Geocaching In The Desert

For a little distraction, Luann & I decided to do a little geocaching. Uncle Frank went along and decided he liked it. He signed up and immediately went to work, passing up Karen's score (she has 18 finds, he found 19 during his stay in Arizona). [Editorial Note: We visited Uncle Frank at his house a couple of weeks after this was posted and we discovered he accidentally 'double-dipped' one of his posts, so after he cleared that up, he actually has 18 finds, the same amount as Karen. The contest is now on!]And he did it by chasing down a wide array of them, from simple 'Park & Grabs' to an Earthcache. At his prodding, we even did a puzzle cache during the day that was designed to be done at night, and we found it. Man, he is good! Following are pictures of several of his first finds.

This one was his first 'nano'' geocache, a container so small, it was concealed as part of a bolt.

Here is one hidden inside of a plastic fence post. It turned out to be a stainless steel thermos container beneath the fencepost cap to Luann's left.

This one was a nicely engineered cache that was built into a fence post cap. Yep, that big 'honker' in Uncle Frank's hands was tucked into a fence pole.

This is a mailbox cache that also had a note on the white fence, asking us to sign our names on it. Of course we obliged...

Gotta get just the right picture for the weblog...

Uncle Frank was like a bloodhound sniffing out a rabbit, but in this case, the rabbit turned out to be a lizard. Click on the picture to see what he's pointing at.

I'm the King of the Rock Pile! At least for the moment...
Looks like the young whipper-snapper is about to fall from his not-so-lofty perch!

Oh, I forgot to mention that Luann's parents went along with us for some of the caches we were hunting.

This is a marker for a geocache we were supposed to look for at night. That's because it uses reflectors that you typically find at night with a flashlight. Uncle Frank decided we could beat this one during the day, and he was right. Found it!!!

Ah, a saguaro cactus would be a good hiding spot.

Peek-aboo! We see you!

This one is located at the former site of the Grand Hotel. The Grand Hotel was where Luann's senior prom was held. We had a great time that night. Sad to see the hotel is gone now...

It's nice to see that geocachers are welcome at this site. It only took Uncle Frank a couple of minutes to discover that the logsheet is a slide-out card built into the sign (after looking under the rocks first).

This one is located in a washout area inside a piece of wood. Flip it over and there it is!

This one is another nano-cache that was magnetically stuck to the underside of the electrical box. It is so small, that the little black dots in front of him are the halves of the tiny container, and he has the tiny scroll of paper in his left hand in order to sign his initials on it. It took more time to roll the logsheet up and put it back into the container than it took to find it.

All-in-all, Uncle Frank has shown a natural knack for discovering well-engineered concealment devices, and has professed a desire to continue looking for them. Weeeee-haw!!!