My firsts for the weekend:

• camping!
• going to Wal-Mart at 2 in the morning in my PJs.
• real s’mores on a fire
• quesadillas around the campfire
• seeing a campfire lit with a “weed burner” turned up to MELT
• doing a cache that required pouring water
• seeing multiple tree stump headstones in one weekend

I was a great weekend!  If you ever have a chance to go visit – take it!

Sometimes when I go to a new area it takes me a bit to get a feel for how cachers in the area hide. So I was a little concerned about going caching in Central Park. I was only going to have one day and basically one set of eyes looking. Usually I cache with my God’s Little Cache or my Mother-in-Law. My husband was going along to Central Park with me but usually the most he’ll do is keep watch while I look. He tolerates my addiction and that’s about it.

First we searched for Snug as a Bug in Central Park.   I saw what I thought was a perfect specimen of a “geo-tree” but couldn’t find anything that looked like a cache. I poked around in a couple of other locations but didn’t have any luck. I started to wonder if maybe I just couldn’t handle “big city caching”.

So to bolster my self-esteem I went for a virtual cache next.  The Castle was exactly what I needed.

Next we wandered off to Riftstone.  As soon as we approached the GZ I thought, “Now this one I can do!”  I found it in short order while my husband kept lookout for suspicious muggles.  Normally I avoid looking too strange by taking the cache container to another area a few feet away and settling down with it on the ground.  As I did this my husband says “muggle” but I figure I’ve got nothing to worry about as I’m not actually near the hiding place.  As this muggle rounds the corner so I can see her, I notice she’s got a GPSr in her hand!  There was no way to get the cache back with out her seeing so I went over and introduced myself with my geo-name and showed her where to put the cache back after she logged it.  We talked for a few moments and I discovered that  she was in NY to celebrate her birthday with her sisiters.  This is only the 2nd time I’ve met another cacher at a cache.  Both times have been lots of fun!

We then took a quick cruise to the turtle pond to look for Lakeview.  Sadly the virtual cache didn’t give us enough geo-sight to spot this one with all the muggles that were hanging around.  But look at this cute little guy that we did find.

We ended our caching excursion with a trip to Down the Rabbit Hole – NYC where we found our cache, a great statue and some kicking jazz musicians!

It was a great morning of caching in Central Park.  We spent the afternoon exploring the art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the evening taking in a performance of The Lion King!

Since the possibility of finding a large number of caches in one day has disappeared, it seems that our motivation to get an early start has left also.  So finally around 11 a.m. this morning we started on our way to the library to get an internet connection.  Normally we use a paperless caching system but that requires being able to hook both the GPSr and my ancient Palm into a computer.  That was not going to happen on the library computers.  So we began the process of rethinking our caching route to avoid as many ticks as possible.  But we were back to doing this the old fashioned way with pen and paper to keep our list of coordinates and hints.  Needless to say this was PAINFULLY slow and I was not looking forward to entering all those number into my Garmin Etrex either.  After we had our list we asked the librarian if she knew of anywhere in town that offered free Wifi.  She looked at us strangely and said, “Here”.  Duh- why didn’t we ask that first?!?

So we sat back down, fired up my laptop and got to bookmarking and making a pocket query.  After downloading the query off my email we took off for the local laundry mat.  Why you ask?  Well because the really hot dryers where going to kill all the ticks left on our clothes from yesterday.  And before you ask, yes there were still ticks…..really tiny ones.  I know this because when we put our clothes in the garbage bag to seal them up I got another one on me.  So we ate lunch, waited for the ticks to die and hooked up the Palm and the GPSr to the laptop.

By 2 p.m. we were finally looking for our first cache of the day.  Unfortunately once the MOGA caches were eliminated caching meant lots of drive time.  So we looked for 8 and found 6 today but we did lots of hiking.  We saw a really beautiful waterfall.

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We used a TON of Off bug spray and sweated a lot.  Good thing it wasn’t really that hot today.  And I am happy to report that today we only came into contact with 3 ticks today.  Now let’s see that 5 hours of caching, 6 finds and 3 ticks today and 30 minutes of caching, 40 ticks and 1 find yesterday.  Even the math says that today was a better day.   By 7 we were beginning to wind down and the place we wanted to eat at closed at 9 p.m.   So we started back “home”.  The restaurant we ate at was called The Rustic Oak Cabin.  I spent all of $11 dollars and got one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time.  I would highly recommend it to anyone in a 60 mile radius!  Bring a sweet tooth because the dessert menu looks fantastic.  We were too stuffed to try any of them and that made everyone at our table really sad.

Tomorrow we’re leaving at 8 a.m. to begin heading home.  The plan is to hit Springfield and Decatur in a big way.  Our goal for tomorrow?  ZERO TICKS!

We left home and began on our way.  By the time we got to Springfield we were ready to get out and stretch our legs.  We managed to get 4 quick finds on the edge of this wonderful town.  Thanks to geojeeper74 and  schnauzermomx2 for putting these caches out for us to find!  The day was sunny and warm but not hot and there was a slight breeze.  I even managed to drive this portion of the trip and I must say I was pretty proud of my self.    Normally any chance I have to   pass the driving on to someone else I will do it!  None of the caches were anything extraordinary in Springfield.  We enjoyed looking for them but no huge challenges.

So we got back in the HHR and off we went toward Hannibal, MO where we were going to buy our groceries for the three days.  We managed to get our turkey sandwich supplies along with everything we needed to have breakfast in the room.  All this means that we only need to buy supper out in the hopes of saving some moola toward our next possible geo-trip.  Hannibal is still flooded in the downtown areas and we were looking forward to caching in the old MOGA areas so off we went.  We checked into our hotel and changed clothes for caching in the woods.  This involved long pants, hiking boots, sunscreen and LOTS of bug spray for me.

Upon arriving at Mark Twain Lake we were informed that the area that hosted the 2008 MOGA event was closed due to high water.  But the area from MOGA 2007 was still open so we got our bright orange Geo Caching hangtag and off we went to find parking.  We set off to find Becky Thatcher Cache this required a tromp through a quarter mile of knee high grass.  But Ahhhh we found it!  Upon finding it I had to make a quick trip to the nearby bathroom facilities.  While in said bathroom I found 3 large ticks on myself.  This took me back outside where I found my caching buddy, God’s lil Cache, was picking what she hoped was little “spiders” off her legs.  But these “spiders” had the clinging power of a cocklebur and were also strangely flat bodied.  I calmly tell her that, “Ummmm, I think those be ticks hon.”   And so began our tick picking party….. In all between the two of us over 40 ticks were found.  Most of them were found on God’s lil Cache.  Did I mention she was wearing shorts?

And so what have we learned?

1. Long pants are a MUST in the forest.
2. Bugspray helps with mosquitos but not much with ticks.
3. Light colored long pants make the ticks easier to see.
4. Husbands back home are really nice about looking up info on the net for you about how to make SURE you get all the ticks off the clothes you were wearing.
5. From now on Bren1273 will be doing her forest caches in the frozen months of the  year!!

So Day 2 of the Geo-trip will be re-planned tomorrow. We will need an internet connection and I think we’re going to try to do some urban caching in Hannibal.  Our dreams of searching for lots of caches in the same area are dashed at least until the next freeze.  More tomorrow…….

The problems are

1.  I find I need ato carry around a paper just to write down things like if a cache needs maintenance or where we picked up a geocoin.

2.  I would like to know what order I found my caches in but often i forget to write down the number or time for the order I find things.

3.  I’m lazy and didn’t want to set something up in my ancient Palm IIIc.

I was so excited to run across Cache Log Book v1.3!  It’s easy and it works.  It takes care of all the issues I was having!  Now if I could just figure out how to make it dump directly to the geocaching.com site!

A great week of casual caching in GA with my niece and my brother. My brother was even nice enough to take me over into South Carolina so I could get another state colored in on my map. He’s the best!

1. Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me – Elton John
2. Maniac from Flashdance!
3. Find Me Tonight -  Everyday Sunday
4. Blazin’ Your Own Trail – REO Speedwagon
5. In the Air Tonight – Phil Collins
6. Country Road Take Me Home – John Denver
7. Sunshine on My Shoulders – John Denver

Now, finding a cache in the snow does present a different set of problems.   Finding possible cache locations does require looking at the landscape differently when everything is the exact same color of white.  We have also run into more than one or two caches that have been frozen to their hiding place.  But then again geocaching is often about problem solving.  So if we turn the problem over a few different ways we can usually solve it.

Plus and here’s the biggest bonus:  NO MOSQUITOS!!  I’m more than happy to add another layer of clothing if it means that there aren’t any little blood suckers around!

Now my next goal is 200 caches by the end of the summer!