Only one out of three?? Darn it!

Hunter and I were able to get away this past Saturday for some geocaching fun. I had done a search at geocaching.com and discovered a cache hidden about 30 miles away with a cute little story about trolls, prisoners and a hideout in the woods. I let Hunter read it and he laughed and agreed he'd love to help what we both assumed would be toys or other tradeable items escape.

I'm not real keen on city caches. I don't like to drive around, looking for someplace to park that gets me close to the cache, but not close to trouble because I'm parked in a place of business with no intention of doing any kind of business buy geocaching. Thanks to Google Earth I knew what parking lot I should park in, but had a feeling Richard wouldn't take me to that parking lot.

I was right. Richard took me to a side street that dead ended in a turn around in front of an office building. In his computer generated, sometimes annoying voice, he told us we had reached our destination (if we were to leave him there and walk between the buildings, sure). Hunter wondered aloud why I talk to Richard when he can't reply. I smiled and said he talks to me so I talk to him as I turned us around and headed for the next street over. This cache is best found on a weekend I think, when the parking lots are empty and no one can see what you're doing from the many windows that can see us walking below.

In the middle of the picture above, you can see a white line that goes up at the end. (The square with numbers and letters is the cache site.) That line is actually a thin cement wall that leads to the top of a large drainage pipe. We walked down and along the right side of it, among the bare trees and the trash covered ground. That was the most trash I have seen around a cache and could not believe the cache owner or previous finders didn't pick anything up! When we left and my kitchen sized garbage was pretty full, I thought maybe they did but couldn't pick it all up. There was still a lot of trash.

Now that I have a lanyard for my handheld GPS, I've been letting Hunter lead the way. All he really needs to do is keep the arrow head on line with the cache, paying attention to which way the tip of it points. It was slow going, but we made it to the area and then started looking around for the hiding spot. This is where he needs more practice. He always starts out looking in the trees. Maybe some day we'll find a regular or small one in a tree, but usually those hides are saved for the micros and (crazy, crazy!) nanos. I told him to start with the ground and look for something unnatural. Behind a fallen tree I spotted some branches and some once severely bug infested logs piled next to and leaning against this log. I told Hunter to come around to where I was and help me look.

I tried to let him find it himself, but as he seemed to look everywhere but by his feet, I started playing the Hot and Cold game. He finally moved some of the wood, and there it was! He complains about the drive, drags his feet along the walk, but boy, oh boy does his face light up with the find!

His smile was short lived though. The prisoners we escaped weren't toys he could exchange. What we found was a lot of black 35 mm film canisters. As soon as I saw them, I understood the mystery. The cache creator is giving the finders of his cache their own micro cache to hide, equipped with a small log inside, safely sealed in a small plastic bag. He wanted us to rescue these so called prisoners, meaning take them out of the cache and not put anything in return and find them a new home, which meant nestling them in a cozy tree some where or find a little hidey hole some place and adding it to the geocaching.com family as a hide for others to find. Even explaining all that to Hunter, he thought I should write to the owner and complain there were no toys to trade!

You can see, he's not all that thrilled!

The second one we attempted we thought from the description would be a quick find. We found ourselves in a good sized park with a playground, basketball and tennis courts and two baseball fields. My handheld GPS brought me to the right side bleachers between these fields. What? Bleachers?? There was no hint, just the title of Bleached Pirate Bones. Bleached meaning bleachers and the pirate theme is because the team who hid this cache has a thing for pirates. All their caches have something to do with buccaneers. I could believe a hide on these small, aluminum bleachers if it was a micro, but not so much a small, which is about sandwich size. We felt along all the grooves of the bleacher seats, hoping for a small something stuck underneath with a magnet before I realized a magnet won't stick to alluminum. Our time was soon up as a father and son appeared out of the parking lot to play catch on one of the fields. We had to leave with a DNF (Did Not Find).

The last one was a wonderful walk along a trail that used to be a railway. The owner of this cache wrote up a great poem that talked about the cache and also told us how we might find it.

A boarding pass for the Interurban trail,

leads geocachers where others once traveled by rail.

Instead of a trolley, you’ll take the boardwalk,

past a silo and wetlands and maybe a duck.

As you enter the woods you’ll lose some of your light,

Stop where a small trail comes in from the right.

Into the woods on the left you must go,

Bearing west 200 feet or so.

Keep the wet ground just to your right,

If you get muddy, it’ll be quite a site.

Over several downed logs you must traverse.

Then into a ***** ***** your hand you’ll immerse.

When we pulled into the park we saw a sign for the Interurban Trail not far into it. I looked at Richard and his finish line flag was still farther ahead, so we continued in the van. We came to a parking lot and as I turned back around toward where we came in, I saw a white silo above the trees and into the overcast sky. I told Hunter that was it and we parked in the spot closest. I put my green geocacher parking placard on the dashboard, grabbed our geogear and away we went.

Not far past the silo we went over a boardwalk and soon came to the sign post pictured above. If you can't read it, it says, "From 1899 - 1925, the Cleveland & Eastern Traction Company operated an electric-powered interurban railway which carried passengers, freight and farm goods between Cleveland and the Geauga County countryside. This trail leads to the site of the C&E junction where the track split into two branches; eastbound passengers could continue onto Chardon or baord a connecting trolley to Burton and Middlefield."

This is the part where I messed up. I was enjoying the view of duck houses, goose and two minks that were two fast for my photo lense, Hunter was busy stimming with the toys always in his hand, that I forgot the line, "Stop where a small trail comes in from the right...". I didn't look for a trail from the right. I followed my GPS into thick trees and ended up walking too fast for it to catch up. We ended up entering the woods in the wrong area and didn't realize my GPS was having a hard time until I had made a half circle around. I slowed down but still couldn't get a good reading. While waiting for my GPS to tell me where I was, Hunter and I looked under fallen logs and in some stumps. While searching we came upon an interesting tree Hunter wanted me to take a picture of. But then I goofed again! I forgot the hint, Birch Stump. If I had focused on those two words we may have found it, but instead we used up more than the time we planned and had to run back to the van and pick up a pizza and get back home. We were 45 minutes later than the time I told Tim, but my gosh, guess what happened? He, Dev and B survived! (Sorry for the sarcasm, my love! :P)




So, Hunter was bummed about all three of our caches; two DNF's and one disappointing find. After I signed the Internet logs I sent a message to my sister Karyn and said that she and the kids must stop by here on their way to Michigan in June so she can help me find this cache!