Anyone going Geocaching this weekend? **NEW CACHERS...POP IN!**

[lilallybean]

Hello all,
My s-i-l passed away this past Wed. She went very peacefully and her visitation/funeral will be this weekend. www.taylorfuneral.com has her obituary and some great photos of the family. We are all doing well with it, we will just have to see how her Mom does after everybody leaves.
Sandy, I have looked on ebay---there are some CRAZY items on there. It has actually helped me to have an idea of some things to look for. I also decided that I can make some unique items myself, lol.
Thanks Mike for letting me borrow the idea! I saw some Pine trees at our towns firestation that I think would be a perfect spot and since the firemen are always there, maybe it will stay out of the hands of Muggles. I love your orange idea!
I have a couple other caches I want to place. We have a restaurant/bar here with a bike theme, the name of the place is Spokes. I want to start a micro there and attach it under the LARGE bike they have have in front of the place. I plan on naming it "I Spoke about a cache". Then one of our loocal radio stations has a goofy looking frog as its mascot. I though about placing something at their station and calling it "Signal's second job?". We will have to see.
I graduate a WEEK from today!!! I can't wait. I doubt that I will keep my straight A record after this class that I am in now. I just couldn't devote as much time and energy to my classes with everything that we had going on. As long as I am done with it and get my degree I don't really care!
We go on vacation the following day. I am so looking forward to getting away from everything! We plan to hint lots of caches down in Branson!

 

[Pin Wizard]

lilallybean...Hugs for you! I'm sorry to hear about your s-i-l. But she's not suffering any longer either. Bittersweet. Hugs and prayers for you and your family!

"Spokes" sounds like a good one!

One week to graduation! Woooooo hooooooooooo!!!! Congrats on that!!!! I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you still pull an "A" in your class, but if it slips a little, just remember you did go through a difficult time! There's a DISer who hasn't been here in quite a while. She also went through all her courses with A's. Then when her school changed the grading system to include pluses and minuses, she had all A's and one A-. ACK! She wasn't happy. That put a dent in her average for sure. And have fun with the geocaching vacation!

We stayed close to home today for caching. Found two out of four. LOL! Just 50%. Hope the next outing is on the upswing! I'm sure we would have found the other two if there were decent ways to them. One had a few "no trespassing" signs. I backed up a little and found a way through the woods around the sign to avoid it, but then you had to leave the woods and get on the trail that is located past the sign. Grrrrrrrrr. So if you go around the sign that's NOT trespassing? Sheesh. The other cache we didn't get, I couldn't find the trail. I know we were headed in the right direction and had to go in there, but no trail. Everything was covered if it was there. Hmmm. Plus a couple people in the neighborhood were interested in what we were doing. Can't blame them. I'd be the same way at my own home. The cache owner e-mailed me back and said he'll have to clue in the neighbor in the corner house. Says his neighbors are good. He also said we could knock on his door and cut through his backyard. Think we'll do that!

Hoping to get to Richmond tomorrow. Better get up early for that one to avoid the traffic headed to Busch Gardens. The highway isn't fun about 9:30 or 10:00.

Happy caching!

 

[MiJo]

lilallybean: Sorry to hear about your dear s-i-l but, as Sandy mentioned, she is no longer suffering. As bad as it was when my mother passed away, it was a relief to us that she was no longer suffering. Also, congratulations on graduating! That must be exciting! May your future be blessed! I like the idea of the SPOKE cache, and the Signal cache. Have fun placing them.

Sandy: Congrats on the NC cache! We hope to do some down that way next week. We'll be staying in the SE tip of NC, right above Myrtle Beach. We'll definitely get into SC while we're down there. On the way down, we'll grab a cache in MD and we're going to stay a night in Fredericksburg, so we can get a few VA caches. We also hope to visit Harper's Ferry on the way home so we can cross the river and grab a WVA cache!

Well, our son had a pretty good score on his Navy tests and he ended up enlisting for 5 years! He will be leaving August 17 for Boot Camp and then heading to Pensacola for training as an Airborne Rescue Swimmer. It's a tough program that will have him dropping out of helos to rescue downed pilots, etc. I think he can do it physically but I sure hope he can maintain the focus and correct mental attitude for this. We think he can. I guess we'll all find out in a year or so. He is very excited about it, which is a plus. I guess at age 24 he should know what he does and doesn't want to be doing with his life. Now, we'll have a reason to visit Pensacola in a year or so.

We have a 90th B'day celebration today for a neighbor so we probably won't be doing any caching. Have a good week, everyone!

 

[Pin Wizard]

Hope you and your wife have a fun vacation, Mike! Certainly sounds like it will be. We were back in Richmond last weekend. What a difference in the price of gas. Here it was between $2.95 and $2.98 near us. Out in a town on the outskirts of Richmond, it seemed EVERY gas station was charging $3.03. Ugh! Won't be making that trip for a few weeks now. I'm trying to get just three days off of work to go somewhere new and try some caching. Doesn't seem to be a good time between now and August with my new job and deadlines. I was hoping to get a few days before my son heads back to school in late August. I guess I'll have to see how work is going closer to the dates I want.

Congratulations to your son! Wooooooooooo hooooooooooo!!!! I'm sure he'll be fine and love the adventures. Keep us posted along the way!

Hope your neighbor enjoyed the birthday celebration!

Happy caching!

 

[MiJo]

Sandy: Our neighbor, Mr. Richards, enjoyed his little 90th birthday luncheon very much! He's an amazing man. He still does some farming and he sells fruits and vegetables from his house. We had a nice time.
Our vacation plans will have us doing some caching near Richmond on Saturday evening (possibly late afternoon)! We are going to leave Easton early Saturday and stop off in Harpers Ferry for some sightseeing and a few WV caches. We'll then head down to Richmond for the night, staying in a Sleep Inn near I-95. On Sunday morning, we'll head down to Calabash, NC. We hope to do some caching along the way and some around Calabash, of course. We plan to spend Thursday evening/night with friends in Goldsboro, NC, and then drive home Friday.
Maybe you can give us a few leads on caches around Richmond. We're not looking for anything with difficulties/terrain over 2.5 since we are on vacation!
Our DS is scheduled to head to boot camp on Aug 17 and then down to Pensacola. I'll keep everyone posted on his adventure!
I guess that's it. Good caching!

 

[Pin Wizard]

Sounds like your vacation is well planned! Glad the party was a hit, too!

About a 2.5? I guess you don't want to do the Eye of Horus then. That's a 5/5.

I haven't actually been caching in Richmond itself. I'm thinking of adding it to the agenda though! I've been going to Midlothian which is on the outskirts of Richmond. I was looking at the map on the website. You could head down 95 to either 360 (south or west) if there's an exit. Otherwise you might have to go 95 to 195 and get an exit for it. I can't quite tell by looking. Of course, I didn't zoom in either. Oops! Rt. 360 is also knows as Hull Street Road. There are a TON of quick caches along there. That's where I spent the day I came home with 14 finds. You might take a look at Hill Top View (GCJMQW) and scan west on the map. You'll start to see more and more of them. Another good road is Ironbridge. Not as much as Hull St. though. For Ironbridge you could take 95 South to Old Hundred Road exit. Head west. Your first cache would probably be Off Your Rocker (GCV4V2.) "Off your Rocker" caches are close to major highways or roads and located at Cracker Barrels. I think it's Inertial that has a series of them going. There's even Off your Rocker in Roanoke Rapids...in NC! A good one basically off of Ironbridge is Fairground View (GCWEP6.) It's on a fairly new hiking trail in the area if you can use a stretch of the legs. Just a short walk from parking.

Looks like you might also be able to get 60 (Midlothian Parkway) from somewhere close to 95. There are a number along there also that are quick finds. Robious Road is a turn off there and has a nice park with maybe 4 caches in it. Nice hiking again. If you're in the area of Midlothian Parkway, definitely do Bugs Attack (GCWW9J)!!! A cute multi all within the parking lot of a shopping center.

A few of the "players" out that way that probably have a lot of Richmond finds are deepseadivers, Inertial, Huggy_d1 I think is the way the other person's "spelling" is, TeamBlackZ, CodeZero. They may have things closer to where you'll be staying if you check their profiles and their finds.

Hope that can get you started!

Happy caching!

 

[Pin Wizard]

Your son is headed out the 17th, Mike? I bet he's excited about it! Definitely keep us posted.

Oh! Another good player out that way is Walden Pond. He just hit 500 finds the other day himself.

Happy caching!

 

[MiJo]

Sandy: Thanks for the Richmond cache info! We'll be there tomorrow afternoon/evening/night. Yes, David heads out the 17th for Great Lakes, IL,for boot camp. That's where I was back in '71. After boot, he heads down to Pensacola to begin Search and Rescue Swimmer "A" school. After that, who knows?! He's in for 5 years so that may mean we will have to travel around a bit to see him, especially in Pensacola during the winter.
Good caching and I'll report back when we get home next weekend.

 

[Pin Wizard]

Traveling will be great! A friend of mine never heard a complaint out of his family when they had to go to Germany to see him!

 

[MiJo]

Hi Everyone,
We're back! We spent the past several days traveling to and from the Myrtle Beach area and spending time with family in Calabash, NC. We managed to squeeze in about a dozen or so caches along the way and we grabbed one TB that we brought north with us. We'll place that one today. We got our first cache finds in MD, WV, VA, NC and SC!

Sandy: Thanks again for the info. I managed to mess up, though. Originally, we had planned to spend the first night in Fredericksburg, VA, so I had done a Pocket Query for that area. After we decided to stop near Richmond, instead, I neglected to do another PQ to update my caches. We ended up spending the first night near Ashland, VA, and the closest caches I had downloaded were about 8 or 9 miles north! We had nothing south at all until the Raleigh area! It was fortunate we had those Ashland caches because we did end up doing several around that area but we didn't get to do any in Richmond. I guess we now need a laptop so we can take it with us when we travel! Most of the motels seem to have free high-speed access now so it would make sense.

Our vacation went well although it was a lot of driving for us. We got back just in time to get up at 3:30 AM to take our son and one of his buddies to Newark Airport for a pre-Navy trip to Raleigh to visit a friend.

I guess that's it for now. We have some catching-up to do, including visiting our DGD, Erin! Good caching, everyone.
Mike

 

[Pin Wizard]

Sounds like you had a great vacation, Mike!

I'm not sure where Ashland is. I've heard it mentioned on the Richmond radio station, but I'll have to check a map. At least you got to do a few in that area. That's good! I love my laptop. Don't think I could live without it at this point. LOL! I bought it in 2003 when we made the trip from FL up here visiting. If I could just get the printer hooked up and working, I'd be all set. I could have sworn I had that printer working with it in the past. Don't know why I'm having a problem with getting it going now. But that computer kept me entertained on the train ride. Had access in the hotel room also. We stayed at a Hampton Inn. The hotel also had a small office for use by guests. And it included a computer! I was on that a couple times when I wanted to print something.

Glad you got to see your son and friend off at the airport! Good for him to catch up with a friend before he's the military's the next 5 years for sure. I'm sure those 5 years will fly for him. Just yesterday I heard that it was the Coast Guard's birthday. Made me think of my nephew and the celebrating they must be doing.

Have fun with Erin!!!! And good luck with your catch-up time.


lilallybean...You must have that degree in hand and off on VACATION!!! Hope you're having FUN!

 

[SplshMtn99]

Hey, any scrapbookers here??

Look what I found!!! ScrapYourTrip.com now carries Geocaching scrapbooking diecuts. The first geocaching scrapbook stuff I've seen anywhere.

http://www.scrapyourtrip.com/geocaching.html
(I've ordered from them about 4 times. Service is great & fast!!)

We've been caching for 4 yrs now. We are one of the earlier ones here in MA.

Thinking these might be neat to place in a new cache.

 

[ohagash]

what is geo caching

ohagash

 

[Pin Wizard]

Ohagash... try this link www.geocaching.com

Enter your ZIP Code in the box on the upper right corner. You'll find caches that are hidden near you. I've heard people that are great with a compass can use that to find them. Most of us use a GPS. The least expensive I've seen yet was an etrex for $99 at Bass Pro Shops. Sports Authority has them also. And I'm sure they're for sale on Ebay. Try it! You'll have fun! And welcome to the DIS Boards!!

SplshMtn...I'll have to check that site. I used to scrapbook when I lived in FL. Haven't touched a thing since moving here. Too much fun Geocaching!!!

 

[SplshMtn99]

I think I've ordered just about every Disney & military thing they've ever carried. LOL She changes things often.

Here's a BAD 6 page layout I made 4 yrs ago, when supplies just didn't exist.
http://albums.photo.epson.com/j/AlbumIndex?u=4002141&a=30855534&f=

I've gotten MUCH better now.

 

[Pin Wizard]

Those are GREAT pictures! I love Geocaching pictures...so interesting. I don't think I'd get near that hive at all even if it is insulation! And what is that adorable yellow creature in the woods? LOL! Cute!!! My guess would be a snake of some kind, but you never know.

 

[SplshMtn99]

I love caching pictures too. I just realized those are all so old. Time to add a bunch of newer ones.

The beehive was lowered down by green string that was attached to tree. The untwist the top. Cool --- because who looks UP??? WAY UP??? We finally spotted the string & that was how we found it.

Also, never did figure out what that little yellow guy was? As you can see, he's pretty small. Like a catepillar or something with BIG head. lol

 

[Pin Wizard]

LOL! I said a snake, my son said a caterpillar and then said no. LOLOL! A hybrid?

 

[SplshMtn99]

I just asked on geocaching forum & got an answer right away!!!
http://www.virtualinsectary.com/insects/insect_12.htm
caterpillar

I'm trying to find out what it looks like when matures.
http://www.rlephoto.com/butterflies/swallowtail_sb01.html

 

[Pin Wizard]

I prefer him as a caterpillar. LOL! Just too cute! And it says yellow is less common than green ones. You really saw something special!!