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.

23 December 2005 #700 Lions, Tigers, and Bears!

I really crave night caches so I should have great memories of this one. The only problem was I was having a really bad day physically when we went for this cache. I have no memory of the trip to or from the cache. I think Ali had to help me back to the car but I'm not even sure of that. I must have been there because I snapped the image.

26 November 2005 #650 Bring Your Fishin' Pole

We first cached in Kane during October 2005 for the Kane Cachers Picnic Event. We stopped on our way to the event to grab a couple caches on the North Country Walking Trail. We were really impressed by the trail and wanted to return for more hiking and caching. On this day, we were lucky enough to grab this wonderful hide placed by two really nice cachers, PEGASIS. They have an outstanding knowledge of the area and know of superb hide locations. This one was also a very sneaky hide.

3 August 2004 North Chagrin Giant's Bench Cache

I started this blog with the plan of posting events chronologically. Two weeks ago my hard drive crashed. While I was frantically trying to recover my images, I found photos from our first cache find. I didn't remember taking them and had no idea they existed so something really great came from the crashed drive.

I bought Ali a gps in 2002 for off trail hiking at Pinancles in California. She's a map fiend so this seemed like a great extension of that hobby. It was two years later before I saw an article in a Pennsylvaina paper describing geocaching. This cache was very close to our home in the North Chagrin Reservation of Cleveland Metroparks. We actually visited the cache on July 29, but our log is for August 3rd. It only took one cache in the woods for me to be hooked. I think Ali was rolling her eyes at this point. We always make a point to travel around each year to find the Cleveland Metroparks caches. we had a lot of fun on a nice evening walk to this cache. Little did we know at the time how much geocaching would enrich our lives.

10 November 2005 #600 The Historic and Scenic Chippewa Walking Tour

For my birthday we were very near a milestone cache. I wanted to find Eric Sherwood's last Cleveland Metropark cache, and this evening seemed like a great time for the find. It was a little different way to spend a birthday, but I had a great time and we grabbed a few really nice caches in the area. At the time, this may have been the toughest non-night cache that we had completed after dark. Tha cache is archived now.

4 November 2005 #550 A Walk Down Millionaire's Row

Eric Sherwood was a friend, to us and just about everyone else who knew him. We finished this milestone during a walking tour of a virtual cache around his hometown of Warren, Ohio. The picture is filled with many of our friends and Eric's friends. As a group, we walked his vitual cache in Warren as a tribute to him at the end of his funeral services. He died too young and left a vacuum. Cache well friend; we'll see you around the bend.

17 October 2005 #500 Minister Creek Boiler Cache

We met Grandpa and Grandma in the early fall of this year. They were having a hard time finding our toughest hide ever. We offered to meet them at the cache and got to know these two wonderful people. We've had the opportunity to cache the Tanbark and Kane with them.

This was their cache and our 500th find. It is a really challenging cache that sees few visitors because of the difficulty. It is well worth the effort and a great memory for us.

15 October 2005 First Annual Kane Cachers Picnic

This may have been the first and only Kane Cachers Picnic, but it was a lot of fun. We got a chance to meet more people who have become our friends. We met kickin' and kachekat at this event. Little did we know that kachekat was actually related to a cacher in Northeast Ohio who would also become a great friend. We spent time caching with Ali's Mom, Grandpa and Grandma, Tprints, MommyTP, Joelmart, Wendy and their kids. At the end we celebrated Ali's birthday.

1 October 2005 Kiawa's Halloween Comes Twice This Year

This was the second big caching event we attended. We had been to a few coffee nights in the Cleveland area and a Cleveland Metroparks event, but this was the first large event where we met a bunch of cachers who would become close friends. We already knew Grandpa and Grandma. Many of our other friends somehow ended up in this picture in a silly variety of costumes, Geauga Garmin, dbczarina, Pirate & Crafty, Tprints, Snoop, and 3Beans had all dressed up to attend this event.

We really enjoyed this event and looked forward to attending many more of Kiawa's events. Too bad her health took a turn for the worse, and she has almost vanished from caching. This was about the point where we knew we had become hooked on caching.

16 September 2005 #400 Crafty View of the Grand

I used to fish very near here many years ago. The Grand River is a glorious place to visit. This park is very near an urban area and has ball fields and playground stuff. We had just found Number 400 at our friend Zoisrus' cache when we stopped by the skateboark park to grab a locationless find.

16 July 2005 FTF Tanbark Button Cache

Our friends kcepenn had placed two new caches on the Tanbark Trail during the week before we got to PA. The cache closest to the parking area was found quickly, but this one stayed unfound for a little while. We got to our home on Saturday and decided to head out for these caches. The trail was filled with blueberries. We hiked out and found this cache just before the rain began. On the way back from the cache, Ali walked ahead as I stopped to grab blueberries every few feet. At one point a huge tree fell during the storm. It was a fun, wet afternoon at one of our favorite places.

29 May 2005 #150 - Tanbark Rocks

We hiked this trail before we bought our second home in the area. It has always been a favorite place for us. Tanbrak Trail is a long trail with may different looks, from a really tough uphill push to a gentle walk through towering hemlocks to fields of wild blueberries. For us, the existence of geocaches on the trail just made a good thing better. Our friends kcepenn have placed almost all the caches on this wonderful trail. On the day we found this cache, we saw wild azealas in bloom on top of the rocks near this cache.

20 September 2004 Whiteoak Canyon Shenandoah

When we started geocaching in August 2004, Ali wasn't very excited by the game. We found a few sporadic caches starting with a Cleveland Metroparks cache, but weren't very active. We went to Shenandoah in September and I was determined to find some caches. Little did I know that National Parks did not allow cache containers so our only chance for a find were two virtuals. There had been two hurricanes prior to our arrival so the streams were raging. It took us two stream crossings and over ten miles of hiking a loop to come up with the virtual at Whiteoak Canyon. Yes, we crossed the stream in the picture. This is a picture I took very near the virtual location.

Hello

I am planning to use this blog as a place to post milestone photos and other memories of geoching for us. We have placed these photos on the geocaching.com page before, but we continue to bump up agianst their page size limits. I hope this will be a better memory.