Geocaching with "thepaytons"

We took the afternoon to visit some areas of higher cache concentrations to try to pick up some that we’d missed before, as well as some new ones.

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.