3200th on 8/23/09 at GC1PP1P Fat Man's SQUEEZE in Bellbrook, OH. A 2.0/4.0 pipe crawl by 5BizzyBs.
8/9/09:
Another great day of adventure in the Columbus area!
GC1VZNT "Dozer's Domain" d5.0/t4.5
GC1TYCA "Three On The Tree" d1.0/t4.5
GCVRVN "Maized & Cornfused" d3.0/t1.5
GC13GKC "Wascally Wabbit Updated" d1.5/t2.0
8/5/09:
GC1V3H0 "Wheeeee!!" d3.0/t5.0
7/25/09:
Wanted some fun -- headed to Columbus for a bunch of drainhook caches. Its been a long time since I've climbed that many trees. You either like these kinds of caches, or you don't. I LOVED IT! Had a BLAST! So looking forward to a return trip to Columbus to get some more drainhook caches. A day running around with brownsignbob, TheOSUBengal, 5BizzyB, and finally meeting drainhook and Extheflow.
GC1PZ84 Peanut's Playground #3100, and GC1VZNT Dozer's Domain! WOW! Also GC1VV2H Occam's Razor, GC1TYD1 Catalpa?. We also checked out the 1st stage of GC1TYCA Three On The Tree but it was too slick to begin today. Looking forward to whatever else drainhook can dream up! I think I've been inspired to hide a few like it near me just so he can come out and get them and I can watch/take photos to return the favor of the fun that I had today.
Goofing off at a cache in the Columbus area (GC134ZZ "Victor Salmones") after all the fun at drainhook caches...
7/16/09:
slammer47 muggled by Satan at GC1VP7H "Troop 666" cache???...
6/30/09:
Two days straight of nothing but geocaching from 5:30am to 10:00pm with 5BizzyBs on Monday and Tuesday in southern Ohio.
I reached my #3000th find at GC1PYTT HIGH ROCK in southern Ohio! Spectacular views from the rock. The geocache rating seems a bit high on the difficulty/terrain but it can be dangerous if you're not careful due to some sheer dropoffs at the ledge where the geocache is hidden.
JOIN THE REVOLUTION!
5/31/09:
A LOT of planning went into a sucessful space alien themed GC1JKHE "GCINOHIO Geofest". Over 100 listed geocachers from places as far away as California showed up. Thanks Pinewood and all volunteers! This really was a great time. They even had fire spinners at night, a special event night cache, and a the 1st whereigo in southern ohio was demonstrated (GC1T8AY "Miami County Fairgrounds"). I wish I could have camped and stayed there the entire time. There will always be next year! :)
5/6/09:
2800th find at GC1E2YK PUK #1 in Moraine. A d2.0/t4.5 island cache by by goltzene (the Mad Kayaker). 5BizzyBs and I went out on the Great Miami River after a big rain storm on an inflatable raft to get this one for a double play milestone (my #2800, his #2400). It was a very memorable cache. I hope to do more like it soon.
5/2/09:
Went to the Cincinnati Flash Mob event WWFM V: Lunch in Peace in the middle of a full day of caching with Grey-n-Red and 5BizzyBs. We cached straight from 4am to 11pm. A blast! After the day was through I have 41 finds including some in a great location around the history cache "Coinfusion" and 5 dnf's.
4/18/09:
#2700th find at GCRVXB "Cavers Plunge (an extreme cache)" in southern Kentucky. A d3.5/t5.0 - 100 foot vertical free rapell into cave. A team of six, 5 made the drop into the pit. goltzene, Atlatl, SM325, Mrs. Amazing, LJ44, slammer47. This was THE most AMAZING cache I have ever done. It was goltzene's #5000th find!!
4/5/09:
A day at East Fork Lake just to the east of Cincinnati. I have no idea exactly how much hiking it involved, but a group of 6 from the Dayton area (goltzene, Bernoulli, 3trees, boydfamily, POKERBUZZ, slammer47) had a great time getting to know the area. Talking about being worn out after a full day of caching. We completed an epic multi cache all day long GC17BF "Eye of the Illuminanti" while getting nearby caches at the stages along the way. This cache is WELL PLANNED and VERY REWARDING. And its one of the "Ohio history" original 2001 hides in Ohio. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED CACHE!!
GC17BF "Eye of the Illuminanti" left-to-right: slammer47, Bernoulli, 5BizzyBs, POKERBUZZ, 3trees bottom: boydfamily
3/28/09:
Back in Ohio after a week's vacation in Vegas with my wife.
Finally! I got to see the Grand Canyon! We did a short 1-2 mile rim walk along the south rim of the canyon. I got to go out on a few outcroppings with no guardrails, a place not all tourists will go. AMAZING! AMAZING! Its a long way down! I can't wait to one day make the trip down into the canyon. And after a long week of sitting at #2599 I finally got my #2600th find at the Grand Canyon with my wife at a virtual cache along the south rim called "Peace on the Rim". BY FAR the most amazing location for a geocache that I have ever done. Its going to be VERY difficult to beat that!
Big Friggin' slot machine!
3/17/09:
My geocaching blog is back up! Fileave.com apparently thought my account contained viruses and locked it for nearly 1/2 month.
But they've fixed it and so my blog is back!
3/14/09:
Its been a little while since I've done some day-long solo caching. So I went down to the south-west corner of Ohio and got the oldest still-active geocache in Ohio. What a neat area and park to visit. There's plenty of other caches in the park to fill up a day there with some scenic views here and there. Since I left the house at 5am and cached on the way there and back, I managed to grab 36 caches, bringing my total to 2599. Holding out to get #2600 at a virtual cache at the Grand Canyon next week with my wife. Can't wait to see that place in person; since I've never been there before. Besides, my car died on me and so right now I don't really have a car to be tooling around geocaching. Hope to have it back on Wednesday after paying the big $$$ bill for the fix.
3/2/09:
My fileave file sharing account is not working right now. I don't know why and I am waiting on a response from the site owners.
So until then, my geocaching blog and some links on my profile are down. :(
2/28/09:
#2500th find @ GC1MR3G Secret of Cacheopolis in Xenia, OH; a d4.5/t4.0 - lengthy multi by bernoulli and family.
You just HAVE to check out the new night-only multi cache called GC1MK1P "Dark Night" by It's Cached Dude up by Kiser Lake (between Urbana and Piqua). VERY WELL EXECUTED night cache and a lengthy adventure.
I AM....BATMAN!..
The Dark Barbarian Knight...
2/15/09:
#2400th find @ GC1KMET "Nocturnal Mission" on 2/15/09 about 6:00am! - d3.0/t3.5 by cache_n_out. Along with me for this find was goltzene and 5BizzyBs. This is a night cache multi, requiring use of flashlight to locate reflectors on trees that lead you to the final container with log.
1/25/09: Muther of Multis went down! Bernoulli gathered up a large group and put the final stage of this time-devouring multi to rest. Our failed attempt as this earlier last year turned into a missing container maintenence by the owner. How an ammo box hidden so deep into the woods comes up missing like that is beyond me!
Afterwards four of us went for a 5 hour loop hike to get some amazing earthcaches at Fort Hill close to Chillocothe, Ohio.
The snow is just getting started and the hill is just getting started too
1/17/09: TeddyR got his #4000th find at Salt Run cache as a group of seven cachers (slammer47, 5BizzyBs, TeddyR, hideme, nc_cachegeek, riffleman, boydfamily) went on a snow covered cache run just west of Columbus. I got to get another GIANT THING cache to get my photo with a GIANT BASKET! WHOLY COW THAT SUCKER IS HUGE!
1/11/09:
46.3 miles hiking on the Sheltowee Trace trail over 3 days from Cave Run Lake to Natural Bridge (no geocaching). Rained on and snowed on, cold, but a successful trip!
1/3/09:
My first geobiking adventure was only a 2.0 mile-ish round-trip but it was a complete success and the 3 caches I got by bike were all quality caches!
12/14/08:
Check out this neat virtual cache in Columbus. A Sunday Afternoon Cache Topiary bushes are arranged like a really famous painting...
12/10/08:
After getting 2 caches in Massachusetts (grilled cheese micro and The Roach Motel), I had a chance meeting at the airport on the way back to Ohio...
12/6/2008:
2200th find! @ GCKCEQ "Quarry Cache" in Marion, OH
A group of 8 led by TeddyR headed up to Marion to cache out the area. The numbers mostly worked out and this cache turned out to be my new favorite cache - the location is something else to see and experience for yourself!
nc_cachegeek, hideme, goltzene, slammer47, TeddyR, fyrmdc, Grey-N-Red, and 5BizzyBs
left-to-right 5BizzyBs, PZ Dude, and TooManyCooks, slammer47
11/8/08:
I attended the World Wide Flash Mob event WWFM IV: WILL FLACHE FOR CACHE! - Dayton Ohio. The event is a 15 minute event where everyone shows up exactly on the hour and stays for exactly 15 minutes. After the 15 minutes everyone leaves like nothing ever happened. There are similar coordinated geocaching events all over the world at the exact same time. In the photo below, you should be able to pick me out in the crowd. Its not too difficult....
October 19, 2008!
Just 8 days from my last milestone (a new record!) - I hit #2000 finds at a d2.0/t4.5 cache in Morehead, Kentucky called GC1B1ZQ Mt. Dumm. TeddyR came along with me for this epic find! We had a blast - and we were beat down after it was all over! What a weekend it was in Kentucky!
October 11, 2008:
101 Indiana caches in less than 24 hours! WE DID IT! abuhhhh, BTBAM, sommer family, and I slammer47 started at midnight at Bring your own log and cached through the night-day-and-night again to finally land on #100th around 10:30pm at Need a gift #2. 100 caches later we were all tired and ready to go home. We did get one more before leaving Indiana but WOW we were exhausted/tired/and ready for the snoring to begin. Along the way we got our pictures with a GIANT SHOE and a GIANT COW. And I got my #1900th milestone at a small terrain challenge and fun container cache called GC1D5M6 "Monkey See, Monkey Do". What a day!! It seemed to take forever to log all my found-it and dnf logs, but finally 10/14 I am finished! Stats are up to date. Ready to get back to "normal human numbers" caching in Ohio again. Can't wait for the next similar style trip!
GC1EAJ5 Cache Cow
GC11GJA Hoosier Hysteria
Indiana counties BEFORE the 24 hour run:
Indiana counties AFTER the 24 hour run:
October 5, 2008:
It was quite the weekend. I was up in the Toledo area with my wife visiting with a friend. Got ~17 finds in the area - a new county colored in on the Ohio map! I saw TeddyR's name on the logsheets all over the place up there. An I got a cache hidden by P-burgZoo who I randomly ran into down in Centerville not all that long ago (Sept 20th) at The Forbidden Forrest cache. And much to my surprise I saw a bunch of Dayton/Cincinnati area cachers on the logbook for a cache (a giant Uncle Sam) in Michigan. Quite the small world we live in! Since it was so close, my wife and I went to the oldest active cache in Ohio - what a trophy find! It was about a mile round-trip walk to get that find but on easy terrain and very beautiful back in the woods with the changing leaves. GC2DBE "ancient lake". There is another cache down south of Cincinnati called GC31A "Shawnee Lookout Tower" that I really think is really the oldest active cache based on the GC# being shorter. I hope I get that one soon too! Something about getting a cache find that is really old like that. Since we were so close to Michigan I got up early enough to make a quick cross of the border and got 4 Michigan finds for a new state! Just by sheer luck I stumpled upon a GIANT UNCLE SAM! GCNHR4 "Say Uncle!". And our hotel was within walking distance of my 2nd webcam cache find at GC9564 "Traffic Jam"
The oldest active Ohio cache GC2DBE "ancient lake" near Toledo, OHIO
A giant Uncle Sam up in Michigan at GCNHR4 "Say Uncle!"
My 2nd webcam cache find at GC9564 "Traffic Jam"
Sunday, September 21, 2008:
FINALLY! Power restored!
We had no power for 7 days and 4 hours.
9/16/08:
Made it to the Top of Ohio! elevation 1548 feet in Bellefontaine. I got there just as the sun was setting - very cool! GC15CQN "The Top of Ohio" Earthcache
8/19/08:
I saw Mr. 47 loggedNo strength required, just ingenuity 2 with Skinfusionz, BTBAM, and abuhhhh. Having never heard of that screename before I decided to give Mr 47's profile a look over, and besides they picked a really good number for their screenname. Should have known! Laughed out loud! BTBAM is just a clown! The profile photo for Mr. 47 is enough said...
8/5/08: This past weekend EarTrumpet and I were team "White&Nerdy" in the Chicago www.muddybuddy.com 6 mile running/biking/obstacle course thing. His girlfriend ferreter3 and her friend were also in the race and did VERY well for their division. What a blast. It started when EarTrumept asked me if I would be interested a few months back. Since it was my wife's birthday weekend it sort of evolved into an entire weekend in Chicago.
EarTrumpet and slammer47 (Team "White&Nerdy" www.muddybuddy.com)
The rubber chicken bike mascot
Bikes getting ready for the race
The final obstacle - the mud crawl to the finish
ferreter3's team finishing the race
While in Chicago I got to do some pretty neat caches. Step Lightly
Stone Faced virtual cache at the Chicago Tribune building - relics from all over the world bricked into 3 sides of the building
Although it didn't work out to meet up with BTBAM (who was in town for Lollapalooza) to get the Whereigo cache about 20 miles from the hotel, I did end up trailing him on a cache at a rest area on the way up to Chicago called Sixty-Five Reasons to go North.
7/27/08:
Canoed 60+ miles with my noncaching friend Scott starting 1 mile south of Indian Lake and going to Tipp City along the Great Miami River. 5 Miles Friday, 39 Miles Saturday, 16 miles on Sunday. I even turned into a human headlight for our canoe by strapping a flashlight to my head and we did 4-5 hours of night canoeing. We canoed a little in the pouring rain. And hit some sweet rapids - most of the best rapids were between Sidney and Piqua. We had to portage over a bunch of dams and strainers along the way.
The only cache I got this weekend was a perfect end to a great dam canoe trip - bigdog421's earthcache GC1DG3C "What a dam sight".
7/20/08:
captain Bernoulli led a group of 7 Dayton-area cachers [Bernoulli and Family, Boydfamily, TooManyCooks, B n J, osubrownsfan, slammer47] on a two island canoe paddling excursion and then finding caches in the surrounding area. It was a 7am-11pm adventure. WOW! Check out the pics! This was the first time I've done island caches the right way - by boat! So much fun I hope to do some more caches like them soon.
7/19/08:
After comparing the Garmin Colorado to the Garmin Vista HCx, there is no comparison. In my opinion the Colorado lacks a lot of customization features that I like to use for geocaching. The colorado is probably a great unit for someone who just wants to use it for driving to places once you get City Navigator loaded onto it, but I didn't like it for geocaching at all. Even though you can upload geocaching descriptions, hints, and last 4 logs to it the unit only allows so many before it decides to randomly pick and choose which ones to show you. Sure you can use the POI loader and load tons to a SD card, but you won't get the full cache description that way. I really didn't like that. The biggest deciding factor was the price tag of $460 versus the few new features you get. Plus it seems to take forever to aquire satelllite signal and would not get a signal in my house like my Vista HCx does. At least for now until they come out with maybe a next generation hybrid, I'll stick to my original GPSr (Vista HCx) and PDA (Palm Tx) and I'm selling the Colorado back to Ebay-land. Garmin Colorado - reselling on EBAY.
7/12/08:
What a great day the 12th of July was!
Got up REALLY early for my #1500th milestone at GC1E368 HAIL TO SLAMMER47! - a huge physically challenging terrain (3.5/4.5) hide that I am honored to have in my name, placed by Abby The Explorer.
Then on the way back from Cincinnati I stopped to see the Extreme Home Makeover in West Chester. In case you're interested, the coordinates for the house are N39 20.638, W084 21.802. There are no walk-ins allowed so you have to take a free bus ride over to the house - there's plenty of signs in the nearby area to direct you to the spectator parking. The big reveal is on Thursday. On Monday my wife and I returned and I was shocked at how far the house has come in 2 days time. Its practically finished on the outside already!
After some more caching I went to GC1CXYW "Hail to the K! IV" and eventually cached on with BTBAM, Sommer Family, and skinfusionz - it turned out to be the most caches I've found in one single day beating my own personal record of 32 caches in one day.... I think today I got like 38-42 caches.... hopefully all of these new caches will publish soon so I can finally log them. There seems to be a bottleneck with the reviewer right now for them, or there's problems with most of the locations on them, or something?
7/11/08:
Finally broke down and did it -- my new Garmin Colorado 400t should be arriving in the next few weeks. After I make sure I really want to keep it I plan to sell my Vista HCx and Palm Tx on EBAY and a few other tech things to help offset the upgrade.
7/10/08:
I GOT WHEELS AGAIN! And it was $4 less than they quoted - not that it was cheap!
Time to milestone tomorrow (Saturday July 12th). I'm ready - going to get GC172HR Little Brother- Big Brother, a d4.0/t4.0 multi cache near Cincinnati. . Meeting at 7:30am sharp at the end of Quante Ave off of Montana Ave and then hitting the trail no later than 7:35am - its a bunch of bushwacking or trails to get to stage 1. Originally a concept idea for BTBAM and I to do a joint 1500th milestone at this cache, but since he is a freak of nature and caches WAY WAY faster than anyone I know, he passed up 1500 and is already near 1700. So then it was going be just a joint milestone of 1500 for me and 1700 for BTBAM. However, both of us have some sort of car curse. His is much worse than mine, though. CLICK HERE FOR BTBAM's BROKEN CAR LOG. As of now it does not sound like BTBAM is going to make it out for Little Brother-Big Brother on Saturday. But maybe he'll still surprise me. I know that his caching buddy abuhhhh invited a bunch of Cincinnati area cachers to the non-official event so I'm sure I won't be alone for the milestone find. Really looking forward to it.
Then later on Saturday the 12th at 11:00am I'll be at the GC1CXYW "Hail to the K! IV" event a bit more northwards.
7/9/08:
CAR-LESS SINCE THURSDAY JULY 10TH! :( I'm getting the shakes from withdrawl! This is unrelated to the "throw me a bone" log photo below. The ignition coil #4 went bad and the dealer screwed up by shipping the part to Chicago instead of to Dayton. It could be until Thursday or even Friday till it gets fixed.
6/29/08:
Spent the weekend at the Red River Gorge in Kentucky getting mostly the many earthcaches down there with goltzene, EarTrumpet, ferreter3. We also took a non-caching trip up Indian Staircase and did a circle around the Frog's Head box canyon.
Goltzene making the jump back from the actual Chimney of Chimney Top Rock:
On Sunday I got up early and headed out to Cave Run Lake about 30 miles north of the Red River Gorge and did the high terrain multi that has been on my wishlist for a long time - GCG5J1 Sky High Knob Hopping at Cave Run. It turns out that it is my #1 favorite terrain find now. It was a grueling 10 mile round-trip hike and most of that was uphill at 65-70 degree inclines. Talk about being worn out --- the actual cache took me just over 4 hours to complete and then an additional 2 hours just to get back to my car. I really liked this one and I recommend it to anyone who likes higher terrain caches -- it would make an EXCELLENT milestone find!!
The irony of this picture is I wrote "finish 4:17pm" on the logsheet but I wasn't finished - the last stretch wore me out even more - it took until about 6:30pm for me to get back to my car and about a mile from the car was yet another STEEP summit:
Near the top of the last summit of the trip I was pretty much wore down and out of water and then I had yet a mile walk back to the car:
And my day was NOT over yet. I couldn't resist going for BTBAM's new multi cache near Cincinnati GC1DJH5 Down the Rabbit Hole. I kind of had an idea of what this one might be based upon the name but I had no idea to what extent that he would make me go to get this find. It was quite the terrain adventure! click here for my found-it log. BTBAM, abuhhhh, and Sommer Family even made a surprise appearance just as I was completing stage 2.
After the weekend was over I was beat down and went right to sleep!
Find #1400 at TREEmendous!! on 6/14/2008. Its a 6 stage multi cache in Sugarcreek area at Bill Yeck Park. I learned about the different types of bark and leaves on common Ohio trees. Enjoyed the scenic trails in the woods here. SloTwitch and Abby the Explorer came along with me for this milestone find.
6/3/08: I got to be the "tester" of Bernoulli and family's new cache GC1CK7D PC#1 - PigEye Creek
The cache can be reached by canoe or a 0.5 mile walk along a farmer's field. WOW its so scenic back there! And then there's a small terrain challenge once you get there. I really liked this one.
4/24/08: Went to California for work and after a quick customer visit when I got there I had some free time. So I went for a 6 mile walk and found 7 California geocaches. There were some really neat views and one cleaver hide that stands out. The geocoin I picked up there will be moved back with me to Ohio and will be the most mileage I've put on a trackable item.
3/15/08: I finally made it to the Columbus area to get the GCZW2C "Excalibur" cache by pitufo. All I can say is WOW! The picture alone should be enough to spark your interest if you've never gotten this cache. There's more to it than your average cache and anyone can do this one. Very creative! Very unique!
2/22/08: My wife and I braved the icy roads tonight and drove to the final stage of FRED. After getting stuck in the snowy ditch next to boydfamily's driveway and being towed out by their neighbors I got to sign the FRED logbook for my #1000th find!
2/22/08: As of 8:00am I still plan on getting FRED final stage at 6:30pm tonight. However, ice storm and slick roads may jeopardize my plans for #1000 tonight. My wife wants to come but doesn't want to be stuck out in the cold. It really depends on how the roads are at 5pm when I get off work. If I don't get #1000 tonight then definately will get it after the Winter Getaway event tomorrow.
2/18/08: Got stage #11 today at lunch. It was easier than I made it but I eventually got it. I plan to get 5 caches during this week and go for the final stage of FRED for my #1000th find on Friday, February 22nd after work probably around 6:30-7:00pm.
2/16/08: Got stage #10 today. It was a muddy muck getting back to the container but I really enjoyed the terrain. Thankfully it didn't take too long to find the container once I got there. I haven't cached much that far east so it was neat to be able to get all the area caches afterwards. It was a warm winter day and perfect for trail hiking.
2/12/08: I am skipping stages #8 and #9 for now until they are maintained/replaced by the owner. I was given stage #10 coordinates so I plan to pick back up there this weekend. Eventually I'll get back to complete stages #8 and #9 whenever they get replaced. I'm just glad I can keep moving forward with my plan for FRED as my #1000th find.
2/9/08: Just before the Wright State Adventure Summit on Saturday I went back again to stage #7. With plenty of light this time I made relatively quick work of it.
2/7/08: Voss Toyota finished my car earlier than I expected. So I got to pick it up today after work. Back in business!!!
2/6/08: I am without car! My car was shaking violently last night as I pulled into my driveway. Turns out I need a new ignition coil...and they don't have it in stock so it will be at least a couple of days until I get my car back. Bummer. So if you are reading this and planning on going caching on Thursday or Friday after 5:30pm and don't mind a tag-along, let me know and I just might join you!
2/4/08: First visit to stage #7 turned up empty handed after 30-40 minutes of looking.
2/3/08: For my birthday today I found stage #5 (pretty tricky) and stage #6 (good thing I like math!).
1/30/08: Stage #3 and #4 completed on this FREEZING COLD day. They were both easier than I expected, but still good hides. Made #4 a little bit harder than it needed to be.
1/29/08: Found FRED stage #2 today. It took my wife and I 25 minutes to figure out the stage 3 coordinates - but it was so much fun I wish we could do it all over again. What a totally awsome stage!! I really can't wait to see what else is in store for me on this already incredible multi cache. I hope to get stage 3 tomorrow.
1/28/08: Began working on GCTM74 "FRED". Found stage #1 in under a minute - surprising because it was a good hide. Planning on getting stage 2 at lunch tomorrow.
= "The Miami Valley Obsessive Compulsive geocache Tour"
My plan is to gradually work through the 12 stages of this cache, finding geocache hides along the way near each stage, until ultimately claiming the final stage as my #1000th milestone find in February or March 2008.
GCTM74 "FRED" = "The Miami Valley Obsessive Compulsive geocache Tour"
Size: Large Difficulty 4 Terrain 4
This multistage cache is the most ambitious effort undertaken
by the Miami Valley Geocachers. It may be the most ambitious cache
placed by any organization. Along the way, you will
meander all around the Miami Valley.
There are twelve stages to this cache. Some of them are easier than
others, but then again, easy is relative. 9 different caching teams
placed the different stages, so there will be no consistency
to the hides. Also, we are not telling you who hid each stage until the end of the hunt, so you can’t think about other caches you’ve found by that team. When we did a trial run of this cache, we had in our group, three hunter/outdoorsmen, a registered nurse, four puzzle
solvers, two brave children to go where the adults wouldn’t fit,
three Eagle Eye cachers, an experienced rafting guide, a pregnant
lady and a certified scuba diver. Believe it or not, everyone one
in our party was pivotal to the completion of the task. Yes, it
will be tough, but it will be fun.
How much fun? 150 miles and three counties worth. What sort of fun? Multiple stages large enough to trade travel bugs and other items, devilishly hidden micros, and the occasional puzzle to send you
into a head scratching frenzy. What kind of puzzles? Well, you’ll
have to see for yourself.
1/7/08: HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Finally back in Ohio after nearly 2 weeks away (a trip to Florida and a trip to Virginia).
A week long trip to Disney World with my wife:
And a week long 50 mile hike along the Appalachian Trial in Virginia at the Shenendoah Valley area
11/4/07:
Found my #700th milestone cache at The Throne in Springfield, OH. I had originally planned for Hilligan's Retreat but its apparently duck hunting season so I had to abort. I did wade out close to the island where the first stage was, but there were 3 hunters in a camoflage tent right at the shore with fake ducks floating in the water. They had guns and I didn't so I decided not to make them angry. I'll be back to do this cache maybe in the next 100? I posted some pics of the big letdown in my DNF log on Hilligan's Retreat
10/31/07:
Happy Halloween!
2007 Ugly Lunch Lady - won 1ST PLACE in the 2007 contest
2006a Joe Dirt - won 1ST PLACE in the 2006 contest!
2006b Dwayne Pimp and Angela German Milkmaid
2005 Mario
2003 Conehead
10/22/07: I had never heard of Bridge Day until Eartrumpet invited me to come along just 3 days ago. Too bad Rocky of terock couldn't join us because of his complications from stick-in-the-leg syndrome. I had never been to West Virginia before. We headed over there to WV and tent camped in Eartrumpet's friend's yard. Bridge Day was insane. Base jumpers jumping off the 870 foot bridge every 10 seconds or so and rappellers free-style rappelling from the catwalk for 6 hours. The view from the virtual cache there was amazing. Over the weekend I managed to get about 18 finds and EarTrumpet just a few less since he took me to a few he had previously gotten. We had a blast! We almost hit a dog on the way down so that woke us up quickly. EarTrumpet took us off-roading to a cache not normally meant to be a park-and-grab and crossed a river not meant to be crossed, we went dirt-skiing down a steep hill to increase the difficulty and fun of a WV cache.
10/14/07: My wife and I drove to Chicago, Illinois for the weekend to visit with my wife's brother. We managed to get something like 5 Indiana caches on the way to and from Chicago. In Chicago each morning I got up a couple of hours before everyone and walked to the caches near where we were at. I managed to get about 14 caches in Chicago including some multi's, puzzle's, and virtuals which was quite the accomplishment considering I had to walk 3-4 miles each morning to get the ones I did --- and those city buildings gave my GPSr rediculous accuracy readings. Thankfully most of my caching was on the outskirts near parks, but there were a few in tower-city area. My wife and I claimed the virtual cache at GCJZDR "Cloud Gate aka The Bean". If you've never seen this sculpture - then don't miss it! One of the coolest things I've seen in Chicago. To claim the virtual cache find you have to take a photo of your reflection on the bean's polished surface.
10/9/07: For my #600 find I did GCVYCK Lane Change. Instantly my all-time favorite geocache although GC11AT5 No Strength Required, Just Ingenuity 2 rings in a close 2nd. "Lane Change" is INSANE! Bennet is INSANE for putting this INSANE cache out there! Its definately not for everyone so don't rush out there and get it if you are not physically fit for this one or at least used to climbing. Stage #1 was mind over matter and VERY VERY high off the ground and doing the lane change maneuver up top is very cool. But stage #2 was an entirely different story. I got to know the stage 2 tree up close and personal most of the way. My arms and chest are rubbed raw from clinging tightly -- even drew some blood on one arm. The first 1/3 was the toughest but it was still quite the uphill battle from there...a lot steeper than I realized it would be. I'm sure SloTwitch was a bit nervous seeing me up that high. She was the ground crew for me - finally met her today just before going to the cache. We started caching about the same time and started chatting over email. Since SloTwitch was there for my emergency backup and photo taking I made sure she got her name on the logsheet. Dropped a 2007 RED JEEP travel bug in there too to entice more insane people to do this cache. Just PLEASE PLEASE be careful. What a great milestone "Lane Change" was!
