We were also going to give the game of Munzee a try as well. I’d heard about it on geocaching audio podcasts, and had found a few near my workplace recently, so I thought I’d see what the kids thought of it. It’s another GPS game where, instead of a container with (at least) a log, you scan a barcode and "capture" the Munzee. You get points for captures and hides, as well as some other special events. It’s just scanning a barcode, so not nearly as interesting, but for some that don’t want to go rooting around on the ground, often Munzees are in easily-accessible places, often clustered in an area. So, different strokes for different folks.

We started off by going to a cache placed last year on Memorial Day in a small cemetery that, over the years, has been encroached  upon by the widening of the street and the interstate that it is on the corner of. I’m not giving much away when I say that the cache was a a huge tree that is just barely safe from the interstate. Since it was placed on Memorial Day, and apparently had been placed along with a ribbon around the tree, the cache is aptly named "Tie a Yellow Ribbon…". (See here for more information on this tradition and the song that made it generally popular.)

There were signs of the patriotic ribbon that had been placed there, along with staples that must have held it in place.

We signed the log and tried to put in a small toy car that we had, but that was just barely too big for the container.

Next we tried a couple of Munzees. The first one was a the entrance to a miniature golf place we used to take the kids to. We searched all around but didn’t find it.

There was another one nearby at an abandoned Ryan’s Steakhouse, and this one was rather simple; the Munzee equivalent of a lamp post cache.

Right near the bottom is the barcode you scan to make the capture.

Now, you may be saying, "By posting that picture of the barcode, couldn’t someone else just scan it from the picture and get credit for the find?" But the answer is no, because the Munzee app, which you must use to get credit, checks your GPS location against the location recorded on the website for the Munzee. If you’re not reasonably close to it, no credit.

The next Munee looked like it would be another lamp post one near an old movie theater that has been closed for quite some time.

But this one was laminated and tied to a tree instead, requiring actual searching to find it.

Also in the nearby Fry’s parking lot, there was a geocache, an actual lamp post cache (often referred to as an LPC). A quick find by the kiddos.

We tried one more Munzee near the Fry’s, but didn’t find it. It was then that, while it’s interesting, the kids decided they wanted to hunt geocaches the rest of the day.

Around the nearby mall there were a few caches. We made quick work of one by Sears.

But the one near J C Penny gave us trouble and we logged our first DNF (Did Not Find) of the day.

Not having gloves, we didn’t want to paw around in the prickly shrubs.

There was a nearby "mystery cache" where you had to solve a puzzle to get the coordinates. The puzzle was designed for kindergarteners, so it was simple, but it was fun and gave us another nice find, with a regular-sized cache with stuff to trade. And the location, the tree it was near, was truly beautiful.

It was here that we realized we’d misplaced the caching goodie bag, so we took nothing and left nothing. We figured out that we’d left the bag at the cemetery, so we started back. After picking it up, we hit some caches back towards home.

At one office building, someone had hidden one at a picnic bench just outside the building. Well, "hidden" is putting it loosely; it was just sitting on the ground next to the bench, though it looked like it could have been hung from a hook on the bottom of the table at some point, but there was no obvious hook.

The next find was at Home Depot, and was a rather ingenious hide. It took us a little time, but one of the girls finally tried looking in something (and I don’t want to say what so that cachers looking for this don’t get spoiled), but didn’t look…close enough, let’s say. The other girl tried a little harder and did find the cache, so a team effort here.

Going further towards home, we stopped by a Chinese restaurant that  used to be a BBQ place, and picked up a quick LPC.

We finished on a DNF, unfortunately, and ended like we had started; in a cemetery, near a small church. A few fire ants and lost of poison ivy held us back a little, but we did made a good search but found nothing.

We hit 9 caches (7 finds) and a couple Munzees, which, I think, was our biggest geocaching excursion ever.

One of them was very nearly across the street, in the back parking lot of another hotel. I came by and tried to extract it (the cache page says to bring a "tool to extract" but doesn’t say what kind), but to no avail. I did take a picture of it to show that, yes, I had indeed been there.

(This picture might be considered a spoiler, but once you get to the coordinates, it’s pretty obvious where to look.)

There was a family sitting outside in the back, so I didn’t want to spend too much time getting their attention while trying to get this out.

I went further down the street to find another cache, and the coordinates took me to the end of the sidewalk.

This time, I found it and could actually get at the small container.

And so we get our first two finds in California. It’s been a while since I had done some caching on my own, and it was good to know I hadn’t lost my touch.

We started at the Antique Mall that my youngest son and I visited last June, but it had just rained and neither of us wanted to get too wet, assuming that the cache was probably in some bushes that were drenched. This time, my two boys and I started searching in earnest.

The actual GPS coordinates are inside the antique store, so it was worth looking near the building, as well as other common cache hiding spots.

Turned out that the film canister was in a dry enough spot that we could have nabbed it in June without getting soaked. This time, I found it. We brought it back to the car and signed the log.

The second cache was right across the street. We were clearly at the right place because the name of the cache, "Write or Right Cache", is a pun on the name of the business in who’s parking lot it’s located. We made short work of the find and signed the log.

One thing I’d done at the first cache was find it, walk away from it, and announce that I’d found it to the other guys. Then they would try to find it based on where I’d been recently, so it gave us all a chance to "discover" it. This time, my older son found it and did the same thing with me.

Moving on, we traveled up the road to another intersection that has a number of caches but where we’d been not so successful in the past. The first one was behind a Kroger strip mall, and was a cache placed on the birthday of the hider, "Flamingomama". She’s hidden over 60 caches (so far) in this part of the county. Some we’ve found, and indeed the previous 2 finds were of her caches as well.

My phone’s GPS was not really cooperating today. It would sometimes be 2 or 3 minutes before it would update my location, so we had to go more by the Google Map of the cache location and just eyeball it. So we were all over the area trying to find this one.

But the boys eventually found it, bearing the familiar pink flamingo logo.

The log was signed, and we hit the road.

Next stop was a Lutheran church, which we’d also visited on the same trip last June. In the interim, the cache had a number of players who were unable to find it and so it had recently been replaced. Still, after scouring the area near a storm water drainage area that has quite a bit of litter around, we gave up one more time.

Our last stop was at a Primitive Baptist church cemetery. The name of the cache is "Bryan Was Tall", so my oldest son, as soon as we pulled up, immediately homed on the tallest monument he could see, and sure enough…

Back to the car for the final log signing, replacing it, and off we went in search of supper. It was good to get some of these finds in areas that had often given us difficulty.

The first was near a doll house store, and was named appropriately, "Itty Bitty Citty Comitty". It was a nice ammo can that was easily enough found. I saw it first and just told the guys that I had, and they each found it quickly themselves.

We took a pathtag and signed the log. A pathtag is a collectible item that some folks use as their "signature" drop in a cache. I didn’t realize this when we took it, as we didn’t have something to put back in the cache, and usually, as I understand it, folks don’t typically trade for trackables; they just take them or leave them with or without a trade. Anyway, now we have one of these.

Moving on, we hit a lightpost cache at a nearby Wal-Mart. The cache is named "black canister", but when we found it, it was just a baggie; no film canister.

The log was not damp, exactly, but there was mold on it and trying to write on it caused the paper to tear. So we sealed it back up as best we could and replaced it. Lots of folks shopping there today, including a lady sitting in the parked van next to the light, so I hope it doesn’t get muggled.

This one is located in tall grass by a retainer pond across the street from the mall. Clearly, they have beavers here.

My GPS was giving us fits, but I’d recalled the general area I saw on the map where the cache was, so we checked it out.

While Mommy watched us look all around, she did a little looking and found it herself, so we all headed over.

While it’s a nice cache that will stand up to the weather, it won’t handle a moderately sized traveler.

So we took nothing, left nothing, and signed the log.

The packaging for the yo-yo (which included instructions) was covered in mold and, with the dampness, had opened up. The crayons looked very suspect, and the Atlanta Braves parking receipt was beyond hope (and not very healthy to be near, I imagine). So the yo-yo packaging a those two other items just had to get thrown out.

I got out some cleaner with bleach and we wiped down everything else that could be saved.

I also got as much of the mold as I could off the inside and outside of the box.

Having thrown some things out, we replenished the cache, put the log book in a new bag, and packed it up to be placed back in its spot tomorrow.

If you have a cache, please do regular maintenance. And for those of you who do maintenance on other peoples’ caches that you find need them, many thanks.

First, a weather report. It hadn’t rained for quite some time in our area, and indeed drought conditions were starting to take hold. But this afternoon we finally got a nice pop-up thunderstorm that indeed hung around for about 30 minutes. The good news is, we needed it. The bad news is, it hampered our geocaching, even hours after it had left.

Our first stop was at an antique store behind which was a cache.

The problem was that the cache location seemed to be in a bunch of bushes, but after the rain, my son was not interested in poking through wet bushes, so we went on to our next stop.

This was at a Lutheran church, and the name of the cache is "Ninety-Five Thesis"; rather appropriate.

But again the wet foliage slowed us down. We did get into what we thought was the zone, but after a short look around, we moved on.

The next stop I wanted to  make was at the home of the cacher nicknamed "Flamingomama". As of this date, she’s hidden 68 caches, many around this area, and we’ve found some of them. I reminded my son of some of the caches of hers that we’d found. Less than a month ago, she hid a cache in her front yard, so we decided to look for it and hopefully meet her.

When we arrived, there was no question we were at the right place.

We knocked on the door, but alas, no one was home. So off we went into her front yard to look for the ammo can hidden there.

After a short search, my son did indeed find it. We opened it up and the container was quite full of stuff.

There was a trackable inside, and so we took it to move it along, and left some spooky, glow-in-the-dark press-on nails; a gag gift from last Christmas.

My son signed the log, saying that we were sorry to have missed them, and then re-hid the can.

Now, see, we have to go out again some time to move the trackable, so that guarantees another geocaching hunt.

The other coin, "Just Shoot Me", which wants to get pictures of it taken and uploaded to the site, has apparently gone missing. It’s last known location was a cache near Montreal, Quebec, but that was 7 months ago, and, while other cachers have found that cache, no one has recorded picking up the coin (nor the one that I had also brought up to Canada on a business trip; both coins got moved and both have stopped). I’ve registered this geocoin with the site "tb-rescue.com" which allows people to register apparently lost (or non-moving) travel bugs. Others choose an area in which to get alerts for when a travel bug needs to be moved. We did get one group who said that, last March, they were going to try to locate the cache and rescue the coin, but no word since then. Ah well, all part of the game. These things get lost.

There are 2 on or very near the campus. One is a difficulty 4 (though the description said it had, at one point, been a difficulty 5) and one is a virtual. We tried the physical cache first, having never tried one this difficult before. Having read how hard some 5s are, I was wondering if we’d be successful, even if it since had been downgraded to 4. The logs said that it had been rated easier, but then increased as many folks could not find it. The cache is called “IVP but not IPV”. The GPS brought us to Ingleside Village Pizza (“IVP”), and the description told us it was not “in plain view” (“IPV”). It also noted that the cache owner had not see this particular hiding place type before, so the obvious searching of bushes felt unneeded.

I don’t want to give away too much, so I’ll say this; looking at this spot suggested a particular hiding place to us (but not the green box, because the description specifically said it’s not associated with that). We searched for about 10 minutes, and almost left, but just before doing so, my daughter tried one more place and it turned out to be the right spot. While there were few muggles around, we hurried off back to the car to sign the log.

The virtual cache is called “Jesse the Baptist”. Mercer University is a Baptist university started by Jesse Mercer, and there is a bench with a bronze Jesse on campus. Surrounding the bench is a circle of stones with different words of inspiration he said, and to get credit for the virtual you had to either e-mail the cache owner a picture or one of the thoughts.

We walked through the campus on the way there and enjoyed the beauty of this wonderful spring day (though it started, as we found out, with a 6am tornado warning from strong storms that moved through the night before).

And then, there was Jesse.

A little later, we watched a video at the opening session for the campus visit, which noted that freshmen rub Jesse’s head for luck, and then the graduation seniors do, as they file in for commencement.

We took a picture by one of the words of inspiration, and went to register for the campus visitation day. A very nice start to the day.

However, a new greenway trail on the other side of the town was recently completed, and two caches were placed at the two ends (it forks). We went to find one of them.

The GPS gave me some bad information right at the start. It seemed like no matter where we were, the target was 50 feet away. After some frustrating clambering in the woods, we noticed that the distance got smaller the closer we got to where we were entered. We got to the zone and I located it in about 20 seconds.

Don’t have any real good pictures of the find, because we didn’t realize the significance of the find. And we didn’t bring a pen to sign the log. The kids bike there often, so they may come back later and sign it.

But we made it to 50 today!