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WARNING - This post contains graphic pictures, text and video. If you are offended easily, please go to this link to enjoy " Tools Of The Geocacher " Proceed at your own discretion. 
*note - some of the following is fact and some is fiction and you can decide which is which. BH

It was a Saturday evening in late February. The wind was blowing through hemlocks outside and the cold winter air frosted the window panes. I looked out onto the lawn and hoped that the weather would change for tomorrow. I had planned to attend the Travelnbhappy21 event celebrating their 2000 geocache and take part in the three caches that Nishollow had just put out named “The Devils Playground”. I placed a few more logs on the fire and retired for the evening.

I remember thinking how much fun it was going to be as I drifted off to sleep. The breakfast, meeting new geocachers, old friends and checking out all the cool raffle prizes, it was surely going to be great! Just about the time I fell asleep I entered the thought of the geocaches that Kyle had in store for us. That’s right about when the nightmare began. My body was shocked as if someone doused me with cold water. I was wide awake but I had to be dreaming, I thought to myself however, it all seemed so real.




I leave you now with this madness and some really cool pics!

Special thanks to:
Nishollow - You never cease to amaze me! You are my Geohero! What else can I say!
travelnbhappy21 - Congratulations! You guys are two of the greatest people I know who have positivly influensed the sport of geocaching! Thank you!
All of the event attendees: I had a great time with you guys and even though I was under the weather, I enjoyed your company. Until we meet again, keep on caching!
midas1 - Always great to do some geocaching with you brother, thanks for the company!
All of our excellent contributing photographers, helpers of the hides and others:
Pserine, adam9512, John Galt?, Dave (ST.FU) Zellers, Hound,  jkur247 and captainmath! Great job guys!
Special thanks to all of the contributors of raffle prizes too many to mention! There were over 40 quality prizes up for grabs (CacheCrazy.Com contributed a wood slab woodbured clock of a pike striking a spoon, Secret Weapon #7 aka pinecone cache in display wooden box and a new concept cache duo the "his and hers" leopard print camo cache combos)
...................and thank God I have a strong faith in Jesus! That's all I can say.............BH

Cool cache container...or torture device?

My son, BigAlJr1993, was going on Spring Break from college and Molly who attends with him was joining him at our house for the entire break. We picked them up from college in Upstate NY and then loaded the car with their belongings. Boy was that car packed.





My wife and I had decided that we would search out some caches on the way home and introduce Molly to Geocaching. We were able to secure three caches on the way home.

The first one was a micro about the size of a bottle cap. It was an easy find. We signed the log and then moved on. Our second cache was at an Information center for the Adirondack Mountains. We had to walk into the woods a short distance to find this one; did I mention that it was snowing and very cold? Well it was. We also were not wearing the proper shoes for being out in the snow, but then we weren't going to let that stop us.

We found the cache with no problems. It was a nice ammo can. Molly was pleased to see that they come in different sizes. We dropped off three TBs that we have held onto for too long. I then stocked the cache with SWAG since there was not much in there for kids of any age. On to the next cache.

We stopped for lunch at a local BK and then I did a search with my SMART phone for any nearby caches. There was one not too far away so we headed for it. Now this seemed like a typical skirt cache, but was I in for a surprise when I lifted it up. Low and behold there was a rat under there.

                           Craftimom with the rat in her lap

This little guy had a film canister in his backside with the log in it. We all got a good laugh out of this one. We signed the log and headed home. So we found 3 caches, but better than that we had introduced Molly to Geocaching. She was hooked for sure. After getting home she signed up for an account and now has to log her finds. This weekend we plan on spending all day Saturday taking her out for more caches.


Well that was our trip to Upstate NY to get them, but then we had to make a trip over towards NJ to pick up my daughter, Kyo-Kat. She is in a traveling choir tour and they were finishing up on Sunday and we were going to meet them at a mall to pick her up. We left in plenty of time and arrived with no problems. Katy then called and said they had just gotten on the road and they expected to arrive in about 4 hours.

WHAT? Four hours. You've got to be kidding. What were we going to do now? Well there is always time for a Geocache, or two, or three. The only problem was that I had not brought my GPS or Geobag since that was not in the plans at all. Well once again the smart phone comes in handy.

We were able to look up 12 caches around the area and begin our search. We found a number of micros and I just can't understand why people hide them when it's a perfectly good place for a much larger cache.

We were at a bus stop searching for a micro and we just could not find it. We had searched everywhere possible and I knew we were at the right spot from the hint. No luck. We got back in the car and started reading the logs and noticed that the last three people had logged it as a DNF. This really began to upset me. That was when the police car drove by. Oh boy. Did someone call us in for snooping around the telephone pole? He pulled up behind us and to our right and just sat there. We decided to hit the road.

We headed on to another cache, which we found. Then we decided to find a small series of three caches all within driving distance of the mall. They were odd little caches, but nicely hidden.


                         Some sort of bug

We were up to 9 caches now and still had time to kill. We then saw a nice park called the Algonquin Park. It had two caches located inside of the park area.


We parked and started our walk into the park. Now I must tell you that Craftimom was wearing her dress shoes from church. I was in sneakers. We had to cross a little bridge to get to the first one, but then it was back in the woods a little bit. We were crawling all over some rocks and she was slipping around. I thought this might not have been a good idea, but then we found the cache. It was a nice loc-n-loc. We signed the log, but did not have anything to leave. I guess next time I'll take my Geobag no matter where we go.

We then started walking off toward the next cache. It was a nice walk even though it was cold out. We finally turned off the path to head to GZ and the woods became a little mushy. Well we were determined to find this one. Craftimom saw it with no problem in its hiding place while I could not see it until she pulled it out. What did you expect for a guy that is going in for Cataract surgery on 4/1. That's a story yet to be experienced and told.

So we ended up with 11 finds and 1 DNF. After we found the last one Katy called and said they were just about there. We headed off to the mall and got there just before they did. What a day. We were tired, cold, and couldn't wait to get home to go to bed. All in all it was a fun day. Next time we'll wait a while before we go pick her up. Well maybe we won't because there is always another cache or two to find, or three... or maybe a dozen.

I know you're thinking that GeoWoodstock IX is old news by now.  But I've just realized that I didn't really share the spoils of my trip.  So I'd like to take the opportunity to do so now.  

Trackables are a special part of geocaching.  There are many types of them as well-geocoins, path tags, and Travel Bugs to name a few.  What makes these items special is that they each come with their own serial number used for tracking the item's location.  You can choose to pick up and move along one of these trackables or you can just "discover" it, meaning you log that you saw it instead of removing it from the geocache.  

I've always wanted me own geocoins, ever since peaceout showed me hers last September.  I had a great opportunity to shop around in Pennsylvania and I came home with five, including the one Brad picked out.

This coin celebrates the fact that I made it to my first Mega event.  An event can only be considered Mega if it has over 500 people in attendance.  GeoWoodstock had over 5,000.  Events this size usually last a day or more and have smaller events that coincide with it.  

Back of the Mega coin

This is the coin Brad chose.  Not only did they have an EMT coin, but they also had one for firefighters and all branches of the military.  They also had one shaped like a miniature space shuttle.  The hatch opens up to show the tracking number.    

This last coin I chose because of the colors.  I love green.  I also thought it was unique in the way that the coin actually opens and closes on a hinge inside the body of the dragonfly.  


I initially thought that these coins would never see a cache.  I'm worried that they'll disappear much like my two Travel Bugs have.  I've seen two options for my situation.  One is to make a color photo copy onto some thick paper and laminate it.  I recently picked up a "coin" like this and thought it was a great idea.  My other option is to purchase a Proxy coin.   These folks had a booth set up at GeoWoodstock and they sell proxies so you don't have to put your actual coin in the cache.  Instead, you send out the duplicate which has the same tracking number as your original.  These copies are only a few dollars and wouldn't be as tremendous a loss as if the real coin went missing.

Other than coins, I also picked up a dozen or so new Path Tags which I'm eager to share.  Just not today...

Back when I first started geocaching I remember seeing a video on extreme caching and thought, "wow, those guys are nuts!" Little did I know that "those guys" were geocachers in my area of Pennsylvania. There was this one guy that was particularly interesting. Keoki-eme is his caching name but he is known by his very appreciative extreme caching friends as, George.

Why appreciative? He is one of the pioneers in the craft of setting "total challenge" of mind and body, 5/5 extreme geocaches in the North East. I remember when he was the FTF on one of my more challenging hides. He had a lot of great things to say about it in an email to me but in the end he said, "the finish (or final) was deflating compared to the location and placement of the first stage". I ran right out to change it. I was out there scouting for days and finally placed it more appropriately. I remember wishing he could see the new location. I sent him an email but weeks went by and nothing. Then one day, Keoki_eme in my inbox and a short and sweet "nice job, excellent placement", I was flying high. I respected him for that. He really followed through and I appreciated his direction. Today at 4/4, The Dog Day's Of Summer is my most challenging cache.

Keoki_eme is an extreme geocacher. I watch from a distance but have never had the nuts to do what they do. Be it caves, trees, structures, cliff climbs, crawl, rappel, squeeeeze through some of the tightest spaces that just writing this has me a little short on breath, they do it all. My many phobias keep me away, but I watch and I wonder. I recently reached out to George in a "out of nowhere" email that I'm sure took him off guard. I couldn't believe it when he accepted to do a guest post! The questions just poured out of me, there was so much I wanted to learn and learn I did. In Northeast PA, Extreme Geocaching and Keoki_eme are synonymous! Everyone around here knows that if you’re going on a Keoki cache, you’re in for a wild time and you may not return the same person or at all. George, thanks for being a part of CacheCrazy and helping us understand the ins and outs of Extreme Geocacheing. Here goes......

Q: Can you tell me how you got into geocaching and where, in your experience with the sport, did it turn extreme?
Got into geocaching when my friend Mark aka “team kasch” talked my wife and I into it. The first cache we went out on was  “ZOFODRAZIWEHT”.  After that, I was hooked.  Amy was for a time, then she began to hate it as I became obsessed.




Check out some of their videos



It seems to me that no matter here or abroad, Extreme Geocaching is a popular activity among those who seek "a little extra" in their cache. It's unlikely that you'll see these guys looking up lamp skirts, they have much better things to do such as dangling from ledges, climbing cliffs and searching in some dark, wet cave for their treasure. It appears that the cache itself is secondary to the experience and the experience is one you won't soon forget.




And these freaking guys are just outright crazy, cachecrazy!

I have to also give a shout out to our very own homeboy, DctrSpott who also fits squarely into the extreme geocacher category

I think for now anyway, I'll keep my feet planted firmly on the ground and continue to watch and admire. Hey, it's still an adventure to me and you never know, one day you may see a picture of me, all harnessed up and hanging from a cliff conquering my fears! Now if I could just figure out that clown and pink elephant thing?
Have fun and cache crazy!