An 'FTF' Weekend

Well I woke up this morning, checked the email and saw that there were four brand-new geocaches that were offering up the ability to collect an FTF (First To Find) for each one. Armed with this information, I decided to wake up the sleeping 'Mama Bear', knowing that the possibility of so many FTFs and a geocoin hiding in one of them just might get her up and going with gusto, even on a Sunday morning.

The views were awesome and Nature was in full bloom.

Here we are, it's 7:30AM and we already found the first cache. Luann is dutifully signing the logbook of this 'pineapple' cache. You can tell by the orangy light and the long shadows that we definitely got up early.

Here is the second one hiding up in a tree. The sun is still a bit low on the horizon...

For the next one, we had to do a little bushwhacking to get to it and when we got there, we were welcomed by this big plastic iguana.

The next one was located near a small dam on this flood control canal. There were a bunch of birds everywhere.

In the description for this cache, there was something mentioned about beaver dams and chainsaws and concrete. As usual, it didn't make sense until we got to the cache and saw this little guy attached to the top of the container...

This was the bridge we had to use to cross over to the other side of the canal in order to find the cache.

This is a closeup of the falls coming off the dam. Small, subtle, yet peaceful and serene.

It looks like we were up so early even the moon didn't have time to go to sleep yet.

On the way back, we saw a bunch of things worthy of a photographic moment.

After picking up the four FTFs, we checked our email again using the PDA, and saw that yet another FTF opportunity popped up on this trail. Well, we just had to go for that one too, you know?

And here it is, just a bit easy to locate, don'tcha think?

After finding that last FTF, Luann noticed yet another one was posted in our email, but it was over by work. Since it was owned by a cacher we know, Luann wanted to see if we can find it before anyone else. As luck would have it, we met up with another cacher looking for it too.

Say hello to Seminole Neil. This was his third attempt to find this ammo box cache when we came up (before the sun came up - NOPE - with a magnetic tool - NOPE - and now). The funny part was, when we joined up with Neil, Luann simply walked over to where she thought it might be and said; "There it is!" This has to be the smallest ammo box we had ever seen...

Actually, Seminole Neil is holding the ammo can in his hands in this picture! Since we had already found five FTFs and Neil had put more time and effort into trying to find this one, we told him to log it as his FTF. No co-FTF or some such thing, it was fun to come out all this way and see that cute little ammo box...

You can see from today's events why we really enjoy geocaching. Ah, the memories...