for the evening with our friends Tom and Mary with a specific cache in mind.  It's a 4 stage, multi cache out in the country where you have to drive to each stage, use your flashlight to find fire-tacks on trees and then locate the cache container nearby which will contain the clues to the next stage.  Unfortunately we didn't get off to a good start.  We found the first location and spent an hour searching in the dark for the first clue, which we could never find.  So after all that, we weren't able to advance to the 2nd stage and we had to abandon hopes of doing this cache.  We emailed the cache owner and it turns out the 1st stage may be missing, so we searched in vain.  It was very disappointing to say the least.  We were not about to go home with our tails between our legs, so we looked up some more caches from our cell phones and took off.

This one was down a path in the forest preserves so it wasn't too hard to get in and out.

I liked this old fashioned street clock.  And yes, that's the correct time.

 I loved this one as it was near a creek and this old log cabin.

 This one was in a park.

 This one was underneath an old bridge.  If he slid down the bank he would have ended up in the river.

And here we're crossing the bridge on our way back.

We ended up getting 8 caches and had 2 DNF (did not finds).  We got home at 3 am.  It's been a long time since we've done any night caching, but it was a beautiful, warm evening and just fun to be out with good friends.