The hide itself was placed very nicely into an old tree hole with well placed bark as cover. A very eerie yet peaceful FTF. Not sure why I am attracted to cemeteries but they are fascinating. Must be something with the history that has been and the time passed.
I currently have a very cool cemetery hide myself and have received nothing but nice comments to it's Uniqueness. Its GC1NK95 "At Peace and Not To Be Forgotten" if interested.
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(RESPECT patio stone on top of regular sized geocache)
I had tried this easy and quite inventive geocache late last week and had to DNF it. Mainly because the cache wasn't hidden at time of publishing. Little details. For some magical reason it remained unfound all weekend so I swooped in this morning and snagged it.
If anything I have a great motivation to make a GeoSnippits video on guidelines for how NOT to hide a geocache.
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We saw one huge turtle, frogs and minnows in pond. I had a blast but Miss Geoness was a bit fatigued.
Hope the rest of the afternoon goes better.
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This was an extremely rainy wet Saturday afternoon when my BlackBerry went off telling me a geocache just published. I quickly read over the description and found that it was only five miles away. After stopping myself from leaping into my car all by myself I asked my daughter Geoness if she wanted to go for her second FTF."Sure no problem", says I but I warned that Maria needed to ask her parents for permission first.
After a few minutes we all jumped into the geocache-mobile and were off for the 1/1 find.
Being a 1/1 it was a quick find and the girls quickly went through and traded swag before we put everything back in it's hidey hole. The First To Find was ours.
HeadHardHat got himself a new toy and boy is it fun for Geocaching. I have in my hot little hands a brand spanking new Garmin 60CSx GPS. Some of you with the more up to date GPSs may just go "big deal", but I have done my research and pound for pound I have found that the 60CSx is the work horse's work horse. I know it has been on the market for several years now and there is a reason why it is still the most popular handheld GPS to date.
In the geocaching world there is a rating for how difficult the terrain surrounding the cache site (or getting to it) is and another for how difficult it is actually hidden. The range for both is from one to five. So if you ever look at a geocache listing you will see references like D3.5/T2. The easiest of geocaches to find is a 1/1. Normally a cache of this ease is accessable by wheelchairs and usually is wide open or has obvious where-a-bouts like flashing neon arrows and the like.
The owner of the Geocache that I went for tonight said to be careful because the police like to hang around the same area as the cache site. So when I hopped into my geocache-mobile at 10:30 at night I was not surprised to see two police squad cars sitting right where the geocache was supposedly hidden. Now I am not going to let the law slow me down from getting an FTF if I can help it.
So off we went after I showed him the printed off geocache page. I told him roughly what we were looking for which was a regular sized geocache and it was hanging in a tree. We walked down a slight slope and within a few minutes I spotted it and showed the geocache to the officer. He examined it and I showed the log book and other trinkets that were inside. After signing the log and putting everything back in place it was time to leave so I thanked him and went on my merry way. What fun this evening adventure was. Not only was it fun doing a night time FTF but having a police escort made it that much more exciting.California may have happy cows but NC has happy trees.
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While we are at it lets discuss pill bottles. Great idea at the time - okay it's a bad idea. You heard it here first, bad, bad, bad and bad. They are screen doors in a submarine at best and unless you really like your log books extra soggy don't turn them loose on the geocaching world. We would really appreciate it.
Calling All Geocachers!!! Tell us what your community gets out of bed to go geocaching for?
The #101 is a green 35mm evil hide hidden in the middle of hundreds of pine trees which are so thick that I made it a 3 / 3.
When you know that there are several very competitive FTF hounds in your area the urge to be first can be very compelling. For me, depending on where I am during the day and where the newly published geocache actually is will tell me who I am up against and how drastic of measures I need to take to achieve "clean sheetz".
"Ian, is that you", I called into the darkness. The return snickering told me that my suspicions were correct.
Ian retrieved the small geocache and we looked to see if our efforts were in vain or not. We were not disappointed this time and the FTF was ours. 
I am sure that this particular photo is going to be used down the road for something more humorous but for today lets discuss what is appropriate for what to put into a geocache.- What should not be placed in a cache?
- People of all ages hide and seek caches, so think carefully before placing an item into a cache. Explosives, ammunition, knives, drugs and alcohol should not be placed in a cache. Respect the local laws.
Food items are always a bad idea. Animals have better noses than humans, and in some cases caches have been chewed through and destroyed because of food items in a cache.
It was a gloriously beautiful Spring day. The kind of day that made you easily forget that just a few days earlier we had three to five inches of snow on the ground. No this was more like what North Carolina can bring in early March. Sunshine filled and the highs around 80 degrees. You just couldn't have picked a better day for a Spring themed geocaching event.
BBQ in North Carolina means only one thing - pig. This particular BBQ is pork served in a certain way. Take your large steel drum and cut it in half top to bottom. Turn it sideways and support it with legs. Hing the sides together so you have a top and a bottom. Put a grating over the bottom half and fill with you favorite wood/coal combination. Insert one whole large prepared porker and cook for hours (we are talking skin and all). The end result is some of THE most succulent pig you will ever taste. Then take a large portion of the meat, chop and add a special southern vinegar based sauce. Serve and enjoy. If you are used to the molasses based sauce it does take a bit of getting used to but who-boy is it delicious.
To sum up the day, Miss Geoness and I was able to do some geocaching in the Princeton area and picked up about twenty geocaches. That was a good thing because she is now just shy of her 250 finds mark and I have a special geocoin and pin waiting for her when she does get there. We had a blast driving around in the very micro enriched town.
As night came many of us sat around a very nice fire and just chit-chatted. The only difference between a star filled sky this day or one in June was the complete lack of bugs. Again just a magical time to sit back relax and enjoy yourself.
Fence post hides are like a box chocolates. No not full of ooey gooey confection filled goodness but they can have some sweet hides. Also yes you never know what you're gunna git.(note above my shoe bottom left and the ice just above it -HHH)
I am typing this rather interesting little story to you in wet and sandy socks. My work shoes are drying next to my desk and though quite damp, no longer dirty from my geocaching escapades of yesterday. The reason they are no longer dirty, yet moist and a bit sandy is due to my obsession with geocaching FTFs or First To Finds. If you read my blog on a regular basis you will see many postings of a happy smiling me showing clean log sheets of some cache with either my name on top or soon to be signed. Today was a smidge different than my normal routine thus the wet shoes, socks and my right pant leg.
Let me tell you of my adventure. It started out innocent enough. I received an email last night telling me of a new geocache that posted in the Creedmoor, NC area. 1208Zuni a geocaching friend of mine was the owner. Zuni is known for some downright crazy geocache hides and I prepared myself for the possibility that this would be a tougher find.
It’s 6:45 am and I pull up to the cache site. It is on a fairly busy road looking over a stream which goes under the road itself. The base of the stream is a good twelve feet down with a steep snow covered slope. We had just received several inches of rare March snow that still had not melted and it was only about 27 degrees out. I figured out a way to get down but it would take a bit of a walk around to accomplish, no problem. About half way down was when the police showed up. I waved, he waved, I thought to myself, “well – shyte!”.
“That your car”, the officer asked from his rolled down car window.
“yessir”, says I.
“Whatcha doing down there”, says he.
“Why Geocaching Sir, there is a new one that was just placed here and I’m trying to find it. Is that a problem”, says I hoping this will end quickly yet without being arrested.
“No problem, just wanted to make sure it wasn’t an abandoned vehicle. Have fun”, with that he rolled up his window and drove away.
“Well that was interesting”, I thought to myself. No big schpeel about what geocaching was and I still had time to find it before heading off to work. Cool!
With the threat of incarceration behind me and after a bit of bushwhacking I reached the small stream and though there was a lot of vegetation there were two areas to cross if I was careful. Checking my BlackBerry and Geocache Navigator I realized that the cache was indeed on the other side of the bubbling waters. After making sure that my phone would not end in the drink I made a leap that did not end in tragedy. Being in work shoes that is always a good thing. Actually I was pleased that I had not already broken my neck after walking downhill on the snow covered weeds.
The cache site was a concrete spill drain that controlled the stream itself. There were several hiding areas for a micro which required me to stand on some ice covered rocks while straddling the hillside. This was not a very comfortable way to be for a rather girth prone person such as I am. As I poked and prodded with my now frozen fingers I held a wonderful cataclysmic thought in my head of landing straight on my butt into the icy cold water behind me. I could feel my legs ache from the cold and precarious position while trying to keep my balance. Minutes seemed to slip away as my frustration level increased. Maybe it was in the stump that was six feet up and out of reach, maybe in one of the drain holes that I could not see far enough into? Drat, where could it be? As usual just before I give up I look and see the well camouflaged geocache.
SUCCESS! I quickly but carefully take out my Blackberry and snap some photos all the while remembering that I was standing over water. I sign the clean sheets and put everything back where it was. That was when I heard something rustling about 30 feet above me and to my left. I look up and there was Zuni smiling ear to ear.
“Did you find it”, he asked.
Now any other time I would think that a 300+ fat man straddling the side of a hill and standing on frozen rocks over a flowing stream may have caused a slightly different reaction from anyone else. Except Zuni knows me and he knows what I have done in the past for a FTF so this was pretty much business as usual in the geocaching world.
“Yup all signed and put back, oh, and you suck Zuni”, I said with a grin. He laughed.
Zuni came back over to make sure everything was in place for whoever was fool hardy enough to try and find this particular geocache after all the rain and snow. We chatted a bit and he told me that another geocache will be opening in the area soon. First thought, cool. Second thought, getting my keester off of these rocks and onto solid ground before something bad happens.
Zuni had to take off himself so we said our good-byes and I tried to figure out the best way to get back to my car. The route Zuni originally took to get down here was way too snow covered and steep for me to try in my work shoes. So I decided to go back the way I came. Unfortunately on my attempt going back I slipped and landed on a sand bar like ground which looked at the time rather firm. It wasn’t and my foot sunk down to above my ankle in thick quicksand muck. The cold was intense and as I jumped from right foot to left the second foot placement was not much better. It too found a soggy spot though not as deep but deep enough to soak that foot as well. It is amazing how your mind just disengages when you realize that you screwed up big time. All I could think of as I trotted up the now even slipperier path to my car was how the water washed away the red North Carolina dirt off my shoes from yesterday. Needless to say I could not wait to get into work and at my desk where I can hide till everything dries.
All of this for a First To Find. I wonder if Zuni’s other geocache has published yet? Hmmmmm.
But I’m NOT Obsessed…. Right?
Rare snow geocaching in North Carolina. Interesting specimen of a geocache choice. Where's my hand sanitizer? Yeah I know the owner of this little guy and if you notice he didn't bother to even take off the label... Yuckie... At least it didn't have a name etched on it and yes I know the rule about eating yellow snow... 
I love talking "shop" with fellow geocachers especially when it comes to tips and tricks they have aquired along their adventures. In every one of these discussions it was not the big expensive gizmos that grabbed my attention most but the home-made ingenuity to solve common problems or situations geocachers face.
