Holiday Greetings To All

May all your geocaching wishes be filled.

North Carolina Gadget Cache

I was caching in the Salisbury area while there for business. I visited a familiar park to find some of the newer cache hides. One of those included a bird box in the woods.

The open front of the box reveals four tumblers, a locked box, and a key to the gadget.

The combination is revealed by using the tool to align the tumblers.

Soon, the log is in hand.

The gadget isn't challenging as the cache owner explains the solution on the page, but the cache container is really well done and gives a fun experience. As a plus, the bird box is anchored to the tree with cords which doesn't deface the tree. It was a fun find on a summer evening away from home.

Accidental Letterbox

This year we have found two true letterbox hides by accident while geocaching. It isn't the first time, but it's still fun to come upon these hides by accident. One of the finds in New York happened while actually searching for a cache. That letterbox was within 50 feet of the newer geocache and had unfortunately become the geocache find for cachers who were too busy logging their latest non-find to note the sentence on the cache page stating there was a nearby letterbox which was not the cache. Signing a letterbox stamp book like it is a geocache log is beyond rude.

The second letterbox find at Stan Hyett Gardens came on an afternoon when we were looking for caches, but not at the time of the find. We were walking one of the many paths through the gardens and nearing this small tunnel to pass through.

When we reached the structure there was a rock out of place.

Only a geocacher would look at the hide location and think something may be hidden there. Once spotted we had to open it.

This true letterbox even included a hand carved stamp.

When geocaching was younger, it was not unusual to find a hand-carved stamp in a letterbox hybrid. We have found a number of older geocaches with well done stamps. I've tried my hand at carving a few stamps, but the results are usually not very good.

The Perfect Micro Container

Most micro containers are not good. The leak. They rust. The logs are mush.

They seem to shout I was put here for no other reason than a cheap, fast find. There is only one exception.

It is the PETling.

We really gained respect for this geocaching-perfect container when we started spending more time in Florida. Southern Florida geocachers know and understand many of the areas where they place caches will flood many feet annually. The caches may very well see hurricanes. Many of the hiders there have embraced perfection and made our caching adventures better with these containers at their hides.

They also work great in cold climates with lots of snow.

All Caught Up

With an extremely busy work schedule and reviewing, I fell way behind on logging caches. For the last three to four years, I have been logging caches long after they were found. The list was as long as 350+ unlogged caches. When cut-and-paste logs became the norm, I decided the day I had to resort to those, I would walk away from geocaching. I've caught up with our logs so I guess it is time to cache on. It's a good feeling. Maybe I can use the extra time to blog a little more often. ;)