Impersonation is the Greatest Form of Complement

I have read that impersonation is the greatest form of complement. I never really had a good point of reference to that statement until I found a newly hid cache up near Oxford, North Carolina.

The owner of the cache is Ringer2410 who is a notorious "hide in plain site" kind of geocacher. For example his EU457 drove me nuts for several weeks and more attempts than I wish to acknowledge. Over the Labor Day Weekend he unleashed Tar River Migraine (GC1FM3M). The description pulls a very interesting collage of other caches that can be found in the Oxford, NC area. Including a couple by yours truly.

Here is a snippit from the description:

"This ain’t no D.N. Hix Micro in an Oxford Park. If you are 85 and over you might not want to Play on these Tracks because of What’s That Speeding By and you might be able to Reach out and Touch Someone in a car. If the Farmer Watches over me/you or the Taxman Cometh then you might want to head down to the Redneck Yacht Club (Tar River), take a seat, and Read a Book and Enjoy the scenery. On this one I’d have to say your odds are a little worse then a 50 – 50 Chance, but if you start to get the Folsom Prison Blues you might want to get Ol Red or seek a Hallowed Ground to pray for help. Geocaching is all Location, Location, Location. Have yourself some Barnyard Fun while thinking Where Art Thou? "...

Creative caches like this just shows how tight knit the geocaching community can be. Many times we get so involved in our own creative outlets we can forget the obvious around us. Once again it takes someone like Ringer2410 to show us something new in plain sight; ourselves.

I went out today and actually was able to claim the FTF! This cache is designated a Difficulty 3 and Terrain of 2.5. I found it to be a really great challenge and a completely satisfying find.

Thanks Ringer2410.

A Note by HeadHardHat: I wanted to show you an actual Travel Bug I ran into whilst looking for this cache. Near a large crack in a concrete wall I thought I found a large rubber wolf spider with a sinker holding it in place. It looked like one of those spiders you would find at the Natural Science Museum in Raleigh. So before picking up my prize I decided to take a photo of it showing how creepy it was and that it was also about five inches in diameter. I put my camera away and was just about to pick it up when I saw it slowly move back into it's hiding spot... It was real! This by far was the largest wolf spider I have ever seen. The sinker must have been the egg sack seen in the blurry photo to the left. All I can say is wow!

Thank You Smithfield, NC For A Great Afternoon of Caching

A couple of months ago I wrote a fairly nasty blog entry about my adventures or should I say LACK of adventures while caching in the Smithfield, NC area. Well that area has done quite a change and I had an absolutely fantastic time there yesterday afternoon. What made the difference? For starters I noticed that over the past few weeks a boat load of caches were enabled back into service. When my last attempt happened I had 10 our of 13 caches come up as DNF's. So after I observed all the effort in getting the area up to a decent standard I wanted to give it another go and I am so glad I did.

First I wanted to take another whack at the DNFs I knew had been replaced which was a real joy to do. Then I headed downtown for an effective cache raid with hopes of some nice finds. I am happy to report that my expectations were not only met but exceeded. In those few hours I was able to find fourteen smiley faces with many, many more to try for on another day.

Thank you so much to all the cache owners of Smithfield, NC for making the area a great place to go geocaching.

Daughter Geoness and HeadHardHat in Fuquay-Varina, NC

Well daughter Geoness and I took another swipe at Fuquay- Varina, NC for a couple of hours and pulled away with some nice nature trails and some Grab and Go's. Added ten caches to our ever growing list.

Seen to the left is her Geoness doing what she loves to do and that is finding ammo boxes. Sure she loves being first to find the micros. Mainly because the deal is who ever finds the cache first gets to sign first. But the ammo boxes is pure buried treasure.

I feel the same way too.. Shy of a half dozen ticks going for the ride we had a real great afternoon together.

I don't know who looks more forward to our time together but I know I am savoring mine while I can. She isn't going to stay 12 forever....

And the Winner Is...

Okay I had to laugh when I found this particular cache on the way to work this morning. It was unexpected and quite creative and really set the tone for today.

What you are looking at is a Tivo remote controller and the log is placed where the batteries go. There are two magnets that hold it to it's host.

What a great idea.

TNLNSL TFTH!