Hidden within Eyes and Windows

I’m going to be starting my third week of recovery this week. I'm still a little sore, but I can walk around very well and I'm able to drive a car. I’m really just restricted in what I can lift for the next couple of weeks. Last Thursday, I had my staples removed and got taped up in replacement. I was even able to find a cache after I’d had the staples removed, so I guess I’m definitely on the mend. Everything is healing according to plan and I should be back at work next Monday.

Friday I got to drive around a bit for the first time since the surgery. I went to the local big box hardware store to pick up some spray paint, then drove down to the local surplus store to get a couple of ammo cans. I’m used to having a supply of ammo cans and/or decon containers, but I’ve run out of both recently, so it’s high time I get restocked.

This week, I’m going to be working on the camouflage for one of those ammo cans for a puzzle cache that I’m planning for my 20th hide. The two pictures below are the puzzles for the cache. I guess once the cache page goes live it’ll make a little bit more sense than just looking at the pictures here, but I spent the better part of an hour finding the right picture and then another hour or so putting all of those eyes together for the graphic. It’s interesting to note that both of my sisters are in there as is my wife, my mom and dad, my three kids, my niece and nephews and lots of my daughter’s friends. For those who’ll ask, one of those eyes is from a Halloween mask my son wore one year and the other is rather large fish eye that you can see I pulled from a picture I took of my son down at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach a couple of years ago.

I have several possibilities for where this cache is going to go, but I’m leaning toward the western edge of a park in our fair city because it’s the least cache saturated area and there are several good places where I could hide it. One of the reasons this area is less cache dense is mentioned in my last post. The five stage multi-cache is hidden over there and it takes up a large portion of room with all the waypoints that were created for that one. I’d loved to hide this puzzle in between two of the waypoints, but I don’t believe there’s enough room to do that, so I’ll have to be satisfied with one of the many spur trails up there. Then I’ll have bookend puzzle caches on each side of this rather large open area.

The cache will still be a short hike in to find it. When I first started caching back in 2001, all of the local caches were hikes. The closest cache to my home at the time was 7 miles away and a half mile hike to get to it. The other thing that stood out with caches at the time was the size. Most were large size, five gallon buckets, ammo cans, Tupperware containers, etc. I’ve made a conscious decision to keep it that way, at least with my hides. I want all of my containers to be at least large enough to hold a geocoin and/or travel bug, so I haven’t hidden anything smaller than a decon container. That's probably a little smaller than what I was finding most of my first year of caching, but I’ll hold to that size and no smaller as long as I’m caching.

The second thing I’ve tried to strive for is not to hide any “cache and dash” caches. All of my caches, you have to get out of your car and walk to find it. Even if it’s only a block, I’ve hidden my caches in such a way, that you’ll be forced to get out of the car if you want to find it. Because of these restrictions I've placed upon myself as a hider, I’ve come to realize that my caches don’t necessarily get as many finds as others, but I hope they can be viewed as quality caches as opposed to a numbers run kind of cache. My hope is, if enough newer cachers find my caches, they’ll get the idea that geocaching is not all about hiding an Altoids tin under the nearest lamp post skirt in every Wal-Mart shopping complex. Anyway, by the end of the week, the local park will hopefully have a new cache hidden in it.

Pictures are from the following caches:

Grand Prix Crache - by crash77
The Window of the Soul - by Webfoot