Wednesday, August 22, 2012

International Geocaching Day 2012

Saturday, 18 August 2012, was the second annual International Geocaching Day. So, a couple of friends and I got together and set out to find some caches. I had a list of 12, then we couldn't find two and it thunderstormed, then someone had to go, then we went to find four others I had been meaning to get, then we ran out of time on the last one but all told I got 13 finds--one shy of my 250th find.

These are the finds we made:
  1. TreyB's 5K cache.
  2. Climb #4 - Beware of the Apple Guards
  3. Yett Creek Four
  4. Bread, milk, eggs and a cache!
  5. Another YARN or is it?
  6. SRPS #6 Rubber
  7. SRPS #7 Power
  8. SRPS #8 Animals
  9. SRPS #9 Steel
  10. Paul's Walkabout
  11. XANN-Welcome to Pflugerville!
  12. Smooches
  13. The Old Austin Executive Airpark
I chose these mostly based on proximity to our start location and the number of favorite points. My favorite cache of the day was probably "TreyB's 5K cache" because it was just a nice hike to an ammo can and I love ammo cans.

The two we had trouble with were:
  1. Paper, Scissors, Rock
  2. Climb #14 - Bee Careful
"Paper, Scissors, Rock" is a multi-part cache and while step one almost defeated us, we eventually found the first redirector. The second redirector was easy enough but while searching for the final cache container, a thunderstorm blew in and we split before making the find. I emailed the cache owner for a hint and he said we were on the right track. We went back yesterday and found it very quickly; and I got my 250th find!

"Climb #14" is another matter. We just couldn't see it up in the tree (granted it was raining still) but the same person gave me a hint as to where it was and it happen to be MUCH higher up than we thought and in a different tree. We spotted it right away yesterday but it started to rain, again, and it was still too slippery to climb. A lot of people use tools like ladders or sticks to get these caches and to me that seems against the spirit of the cache given their high terrain ratings, but apparently I am in the minority on this one.