Just two out of four...or so I thought.

I had promised Hunter we'd go find him his own treasure boxes the day before. With rain predicted to start falling by 4:00, I headed outside earlier that morning to work on my new landscaping and do some spring cleaning. After that my hubby grilled up some hot dogs for the first time this season and then Hunter and I were on our way.

While scrolling through the caches I had saved, Hunter paused at one called Fifteen Goats on a Dead Goat's Chest. I was all for finding Dread Goat Pirate's treasure until Hunter read to me what was saved in the part for a cache description; See printout. Apparently the story behind this cache was too long for the space designated in my handheld, so I printed it out...but forgot to put that paper along with other longer details in our geogear bag.
We'd have to attempt Dread Goat Pirate's hunt another day. Instead, Hunter chose one called Send More Cacher's because inside the description Hunter read that the mosquitoes in the area needed more cachers to come and give them their blood.

We pulled into Burton Memorial Park, but I wasn't sure where to leave my van. There was a bulldozer and back hoe in a small area that was made even smaller by their presence. I parked as far away from the machinery as I could, put my geocacher placard on the dash and grabbed our gear bag. When we looked at the handheld we were surprised to see there were actually two caches in these woods. One called Mosquito Haven was actually closer than the one that brought us here, so we focused on that one and off we went.

Yeah, that's my fingertip in the picture of the trail head. I couldn't find my digital camera so the pics in this story were taken with my camera phone.

We followed a trail made up of crushed asphalt and then a more natural dirt and leaves until we reached the namesake for the two caches these woods hide; a muddy, leave crusted, murky pond. The perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. We had yet to see any of those blood suckers, but we had only just begun....

As we continued on we could see where trees had been cut down, wood stacked and other trees targeted with orange X's. There isn't much to this park and why it's even called a park I don't know. It's just a walking path that bends back and forth like a snake trail in sand. Maybe the heavy equipment and clearing away of trees means good things are in the future for this place.

We weren't that far past the mosquito breeding ground when my handheld told us to hang a right. If leaf free trees make my GPS bounce around so much, then what's the signal going to be like in the heat of summer when I'm out there in the woods under heavy canopy cover, like a giant storm cloud had suddenly blew in to rain on my day? I stood at a tree marked with one of those orange X's long enough for my GPS to tell me I was probably within 20 feet or so of the cache. I told Hunter we were going to have to rely on our eyeballs and brain muscle to find this one.

He did start to look around, but when it comes to looking for something, be it in the van, in the house or there in the woods, Hunter doesn't put much effort into it. Even when I tell him to bring me something that is right there on the dining room table, but because I tell him I think it might by on the kitchen counter, the kitchen counter is where he'll look and no where else.

So we're in the woods looking for a box that, by the rules, can't be buried in the ground. It might as well be to Hunter, though, because I saw him staring at the ground like he could see through all the way to the worms borrowing below. As I look in stumps and under logs on one side, I cue Hunter to look at the next possible place to his right or whatever.

I've been giving us 20 minutes for a find and when that time runs out and we're still searching, we sigh and accept the fact that we have to log a DNF. We left that part of the woods and head over to another area where the first cache, Send More Cachers, is supposed to be. Will we find it?

Nope. I had the same trouble with my GPS but I thought I knew the general area. We even found a toy Dalmation dog that I had read about in one of the Internet logs, but no cache in any stumps or under any logs we looked at. Neither of these caches offered any hints. It's my opinion, and I will keep it in mind when Hunter and I hide our first cache, that if the hiding spot is in a place where GPS signal is iffy, INCLUDE A HINT!! :P There was just way too many places someone could hide something in there.

We left with nothing new in our possession and returned to my van. We drove to the nearest gas station for a potty and snack break and then drove to Punderson state park. Besides some geocaching fun, this park offers boating and fishing on its natural lake, a lodge, family cottages, a golf course and scenic campgrounds. There are many trails but it seems it's at its best during the colder months as it's considered a premier Ohio winter sports park for sledding, snowmobiling and cross-country skiing.

Richard took us a mile past the front gate and to the parking lot of the main lodge. I could see a sign for the Iroquois Trail, the closest starting point mentioned on the cache information page. As you can see, the trails were what you'd expect in the spring. Hunter and I walked along the sides and tested our balancing skills by crossing over standing water on green clumps of grass. Both of us felt the touch of the water through our shoes, a cold burn spreading out across our toes before we quickened our pace to make it stop.

The first cache in our sights had a seasonal theme. It was called Easter Basket and was the only cache we've found that wasn't camoflauged. Before we got there though, we learned quite a lot from the numbered posts along our route. The post in the picture with my for once wonderfully cooperating model spoke of the lake while others we paused to read told us of marsh lands, animal dens, how huge boulders got to where they were and more.

It was a beautiful day with just a little chill in the air, so we weren't surprised that there were other people out enjoying Punderson's paths. We greeted quite a few couples and two groups of families. One family with four kids was nearby when my GPS told me the cache was directly to my left, just off the trail.

Hunter and I sat on a log bench, one that fit perfectly into its natrual surroundings. It was a large shortened tree trunk trimmed of all branches with the top twelve inches or so of one side shaved down to allow tired visitors to rest a spell. Maybe the cache creator puposely planned it out this way, to have a bench so near to his cache. I am all for taking my find away from its hiding place so people won't wonder what I'm doing and come back to look around where I was, but as you can see in the picture below, this cache would have been seen even from a distance! First, to the right is where it was hidden. You can see how unnatural that wood looks, at least to a geocacher looking for something Mother Nature wouldn't do. If you were able to magnify that shot a few times and look to the right of the pile you'll see the crinkly, bright green cellophane shredding that is recognizable as the decorative grass used in Easter baskets. Only after I spied the grass did I see the wood in a row next to it.

With just the removal of one stick we found a cache that screamed, 'Look at me!'. As I said above, this is the first cache we've found hidden without any disguise. Clearly seen inside the plastic container was the grass and the bright plastic eggs. I understand the effect of the Easter Basket idea for a cache wouldn't be the same behind a masking cover, but there was no way I could take that thing over to the bench and go through it without someone wondering what I was doing. The cache was only maybe ten feet away from the trail itself. I told Hunter we had to be quick. I heard another group down by the dock we had taken a picture by. He took the two small items inside a purple egg, put the egg back as the cache creator requested and then added his trade, which was a glow stick. While he did that I signed the log and kept looking toward the family I could hear but couldn't yet see. We closed it up tight and put it back into the hole among the wood. We covered it so no one could see the colored plastic and then I told Hunter to head toward the trees, away from the path. We walked in a half circle and returned to the path away from cache. The family was about 20 feet from the cache when we came out of the woods ahead of them, but if they were curious what we had been doing, which I doubt they were, they wouldn't have found anything at the place they first saw us.

After that quick find we back tracked and took another trail toward the second cache in the park. We crossed a simple bridge on our way and then over the road we came in on until we were in a drier and quieter part of the woods. The only thing we saw on this walk was the blur of a chipmunk as he raced across a downed tree and disappeared. The only thing we heard was the crunch of dried leaves and broken sticks underneath our own feet. I tried giving Hunter a lesson on how he can minimize the racket he was making, but I think my words disappitated in the wind before even reaching his ears!

We turned off the trail and Hunter was so close on my heels that he bumped into me when I stopped. He was playing with one of his small toys again and I told him to put it away because we were close and he couldn't make a trade if he didn't help me find it. Honestly, I was a bit frustrated and impatient with him because on the other caches he was so close to me and focused on his toy then, too, that it was like he were walking blind in a cave and was tethered to me by a rope for safety. I told him about my feelings and wanted to know if he really liked to go geocaching with me. I want to do this with him because it gets us both out of the house and into the fresh air for some excercise and an escape from his brothers. He said he did like to go, but the driving is long and the walking tiring, but he liked doing it. I'd rather not have him playing his Nintendo DS or reading a book on the way to the caches, but he's even quieter than me. Next time I'll let him do one of those things to the first cache, but then we'll play a word game or something to the second cache. We'll decide before we leave what caches we'll do and find out if Kit can come. Having her around might make the walk more enjoyable for him.

Looking at the cache information page before we leave is probably a good idea. If I had done that for Mosquito Haven, then I would have realized it had been deactivated! Actually the word is called archived. When a cache has been archived, it usually means the box has been muggled; stolen or vandalized in some way and won't be found out in the field anymore but is still there to be viewed on the website. Muggled wasn't the reason listed for this cache though. The owner wrote, 'Beware the ides of March. And now for something completely different.' I have heard that phrase before, but to understand it completely I Googled it, don't ya love Google?, and found this definition, courtesy of The Phrase Finder - From Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, 1599. 'Beware the Ides of March' is the soothsayer's message to Julius Caesar, warning of his death. The Ides of March didn't signify anything special in itself - this was just the usual way of saying "March 15th." Each month has an Ides (usually the 15th) and this date wasn't significant in being associated with death.

The cache owner archived his cache on March 15th and sounds like he'll put it back in a different spot, maybe with a different theme at a later time. I hope it's in the same park because that was a nice, quiet place to walk and we can bring Kit along.

We can also return to Punderson with Kit because there is an Earth cache there. I saw the icon on my handheld and it was back up by the Lodge. As Hunter and I walked back from our successful hunts I read through the Earth cache information I had saved and almost cuffed myself on the back of the head (sorry, early childhood memories :P). This visual cache wasn't by the lodge, but it started on the same trail we began on. I had forgotten that, like with the Virtual cache I did a few weeks back, Earth caches also have tasks set by the cache creator for the finders to do. Remember the informational posts I told you about, the picture of Hunter by the number 6 post in front of the lake? Well, on some of those posts was information we needed to collect. We'll save that for another time. We were tired and ready to head home after about four hours of being out. Despite what I mentioned about Hunter, I enjoy doing this with him, but if he tells me he doesn't want to do it anymore, I will push for it because he needs to get out of the house, but if he insists, then it'll be OK. (Devin will take his place!)