Spoilers

This really isn't a story about spoilers in geocaching, but more about the name of the cache that I found yesterday.  It's actually one of several I found yesterday, but I'll be writing about this particular one, since it has special meaning.

My friend Chaosmanor pointed out a series of caches just north of where the Smiley series was which we attempted and completed last year at the end of February.  This new series, is larger than the Smiley series, with about 40 caches as opposed to the 26 involved in the other series.  It creates an overlarge Groundspeak symbol on the desert floor and surrounding foothills.  Each cache was named after a different part, or aspect of Geocaching, things like GC Codes and Archive.  One of the ones I found with Chaosmanor yesterday was the Spoilers cache.

With a planned geocaching trip out to the desert yesterday, we both knew I would cross over a major milestone of cache finds on Saturday (3000).  It really didn't matter which cache ended up being the 3000th, more that I was out with a friend enjoying the game and having a good time.  As luck would have it, the 3000th also happened to be a larger sized cache.  This ended up being very fortuitous, since I had a Donald Duck travel bug in my possession that I had acquired in Northern California over Presidents Day weekend.  Both of us couldn't think of a better way to celebrate than to drop a web-footed travel bug in Webfoot's 3000th cache find.  Here's to Spoilers and other caches that I will find in the future.

Picture was taken near the following geocache:
Groundspeak Series - Spoilers - by HDGC

Milestone

This past weekend, I passed a caching milestone. I have now found just over 2500 geocaches. At the moment it's a number, but it seemed to be pretty important to my son this past weekend, so I made sure he was part of it. Saturday we headed out, trying to get the 11 caches we needed, but were thwarted by Father time. We only had the morning, because of other things going on that weekend, and we only found 7 caches. I told my son that it looked like I was going to end up getting my 2500th sometime on the road this next weekend when I went to get my daughter from college. He was visibly upset about that. It was at that moment, I made up my mind, that if I could, we'd get out caching sometime this week and get those last four elusive caches so he could celebrate the milestone with me.

At first, I thought Sunday might work, but it was also Mother's Day and as a friend wrote to me later, "Caching on Mother's Day? You are a brave man." But after talking with my wife and discovering that my other son had a project to work on at a friend's house, the peace and quiet of a Sunday afternoon for her looked mighty enjoyable, so off we went to cache.

The finds came easily yesterday and we were at 2499 quickly. For 2500, we chose a smallish cache hidden by ballerinaprincess, who lists her occupation as a kindergartner. I've met her once and she has hidden some very fun and challenging caches for a person of her stature and age. This one was no exception. It was a decon container hidden in a hollow space in a tree, waist high to a ballerina princess according to the hint.

The Tadpole took my picture at the cache site with cache in hand and he and I logged the cache. After finding one more cache, we came home very pleased with our success of the day. I'm glad I said something about possibly not finding the cache, otherwise I might not have known that he wanted to be there. I need to remember that for future reference.

Picture was taken near Ballerina Decon - by ballerinaprincess

This is Sparta!

Having not seen the movie 300, I can't comment and I'm not sure how my son knows about this since he's but thirteen and hasn't seen it, unless it was at a friend's house, but this past Saturday, the Tadpole passed a milestone in his caching, that of 300 finds. Technically, it wasn't his 300th because he's found many more than that, but he's a purist, so it is his 300th find. Confused? You really shouldn't be.

When I first started caching, I didn't think about the possibility of any of the kids developing a life long like to this silly hobby of mine, so I didn't think about getting any one of the kids their own account. Nor did I think about logging the logbook with their name. Whenever we went out as a family unit, I just signed Webfoot, and we moved on to the next cache. Many times, one of the boys found the cache, but neither one of them ever signed a log. Consequently, the Tadpole has found more caches than his official 302 finds that he's logged on line. Like I said above though, he's a purist. He refuses to count those in his find total because he hadn't logged them with his own signature.

I can't even begin to tell you how many he'd actually have if I'd taken the time to put his signature in along with mine, but I would be willing to bet it is close to a couple of hundred more caches. The cool thing about this is that's the way he wants to play the game. This is probably because he realizes it's just a game and that perhaps it's really not about the numbers, although he sure looks happy celebrating a particular number.

The cache before this find was his first find in San Diego County. He's starting to get interested in logging the 58 county challenge which I've written about on numerous occasions. He started to pester me Saturday afternoon about finding a cache down in Imperial County, which for those of you outside of California, is in the southeastern corner of the state. It's mostly desert area, but the Salton Sea is a pretty impressive site, so I can see the interest in heading out there again. I've already found several caches in Imperial County, but I'm more than willing to help him out. I told him that perhaps at Christmas time, when the weather is decent down there in the desert, we might make an overnight stay and find several caches out there. He's up for that idea.

So anyway, here's to you, Tadpole. You are a great caching partner.

Pictures were taken at the following geocache:
Cassattack - by momobomp

A Space Odyssey

Yesterday was an interesting day for me. After last Saturday's romp through the desert I was only 11 caches away from 2000. Chaosmanor and I couldn't get all 49 that I needed on Saturday, so I'll have to thank him for getting me close. I started surveying the local landscape for a fun cache to be my 2000th. At the same time, I wanted it fairly close to a dashpoint that was sitting out east of me. I found three caches that were of larger than micro sized and one that just looked kind of whimsical, so I decided that the whimsical cache would be the one.

I set up the PQ and emailed my friend 3blackcats who was available for the trip. 9:00 we were off. First we drove over to Riverside to rectify a DNF that both of us had posted last week in the 108° heat. I think it only hit 85° yesterday, so there was a big difference. The owner had updated the coordinates since our last visit, a change of only 11 feet, so we should have found it and the owner even stated that there were footprints about a foot away from the cache. Both of us were surprised when we found it right away this time around. How could we have missed it the last time? Chalk that one up to one of those imponderables.

The ten caches that preceded my milestone were your average garden variety of caches, a couple of smalls and a couple of micros. I was surprised to find one hidden in the parking lot of a school. I thought the powers that be frowned on that sort of thing. It was a really strange placement considering there was a very nice park right across the street from the school. One cache near that one does stand out however. We were walking down this abandoned road and noticed some movement by the side of the road. Next thing we knew there were two ground squirrels that scampered out and ran quickly across the road. The next thing we knew, a large bird swooped down over us, almost as if it were dive bombing us. I'm not sure whether we scared it and thus the squirrels, or we scared the squirrels and the bird took advantage of it, all I do know is it was one big bird. We watched it fly over to about where we estimated ground zero to be, so we slowly continued our short walk over there. We got the cache quickly and then checked out the bird which turned out to be a Great Horned Owl. I didn't have my camera with me, but I think it unlikely that I would have been able to get a decent shot of it.

One of the other caches that we also found was at the location of the original McDonald's restaurant in San Bernardino along Route 66, the Mother Road. The building is no longer a restaurant, in fact the original building isn't there anymore, but the new building houses a smallish Route 66 museum that has lots of McDonald's memorabilia. It was an interesting spot.

After that it was time to get the milestone cache. This was a large cache on private property, actually sort of in the back yard of another local cacher, which we discovered during the search. It was a very large ammo can and the hider requested no trade items. He did allow a "bonus" find if you posted a picture wearing the items in the cache. I chose to log it once, but wore the items for the photo anyway. It was just a fun cache. We found one more cache after that, giving me 2001 cache finds, thus the name of the blog for today.

In all the hoopla and excitement over this cache, I forgot the grab the travel bug that was in the cache. Perhaps I'll go back for it later. I never did get that dashpoint either. Oh well. You can't get them all. It's the hunt that matters anyway.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Route 66 Museum- Original McDonalds- McToy Museum - by Team GeoCan
Altigenman's Wedding - Anything for smiles! - by altegenman

Friendly quirks

Living in Southern California, I’ve had the great fortune of caching with some very interesting and entertaining people, some of whom, I’ve developed very good friendships with that will probably last the rest of my life. One such person is 3blackcats.

I met 3blackcats after I goaded her into finding my Size Matters … Especially in California cache. It was a multi-cache that had a little bit of a twist and she and her sister had been out another time already to find the cache and couldn’t find the first waypoint. Trash talking ensued and that was probably enough to get her back out on the trail to find this one, which she did. For some reason, I had given her my phone number in case she needed a lifeline on it, but instead she called to brag and a friendship developed. A couple of days later, she, her sister 1bigdodgerfan, another cacher Lostlad, and I went out to conquer a well conceived mystery cache entitled Curiouser and Curiouser. We found it and 19 other caches that day and the next thing I knew, 3blackcats and I were caching together on a regular basis.

As you get to know people, you learn more and more of their personality, their quirks and what makes them tick. One of 3blackcats’ quirks is she doesn’t like to show her face when getting her picture taken. Well, not really, but it seems like that’s the case. I heard her tell it once that it was because of a witness protection program that had gone sour, but I’m not sure I believe that one.

It actually started out as a joke when she and Lostlad were caching near the Devil’s Punchbowl and she ended up getting one of her milestone caches out there. Lostlad wanted to take a picture, so she posed for the picture, with just her hand sticking out from behind a huge boulder. Her next milestone cache, I happened to be present and the traditional picture was taken, from behind her, looking over her shoulder at the view from the cache site. A legend was born.

As you can see from some of the pictures posted, she will go to great lengths to make sure she’s unidentifiable in the picture. Her sister, 1bigdodgerfan even got involved with this as well. The event picture was the best in my opinion. I didn’t even realize that she’d turned her head to make it look like she was reading the menu until after I got home and downloaded the picture to my computer. I busted a gut laughing at that one.

We’ve actually started making a game of it. How many clues can we reveal about 3blackcats before we finally show everyone who she really is? It’s just one of those diversions that keeps us entertained on the trail when we’re trudging along a steep part, or when we’ve ended up sort of bleary eyed from one too many lamp post caches. The last time I cached with her was right after Christmas, on a 4x4 trail up in the Cajon Pass. The wind chill that day was close to 20 degrees and most of the day was spent in a heated car as we bumped along a dirt road. Once we got near ground zero, we didn’t mess around taking pictures, but worked on finding the cache and moving along. It was that cold.

Our latest plans are to go out on next Monday afternoon. We may end up in an area that is ripe for another picture, but then again we may not. The one thing that I do know is, we’ll have fun.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:

Chelsea & Ginger's Favorite Walk #1 - by Chelsea & Ginger
Devil's Punchbowl by Yosemite John and Debbie
Crossroads - by fontanabill
Cache Addicts Meet & Greet #10 - by CacheAddicts.org

Group Caching or Going it Alone?

In the main forum a question was posted about how many caches have you found in one day. I gave a three part answer.

With a group? 37
With one other person? 31
By myself? 26

Obviously, I do a little of all three types of caching. I think the largest group I went with was following an event where there was a FTF available nearby. Several car loads of people decided to head over there and give it a group effort, especially since several people at the event had already come up empty earlier in the day. We ended up finding the cache, but it took close to a half an hour to come up with this well conceived cache. I’m sure the owner was loving every minute of it, since he and his wife were both there watching the entire process play out in the dwindling twilight of a cool summer’s evening.

Most of the group caching that I’ve done is more on the order of three or four people. There were four people in our group the day that I found my personal best of 37 caches. It was an interesting day, starting out in the morning going after several puzzle caches and some other larger caches. We had decided the area where we were going and each of us independently of the others had solved a puzzle or two, and so we drove around getting the puzzles first, actually bypassing some caches to make sure each person in the group got to find the puzzle they’d solved. After lunch, it became a numbers run to see how many we could get before we ran out of energy. The 37^th cache actually became a milestone number for me as well, #900. I wasn’t actually planning on getting that many that particular day, in fact, I would be willing to bet that everyone in the group was surprised by the number that we got. The point is we had fun.

Most of the time, when I get larger numbers like that, it’s usually because I’m caching with one other friend. The particular run where I found 31 caches was a very quick run, done in about three hours on a Saturday in July. I’m sure we probably could have done a lot more as it was a pure numbers run, but I hadn’t slept well the night before, my PDA had died on me that morning, so I was taking notes longhand and hand inputting coordinates into the GPS. Trying to keep track of all the caches we’d found without the use of my PDA was a logistical nightmare. I was absolutely exhausted after the day was over. I’m pretty sure I slept well that night though. I had fun that day, especially since I was with my friend and so we shared jokes along the way, but it’s not something that I’d care to repeat. 31 caches would be cool, don’t get me wrong, but I’d just like to stretch those 31 caches out over a little longer period of time.

The 26 cache day when I was by myself, was on my roadtrip last weekend. Most of the caches were easy finds, not taking too long. Most were of the larger size, there were a few micros thrown in, but for the most part, they were smalls or larger, so the finding was a little bit easier as well. This was an incredibly enjoyable day. The scenery was great, the infamous snake incident occurred during this cache run and there wasn’t any set agenda or time frame that I was stuck with, outside of darkness. It was a fun day.

I guess my point to all of this is that caching can come in many forms. Group caching has its own dynamics which are entirely different than when you’re by yourself or only with one other person. I can remember one group caching effort, my first actually, where I was ready to go home after our first ten caches found. I’d never cached for more than 8 to 10 caches and I had had a great day and was ready to call it quits. My friends convinced me to come along for the rest of the afternoon and I’m glad I did. We found 10 more caches, two after dark, so I’d discovered another interesting aspect to caching on that group run – night caching.

The planning probably takes a bit more time when you’re going out with someone else, but the benefits of having a partner that shares your passion of caching, that helps you out when there are muggles around and is just there to share stories with you and laughs at your jokes is really priceless. Sometimes going alone is fine, but I’ve found that my most enjoyable times were when I was caching with someone else.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:

Curiouser and Curiouser - by Terra Girl, Bean Dog, and my faithful sherpa Max
Walt Disney Concert Hall - by EMC of Northridge, CA
Mid-State Parking - by General Grant & The Mad Dog
Sunset Crater - by wolfb8 (libby)
SwitchBACK! - by WestwardHo