Foxtails, Foothills and Flora

Most of my articles seem to be inspired by the pictures in my gallery, and this one is no exception. Earlier, I posted about animals that I’ve encountered while hiking and caching. I guess it’s about time I wrote about the plant side of hiking as well. Animals get more notice, because outside of the bug world, they’re not nearly as plentiful as the plant world, and yet the beauty of the plant world is amazing when you stop and take a look.

Many times a hike becomes more than a hike, just by that little bit of accent color of a wildflower by the side of the trail. A dandelion, while viewed as a weed in our back yard, is an unexpected bonus while out on a hike. Other times, it’s the magnificence of a Giant Sequoia that you’ve encountered, either where it’s supposed to be, or more curiously, where it’s not supposed to be. Now I don’t claim to be a botanist, no do I play one on TV or anywhere else, but a little plant knowledge can usually enhance a hike and make it more enjoyable.

Even if you are not into plants, it’s usually wise to know a few of the ones that can cause problems, particularly, those nasty “leaves of three” varieties that can cause all kinds of skin problems. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve encountered poison oak while hiking and searching for caches. I can tell you how many times I’ve broken out because of an encounter with poison oak – exactly one time and it happened in the fall after the leaves had fallen off the plant. Yep, even the stems can cause problems. For the most part though, poison oak is one of those minor annoyances that you encounter when you’re hiking that can easily be avoided once you’ve educated yourself on what it looks like.

I would be remiss, if I didn’t mention one other annoyance that I don’t enjoy while hiking and that is foxtails. I have a cache dedicated partially to foxtails and I’ve had friends of mine threaten to name caches after my least favorite flora. Some people in Southern California even know about my running commentary in my cache logs when I encounter foxtails while going for a cache. It’s really become something of a standard joke. “Have I ever mentioned how much I hate foxtails?” But even foxtails can sometimes hide those little wildflower gems that might go unnoticed.

But enough of that. I think those little surprises, a wildflower at the side of the trail, a plant, growing where you wouldn’t expect it to be growing, are a few of the reasons why I enjoy hiking to find caches. I view the hike as part of the experience, not just a trip from point A to point B with nothing in between to enjoy except the found cache at point B. No, rather, the slow walk through the woods will bring all sorts of enjoyment, from the tiny sprout of a pine tree just starting its life, to the dead snag that houses an azalea bush up in its crown and after it falls, will nourish other plants that will start the forest anew.

I can attest that while hearing and seeing a coast redwood fall while out on a cache hike was a sad experience, it was also an experience that I wouldn’t have wanted to miss. Since we heard it, the definitive answer whether a tree makes a sound when it falls if no one is there goes unanswered. However, a tree makes an awful racket when it’s plummeting to the ground, and after it hits, it seems the entire forest holds its collective breath for the briefest of moments, and then the natural sounds of the forest begin again.

And yet, most people, if asked to color a forest, would probably color it a dull green color. With the different wildflowers that grow in the forest, or meadowland, it is definitely not all green. I’ve seen riots of purple and orange, with sprinkles of red and yellow many times. But mostly, the colors are subtle, announcing themselves to the pollinators saying, “Here I am, come and get it.” The subtlety of the colors makes the experience enriched, in my opinion. You have to look for them, discovering how the veins of a leaf intersect, how the colors of an iris blend together in different shades of purple. Looking at that creek bank, you see a hint of brownish orange and only upon closer inspection do you realize that you’re looking at a multitude of tiger lily blossoms.

And once again, it’s because of geocaching that I have these memories. I fully admit, I wouldn’t hike along the trails in the foothills behind my house. I had no interest. I basically thought that there wouldn’t be anything of interest, instead preferring the grandeur of places like Yosemite or Yellowstone. Over the course of the last seven years, I’ve come to appreciate the natural beauty that can be found in my own backyard. I no longer need to travel hundreds of miles to find nature at its best. I’ve also decided that I want to share these little hidden gems with others as well, by hiding caches up in the foothills near my house so that others can seek the beauty to be found here at home. And the beauty of their hike is that it will be different than mine. The seasons will change, the colors will change and then it will renew again, a little bit differently each year.

I believe that cachers, on a whole, are nature lovers, wanting to enjoy those unknown pockets of wonderment, to take the road less traveled and enjoy the walk as opposed to the number. It’s the local cachers who make it all happen. They know the area. They know where the trails are and what lies down that hidden path. If those local cachers continue to share their knowledge of their area with the larger caching community, through their hides, we will all be better for it.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:

Oak Trail - by Lab Rat
Hermosa Falls - by Team Chloe
CV Trail #3 - by BrianK124 & Tomahawk chop shop
Mountain's Majesty - by Mandy's Mom
Cucamonga Creek - by Team CEREO

A day with my son

One of my friends said to me via email this week, “They say that there is nothing so dangerous as a new convert” in regard to my sudden interest in capturing virtual flags. This might be true, as I tend to get kind of obsessive about things that I really like. But then again, I think many people do the same thing. I took the Tadpole out today to capture some flags and find some caches, trying to get him out of the house on a gorgeous day. Our high today here hit 93°. At least that’s what it said on my backyard thermometer this afternoon. I’m sure it was hotter in other places. After reading about weather in other parts of the country, I'll take it.

Anyway, I finally convinced the Tadpole that I needed a navigator to help me out with all the twists and turns in the streets I would be driving today. Somewhere in the conversation, In-n-Out was also mentioned and he readily said yes. Our goal today was to capture five flags in our local area and find 10 caches, a two for one ratio. It looked doable at the time. Well we all know how that goes.

I was seriously thinking about writing a blow by blow description of the day’s happenings, but then decided that it might be too over the top for some. I might be becoming too dangerous for my own good. And I really can’t say why GeoVexilla intrigues me so; it just does. Suffice to say, we didn’t hit our quota, finding only two flags (Haiti and Dominica) and striking out on two others due to private property issues, but that's the way the game plays out sometimes. We also found four caches and had a great time together just enjoying each other’s company while we spent some time using billion dollar satellites to hunt for small hidden things. We’ve already decided where we’re going next weekend for some more caching, so all is good in life at this point in time. He’s getting out of the house into the fresh air and so am I which is the important thing.

After logging all of our caches and flags, I decided to play around a little bit with one of the pictures I took today. With our two flag captures, we were incredibly fortunate to actually zero out on the virtual flag in both instances. One was actually out in the street, so when there weren’t any cars coming, we quickly walked out to ground zero and then walked back, but the other one was in a parking lot of an industrial complex, so we were able to get some pictures. I decided to take a picture of my son at ground zero and then later got a copy of the flag of Dominica that we “captured” there and created the image that’s here now. Just a little bit of whimsy to round out our day together.

Virtuals Reborn?

When I first started caching back in March 2001, caching was still new. President Clinton’s executive order de-scrambling the satellite signals so that the average person walking around on the planet could utilize the GPS technology was less than a year old. Caches were few and far between and there weren’t as many regulations regarding caches, probably because not everything had been thought out yet.

The sport is still evolving today. I remember looking at the website, even before I’d purchased my first GPS unit and marveling that there was actually a physical cache hidden in Yosemite Valley. I thought at the time, “Wow, that’s kind of cool that they would allow someone to place a cache right there near the chapel in the valley.” In actuality, they really hadn’t given permission and the cache, I believe, was removed by the National Park Service, as “abandoned property.” I know that there are a couple of physical caches still in existence in National Park areas, most notably, the one down at the bottom of Grand Canyon, but that is maintained by the Park Service. As of this writing, permission hasn’t been granted to hide any in national parks, nor probably won’t be in the foreseeable future.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, more likely, just the way things have worked out over the past 8 years that the sport of geocaching has been around. I think physical caches in national parks would become problematic no matter how well they were maintained by the owners. I found a Pop-Tart in one of my geocaches once. Imagine what would happen if an uniformed cacher placed a small granola bar in a cache that had been placed in a national park where bears frequented, or any animals for that matter. Animals would be attracted to that cache like honey to a hive. In all likelihood, the cache would probably be destroyed and if the animals became a problem, they could as well.

Within the past year or two, we’ve seen the development of a new kind of cache called an Earthcache. Earthcaches are places that people can visit usually to learn more about the geology of a particular area. In reality, what Earthcaches do is replace the Virtual Cache (which has been eliminated by Geocaching.com) in spots where physical caches can’t be placed, like national parks. Cachers learn about the geology of an area, do something for the cache “hider” to prove that they were there, and they get credit for finding an earthcache. Similar to virtuals, usually the requirement is to answer questions about the site, or posting a picture of you and your GPSr at the site.

My son enjoys going out and finding earthcaches. He stated one time that he likes the educational nature of an earthcache. “You get to learn something about the earth when we visit them Dad.” Needless to say, when we went on our tour of the pueblo areas near Flagstaff, AZ and the Grand Canyon area last summer, we found several earthcaches. One was a blow hole near some pueblos in Wupatki National Monument. The underground chambers reacted to the outside change in air pressure and actually blew out or sucked in air through a small hole in the ground. We actually missed a pretty spectacular display of this blow hole by about four hours or so. We’d visited the blowhole in the morning while we toured the area. There was a gentle breeze blowing out of the blowhole when we were there. When we got back to our campsite later than evening, we learned from other campers who had been there later in the day that a girl had been floating her Crocs on the column of air that was being forced out of the blowhole. That’s pretty impressive, even if you don’t particularly like Crocs.

The larger national parks within the United States have several Virtual caches placed in them that have been grandfathered into the geocaching system. The smaller or lesser known parks, never made the cut probably because they weren’t really visited by cachers before GC.com placed a moratorium on Virtual caches. What has happened is Earthcaches have now filled the missing niche in some of these areas. When I first investigated the area northeast of Flagstaff as a camping spot for last summer, I looked and saw a multitude of earthcaches. I figured we’d get a couple of them and move on. I was surprised, although I shouldn’t have been, knowing my son, that we found all of them in that area once everything was said and done. He loved the concept of an earthcache and wants to find more of them in the future. Who knows? Perhaps on our next camping trip, we’ll find a geological area and create our own earthcache.

Pictures are from the following caches:
Bonito Lava Flow - by TerryDad2
Cinder Hills Overlook - by TerryDad2
Wupatki Pueblo Blowhole - by TerryDad2
Walnut Canyon Geologic Sampling - by TerryDad2
Joints of the Wonderland of Rocks - Joshua Tree NP - by TerryDad2

Capture the Flag

The past two days have been a welcome change of scenery for me. Friday, I was able to get out again and hike up in the foothills. Not much mileage, less than a mile total, but I took along my new cache and hid it up there. I came back home, submitted the cache page and it was approved by the powers that be in less than fifteen minutes. That has to be a record for me. The Window of the Soul is now live. No one’s made a find yet on it, but that will come eventually.

Today, I went caching with my friend Chaosmanor from Camarillo which is out in Ventura County to the west of where I live. He was kind enough to come out this way and we went caching in my neck of the wood, picking up some stray caches here and there, getting a couple of those bugaboo caches off of my list that I had been having trouble finding by myself. We also played a new GPS game today (well, new for me anyway), called GeoVexilla. It’s basically a virtual “Capture the Flag” kind of game.

“GeoVexilla is a GPS game that uses the globe for a playing field. At random times, in random places, random virtual flags appear on a map of the world. The challenge is to visit a flag’s waypoint before the flag disappears. Each time you succeed, you collect that flag, increasing your score.” Any number of people can capture the flag, as each individual can score points for themselves. Every time you capture a flag, the website generates a set of flags that you need to complete. The first flag is worth 1 point, the next 2, the third 4, the fourth 8 and the fifth is worth 16 points. Each completed set can get you 31 points.

The first flag I captured today, the flag of Canada, happened to be in a residential neighborhood about 12 miles from my home. According to the rules, you have to be within 100 meters (328 feet) in order to claim a capture. According to the coordinates listed, the flag (remember that it’s virtual) was on the rooftop of a garage on this one street. One of the criteria for logging a capture is to provide enough detail to “prove” that I was there. This might include sights, sounds and perhaps even smells that cannot be learned from maps or aerial photos that you can readily find on sites such as Google maps. So I noted things like how many trees were in the front yard, what the front of the house looked like, etc.

After finding that first flag, chaosmanor and I started working our way back to my house by finding some caches. I found 11 caches today, including several excellently camouflaged containers, one being a very large ammo can that both of us looked at several times before realizing that it was a cache. It was sitting on the ground under a bush, but the person who hid it had done an excellent job of matching the texture of the camo with the type of bush it was next to. It was in plain site, yet very difficult to see.

We worked our way back beyond my house caching and then we decided to find another flag in the GeoVexilla game. This second flag, representing the Caymen Islands, was in Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park. When I looked to see approximately where it was using Google Maps, I realized that it was in an RV campground within the park. So we drove over there and got within 14 feet of the flag, thus capturing it as well.

So now, I am the proud owner of two virtual flags and have two points in the game. Why not three points since the second flag should be worth two points? Well, when I logged the Canada flag into the system, the set was generated and I ended up with Canada, Bermuda, Madagascar, Bangladesh and Bahamas in the first set. No Cayman Islands, so when I logged that one into the system under my account, a second set was generated with Cayman Islands, Cuba, Guernsey, Gambia and Syria. None of the other flags are near me at this point in time, but over the course of the next couple of weeks, flags will disappear and others will take their places in different areas near me, so I’ll need to monitor the site. I can see where this can easily become a new diversion for me.

There are other games that you can play using your GPSr at the GPS games site. They include Geo golf, Minute War, Geo Poker, Shutterspot and Geodashing. Check out the site. You might find something that just might click with you. Right now, I’m reliving my Boy Scout days of capturing the flag.

Camo the Ammo

Since I’ve been home this week, I’ve been working on the puzzle cache, The Window of the Soul. I thought I’d share with you my camouflage technique. Last week I went down to our local surplus store and picked up two ammo cans. The Grade 2 cans were a little bit too worn, so I took two Grade 1 cans for $7.97 each. One is an interesting orange color and the other one is the standard green that most of us have seen.

Last time I posted I was uncertain whether I was going to place this cache on the east or west side of the park. Since that time, the decision was semi-taken out of my hands by the placement of two caches, Where is the parking lot? and The kings Heart on the east side. I was originally planning on placing my final for the puzzle where this cache, "Call" of the Wild, used to be. If you click on the nearest caches, you’ll see that Where is the parking lot? is only 470 feet away from the original placement of the “Call” of the Wild cache, so I figured that for cache density sake, it would be prudent for me to place this new cache on the west side.

Today, I hiked up to scout possible locations for the cache. I’ve had one spot in mind for awhile and actually, it’s where I should have placed my Size Matters…..Especially in California cache. I had so many problems with muggles where Size Matters was placed, that if I’d placed it up here instead, it probably would still be with us today. Why I didn’t place it there is beyond me, but I probably had my reasons at the time. Anyway, the hike was fairly easy, considering that I’m still recuperating, but I found the perfect place for the cache, just off a fire road, yet secluded from muggles eyes and giving a 360 degree panoramic view of the hills and the city below. Today, I didn’t have any kind of view because the hillside was shrouded in fog. It was a different view, but beautiful in its own right.

After coming down the hill, I finished up the camouflage on the ammo can. Yesterday, I painted the ammo can a rusty color using primer paint. Much of the foothills in this area are this color rock, so it’s a good color with which to start. Fortunately, I have a very similar type of bush in my back yard that matches where the cache is going to be placed, so I picked three sprigs from the bush to use as cover on the ammo can. I laid the three springs on the side of the can, then did a quick spray through with both a flat green and then a flat black paint. This creates some break up in the main color of the can and will probably make it a little bit tougher to spot. My purpose is not to make it that much tougher for the cacher, but to make it tougher for muggles to spot it should they wander up in the area. I think if cachers don’t think that muggles will ever spot their cache, they are deluding themselves.

With the camouflage applied to the can, now all I have to do is gather some goodies together to place inside it while the paint dries. Depending upon how well I’m feeling after today’s hike, I may be able to place this cache tomorrow or Friday. Once placement has happened, all I’ll have to do then is send a reviewer note on the cache page and wait for our local reviewer to look at it and hopefully approve it.

Cabin Fever! Spring Fever! OUT!

It's spring here in Indiana...theoretically. You couldn't tell it by our weather lately, though. Snow, sleet, and generally about 20 degrees or so below normal. Of course, "normal" is pretty much defined as "the average of 10 abnormal years", so I expect that this year will go toward lowering the "normal" temperature a little bit in a few years.

Be that as it may, over the weekend we had some gorgeous weather, so we went out caching and benchmark hunting.

Our first quarry was a National Geodetic Survey Benchmark disc in Auburn, Indiana.
The benchmark disc is stamped M22, but its official designation (called a PID) is MD0692.

This was a fairly easy find - its coordinates were almost exactly dead-on, and the description given by the NGS was more than enough to help us find it. The fact that the benchmark was on a small concrete "pillar" that jutted up from the ground about 3-4 inches, and was right next to a Witness Post sign didn't hurt, either!


We got some good, clear shots of the benchmark disc and went off to find our next target.


Here's our next target, which was a little more challenging. It too is an NGS benchmark disc, as you can see.
This one was also set in concrete, but the concrete has been there long enough that the surrounding soil has "grown up" to the level of the concrete.
The landowner spread mulch over the benchmark and around its witness post sign - presumably so he didn't have to mow around it! Benchmarks can be hard on lawnmower blades - and are equally vulnerable to being cut.


Here's a picture of one we found last year. You can see the effect a lawnmower has had on THIS benchmark! That's why I think the owner of the land housing G198 was very smart to avoid the lawnmowing issue altogether.

The benchmark's stamp "name" is G198, but its PID is MD0933. They always stamp the "name" and the year it was placed in the middle of the benchmark. The year helps to determine, on occasion, if the disc is even still there! One we hunted this weekend was completely missing - we couldn't find any indication whatsoever of a disc. Since it was on the wingwall of a fairly well-maintained bridge, we were fairly certain that if it had been there, we would have found it. There were no structures or plants obstructing our view (yet), so we concluded that it was missing. A plaque on the bridge gave us our final clue - the benchmark disc had been placed in 1968, but the bridge itself had been completely replaced in 1970. We concluded that the benchmark was very likely removed and destroyed at the time of the old bridge's destruction.


Our final benchmark was one that was placed by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Water Division. While there are coordinates for the NGS benchmarks, which can be found at http://www.geocaching.com/mark/, the Indiana DNR database contains only descriptions of their benchmarks and their locations. We've really started to enjoy hunting the Indiana DNR benchmarks. It's like letterboxing, only without the box at the end! It's quite challenging, and stretches our hunting and clue-reading abilities to the limit at times.

We had not realized how very small some of these marks are, either. This triangle, for example, is approximately 2 inches per side, tops. Not exactly easy to find when you're looking for something chiseled in concrete, that may or may not have been worn down by the weather in the meantime!

We really enjoy looking for Benchmarks. They're useful, interesting, and many of them have histories. We've learned that benchmarks can be many things - not only discs, but chiseled marks in concrete, church spires, courthouse domes and even railroad spikes.

We're looking forward to our next benchmark hunt.
See you on the trails, the bridges, and the courthouse lawns!

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

What's that smell?

You know that smell you notice when you open up a cache and have discovered an unsullied log, bereft of any signature, except your own when you’ve finished logging the cache? You have a First to Find (FTF), which can be highly prized by many cachers. I like to call the smell, Virgin Log. It’s actually become a joke between some of the cachers in my area. Will Webfoot get a whiff of virgin log this time? Usually not, because I’m not really a FTF hog. I’ll get the occasional FTF and they always seem to come in bunches as well. I can go months without getting any, then three or four will fall on a day or a week’s period of time.

I’ve driven as far as 77 miles away for an FTF and as close as ¾ of a mile where I walked to the cache from my house. I got an FTF during a torrential downpour that let up right when the Tadpole and I got to ground zero. I’d picked him up from school and it was pouring. I asked him if he’d like to find a cache, and he told me not really. When I told him that there was a possible FTF involved, his mood changed and said, “What the heck, let’s go for it.” So we drove over to ground zero, which was on the way home. As we were parking, the rain stopped. We made the quick grab, opened up the cache and found that we were the first finders. So we signed the log in the car, because it was sprinkling a little, then I went back over and replaced the cache. As I got back into the car, the heavens opened up into a regular deluge. I think there was someone looking down on us for that FTF.

If you’ve cached long enough, you’re eventually going to get some FTFs along the way. In my first four years of caching, I got a grand total of 3 FTFs. And as I look over my bookmarked list of FTFs, I can see that only one of those three did I actually and purposely go out and try to get the FTF. Since that time, most of the rest of my 32 FTFs, I’ve gone out to get them. I probably could have more, but I don’t get email notifications, or blackberry alerts like others in my area. One cacher in our area likes to sign his logs stating that the log now has blackberry stains on it when he’s first to find. My signature line, that the local know about, when I get a first to find is, “Love that smell of Virgin Log.” Interestingly, of the 32 FTFs that I have, I’ve only actually written that on about 10 logs, yet local cachers know that it’s my signature line when I get a first to find and seem to expect seeing it as well. Go figure.

I would have to say that my most satisfying FTF was one where I had to do a pre-emptive strike to keep another of the local cachers at bay. This particular cache had been dedicated to me and several other local cachers, including the guy who I figured would probably be my biggest challenge to get this FTF. Once the cache was published, we actually started a running conversation on the cache page that, in retrospect, probably loses a lot in translation, but at the time was pretty hysterical. While this conversation was going on, I had the presence of mind to send him an email asking if he’d be interested in finding it together. When he responded in the affirmative, it became a go for the following day. It was pretty much guaranteed that the FTF would still be there, since it was a hike up in the foothills, so off we went and after finding all five stages of this great multi-cache, we were standing at ground zero and smelling virgin log. Nice.

That was my 7^th FTF of 2007. I’ve since found three others for an even ten for last year. As I stated earlier, they seem to come in waves. I haven’t found any in 2008 yet, but then again, I really haven’t tried for any and probably won’t until summertime rolls around when I have more time away from work. Until then, I'll just be satisfied with what I find, when I find it, even if it doesn’t have that special smell to the log.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches, which were all FTFs for Webfoot.

At One With Nature - by juniperb
North of 1951 - by Lostlad
Higganbothem Express - by King Camilomilo