Surprise FTF

 I was caching in the Fort Wayne area while there for business.  I made a first visit ever to the town of Garrett and found a fun hide in a cacher's front yard.

I was really planning to visit Auburn for ice cream and a few caches, well mostly for ice cream.

Tasty Treats and  a toy Jeep to play in.

After the ice cream I headed to a nearby park.  There were a couple unfound caches there.  I found the first quickly than enjoyed a walk to the second hide.  I was surprised when I opened the cache and found a blank log book.

My first thought was owner maintenance.  Then I decided to check the phone for previous logs.  I was quite surprised to find this had been published two days earlier and was still unfound.  It's been an odd year for us with four previous FTF's.  One FTF in a year's caching is big for us.  Five is record setting.

The ducks were fun to see as well.

19,000 Finds

We were finally at our 19,000 milestone.  At the start of 2020, we thought we might make the milestone by the end of the year.  With COVID, we ended the year 100's short.  We still had the same plan as the day drew near, a find in Pennsylvania and a find with a terrain of at least three.  We knew of two hides well off the Tanbark Trail near an old camping area.  We had been here before and remembered the terrain was up to our expectations.  It was a grey day as we headed out on the Tanbark Trail.

Phin and I headed up for a path through the rocks wile Ali and Lizzie angled to meet us.

With past dogs we've been able to set the camera and take an image.  That isn't in Phin and Liz's nature.  Our test image was maybe the closest we've gotten with them on a milestone cache facing forward.

By the time we took "the image" Lizzie was distracted.  At least we had fun.

There was a second cache beyond this one.  We made a bit of a tactical error here by deciding to make our way through the mountain laurel rather than taking the high road over the top.  Anyone who has been in mountain laurel can imagine the pain when we realized the mountain laurel was not going to go away before we returned to the stream.

At least our journey through the mountain laurel led us back to the very pleasant stream.

Who knows when the 20,000 find will happen.  We will just keep enjoying the journey.