Adventures in Geocaching: #2,000! 2K! I’ve Found Two Thousand Caches!

Okay. I know finding 2,000 geocaches isn’t that big of a deal anymore since some people can find that many in a year or two these days.

But me? It’s taken me since December 26, 2004–that’s 7+ years–to find two thousand caches. I’m kinda slow since on a normal caching day I’ll DNF (did not find) approximately 30-50% of the caches I attempt. Today was an anomaly since I found 100% of the geocaches I attempted!

Also, I don’t like to cache if it’s raining, extremely hot, or extremely cold. I also won’t cache most weekends since I prefer to spend time with my husband, a dedicated cache-hunting hater. (I love him anyway.) 😀

I love, love, love geocaching, and I’m so glad to have marked 2K down as a milestone now.

This cache is 100th Anniversary. I adore cemetery geocaches because I love old cemeteries. This one fit the bill perfectly since it has graves that are well over 100 years old.

See the Little Church?

How cute is that? I would NEVER have seen this little church if not for geocaching. I love this hobby/sport/addiction!

My 2,000th Cache!

I had actually found a cache here in the past, but it has obviously been archived. I contemplated skipping this one as my 2K in favor of something else, but when the golden hour of photography lit up this church in such an awesome light, I knew this was the one for my 2,000th.

Geocaching, thank you for over 7 years of joy!!

Rotten Alabama Weather

We have a saying in Alabama that if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes and it will change. (I said this a couple of weeks ago.) Well, tonight the five minutes can’t come fast enough because we are supposed to have tornadic weather starting around midnight.

I had pretty well gotten a mental grip on dealing with the frequent turbulent weather around here, and then April 27, 2011, happened dealing the state with the worst, deadliest tornado day ever. I guess I thought since it was so bad last year, we might catch a break this year.

Image via Wikipedia

But noooo. We are having March weather in January. Currently, it is after 9 p.m. and the temperature is 65 degrees. It should be 30-35 degrees. Last year we had snow, for crying out loud.

We’ve had rain, rain, and more rain this January. Snow is much, much better.

Here’s hoping the night brings only rain, with nary a tornado in sight.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Simple

Simple red, white, and blue.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Peaceful

There are two places where I feel most at peace.

At the river where I am lucky enough to be able to go for lunch several days out of the year.

And at the beach, where the sound of the waves and breathing the ocean air soothe my soul.

Adventures in Geocaching: A High Memories Day

As a geocacher, I love high numbers days. Mostly though, I don’t have those. What I really like is the kind of day I had today.

A high memories day.

Really, there was nothing overly special about today. It started out sunny and a little warm, but as the sun sank it got a little cold.

The caches were mostly easy finds, but I had a most outstanding caching partner.

Anytime a grandgirl comes caching with me, the day becomes a high memories day rather than a numbers day. It doesn’t matter if the caches are at spectacular locations or not.

It doesn’t even matter too much if we find all the caches or not, but finding is always better than DNFing.

It matters more to her if we find something other than a log in the cache, and happily, today she got to score a smiley face pin for her shirt. And that was from a micro cache.

Looking for the Cache

What matters more to me is seeing the smiling face of a grandgirl finding something she didn’t expect and getting to spend time with her that I wouldn’t have missed for anything.

Now that is a high memories day. Thanks, geocaching. You have given me that with all five grandgirls.

And for the record, we found 4 and DNF’d 2.

Weird Music Mix

Today while eating at Five Guys, DH and I listened to the strangest mix of music.

We started off with a classical music choice which we thought was very strange.

As we sat waiting for our junior bacon cheeseburgers and fries, we heard The Beach Boys singing Good Vibrations. Okay.

As we ate, we heard Paint it Black by The Rolling Stones pounding through the establishment. Strange follow-up to The Beach Boys if you ask me.

Next up was a mellow song from The Beatles.

After that, we were thrown into the late ’50s/early ’60s and had to listen to Mashed Potato. Made us think of potatoes and then fries, I guess.

Last in the lineup while we were sitting there was I Hear a Symphony by Diana Ross and The Supremes.

I dunno. The music mix was just a little to weird for me today. If nothing else, I guess I’ll pay more attention to whatever is being fed to my ears in restaurants in the future.

Adventures in Geocaching: Blinded by Ivy

Actually, I’m not blinded by ivy. I’m mostly just blind when it comes to finding caches, evidenced by my stats of 1,983 finds to 399 DNFs (did not find).

The local cachers keep saying they are going to throw an event for me when I reach 1,000 DNFs. That would be swell!

Anyway, on to the cache at hand. I had looked for this cache a couple of times before, but I didn’t DNF it because it was raining both times, so I felt like I didn’t give it the ole college try. Today I went back, and since the ivy–lots of ivy–where the cache is hidden is getting a tad ratty-looking from cachers pawing through it, I called the cache owner for help. I also knew I needed help because I had been called to help another cacher a few days ago, and he ended up DNFing the cache.

Turns out the cache had actually been placed by someone else, so I called him. After looking where he told me to, he said he’d come look.

I got in my car and waited. We walked to the location and he started poking around all the places I had looked. He even managed to step into a hole that sank him to his knee, and that right there is one reason why I’m a pretty terrible cacher. I won’t do such things.

After a bit more looking, he said, “Look here.” Well, wouldn’t you know it, it was right where I had looked before. You’d think anybody could see a plastic container with a red strip, but nooooo. Not me.

I apologized profusely for dragging him out in the 30ish degree weather to help me.

He knows I can’t see anything, but he came anyway to help me. I definitely owe him one.

All I had to do was walk up those steps and look to the left. Easy peezey unless you are a blind cacher like me.

Gotta Love Alabama Weather

We have a saying in Alabama. If you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes, and it will change. Today is the perfect example. Here’s how it played out.

When I woke up this morning, it was raining and a relatively warm 58 degrees.

When I was driving to work, the sun was trying to shine.

When I got to work, it was misting.

When I was teaching my first class, it was raining.

When I was teaching my second class, the wind was blowing.

When I was teaching my fourth class, it was cold, cold, cold outside.

When I was keeping my office hour, it was snowing.

When I was driving home, it was snowing more.

When DH was driving home, he was in a blizzard whiteout.

When I looked out this afternoon, there was a pink sunset.

When I was carrying grandgirls home, there was only spitting snow.

When my DIL was driving home, it took her 40 minutes to cross a very short bridge due to wrecks from the icing caused from the sudden drop in temperature.

When many people were driving across the bridges in the area, many faced hours of delay due to as much as 25-car pile-ups.

Schools in the area, including mine, have a two-hour delayed opening in the morning.

Why? We had .20 inches of snow.

In all fairness, the delay is because of the icing of the roads which will not thaw out over night since the temp is now 27 degrees.

You gotta love Alabama weather.

Adventures in Geocaching: Weird Building Sighting

One of the things I love about geocaching is when I stumble upon something I would never have seen if I hadn’t been on my way to a cache, looking for a cache, or returning from a cache.

While meandering around Tarpon Springs, Florida, I came across this odd-looking building. All four corners of the building were decked out in this colorful stripeidey (stripe-uh-dee) pattern. It caught my attention to the point that I had to do a U-turn and go back and take a photo of it, even with the local law enforcement sitting in the parking lot.

I couldn’t see any signs designating what the building was for. I’m just glad I got to see it.

A little color is always a happy addition to the day.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Launch

What says launch more than a rocket?

In Tarpon Springs, Florida, the Greek community had these boats ready for their young men to launch from them to retrieve the Cross on Epiphany Day.