CacheCrazy.Com

SEASONAL ALLERGIES

 


Or, "How I learned to stop worrying and love the outdoors"



DctrSpott
  
For me, it happens every year in northeastern Pennsylvania. March draws to a close, and the weather starts to warm up. Everything starts to thaw out, the sun comes out, everyone is wearing shorts. The biking and running population seems to explode. And I finally get to cast off my miserable, cold-to-the-bone attitude, and adopt a cheery, springtime persona. So Boltzmann and I, and whoever else has also contracted this spring fever, cancel classes, call off work, and try to absorb as much sunlight as possible.

And so it goes on for a week or three. Outside nearly everyday, several shades tanner, and generally in a cheery disposition. Cars and houses get their spring cleaning, winter bodies slim down towards summer ones, and life is generally improved. "Yeah, I guess living in Pennsylvania isn't that bad." I this Vitamin D induced high, I hardly notice or mind my slightly watery eyes. Or the occasional sneeze.

And then, out of NOWHERE, it hits. Suddenly, my nose is simultaneously a clogged airway AND an unstoppable torrent of mucus. I'm sneezing enough to propel a small waterbourne aircraft. Someone has decided to sandpaper the back of my throat in my sleep. I'm miserable again, and anyone else who shares my affliction knows why: seasonal allergies.

So, since I seem to forget each year, I'm sure you other victims could use a reminder too. Use these tips to stay sane during the spring pollen season:

• Air conditioning is your friend. The filters in those buggahs will catch most of the pollen trying to get in your house or car. Even a filter or cloth over an open window will catch a lot of the pollen trying to get in.
• Shower and change clothing often. This isn't always practical, but it does help.
• Avoid going out on those dry, humid, windy days. These are the ideal conditions for pollen and allergens to spread.
• For once, rainy days are actually a boon: the water washes a lot of the allergens off, and keeps it from floating and spreading through the air.
• Dear lord, don't go out from 5am to 10am! Everything has just woken up and bloomed: pollen and allergens are at the highest, you'll be a goner if you go out there!
• Mouth and nose coverings can look silly, but help a great deal. Try a bandana for something a little less silly than a face mask. Sunglasses with offer some protection for your eyes.
• For medication, start early. Don't take allergy medication when you have symptoms: anticipate the weather, and start at least a week beforehand.
• Similarly, some people swear by eating local honey. In theory, the honey is produced by bees from local plant life, and should have a small dose of the local allergens. Exposing yourself to the allergens early may act like a vaccination, and make your effects less severe later on.
• If you can, try taking a vacation. Get out of areas with a high pollen count.

Any other tips? Share them in the comments!

By Big Al

PLACED 8/24/2009

In the mid 1800’s a man who was the caretaker of an old cemetery, lost his 6 year old daughter to a tragic accident. The evening before the accident, he was working in the cemetery. Sitting next to the fence was a stray dog. She sat on a small knoll underneath a large old oak tree, seemingly waiting for someone. Little did he know that three days later he would be burying his little girl on the exact spot where the little dog waited.

Event History

Here we go!

Finally the event started to wind down, and various groups broke off to hit a few of the nearby caches. (We got a few right there at the park and then took a short drive to pick up a few more in the woods near the small town of Analomink.)

Thanks to Stellar Jr. for hosting this fun day. No doubt, everybody in attendance had a ball. I know we did!
Looking forward to seeing everybody on the trails and at the next event. Until then,

Happy Easter!

                                                   By: Bloodhounded
Notes from the author: "My friend" has this problem and I was hoping that maybe some of you senior cachers or an enthusiastic cacher could help me, I mean him? Here is "my friends" letter that I told him I would post for advice.

Nothing like starting a 4.5-star difficulty/4-star terrain cache at 5:15 in the evening.

And pretty much on a whim.

And with heavy winds and the occasional passing shower and even some snow thrown in.

And on a school night.

No worries, that’s just part of caching with the Dodger Lizard Crew and Bloodhounded.

Come on along…!

THE BRAINSTORM

We had magnificent plans of getting the Cache Crazy team together for a group outing, but schedules just weren’t meshing. When it looked like all was lost for the weekend, suddenly gears started to click, and it became clear that DLC and Bloodhounded were both going to end up having Sunday evening free. What shall we do… what shall we do… Hey, let’s surprise our colleague and buddy DctrSpott by showing up in the logs of his brand new adventure cache “Windmill Hunting in the Barrens” (GC2RYXK)! It was too windy for fishing anyway so, like a couple of geniuses, why not go climb trees in the woods instead, eh? Time, conditions… none of it mattered. The idea was just too grand and took on a life of its own. With a big ha-ha and drunk from exuberance, off we went…!

WEATHER, TERRAIN AND BEGINNING STAGES

5:15 PM. Blue sky above us, black sky hanging over the valley behind us, a stiff breeze pushing it all this way… And we were just starting. Nevertheless, optimism was high and we made short work of the beginning stages even as we got hit by the first smatterings of rain. Bloodhounded acted as our initial retrieval “expert” and made the finds like a pro.



We were cruising! Where was this terrain? This the best you got, Spott? Ha ha! Bring on the rain! Bring on the weather! Bring on this “physically challenging” cache!


THE DIFFICULTY RISES

The weather continued to toy with us. The rain changed to snow and sleet and, just as suddenly, the clouds moved off to the horizon and the overhead sky cleared. This strange pattern would continue the rest of the evening. Additionally, the terrain continued to morph until we were faced with pretty much of a swamp-walk right to the end of our journey.


We realized based on a clue in the last hide that we were approaching some sort of field puzzle. We had written down the rather cryptic hint and marched on. When we reached the latest installment of Ground Zero, we poked here and there for a few minutes before the light bulb clicked on. After some assumptions and quick ciphering, we were 100% positive that we had the coordinates to the Final in hand. Clever boy you are, Spott, but nothing these Robert Langdons can’t handle. We declared triumph – “We’ve got it in our sights now!”

Still, something didn’t feel quite right.

Little did we know that despite having the correct coordinates, we were still a long way from signing the logbook. Even worse, we were going to do something I just don’t like to do – use the Phone-A-Friend (PAF) option.

EVIL DCTRSPOTT AND SOME CLEVER TRICKS

It made perfect sense. Surely Spott used his field puzzle as the prelude to the grand finale. When we got to yet another new Ground Zero, I was even more convinced we were at the end. What a great place to stash an ammo can!

This preconceived notion turned out to be a big mistake, and it cost us dearly in our battle against nightfall. There were just so many good hiding places. Bloodhounded had Ground Zero nailed down and spent most of his time scouring that spot. I expanded out to well over 100 feet, checking every nook and cranny. Over and over and over… it’s here… it HAD to be here somewhere. At one point, I was sure I found it. I spotted the “cache” and went to reach for it. Whoa. Not so fast, slick.



After blowing an hour looking for the phantom ammo can, almost getting quilled by a porcupine, and now losing the fight against darkness, it was time to outline a new strategy. Getting a hint from Spott would not be good. First off, we didn’t want him to know we were trying the cache. Secondly, we both really like to solve these things without additional hints. That’s just the way we play the game. The problem, though, was it was already well after 7:00 PM. Did we want to try it again another day? Yes and no. Neither one of us knew when we’d get another opportunity. Finally I decided to bite the bullet and use a PAF…

Dodger text to Spott: “Stuck on (physical feature excluded to avoid spoiler). Hint?”

Spott response: “Are you on Stage ‘x’ and is that you CJ?”

Ha! Some “colleague and friend”. He didn’t even know it was his Cache Crazy teammates! That’s too rich. I was about to respond with, “Hey, dumb @$$, it’s us!” but Bloodhounded quickly cut me off - “No, no! Don’t tell him!” Ooh, very good! So without lying but without exactly telling the truth either, I responded, “Yes, Stage ‘x’.” The fun from our little masquerade quickly evaporated, though, when I got the hint. We were NOT at the Final. I spied the hide immediately and we both cursed ourselves, Bloodhounded for not seeing it initially and me for convincing myself the whole time that we were at the end. Hmm, so it seemed the good Doctor has more brass than I gave him credit for. I retrieved the stage, almost falling once and almost dropping the container once. With the needed information and a good deal of sand knocked out of us, we went on our way. Looking back now, I do have a question for DctrSpott – How did you rig that up? I no longer question your heart, just the reach of your arm.

We were left with another decision to make – bag it or press on knowing full well that we weren’t going to finish before sunset.

PRESSING ON

Screw it. Pressing on was really the only option. With darkness beginning to close in, we continued picking up stages. I got my turn to play “Stage Retrieval Expert” and quickly gathered up the coordinates.



THE DARK TOWER

Finally, it started to make some sense where we were going.



For real now, the Final was near. So were those windmills. They just hung in the dark sky with their incessant WHOOSH… WHOOSH… WHOOSH. The howling wind, the on-and-off rain, the clouds moving constantly in front of the moon… It was spooky, no doubt, but very, very cool. We scrambled all over the place looking for the prize, but in the dark it was just a shotgun approach.

“Where are you?”

WHOOSH… WHOOSH… WHOOSH…

“Over here. Did you find it?!”

WHOOSH… WHOOSH… WHOOSH…

“No. You?”

WHOOSH… WHOOSH… WHOOSH…

“No.”

WHOOSH… WHOOSH… WHOOSH…

And of course, the dreaded cell phone call from concerned wives…

“Where ARE you guys?”

“We’re still in the woods. We’re fine. We’ll be home in a little bit.”

(“Little bit” being a relative term...)

“Are you OK?”

“Yes! We’re fine!”

Just as I was about to pitch the stupid phone in the creek, I realized that we might need Spott again. I put the phone back in my pocket…

Well, what the hell. It was time for another PAF…

WHOOSH… WHOOSH… WHOOSH…

“He says it’s around here.”

“Where?”

WHOOSH… WHOOSH… WHOOSH…

“Wait a second, wait a second… YES!!!!”

“You got it?”

“WE FOUND THE FINAL!”

We signed the logbook with the aid of a flashlight, quickly swapped some swag, and made tracks for home.

ONE MORE ERROR IN JUDGEMENT

Instead of backtracking through the woods, we decided to take one of the windmill access roads back to the parking area. It was a decent walk for a while – you could see all the lights in the Wyoming Valley from high atop the Wyoming/Penobscot Mountain ridge (elevation just over 1,900 feet), but we were gradually walking too much downhill. After a hike much farther than anticipated we started to parallel the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and then came out on PA Route 115 about 1.5 miles down the mountain from where we started. At this stage of the game we had little choice but to foolishly walk the highway shoulder back up the mountain to the vehicle. That was an adventure all in itself, but we survived.

The big cache quest had come to an end. It was 10:00 PM.

SECRETS REVEALED

We never did tell Spott that it was us contacting him from out in the field. When we each got home, we went ahead and logged the find. About ten minutes later, my phone buzzed…

“Had I known it was you two, I would’ve let you get lost in the woods … Good job!”

Love it, DctrSpott!

THE REVIEW

I used “The Gunslinger” analogy once before to describe a cache, but if ever there was one that captured the essence of “The Dark Tower” series this is it. Readers of the books and attempters of this cache would surely see the connection – the barren landscape, the mechanical windmill giants, the peculiar weather, trying to do everything properly or be doomed to start all over from the beginning… It is a “DctrSpott meets Stephen King” adventure.

Each stage of the cache was laid out beautifully and not knowing how many you had to tackle really kept us on our toes. The care and planning that went into this cache is top-notch and it definitely is appreciated. It’s great fun.

I’ll also say that DctrSpott might be the guy who puts the “Crazy” in Cache Crazy. Of course, you obviously have your followers and we’re right there with you. As Obi Wan told Han, “Who’s more the foolish – the fool or the fool who follows him?” I scoff! That wizard’s just a crazy old man!

Geez, guys, I guess I’m still looped up from hunting those windmills...

Rock on!

The geocaching segments of this film portray geocaching in a positive and accurate light. However, this film is rated “R” and is not suitable for families. Splinterheads can currently be watched for free on Hulu.

Find Me- IMDB describes the film as such: “Set in Present day, a senator with a controversial mission is threatened with the kidnapping, and possible death, of his son. Given only one alternative, he must decide between life and faith. The clock is ticking... Meanwhile, three college students stumble upon a geo-caching clue that may lead to the solution the senator is looking for.”
This film does have spiritual undertones but they are not overt. The plot seemed a bit confusing, as the weaving in of geocaching with the rest of plot didn’t completely work.

Hello, my name is Daniel Campbell. I am a nature and wildlife photographer and owner of the blog Project: Explore New York! I have always been an outdoor enthusiast, I can remember when I was a young boy and exploring, and then building all sorts of forts in the woods behind my home. Over the most recent winter I was stuck in one of those “I am not good at anything” ruts and I searched for my calling. Then I went ice fishing. I searched some more and then went snow shoeing. More searching followed, and then the light bulb went off – I know about the great outdoors! And POOF! Project: Explore New York! was born.



If you love cachecrazy.com than you’ll enjoy Project: Explore New York! because I too am a geocacher, albeit a new one (I believe I have 6 finds under my belt). Regardless, I love to share my geocaching adventures. My blog goes beyond geocaching as I also take you to the great state forests, parks, and backwoods trails all over the state. Areas frequently visited include Green Lakes State Park, Highland Forest, and the Adirondack Park – the largest park, the largest state-level park, and the largest national historic landmark, in the country.



Not only will you see short write ups and guides to these areas, but from time to time I also bring out my video camera so you can actually SEE the trail that I talk about. I share information about hiking, specifically light weight hiking, and camping. I talk about gear, food, safety, reviews, hints, tips, and tricks...with the occasional unique New York location mixed in for flavor!





My blog is also an avenue for me to share my photography with others. I am by no means a professional but my photos will show you nature from a unique prespective, an angle you have never seen before.



So join me, Dan The Woodsman at Project: Explore New York! and let’s go get lost in the woods.


Dan "The Woodsman" Campbell

Project: Explore New York!

http://www.projectexploreny.com/


Lost In the Woods Photography

http://lostinthewoodsphotos.weebly.com/


All photographs and video by Dan The Woodsman and are copy right protected. Please contact Dan for details of permission for use of material. 

Cache Around the World





DctrSpott
  


For many of us, caching is an activity that takes place locally. For Pennsylvanians especially, this happens in local parks, suburbs, state parks, and state game lands.  Caching around the world, however, has some great benefits.

First, a bit of logistics. If I know in advance I'll be taking a major trip someplace, I'll look up some local caches on the Geocaching website. Searching by zip code allows me to sort through and find caches with the attributes I'm looking for, while searching with Google maps allows me to see what caches are close to places I plan to be. The official Geocaching forums have several subforums for state and region: these, coupled with the websites and forums for any local caching organizations, can provide reliable suggestions for the best local caches.

For those shorter or not planned trips, smartphone users have a nice advantage. Any internet enabled phone can access the geocaching webpage, but it is far easier to use some of the geocaching apps. Both Android and iPhone users have the official Groundspeak geocaching app. Many other apps exist, but c:geo by carnero is by far my favorite. It's "live map" feature and ability to store caches makes impromptu caching extremely convenient.

Caching around the world is a great way to see an area through a local's eyes. Local hiders have the best knowledge of the surrounding area, and can lead you to some truly unique and hidden places. In these situations, geocaching can be the basis for a great adventure in a new place. It can also be a great way to introduce new friends to the game. If nothing else, you're almost guaranteed to make some interesting stories along the way.

Spott , relatives, and COs at a Jamaican FTF!

The serious cacher is also behooved from caching around the world. Just as a conference or sabbatical allows the proliferation and dissemination of good ideas and techniques, caching in a new area is a great learning experience. Clever hides, locations, and containers may inspire new ideas, which you'll bring back home, and in turn teach to other cachers. You're advancing the future of geocaching! Go you!

So, caching around the world leads to some good experiences, great stories, and even helps you develop your skills. If nothing else, it gives you total bragging rights over all your friends. And that is reason enough to do anything.

Why Not Wednesday's will feature an eclectic collection of pictures, games, videos, posts and just about anything that relates to well, anything! So hey, why not send in your contribution to WHY NOT WEDNESDAY’S and have it posted here.
CLICK HERE FOR A PRINTABLE COPY TO PLAY WITH

Join me for a special treat and a great story as told by Jeff from nucci6. He shares with us an interesting adventure and a twist that still has question marks all over it.

The Mystery of the Speckled Hen
 A summer vacation story from the 2010

Part 1: In the Middle


"Dead zone.... nothing but a giant dead zone" I mumbled under my breath as my friend Tom hurled us at a mile a minute towards our destination, a small park in a small town plopped almost in the middle of nowhere. Certainly a wireless dead zone. Neither of us had bothered to preload our GPS units with the coordinates of our destination. Tom forgot to press save, I relied too much on technology. In the dead zone, there was no way were getting the coordinates over the air. We were going to have to rely on Tom's memory and geo-senses, having found dozens of geocaches like this in the past.

Having located this particular cache before, Tom recognized the park but not GZ, ground zero, the holy grail of any cache hunt. I eyed up the park gazebo, the usual suspect for these little park caches. There would be no such luck as neither the construction or the landscaping gave any cues. I wandered about with the Pre held high in the air desperately looking for signal while Tom wandered about with his GPS. No signal, no coordinates, not even a description of what we were looking for. Oh to have had pencil and paper and have written this all down when we were back in the so-called civilized world of too much technology.

A couple of teenagers and the park groundskeeper were about. I wandered over to a bench surrounding a tree thinking it was a likely cache hiding spot, having given up on 21st century technology in lieu of common sense. Imagine that. Not seeing any metal on the wooden bench, I wandered over to some nearby electrical equipment -- a likely place for any magnetic key holder to be hidden, the most likely cache type to be located in a park hide like this.

By now we attracted the attention of the groundskeeper who was looking for a break from the back and forth motions of his grass cutting. "You guys geocachers?", he shouted from atop his industrial mower. Busted. "You were a lot warmer over by that tree than over there" he smiled as he motioned towards the electrical boxes. Busted. At least now though I stood a chance of finding the cache, a high tech treasure hunt using low tech knowledge and a friendly municipal employee.

With the log signed and a new smiley on the map Tom and I set off for a local micro-brewery. Eschewing technology for an old-fashioned map we did our best to either get further lost or towards our destination, trying to correlate squiggles on the map to what road we were on, roads with no names and no proper signage, no sense of north or south. Why bother? The locals knew where they were. After a few false leads around the town square we were just about on the correct road. I was on the lookout for the highway signs. That's when I spotted it, a little square blue and white sign with a picture of a chicken on it, with the works 'The Speckled Hen' and an arrow imploring us to go in that direction.

Part 2: In the Beginning

"Chick-CAAAAAAAAAN" the kids shouted from the cramped back seat of my little blue coupe, putting an extra emphasis and drawing out the second syllable, "Chick-CAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!" "Don't worry, daddy!", they shouted in unison, "every time we see the sign we'll shout out Chick-CAAAAAAAANN!!!! and you'll know to make a turn!!". It was mid-August, 2006, and the kids and I were on vacation while my wife remained home as she unhappily lacked the vacation time to join us. She was furious and let me know at every turn. Going out on an adventure, even if it was just for dinner, was almost a means to an escape as we headed out of cell phone coverage. Being alone with the kids for a week I thought it would be a treat to try out 'all you can eat pasta night' at a restaurant that advertised heavily in the free newspaper. My only GPS was a primitive hand-held unit that lacked any mapping function other than to let us know we hadn't yet driven off a main road. I called ahead to get directions, was told 'it was complicated', and to just look for the blue signs guiding the way. Relying on paper maps in these pre-dashboard navigation GPS days I had not much else to go on to span the 14 or so miles we needed to cover until we got close to those blue signs I was beginning to wish I never mentioned.
Paper maps and two over-enthused children shouting "Chick-CAAAAAAAAN!!!" and how they were going to guide me to our destination. Paper maps, road signs, and dead reckoning. And kids in the back seat shouting "Chick-CAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!" every time they were going to see the blue and white road signs with the picture of a chicken and an arrow. My 'back seat GPS units'. "Chick-CAAAAAAAAAN!!!" the kids again shouted, reminding me over and over that whenever they see a sign they'll be SURE to let me know. We passed at least 3 Speckled Hen signs, none of which they saw, all the while reminding me of their plans to diminish whatever hearing I had left by shouting "Chick-CAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!". They never once did either see ANY sign or call out a proper direction change. But by now had my ears ringing with the sound of "Chick-CAAAAAAN!!".

Tossing the maps aside and relying on the blue and white signs, back seat GPS notwithstanding, we managed to get onto a narrow and winding dirt road more akin to Children of the Corn than what I thought to be a popular place based on its heavy advertising.Certainly there would be a large crowd on all you can eat night. We pulled up alongside an old renovated farmhouse with a giant sign with a picture of a chicken on it, located next to a field with some old trucks and smokey and smelly trash fire burning. "Chick-CAAAAAAAAAAAAN" the back seat finally clucked properly, this time on target but too late to be useful. If I had relied on them we'd probably have been in Canada by now, still clucking. We had arrived at the pinnacle of our journey, something we were talking about all week, The Speckled Hen and its all you can eat pasta night. Counting the three derelict trucks, there were 4 vehicles there, including us, in the middle of God's country, at a small renovated farm house calling itself The Speckled Hen, along with a smokey stinky fire and a farm yard full of animals.

Inside I could hear spaghetti sauce bubbling on a stove and a local radio station softly playing. I felt more like I was inside someones house than an actual working restaurant. We sat down at a table overlooking the trash fire, got some menus, and found out how complicated it was going to be to order all you can eat pasta. We chatted, our food came, and we enjoyed the atmosphere of dad and two kids enjoying a special time together. We had to. The food was... ...OK. Not the best experience, not the worst, certainly the sauce was just not to my liking. After the anticipation, the build-up, the excited trip, the all you can eat part was simply anti-climatic.

Post-dinner we were invited to go outside and see the animals, something which my son and daughter enjoyed more than the meal. My son took to the goats, petting a more tame one, even bestowing upon it a named he held in reverence, 'Bitsy Thomas', a name he modelled after Thomas the Tank Engine. My daughter was more into the chickens, running back to the kitchen to obtain stale bread to feed to the fowl. We stayed for what seemed like hours, a magic time in a magic place that made me forget that I probably just ate what I considered to be the worst spaghetti sauce of my life. Two bowls of it at that.

The evening was soon sadly over. Somehow we made it using pencil, navigating there by map and pencil and paper and road signs. Road signs they somehow never saw while excitedly telling me how they would inform me of their presence. The 'back seat GPS' was giving about as useful directions, it would turn out, as my main GPS unit would years later on a return trip. Full and tired we navigated back by memory, nobody interested in the slightest peep of "chicken..." Instead we all simply chatted about the future of Bitsy Thomas and the hens in the barnyard and that we'll visit again next year. A visit that never happened later that year. Or the next. Or the next.....

Part 3: The End

Summer 2010 marked when we'd finally make a return visit to the Speckled Hen. As far as summers go it was not the best. The weather was not cooperative combined with generous amounts of life happening. On a sunny Wednesday afternoon we made a late start for a day's worth of activities that was to be capped off with dinner at the Hen.

The first mistake was trusting the Mio GPS because the damned thing would have us drive off a cliff if it had calculated doing so would save us .07 seconds off the trip. As we drove deeper into God's country it soon had us driving off paved roads and anything resembling civilization and on dusty gravel roads, with no buildings or power poles visible anywhere. I got the feeling this wasn't going to end good. Sure enough it was soon announcing we had arrived at our destination, the middle of nowhere, and likely with no human beings around for miles. We continued on our way hoping to end up SOMEPLACE. The collection of back roads took us to nowhere in particular although we did stumble back upon human civilization, but only after we encountered a lone cow leisurely walking along the road. Not coming to the Speckled Hen we backtracked, going past the point we turned onto the one road, thinking maybe the GPS meant RIGHT instead of LEFT when it was busy barking out its orders. Our hunch proved correct and we soon came upon a familiar looking building that had a big sign, YES WE ARE OPEN. Everybody missed the smaller FOR SALE sign, the unkempt bushes, the weeds, and the wreck of a barn yard.

As we pulled into what was left of the parking area the look and feel was all wrong. It was closed, and a look inside the windows revealed an empty shell, a sad reminder of what once was but is now no more.

The Speckled Hen was gone.

We returned the way we came, looking for another place to eat. The kids openly wondered about their animal friends, former residents of the now overgrown barnyard which lay a silent testimonial to that magic evening of a few years earlier.

Later on I turned to 21st century technology to learn more. The Hen's web site was useless, still listing a menu, giving an e-mail address, and some old reviews, a ghost ship luring us to come visit its apparitions of summers past. Frustrated by limitations of the present I went to the past, using 19th century technology, the telephone, to find out what was going on. I dialed the number but it turns out it was disconnected.

I found the property listing on an on-line real estate site, offering us the Hen for a mere $65,000. With its matter of fact coldness the web page offered us no clues to the mystery, just square footage, number of bathrooms, and a few other facts and figures. The remains of the Hen were reduced to just numbers someone could crunch and plug into a spreadsheet, its soul stripped away and tossed upon the winds.

I wonder if we'll every know whatever happened to The Speckled Hen.

Real-Life Cache Lessons
Vol 1: Following Directions





DctrSpott





Caching is fun. If you don't believe it, just take it from me. I'm the kind of guy that has a hard time doing things if they're not fun. But, given my line of work, I love any experience which combines fun and learning. And while good ol' book-learnin', like the kind you might find in GCPC79, Reading is FUN!(damental), I find learning street-savy, real-life applicable knowledge is a much more challenging, much more rewarding task.

As a guy who is a human being, who teaches college students, and who interacts with people on a daily basis, I can tell you: following directions if rough. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm a pretty smart dude. Why should I put up with someone else telling me what to do? I can figure it out myself. I don't need someone's help. And so the familiar cycle begins. Cache description? Pfft. Hints? Yeah right. Just plug in those coords and let 'er rip.

With views like this, it's easy to get distracted.

And so began my little lesson. While traveling on business in California, I decided to stop for a few days in the beautiful Santa Monica. Being a huge fan of caching around the world (stay tuned for future post), I decided to combine my leisurely stroll on the beach with some caching. After all, it's a good way to see areas from the local's perspective, a veritable dream for travel bugs and geocoins, and gives you total bragging rights to your caching buddies back home.

So, using c:geo on my Droid Incredible, I brought up GCMTA6, Lord of the Rings. Listed as a 1/1, with a slurry of trackables, I figured it was a good way to start the day. Plus, the prospect of a physical challenge is always exciting for me. A short walk to the listed coords put me smack between 4 palm trees. After a sweep of the area came up empty handed, I began to try the thing keoki_eme taught me so well: climbing a tree.


Ever try to climb a palm tree? They don't have branches. After making a fool of myself for about half an hour, and confusing many a native Californian, I gave up and continued my walk on the beach. But the 1/1 cache stayed in my mind all day. What was I missing?

Be advised the cache can only be retrieved on sunny days between the hours of 9-5pm (7:30pm in the summer), and remember the code words “The Geocache flies at midnight.” Our operatives at this location can also provide you with transportation should you feel the urge to scope out the rest of this historic area.

After reading the description carefully, and gleaning some information from the comments, I eventually figured it out. I won't spoil the fun for you, but a local on the scene told me "Yes, we see people standing in between those palm trees all the time with their GPS in hand. We always ask, 'Hey, you looking for something?', and they almost always respond, 'Oh, no, nothing.' Haven't ever seen someone try to climb a palm tree, though." There's a first time for everything, I suppose.

So, the lesson is: always read your directions carefully. Or if you don't, at least don't make a fool out of yourself in public.


And don't forget to submit your favorite NEPA geocaches!

AND NOW A MESSAGE FROM UNCLE BLOODHOUNDED  HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY LITTLE BUGGER,  HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!!!!!!