18 March 2006 #1100 Great Dane Cache

This cache is the last of a series placed by the NEOGEO Dogs at Wooster Memorial Park. We came here to make this a milestone cache because we had so much fun doing all the NEOGEO Dogs' caches at Towner's Woods. The series was also joined by a few other caches placed by others in the park. It made for a really enjoyable afternoon and a spirited hike. We were pushing to get the series finished and get out of the park before closing time. I think we were literally back at the Geo-mobile with less than five minutes to spare.

The flash photo was taken very near the milestone Great Dane Cache. As we were headed to the final, we came upon this John Deere tractor sitting in a field at the woods line. What better place is there to set the camera to take a picture? The other photo was just Ali being silly on the trail. She doesn't often show her lighter side, and I'm usually too slow to catch it. It worked perfectly today.

While we were taking the photo for the Great Dane Cache, we were lucky enough to hear our first woodcock of the season. Since a Geauga Park District program a number of years ago, we've always called the woodcock's ritual woodcock whoopie. It was a fun day.

6 March 2006 #1050 Don't Blink *** (and FTF)

Solving the puzzle for the coordinates to this cache required finding another cache to retrieve the puzzle. Once I saw the type of puzzle, I knew I could find the coordinates in minutes. I solved the puzzle on Saturday evening and we were off into the woods on Sunday for this milestone and a rare first-to-find. When we got to the parking area, we were also happy to see that two other unfound caches were available in this same area of the ANF. The third cache, Coal Hard Cache was about 5 miles round trip from the parking area.

It was a perfect day. All three caches were well done and the hike was outstanding. Bright, blue February skies and snow. We both regretted not bringing cross country skis. This was one of the few ANF places where we ran into multiple cross-country skiers as wel hiked. It was perfect skiing weather. Coal Hard Cache was an outstanding cache with a container hidden in a nice area of rocks.

The first photo is us clowning around at Don't Blink. The second photo was very near the now archived Coal Hard Cache.

18 February 2006 #1000 Wilekhanna

This was it. The big milestone. The golden ammo can...

We had been to this cache during the summer prior only to find that a unique container at stage two had been damaged and could not be opened to reach the coordinates for the final. We really liked this area of the North Country Walking Trail and planned to be back for this as #1000.

It was cold, really cold. It was one of the few days it has been cold enough for us to put Eva's doggy sweater on her. The cache delivered. It was outstanding. It was a great hike. It was a fun find. Basically, it was all the things we would have liked when hiking before geocaching except it had the fun of the find thrown in.

12 Feburary 2006 #950 Priem-O-Cache

This cache was easy. We were near a milestone and hunting in the southwestern suburbs of Cleveland. The cache page said this was a regular so it became a milestone. It's just a basic local park with woods attached and a cache hidden. It made for a nice, fun find and some playing in the snow. The park has really nice ball diamonds. Some kids are lucky during the summer.

3 Feburary 2006 #900 Promontory Cache

Even really experienced hikers occasionally do unbelievably stupid things. I like to think it is our experience and composure as we work our way out of our stupidity that saves us. Maybe it's just pure luck.

We had set our mind to finding this cache as #900. It was supposed to be a great cache; it had been found few times; and we were in Pennsylvania. With that in mind we set out to find this cache about 45 minutes before sunset. This should have been no problem. Two miles round trip with the last half mile by flashlight. We made fairly good progress for about a quarter-mile and then came the mountain laurel. That mountain laurel was followed by more mountain laurel. Each wave of mountain laurel was thicker, taller, and more tangled than the one before. The picture on this post was taken about ten minutes before sunset. We were still on our way to the cache. The cache itself is hidden in the rocks beyond the peak visible on the left side of the page. It was lucky I took this image before we finished our milestone find.

We searched about 15 minutes through the rocks in the dark before I finally spotted the cache. It was then that the fun began. As I was signing the log, I dropped my flashlight and broke it. We had returned to about the point of the photo when my gps batteries said goodbye. Oops, I forgot to bring the rechargables with me. We were down to one gps with our track on it and one LED with the worst of the mountain laurel standing between us and the geomobile 3/4 of a mile away. No problem, were experienced. Then the batteries in the last flashlight died. Eventually and thankfully, Ali's gps held on and we emerged from this memorable find almost three hours after leaving the truck.

22 January 2006 #850 North Fork

We had never been to Bath Nature Preserve, but chose a cold Sunday afternoon in January for this visit. The park has a number of trails with a handful of caches. It was a pleasant, memorable day at a very nice park. We cached our way to the park and spent the rest of the afternoon and short, daylight hours visiting the area.

15 January 2006 #800 Bonehenge

This was a return trip for us to Towner's Woods. We had been here once before after work without the dogs. We were at a milstone this day and still had a pile of woods caches at this park so we grabbed the dogs and headed for Kent. We had a great day running around the woods. Bonehenge was one of many finds that day. Typical for the NEOGEO Dogs, it was a fun cache with a nice walk. The picture is shot at one of the trail junctions in the park.

8 January 2006 Geocaching and Letterboxing in Geauga Parks

This event was the perfect after holidays way to kick-off the new year. It was also held at a wonderful section of the Geauga Parks that is not usually open to visitors so there was a real incentive to attend. The event started with a GPD presentation on geocaching basics. It was followed by a gps introduction by a guy that admitted he got lost on his way to the event. Geauga Garmin saved the day by following his presentation with some practical tips for the newbies. Afterward we got to cache with our friends LABBOO, Tprints, Mommy TP, DAJJ, Jamie, and Adam.