We Did It! 500 Caches In One Year!

We had to do a little power caching to get to 500 geocaches found, (ten on Friday, nine on Saturday, six on Sunday) but we made it.

During our quest for 500 finds, we saw a bunch of neat things. It's a good thing we always keep a camera handy. This is the first time I have ever seen a bald eagle in the wild... And here in Florida to boot!

He was perched on this power line tower and was watching for anything that moved.

We also came across this mini-chicken cache. Alright, so it isn't real, but since the cache is called "Where's The Chicken" in front of a Chik-Fil-A, it was a great cache to find.

Ok, back to the real birds.. As we were walking through this ex-power station turned nature preserve, we also spotted this falcon. He's a big boy. We spotted quite a few raptors out here.

And now, the hunt for 500. This was one of 10 we found during an evening hunt, something we call 'Vampire Caching'. This one is located at the edge of a golf driving range.

As we were night caching, we also came across one of our geocoins in a cache. Of course, we picked it up, and dropped another one of ours in the container.

This one had something to do with monkeys and it was tethered to a fence. When I tried to carry the container out to the clearing (in the dark), suddenly I said; "Hey!" because I was yanked to a stop by the tether.

This is what a geotag looks like. It has the coordinates for the next stage of a multiple geocache. Of course, I had to wipe off some of the coordinates, just in case a fellow geocacher is looking at this site. We had to find this thing, so other geocachers need to look for it too.

This park was very nice. It was well-groomed and very clean. It was nice that whenever you might be getting tired (or want to sign a geocach logbook), you always find a seat nearby.

And they even have water stations placed around the park for joggers, runners and their dogs (see the silver bowl on the ground?) so they won't get overheated. These things are stocked with ice and water, and they are rotated to keep them fresh too. And of course, there's another park bench nearby where we can Sit-N-Sign the log for the cache I found on this water station. It was fun picking up the 8 caches in this park on Saturday.

The next day, we went to this water-front preserve/park that was once an electric generating plant. This is where we got quite a bunch of nice wildlife pictures.

Our 500th cache was one called, "Russian Roulette". It's a cache that had 6 containers hidden in the bushes around a clearing (the coordinates only take you to the center of the clearing) and you have to find the one cache of the six that has the logbook in it. Katrina found the first one and it had a toothbrush in it. Nope, that's not the right one!

I found the second one and it had Q-Tips in it. Nah, that's not it either. I have this look on my face because I think I spotted another container as Luann was taking this picture.

Luann went to investigate, and sure enough, this one was number 3. It had a big cork in it. 'Click'! Nothing in the chamber on this one...

I located this cache about the same time as Katrina located the one with the logbook in it. Of course, since mine didn't have a logbook, it had something else in it and it turned out to be one of those spring-loaded snakes that jumps out of the can when you open it. Yah!

And the winner is? Katrina! This was a neat design for a cache, and a good one to celebrate our 500th find.

Well, since there was one more left in the preserve, we just had to find it on our way out... Thumbs up for another find!

At another cache we had looked for on Saturday, it was located at a natural spring with these mini-falls. There were too many people around for us to put in an effort to find the cache, but the pictures were worth the visit.

Nothin' But Trouble

We've had an interesting time with the old pickup truck. On the way home from work I was a couple of miles from the shop and the truck started smoking under the hood. I jumped out and opened the hood only to discover a small fire on the engine. After putting the fire out, we had to call AAA to tow the truck back to the shop and leave it in the parking lot until I could get everything together to fix it.

Here is a view of the damage. The fire was located towards the back of the engine and you can see the black soot from the fire and oil from the cracked power steering line went everywhere. The power steering lines were burnt, and so is the throttle cable, the cruise control cable and the windshield washer squirter tubing. Somehow, the spark plug wires are ok.

After heading to the local junkyard and finding a 1980 version of our 1979 pickup (yep, ole' Taz is 29 years old), I was able to get all of the burned parts off of it, with the exception of the power steering lines. At 100 thousand miles, the donor truck was relatively low miles (since Taz is at 265 thousand) and was not modified in any way. I decided to take the opportunity to pull the high-wear items from the donor truck to have some of those hard-to-get parts on hand if they were to fail in Taz. I got a distributor, the windshield squirter system, the wiper arm assemblies, the throttle cable, the hood release system, the headlight, windshield wiper, blower fan and turn signal switches. There were a bunch of little trim pieces and such that I got, that needed replacement in our truck.

In this picture we are installing the high pressure replacement power steering line, but we couldn't locate a low pressure return line from the parts stores anywhere. So, we installed all the stuff I picked up at the junk yard and a new manual choke for the carburetor too. After we installed everything we had on hand, it started to rain. I started up the truck and, "Darn it!" the low pressure line had a rubber hose that must have been burned too, because it was leaking all over the place. At that point, I just cut the power steering belt just so we could get Taz home.

We had to stop at a gas station for gas and after making a few laps in the rain between the store and Luann in the Magnum to get some cash to pay for the gas, we were on our way (and I was soaked!). As Katrina and I were going along in the driving rain, she asked me if I had put the bolt back in the power steering pump pulley after I had tried to take the belt off and finally decided to cut the belt. Before I had a chance to answer, we heard a 'Ting, ting, ting...' Sure enough, the pulley fell off and went rolling down the road. We had to pull off the road and I walked back to the 'drop zone' and picked up the runaway pulley, then tossed it into the bed of the truck. Oh, did I mention that it's still raining hard?

We finally got the truck home safe and sound, then I spent all day Sunday (Jan 20th), finishing up the repairs and checking everything twice to make sure the truck was ok now. Unfortunately, it was cold (by Florida standards) and I ended up coughing and hacking my way through the ordeal, then calling in sick Monday morning (Jan 21st) to recuperate.

Note: We seemed to have picked up a serious case of brochitus so I'm on meds, and Luann has been coughing pretty bad herself, so we went to the walk-in clinic and sure enough, she has the same thing and is now on a bunch of meds too. At least it's not something worse than that.

In this last picture, you can see that Katrina really gets into her work. Unfortunately, she also likes to touch her face whenever she is working on greasy, grimey things, then will scratch an itch or rub her face. This picture is after she had already cleaned her face off after I pointed out how much of a mess she made of herself, but you can see that she got even more stuff on her face after the cleanup.

Oh well, I guess it's time to go bye-bye for now...

Drew's 'Rocky Mountain High'

We got a call from Luann's brother, Drew, who regaled us with his recent hike up the west face of the Superstition Mountain. He sent us some pictures, and I have to admit, I'm more than a tad jealous of the following images, which documented his endeavors. For more information about "The Supes", as the locals call them, click here: http://www.americansouthwest.net/arizona/superstition-mountains/index.html

Ok, this is what you gotta do. Park your car at the Lost Dutchman State Park for 5 bucks, then take a shot of yourself in front of the mountain.

Actually, Drew took this shot after he had already started up the trailhead, but it's a cool shot to use as the opening image...

So, the car is secured, he's got his walking stick, digital camera, an I-pod with his favorite tunes loaded in it, a backpack with water and lunch and now he's ready to hit the hiking trails. His journey will take him around to the right corner of the face you see there and into the cleft between the two up-thrusts.

He's starting to make some altitude already and you can see the outline of Battleship Mountain, off to the right.
This is a shot up into the cleft as Drew made it around the upthrust. Battleship Mountain is in clear view!

Wow, you can see everything from up here! Thumbs up for a job well done, no need to call for an ambulance.

Time to have lunch, sit back and listen to the Ipod and soak up the atmosphere. Nothing like a view from a height. Sure makes you start to think about all kinds of stuff while you're sitting on top of a rugged mountain like this...

Wait a minute! Is that his wife, Amelia waving at him? Break-time's over everybody! Well, guess it's time to head home before the sun sets too low on the horizon...

Note: As Drew was wandering around the Supes, he stumbled across a geocache, signed it and called us up about it. He started up his own account and maybe we can start swapping geocaching 'war stories' soon.

Look Who We Met At Grand Prix Of Tampa!

I was cleaning out my wallet while I was in Sioux Falls and I realized that I had a receipt from the Grand Prix of Tampa from Jaime's birthday and it said I had 5 free all-day passes to play Goofy-Golf and drive Go-Carts. Since the coupon expires tomorrow (01-13-08), we had to use them up today. I even told Katrina to invite her friend Melissa and family to come along. We actually had 3 spare tickets because Luann had a hair-styling appointment and wouldn't be able to make it until later, so she said that we could use her coupon. This means that Katrina and I were joined by Melissa, her mother Tammy and her younger brother Philip. We also had a big surprise while we were there!

It turns out that my cousins, Karen & Sharon were there for one of the kid's birthday. Talk about serendipity, they had played a round of golf and we were following them. I was able to snap a couple of pictures of the troupe in the game room.

They seemed to be real intent on beating this 'Deal, Or No Deal' game.

Time to sort out who will be playing next...

While the kids continued to assault the video games, Luann, Sharon and Karen chatted for a bit, catching up on old news.

And there is Karen, hiding over Luann's shoulder.

After the birthday troupe left, we focused on the go-cart track, trying win the "Best Driver" accolades amongst ourselves.

It looks like Melissa is getting some on-track advice from her mother, Tammy.

See that smirk? She knows she's good...

Here is Melissa, kind of stuck in a log-jam of poor drivers. You can see how she is reacting to a 'thump' on her right-rear corner.

In this picture, she is checking to see if the kid to her right is blind, or is he just driving with his eyes closed? As you can see from this shot (take another look at the previous picture) he definitely is driving with his eyes closed... You can click on any of these pictures to see a larger version of them.

We kept wondering why little Philip just couldn't seem to keep up the pace. Ah-hah, I see the problem! You need to focus on driving, not your nails little guy!

Ho-Hum... Just another day on the track...

Well, it looks like Philip finally finished trimming his nails because he has both hands on the steering wheel now. Too bad it's time to bring the go-carts back into the 'barn' though.

It was a fun and surprise-filled day. Looks like it's time to say, "Bye-Bye!"

P.S. - we had to leave early because I was coughing & hacking so much, I had to go to the walk-in doctor's clinic to see what was wrong. Turns out I have acute bronchitis and am on steroids, amoxicillin and a strong, narcotic cough suppressant. The doc said I was on the way to a case of pneumonia if I waited just a couple more days... And all I wanted to do was stop the troublesome coughing.

Geocaching In Sioux Falls

Since I was in Sioux Falls, you know I just had to look for some geocaches in the area...

This one is actually what is known as an Earth-Cache, where you have to identify some geologic feature, have your picture taken with it and then post the picture. The task here was to identify a piece of pink quartzite that is harder than granite and is just a step below diamond in hardness. Since the Sioux Falls Park is loaded with pink quartzite, this was a simple task. I was able to score this one on the first day that I arrived.

On the third day I saw I had a couple of hours before I had to fly home, so I started out early in the morning to look for some caches before heading to the airport. It was 26 degrees when I got out to the parking lot and I could see there was frost on all of the windows of the rental car. The patterns looked kinda nice.

In my previous posting, I took a few pictures of some ducks and geese right next to a spot where a geocache is supposed to be. Unfortunately, every time I tried to look for the cache, there was a new transient hanging out under the bridge. I figured I would try to look for it one more time, but unfortunately, there was yet another new visitor sitting on the rocks and draining a bottle of his favorite brand of 'anti-freeze' (vodka, I think). The best I could do was take some really nice pictures of the resident water fowl and leave. "Missed it, by that much!"

Since I had no luck at the bridge by the hotel, I then drove a little further south along the Sioux River in order to look for a couple of caches located in a snow-bound park. This is the first real-live cache container I found in Sioux Falls. I was starting to think I was losing my touch. I guess you can understand why it is called, "Squirrel's Nest".

This is a really neat container. The cache owner even dropped a small super-ball into the larger neck of the container so that when you screw the lid back down, it acts as a seal to keep the weather out.

For the next cache, I had to cross over this train trestle converted into a footbridge.

What a scenic (and dry) trek over the river.

I finally made it over the river and to the cache that is near a canoe launch by the Sioux River. It was a good hide that is still available during the snowy season.

After this kind of success, I went back over to the Sioux Falls Park to see about the only 2 caches that are still active there.

This one is called 'Coins For Cache', I didn't find any coins in the container, so a left a pair of them behind. One coin we found in Minneapolis and the other we picked up on the way home from there (in Tennessee).

Now, this is a great hide. From this far away, the GPS receiver said "20 feet, that way!" Since nothing else was nearby, it just HAD to be in this pair of pine trees...

Bouyed by my recent successes, I decided to try and find one I couldn't find on the first day. It didn't take long to locate it now that my GPs unit decided to stop pointing everywhere but where the cache is. I have discovered that the GPS receiver hates the cold just as much as I do, and gets 'wonky' if it becomes too cold. I have learned to keep it under my armpit inside my jacket to keep it warm until I'm ready to use it, then it's a happy guy!

As I popped back out into civilization, I noticed that this area is a freight train switchyard, so I took a couple of pictures of the yard-mules moving some of the cars around the yard.

Yes, this is a train crossing for pedestrians. You don't get an arm coming down or bells ringing, you get the sound of a sickening 'Crunch!' when you foolishly step in front of an oncoming train, so it helps if you pay attention...

Well, one more picture and a wave to the falls as I walk back to the car. It was fun visiting these areas and thanks to our fellow geocachers hidng caches in places they would like for us to see and visit, I was able to photograph some really interesting and neat places and things. Thanks guys, but now it's time to get to the airport and head back home!