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.

Logging the Locationless CITO

 We thought a bit about where we wanted to do a CITO for our locationless find.  The decision was actually easy.  We chose a stretch of the Allegheny National Forest along the Allegheny River.  This area was the home to our first cache many years ago.  We walked a long stretch of trail and filled much of two full garbage bags.  It's a beautiful location and deserving of having the trash removed.

Brokenstraw Creek

A nuthatch we spotted on the walk.

Our CITO efforts.  The dogs believed they helped.

This was a great idea.  I hope Geocaching.com makes this an annual offering.

Geocaching Love Affair...

 We stopped for a cache in a Pennsylvania State Game Lands recently and noticed this log...

We flipped the log book back to 2014...

Congrats to Chelsea and Mark!  💘 Geocupid hit the target.

Blue Switch

 We earned our blue switch souvenir.  We made a small circuit hike at Warren's Washington Park.

It seemed fitting to find a few ammo cans on the walk.

We stopped for a cache called Mountain Hollow II.  It was almost 16 years  since we had visited the park for the first Mountain Hollow Cache.

A Long Time

We stopped today for an ammo can find in a State Game Lands.  It wasn't a long walk.  It wasn't a difficult find.  It was the first ammo can find in a game land in over six months.  The last twelve months have been a strange, stressful, and sad journey.  We have been lucky.  At this moment all of our loved ones are here, and we are all slowly progressing through vaccination.  Hopefully there are brighter days ahead for us all.  Stay safe.  Wear a mask.  We are not through this yet.  May we all meet again to sit around and talk cache.

28 March 2021

19 September 2020

Back in Pennsylvania

With COVID-19 travel restrictions, almost four months had passed since our last cache find in Pennsylvania.  We were happy to be back and very happy to be looking for birds while geocaching.  Our second find was an older style ammo can in the woods.  How fitting...

The birding wasn't bad either.  😊

2020's Images from Geocaching

January: Cleveland Metroparks South Chagrin

February: Fakahatchee Swamp

March: Lakeview Cemetery

April: Garrettsville

May: East Harbor State Park

June: Bendigo State Park

July: Quehanna Wildlife Area

August: Mentor Lagoons

September: Garrett State Forest

October: The Wilderness Center

November: Dunham Siding

December: Ashtabula

Out-of-State Geocachers in PA

PA COVID orders are quite rigid on requirements.  Traveling geocachers should consider the potential costs of entering the state while these orders are in place. 

Pennsylvania Ammo Can

 Steel ammo cans were so much easier to paint than plastic ones.  This one in Somerset County had a well done fall maple leaf pattern.

Rock The Cache Box

 When you find a cache called Rock the Cache Box...  you should be hearing Rock the Casbah in your head.

The place where this cache was located was a good trail for some nice hides and interesting challenges.

Surprise Find While Geocaching

 We are catching up on logs and noted this log from an earlier finder...

I would have settled for a DNF or a did not hunt.

Different Micro

We've seen plastic versions of this made from soda bottle preforms.  This is the first time we have seen a brass garden hose union used with two rubber hose caps.

The container has held up well for nearly five years.  The original log was dry and in great condition.

Wettest Container

We found this cache recently.

We may have seen wetter caches, but this one was filled with water.  I stopped Ali before she poured out the entire container.  The slime line shows how full the container was.

The old logs inside were a nasty pile of mush.  Amazingly a new log and baggie left by friends about a year ago were still dry.  It was a nice hide in an interesting location.  Unfortunately it was doomed as the owner put a hole in the top of the container to hang the cache.

195 Days

We spend a lot of geocaching time in Pennsylvania State Gamelands.  Many of our favorite finds have been during gamelands excursions.  With personal events and COVID travel restrictions, it had been 195 days since our last SGL caching adventure.  We took care of that with a long walk on a warm, late-spring day with the geodogs.

There were toadpoles,

lots of butterflies,

and of course, plenty of geocaches.

There was no need for a mask.  There was only one other person in the gamelands.  He passed by on his bike as we were in the woods signing a log.  It was glorious!  It was the perfect way to be outdoors and not need to worry about social distancing.

PetSTEP

One thing was very clear over the holidays.  If Geodog Phineas were able to recover from his injury, his days of jumping in and out of the GeoUte were over.  We also knew that one of us trying to hold him in the rear seat wasn't a safe idea either.

The hardest thing about finding a dog ramp is finding one that works.  The reviews are filled of failings where the ramps sag, wobble, or break.  If not under-designed, many fail from slippery surfaces or surfaces that fail quickly under wear from the dog's claws.

We spent a long time looking and reading reviews before we decided to give a try with PetSTEP.

Once it arrived, it seemed really sturdy.  We had it in the house for a couple weeks training the dogs to use the ramp on the bed.  Our first trial was a success.  With more use Phineas and Lizzie are getting much better at using the ramp to enter and exit the GeoUte.  It is great to reduce one more risk for Phineas while also making trips safer for Lizzie.

Phin makes a great model.

It is great to have Phineas still able to join us for great places like a geocaching hike near Wildcat Run by Chapman State Park.