I went geocaching over the weekend. I was spurred by the fact that I had a travelbug* from the previous weekend to put back in circulation. So I headed out to an area in town I hadn't geocached in before - leading to the Pulpit Rock area. I'd hiked it once from the West 5 years ago, during the first few weeks I had moved to Colorado. I could not get anyone else interested in going, so I was heading out on my own. Having looked at the area with Google Earth, I decided to try using my bike. Coming from Academy, it made for a pretty easy trip. I wound up having to abandon my bike a few hundred feet from the caches. Well, it was easier on the bike at first. But I didn't realize that the last cache I wanted to hit was up from the first 2. Quite a bit up. Very far up the back of Pulpit Rock. I wound up pushing my bike slowly up, taking probably close to an hour. But I knew there was a dirt trail that lead to streets from having hiked it 5 years ago. It turns out the last cache was along the dirt road, so that wasn't bad. I thought I would have to work my way out to the main streets, taking quite a few miles to get back to where I parked. But I was very, very pleasantly surprised to find the street I was on curved around to where I parked in about a mile - taking less than 10 minutes. It nearly made up for all the extra time pushing my bike took. But the worst thing was that I forgot the travelbug, and hadn't realized it until I was at the first cache - and I didn't want to go back then. I had figured I could pop it into another cache afterwards. But I didn't have enough time.
*travelbug - a special item that has 'dog tags' with a special tracking number - that is designed to be moved from geocache-to-geocache - sometime with a specific task such as making it from coast-to-coast.
Sunday, my wife had her grand opening of her new Massage Office. It went ok. It was find as a party to introduce the office to colleagues and a few friends. It was not as successful as a marketing event, to draw new clients. But overall it went well.
Later in the evening, I wanted to go geocaching again, to try to get rid of the travelbug. It was a spiderman figure, that my middle boy wanted very much to keep. So I really wanted to get it planted before he made it disappear. I didn't take all the papers with me. Just the coordinates of a new, smaller cache near home, and the coordinates of another in the same basic area that would work if I couldn't find the new one. I managed to get the coordinates reversed, and wound up heading for the known cache. It was at that point that I realized that again I had left the travel bug in the car. It was getting towards dusk. If I'd had the bug, I would have just placed it in the known cache. But since I didn't I turned around and went back to the car. The first thing I did when I got in the car was to put the travelbug in my pocket.
I drove to the coordinates of the newer cache. On the way, a dog decided to cross without looking. Luckily I had plenty of room. I stopped, and saw a girl looking for the dog. She was calling for an adult to come help her. She said she was okay and told me I could go. I was willing to wait for her to cross. But she was waiting for the adult, so I drove carefully on. The dog stayed to the sidewalk as I passed. After a short drive through back streets, I found I was very close where a trail crossed a street. I parked, and saw there were 2 trees right near the coordinates, and nothing else really nearby. But it still took me a while. After about the 6th pass around the trees, I finally found it. I squeezed the spiderman travelbug into the container, signed the log, and placed it back. It was getting a bit dark by this point. The sun had been behind the mountains for at least 20 minutes. But I was pretty satisfied. I had found 4 more caches for the weekend.
I went on the geocaching site yesterday, and saw a person had trouble with the 2 trees cache - so I gave them some hints. I read about a brand new one not too far from my house, and I think I got my eldest interested in finding it. But he did not have a good day at school - so it will not happen today.
*travelbug - a special item that has 'dog tags' with a special tracking number - that is designed to be moved from geocache-to-geocache - sometime with a specific task such as making it from coast-to-coast.
Sunday, my wife had her grand opening of her new Massage Office. It went ok. It was find as a party to introduce the office to colleagues and a few friends. It was not as successful as a marketing event, to draw new clients. But overall it went well.
Later in the evening, I wanted to go geocaching again, to try to get rid of the travelbug. It was a spiderman figure, that my middle boy wanted very much to keep. So I really wanted to get it planted before he made it disappear. I didn't take all the papers with me. Just the coordinates of a new, smaller cache near home, and the coordinates of another in the same basic area that would work if I couldn't find the new one. I managed to get the coordinates reversed, and wound up heading for the known cache. It was at that point that I realized that again I had left the travel bug in the car. It was getting towards dusk. If I'd had the bug, I would have just placed it in the known cache. But since I didn't I turned around and went back to the car. The first thing I did when I got in the car was to put the travelbug in my pocket.
I drove to the coordinates of the newer cache. On the way, a dog decided to cross without looking. Luckily I had plenty of room. I stopped, and saw a girl looking for the dog. She was calling for an adult to come help her. She said she was okay and told me I could go. I was willing to wait for her to cross. But she was waiting for the adult, so I drove carefully on. The dog stayed to the sidewalk as I passed. After a short drive through back streets, I found I was very close where a trail crossed a street. I parked, and saw there were 2 trees right near the coordinates, and nothing else really nearby. But it still took me a while. After about the 6th pass around the trees, I finally found it. I squeezed the spiderman travelbug into the container, signed the log, and placed it back. It was getting a bit dark by this point. The sun had been behind the mountains for at least 20 minutes. But I was pretty satisfied. I had found 4 more caches for the weekend.
I went on the geocaching site yesterday, and saw a person had trouble with the 2 trees cache - so I gave them some hints. I read about a brand new one not too far from my house, and I think I got my eldest interested in finding it. But he did not have a good day at school - so it will not happen today.
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