Up a Tree

We made a quick geocaching run yesterday and only did 3 caches, but it felt good to get out of the house for an hour and indulge my inner monkey.  2 of the caches were hidden up in trees and as you know, that's my favorite kind.

Cache one.....

Cache 2 was placed much higher and Louie tried to talk me out of going for it.  Seriously??  I love climbing pine trees - the branches are often perfectly placed for climbing, like stairs to the top of the tree.

If you look closely, you can see my blue jacket in the upper half of the tree.  That's my backpack and red hat laying on the ground.  I didn't want anyone to think I fell out of the tree.  LOL!

It was pretty darn cold and windy up there.  The hardest part was getting my pen out of my jacket pocket and opening the cache while trying to hang onto the tree.    But it all worked out.  It was quick and fun!

Lessons on How NOT To Be Stealthy

Rule number 1 of geocaching is to be stealthy.  You are never supposed to let anyone see you find, sign or replace a cache.  After all, that's how they end up disappearing, or get muggled as we say.  

Over the course of 3 years of caching, we have applied many techniques to our bag of stealth mode tricks.  Sometimes we take the dogs and pretend we are walking them.  I've been known to use my girlfriends daughter as a decoy.  I'll hiss at her,  "Go swing on the swings Abby while I rummage around in the bushes behind you.  Don't look at me."   Mom is really good at sitting on park benches and feeling around the seat with her fingers.  We kneel down and pretend we're tying our shoes, talk to imaginary people on our cellphones and one time I practically crawled on the ground behind a bus stop shelter where 2 people were sitting and waiting for the bus.   Sometimes I feel like I'm 10 years old and playing "Hide and go seek."


The other day we had a fiasco that perfectly defines how not to be stealthy.  The cache was called Money Bags.


The scene was a small island in the middle of a suburban street, that was covered with grass and 3 small trees.  Dad pulled the car to the curb and we surveyed the area.  No neighbors were out and about, nobody was peering through their windows at us, no kids were anywhere playing.  The coast was clear so we shoved Laurie out to find the cache.  

There weren't too many places to look for a cache that was the listed small size, so she quickly determined where the cache was hidden, made the grab and scampered back to the car to open it.  The cache container was a small box that had to be opened a particular way.  We quickly handed it to the resident puzzle box expert and he made quick work of opening it.  We signed the log sheet, threw in a few trinkets, shut the box and he handed it back to Laurie to go re-hide.

Just as she opened the car door to put the cache back into the tree, a man came out of his house and decided to "weed" his yard.  I totally think he wanted to see what we were up to.  Mom poked me in the shoulder and told me to go pretend I was taking Laurie's picture in front of the tree.  So Laurie takes the cache back toward the tree and I follow her with my camera, because you know, everyone who is anyone takes pictures of their sister posing in front of a boring tree in the middle of an island in some random neighborhood.  


So Laurie is posing and goofing around and she doesn't realize I am really taking pictures of her, which makes it so much funnier to me.  The guy is kneeling behind me in his front yard "weeding" and watching us out of the corner of his eye.
  

Then Laurie makes a swift move, turns, puts the cache back in it's hidey hole and swivels to strike another pose... Just then the cache box promptly falls out of its hidey hole, hits the ground, breaks open, and spills everything out all over the place.  At which point I burst out laughing.  You cannot plan stuff like that!

She crammed everything back into the container, stuffs it back in the tree and we go running back to the car, guffawing like a pair of hyenas.  Dad quickly drives away and I am sure that the second we pulled around the corner that guy was running over to the tree to see what we were doing.  If that poor cache is missing, it will be totally our fault and I do feel really bad.  If it goes missing, I'll have to email the cache owner and let him know why.  ** UPDATE as of 7-1-12.  Several other cachers have found the cache since we did so the cache is safe!  A big sigh of relief!


So there's your lesson on how not to be stealthy and I don't think anyone will be asking us to be spies anytime soon.

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?

Ninja Monkey

I had the best time with my daughter today.  The rain stopped, the sun FINALLY came out, and the temperature actually got up to 65 degrees.  We grabbed our caching bag and headed out the door for some quick fun.

I just received my new geocaching hat, so I decided to break it in.

We did 7 caches this morning, but 3 of them were pretty clever ones.  I'm not giving the GC number's out because if anyone ends up hunting these caches they should have the same fun finding them as we did.  Here's the first one....

The 2nd one was hard to find because there were SO many options....

Did you guess where it was?

This last one was my favorite for the day.  If you look closely, you will see my head almost at the top of the tree, near the trunk.  I am a sucker for tree caches - they are my absolute favorite ones to do.  The cache itself was hidden in a plastic squirrel that was tethered to a branch.  (the tree was not harmed or damaged in the placement of this cache)

Geocachers who climb things to reach caches are called "Ninja Monkeys" - hence the name of my post.  I have been a Ninja Monkey my entire life, even before geocaching was created!

Afterwards we went out to lunch.  All in all, a fun morning!  Now I have to get cracking (ha, ha) on dyeing Easter eggs and preparing dinner for tomorrow.  Have a safe and wonderful Easter everyone!