Geocaching with "thepaytons"

I took three of the kids out on an excursion on our 1 year anniversary of finding our first cache.  Well, technically, that was the 27th, but close enough.  I drove us to a location with a number of caches, and with at least one that could hold the traveler that I picked up in Cozumel. 

We started with the closest one we came across, a small one with just a log.  We did some searching but were unable to find it.

We moved on to the nearby Ronald Reagan Park, which has a dog running area and thus the name of the cache; Barking Lot.

I’d read the hint, but didn’t give it out to the kids.  We just followed the phone/GPS, passed a slightly frozen pond (unusual for Georgia in December), and started searching.

It didn’t take long, and my daughter found it.

As per the description, a few of the items were dog-related (food dish, leashes), but there were your typical items that folks had traded in.  We signed the log, took a toy Anakin Skywalker, and left a slightly-warped bouncey ball and the traveller.

We tried a couple of other caches, but came up empty.  The first was supposed to be a simple 2-stage multi in the same park, but we were unable to come up with the first stage.

And then we tried looking at a library across the street.  A small mayo jar in a bush.  Should have been easy but we went all through the bush we thought was the place but didn’t find it.

So we went 1 for 4, but did have a good time.  It was getting dark, so we returned home.  Happy Anniversary to us!

My youngest son’s Cub Scout den was to go camping at a nearby state park, and I’d found one of the GA State Park caches on the website, so I planned on doing that as one of the activities while we were there.  Unfortunately, a fever took me out, and Mom went with our son to the camping trip.  What a trooper.

Upon arrival, the folks were expecting to do the geocaching, so Mom, having never actually run Blackstar on her own (though I’d loaded it on her Blackberry) called me for the coordinates, and I gave her a quick bit of instructions on how to enter them and how to use it to locate the cache.  Off they went.

It seems a short ways off from their campsite; just 8 tenths of a mile.  But walking in the direction, they soon found it was on the other side of the rather long lake.  So they got into some cars and drove over to a parking spot on the other side that seemed near where they needed to be.  Two paths curved around towards the direction of the cache so they split up.  Hilarity ensued as 2 scouts with the walkie-talkies wound up with the same group, and one scout got a bit lost.  (Fortunately, he had one of the walkie-talkies.)  My wife’s group reconvened and continued to follow the compass arrow.  Upon arrival near the location, she looked up and immediately spotted it.  With a little help from her, the other boys saw it, and the other group came over to enjoy the find.  All complaining about legs hurting from walking so much just melted away.

There were supposedly 5 trackables in there, but none were to be found, unfortunately.  Rather disappointing.  I hope they’re not being stolen.

For the third time, we found another letterbox cache nearby.  We keep managing to stumble across these when looking for other caches.

So another find for us, and the first expedition run by Mom.  Wish I could have been there, too.

And anther cache found.  The latitude & longitude for “Some fun in Dahlonega” puts it in the hallway between a couple of restaurants.  Even the Google Maps pointer says it’s there.  So we went in and I asked the server at the desk, “If I said I was looking for a geocache, would you give me a blank stare?”  She said that, actually, she’s heard that question before, but as far as she knew there was no cache in there.  One time, they let a guy do a bunch of searching all over, but he didn’t find anything.

We checked the hint, and it made it pretty clear where it was, so we went to that spot, and my younger daughter found it quickly, hiding in plain sight.

The cache was well stocked, but mostly with pencils, magnet letters and a few little toys. The travel bugs that were supposedly in there, weren’t.

Took nothing, left nothing, signed the log, got the smiley.

I told my older son to go back to the restaurant and let them know where they could redirect geocachers in the future.  (Not too specifically, of course.)  When he came back, he said that there were 3 waitresses at the desk.  When he told the one we’d met before our message, one of the other said, “Oh, are you one of those crazy people with GPS’s?”

Yes.  Yes we are.

I went up to Cleveland for one day on business, and thought this would be the best time to drop a geocoin that is trying to get the the northeast United States.  The client was done with me at around 3pm, so I went out to find a nearby cache that was also a “travel bug hotel”; one specifically purposed to trade trackables.

This was in a grown up area between businesses and at first I was concerned that I’d have to venture into the scrub.  I did a little bit, but then I decided to think like a cache hider, assessed the terrain rather than blindly following the GPS, and immediately found it.

I dropped in the coin, signed the log, and headed out for the airport.  Added one more state to our list of cache finds.

Having received word that the first cache we ever tried to find — a 5-stage multi-cache — had had its 3rd stage replace (it disappeared a couple months ago), and with all the kids home from their summer activities, we decided to make another attempt.

(See here, here and here for previous attempts.)

The 3rd stage is closer to the end of the Greenway away from the parking lot, so we parked in a business at the other end and started down the trail.  We made it back to the place that we knew the previous stage 3 had been.  After some searching, one of my sons went back to stage 2 to ensure that the coordinates were indeed the same.  He had trouble getting the laminated papers out of the bison tube, so he brought it to us to work on.

While I was in the search area, I picked up a stick to try to get it out, while my younger daughter watched.  I then heard her say, “Hey, we have the coordinates.”  I said, “No, I’m still trying to get them out.”  She replied, “No, here they are!”  She had just turned her head and immediately found the clue, not 6 inches from either of us!  After entering them into our Blackberries, we beat a hasty retreat, as a nearby honey bee had stung my older daughter, twice.

On to stage 4.  By this time, my sister-in-law and her two boys had come by to help us hunt.

It was getting hot, though, and after about 10 minutes of searching, we were a little frustrated (lots of thorns) and sweaty, so we left, at least knowing we’d made progress.