A FTF and Other Geocachers!

I didn't plan on going out today. With the temperature predicted in the low 40's and bringing Bryce along...it could be hard. Then I saw there was a new cache posted in the same park Hunter and I had gone to on Saturday and when I looked this AM, no one had yet posted a FTF (First to Find)! I wanted to try and find the DNF Hunter and I missed (see previous entry) and there were two others there as well...four caches at a park with a playground...there was no need to think about it anymore, we had to go for it!

After breakfast I put Dev and B into their heavier coats and loaded them in the van with my bag of geogear. I returned to the park 22 miles away and entered from a different direction and parked in a seperate lot on the other side of the baseball fields than we did on Saturday. There were no other cars, not another soul in sight. I was going to get that FTF!

The DNF was in the middle of the other caches and the closest one to me, but we walked on by and headed for that newly published cache with Bryce in his stroller and Dev helping me push. Obviously we weren't walking very fast and when we came to a point where we needed to roll off the pavement, I glanced around me and...oh, no! There were two people coming up behind us! I thought I'd play it cool and let Bryce out of the stroller to run around with Dev right there. I hoped this older couple would follow the path past me and around the corner, although I knew from parking there on Saturday there was only an empty parking lot and less maintained baseball field. Maybe they were heading for a house on the other side...?

No, they weren't. They tried to be non-chalant, but they stepped onto the damp ground toward the trees and the woman gave me a little side glance. She was probably thinking the same thing I was, that I would continue on my way so they could go on the hunt.... I decided to call them on it. I laughed, shook my head at the timing and said, "I know what you're up to." They both stopped and smiled back at me and without even explaining themsevles nor denying it they said, "You want to share it?"

What they meant was share the FTF honor. You bet I did! Had I not had a 3 1/2 year old and a 22 month old with me, I'd already be disappearing behind those trees! I played a quick game of Who can catch B first with Devin, then we made it back to our new caching friends (at one point, Dev called her Grandma on accident! :D) and I pushed the stroller up to the tree line and then we headed in from there. I can see an all terrain wagon in our future.

Once inside the first grouping of trees a path appeared and we followed it up to a small river, surprisingly low for this time of year. Up to this point I was sort of guiding B in the right direction, but then I picked him up because in front of us wasn't a river bank, it was a drop off. The male of team StPats2 (they were married on a St. Patrick's Day) positioned himself in-between Dev and the fall. We turned away from the river and back into the woods and then our GPS's agreed to turn left into the trees. The name of the cache had old stump in it, so we focused on this huge hunk of wood closest to us with the old rotten tree on the ground behind it. I should have stepped back for an overall picture, but between making sure B didn't step onto the sandy bank of the shallow water, Dev didn't get himself caught on prickers and finding that cache, I didn't think of it. The man (I'm bad with names) volunteered to keep Bryce back on the trail while his lady went in with me. We found the cache hidden inside the other side of the stump and covered by extra branches lined up on their ends. Definately not Mother Nature's style. Behind there was a plastic container that probably held pretezels in its previous life, but now had the honor of being recycled into a container that would be a small part of a large collection of lives! Had this couple not been there it would have taken me longer to manuever with two little ones and I'd be drop dead tired from carrying Bryce. It would have been harder but definately doable.

We each signed our geocaching names in the log as co-FTF's and were thrilled to discover there were two geocoins. I took the one that was shaped as the state of Michigan for obvious reasons, she took the star.

On the way back I asked if they had found the Bleached Bones one Hunter and I tried on Saturday. They said they hadn't, so we walked back to the bleachers and were happy to find we were still alone. We each took a side and searched with our eyes and felt along edges and underneath with our fingers. We still couldn't find it! I had to chase Bryce around the small block of a restroom, and when I came back I saw an older man in a leather coat also on his hands and knees. Another Geocacher! He said he had been here this weekend too and was coming back for another chance. On the very bottom support, pushed as far foward as it could go and covered with sand and dead leaves we finally fount it. It was a small old mint tin painted an Earth tan color. Inside was only a log and a flat eraser in the shape of a football. Devin took the football and I put one of the caching buttons I got for Christmas from my sister Karyn in its place. While the man in leather signed his name, a tall stranger approached us from the direction of the first cache we found together. Team StPats2 and I with Bryce in the stroller huddeled around him so he could finish what he was doing without the muggle realizing. To our surprise, the man stopped two steps past us and said, "You gotta tell me where you found that thing. I've tried twice!" We all started laughing and showed him the simple but sneaky hide and then handed him the log. I've been out caching quite a few times and haven't once had the occasion to meet another cacher, but on this day, I met four other seekers! Both the man in leather and the tall stranger were on their lunch break. The StPats2 couple are retired.

StPats2, or our friends as Dev called them, headed over to another cache in the woods on the other side of the baseball fields. Oh, I need an all terrain wagon! The stroller couldn't get through the soft ground so I let Bryce out of the stroller and of course he ran the other way! I chased him down to both his and Devin's delight and we re-joined our new friends inside the woods. This was an easy find. I saw a tree two people could hug in front of us, but looked at the GPS to make sure. My position was confirmed thanks to such cool technology, so we looked around at the base and eventually found a hole well hidden behind bark almost the same color as the tree we were kneeling in front of. Inside was a small Lock and Lock container that was well covered in camoflauge tape. We didn't find any Geocoins this time, but Dev found another suction cup ball like the one he found in a cache last week and had to have it. The other adults didn't trade anything. They do it for the find and the chance to help send a strangers Tracking Bug on it's journey across the world (progress is tracked on the geocaching.com website).

Alhtough the boys were starting to get restless, there was one more find in this park I wanted to claim. We had been there finding hidden treasure boxes and running around for almost two hours. The next one was a micro, harder to find for sure, but from the cache information page and the direction the man in leather pointed, we knew where to start looking. It was an easy walk with B back in the stroller. Devin walked next to his new friend and was thrilled when the man bent down and found a Buckeye, an inedible, nutlike seed, for him to keep. It's from Ohio's state stree and the mascot for Ohio State University....blah, blah, blah. (I'm not really an Ohio fan! :D)

We were about half way down a walkway outlined in spruce trees when the GPS's digital screen reached those magic numbers. I stopped, looked to the tree in front of me and right there was the cache! I had stopped in a place where two of the tree branches were higher than the others next to it and there tucked between two closely growing branches but just open enough for me to see the black lid of a cache. It was the same width of a film canister typically used for Micros, but it was longer, about the length of a science classroom test tube. Micros rarely have anything in them, although I've read of some having gift certificates of some kind or an unregistered TB for the lucky FTF. I dropped a quarter in with a klunk thinking I couldn't leave it empty.

As we walked back to the parking lot I realized I had a TB in my geobag that I forgot to put in one of the bigger caches. Both the Regular sized caches were further away in the woods and the Micro too little. It was suggested I go back to the Small in the bleachers and see if it would fit in there. I did and found it would fit, although the lid wouldn't close completely. I felt it closed enough that the upcoming rainy weather wouldn't get in.

Back at my van I was buckling in the boys when the female member of StPats2 (I am so bad with names!) came up behind me and said she wanted to give us one of their signature coins. It was a wooden quarter sized creation made to their specifications with their name on it and Luck of the Irish on the back. She told me again how much she enjoyed caching with us and how well behaved my boys were. She hoped to see us again on the trail and as she turned away, I was pretty certain she had tears in her eyes. I'm not selfish enough to think she actually cared for us, I think she was emotional because her only son and his kids, the first Geocachers in the family who showed them the ropes, live in Arizona and don't visit as much as she would like. I understand their bout of melanchony and hope their next family geocaching adventure happens soon.