Happy Birthday War1man !!

We tried to sleep in this morning, but the Blackberry kept dinging in the next room. Then it rang, and I just let it go to voice mail. I tried to go back to sleep, but after lying there wondering what all the dings and rings were for, I got up, threw on a pot of coffee, and went in to see.

As I scrolled through the messages and missed calls, I spotted a new cache alert that had just come out, and it had my name on it. I told Mimi about it, and she ran into the bedroom to get ready to run. I downloaded the new cache to my GPS, quickly poured some hot coffee, and we ran out the door, praying that no would beat us there, and that no one would see us with morning hair and breath!

Everything went smooth until 46 closes to a two lane road, and we got stuck behind a moving van looking for the street he had to turn on. We averaged about 30 mph for about three miles before he finally turned off into a subdivision, and we could get back up to speed. We arrived at GZ, and noone was there!

This special War1man Birthday cache was put out by Turtletoes/Biggie/CHEF, and since their Hunter's Needs caches are my favorite series of their caches, she hid a special Hunter's Needs cache there for me. After spending some time in a rock pile, and then in a pile of paving, I honed in on the cache. Mimi and I chuckled when we found it, and we had the log in hand on the second try, and signed it at the TOP of the log sheet. First to Find! Mimi took a picture of me smoking the celebratory FTF victory cigar! I called the
cache owner to let her know how grateful I was for the cache hidden for me, and I was informed that there was another cache hidden close by that contained a birthday present. WOW! A cache and then gifts.

War1man and Mimi would like to again thank Michelle, Tim, and Judy for making my birthday so special. What a terrific start to my day. This cache, along with the many birthday wishes from my Facebook friends and family, has made this birthday one that I will never forget!!

Sorry about the bad hair, but you notice Mimi is no where around!!

February 25, 2010 Work Release!

I spent all morning working on the computer, trying to get business organized, and make sure I dotted all the I's and crossed all the tees. I needed a break... Right on cue, BojaB starts publishing new caches, by Kleetus, out near Chulota on the new section of the Florida Trail. I check out the first one, and read that you can find one set of coordinates to a third cache??? I am thinking I will wait to see if BojaB publishes all three, which he finally does about an hour later. Now, I am ready to get some exercise, and this is perfect.

I tried real hard to get Mimi to come with me, but after her experiences with the Florida Trail last week, there was just no amount of coaxing that could get her to budge, not even Dipsters! So I load the caches into the Colorado, including another cache of Kleetus on the Trail, and one nearby that Imtomcat hid, and headed out to see if I could get the FTF on the three new caches. Luckily, Kleetus also included parking coordinates, and the waypoint in the Colorado uses the street maps to give me turn by turn directions to it.

Good sign! NO cars are parked at the parking coordinates. I grab a pen, and stuff a bottle of water into my pocket, put on my flannel, and head down the trail. I get to the GZ of the first cache, Rock Salt, and start looking. The cache description tells me its hidden next to a big tree, and also that its an easy find. I spend about a half hour going from tree to tree to tree and back again, and there is no cache to be found. I am sure that something is wrong, so after a long internal battle, I break down and call the cache owner to verify coordinates. The internal battle stems from the belief that there should be no hints or calls until after the cache has been found.

Sure enough, Kleetus had posted the wrong coordinates on the cache page, and when he gave me the right coordinates, I was 450 feet away. I follow the new coordinates right to the cache, he was right, it was easy! I write down the west coordinates furnished in this cache for the puzzle cache, Fringe, and head out to find the second new cache, Buck Shot. On the way Kleetus calls me and says he is going to hike down and will meet me at the second cache. I grabbed the cache Gold Lag on the way, and found the second cache pretty quick, took down the north coordinates, and back tracked until I met up with Kleetus. We hiked toward the puzzle cache, "Fringe", and chatted about how Kleetus had helped cut this new trail last year, and had helped them build the walk bridges a couple of weeks ago. Once near the GZ, I walked right to the cache, and signed the log. Like I planned, three FTFs on one hike, plus another cache and a Terracache.

The last picture shows the cache owner with his hands in the goods. I don't remember why he returned to the cache, but he must of had to check something. We started the return trek back to the cars, only two miles or so, and Kleetus gave me the coordinates to a terracache located on the Trail, as well, that I grabbed as we passed. We stopped at the bad coordinates and he left a note there with the correct coordinates in case someone came out with bad coordinates.

I spotted a really cool spot to hide a cache on the Trail on the way back, and if Kleetus does not put one there soon, I will definitely put one out there.

We said our goodbyes, and I grabbed the quick cache, "Don't Fence Me In", and then made the beeline to Dipsters for their fabulous dipped soft serve ice cream cones. YES, Jarrod88, they are as good or better that Twistee Treat! Off to the homestead.

I always enjoy meeting up with fellow geocachers, thanks Paul, for the fun today!

February 24, 2010

Our daughter, Sheri, has been visiting us from New York, where she now resides with her friend Rachel. During the weeks visit, we were able to take them out geocaching, and turn them into geocachers. We had fun hiking out into the Econ River area and grabbing some caches, and then yesterday we did park and grabs. They loved both, and I am sure they will continue once they get home.

Since we had to drop them off at the Orlando Airport, I loaded up the newer geocaches in the area, so we could fill our map back in with just smileys. Our first stop was Airport Lakes Park, located off of Hwy 436, right across the Beeline from the runways. We were impressed with the park, and its trails, which take you to a dock on the lake, for a nice view. Actually, we never got to the dock, and got our view from the GZ near the cache Mare Prairie (GCQTXG), shown above.

We started out by visiting the first cache out there, Baja Voo (GC1AAWJ), a cache hidden by one of our geobuddies, The Flatouts. We gave it a short look, but because we know the hider, we assumed we would have to get wet or become gator food to get the cache, so instead of continuing here, we walked out to the other Flatout's cache, Pretty in Pink or just another Fungus among us, (GC2414F). We found this sneaky cache right away, because it was not hidden like we felt it should have been. The cache description says to replace the cache as found or better, so we chose the better route. Its not where we really wanted it to be, but it is hidden better now. We were very impressed with the originality of the cache, but the Flatouts go to so much detail with their caches, we were not surprised. They have made visiting the southern downtown area of Orlando and geocaching much better than any Disney visit.

From here we hiked out the trail to Mare Prairie, and found it easily, once we had crossed two fence lines with barbed wire tops!! The view of this lake, as shown above was awesome, and I am told that this lake is loaded with Tilapia. We made the hike back to the car, and started looking for BajaVoo again. Mimi spotted something in the water there, just out of reach behind a small tree/bush. I could not quite reach it with the hiking stick, so I tried to step on some branches, and... I sunk into the water and got one foot wet. I was not to be defeated, so I dropped into another small tree and caught myself with the branch, NOT! The branch was limp, and I went into the lake with both shoes on, and got my pants soaked as well. However, I did manage to grab the thing we spotted, and to our dismay, it was not the cache, It was a tampon tube! I tossed it as far as I could once I saw what it was. We will return another day to get this one, and I will have shorts on and no shoes! We hung around there waiting on Sheri's plane to take off, but once we got a text that her plane was delayed an hour, we headed out to continue our caching.

We found several park and grabs, and then we arrived at a new cache by Jim32809, named Title 2-4, (GC20PAJ), which we found very entertaining. I had no idea what I was looking for, and I came upon a couple of DVD movies cases. I open one up, and the roaches scurried away, to leave a cover picture of a porn movie that no one would want their kids to see. I took a picture to send to the cache owner. This is a fun cache to find, and once found the clues will make perfect sense.

It was starting to rain now, so we decided to go grab the quickies around I-4 and Sandlake Road, which we did, and headed back home to relax and enjoy our now empty home.

I almost was tempted to chase a FTF in Sanford, but I decided to let it go for now. I am sure Bloodybobber has already logged the FTF there, its right where he lives! But you never know!!

A Brief Introduction...

We started geocaching in June of 2008, and are totally involved in this fun activity. We recently are near 4200 finds, and have hidden about 150 geocaches. We like all types of geocaches, from urban micros to ammo cans hidden deep in the swamp. Uh oh, actually, Mimi hates the swamps, and the bushwhacking, but she either lets me go with geobuddies, or she endures the hunt with me.

We have been married almost 40 years this year, and once the kids all moved out, we found we needed something to fill in the free time we now had. Geocaching was perfect for us, and it took us to so many wonderful places that we had no idea even existed. It has become our escape from the "real" world, and when things close in too tight, we go geocaching!

My simple mission in doing this blog is to relate our geocaching experiences with you as they occur, and I truly hope they will be entertaining to some of you.

Another one of the great things about geocaching is the people involved in the sport. We have not met a geocacher that we did not befriend immediately, and we love to go to the events as often as possible to meet and greet with old friends and make new ones.

We welcome any of your comments or questions, especially among new geocachers, so that they will find success and stay involved. I think we have experienced many things that we may be able to relate to you if you are having a problem.