Well, well. It has been a couple days since my last post and I thought that I would bring people, whether anyone is reading or not, up to speed about what I have been doing geocaching wise. This week has been a lot of fun.
July 15th
It started with a short-focused geocaching trip with a couple of good friends. Or that was what I had said in the original email. Our group of three headed to High Ridge Park in Howard County to try and find all of the caches within the park. Once we arrived we decided to head to the furtherest cache out. A View to a Bridge involved about a half mile hike with the last four tenths being a pretty good bushwhack over some hilly terrain. I lead the group in kind of a straight-line method of caching, my regular "Modus Operandi." But to my credit, we really didn't cross any big trails, an occasional deer-trail but nothing bigger. After we made the find there we headed over to two others in the park and were successful as well. The only one we did not attempt was a puzzle that we just weren't sure of our coordinates. After a short breather at the car we headed over to Riverside Ruins. After spending a little time looking up things, I found out that these "ruins" were part of an old dam in the area. The cache was at the top of the ruins about 30 ft in the air. Old stone ruins, me in old tennis shoes with no tread - why not? The climb up made me stretch, both literally and figuratively. Literally it was a good exercise in me finding out my limits, could I climb it. Figuratively - in that COULD I climb it? Did I have the confidence in myself that would allow me to get up there. Come to find out, I could and did climb it! It was the way down that wasn't reassuring. I decided to jump down the last five feet or so. Not a good choice! I avoided any rocks on the landing but the soil itself was pretty hard and my shoes had little to no support or cushioning so I bruised my foot pretty badly. Nothing too serious - a little painful to walk on it but I'm okay now. My first geocaching injury - and hopefully my last.
July 17th
I was able to put the finishing touches on the mother of all puzzle caches, again with a good geo-friend. Scrabble Scramble 3: The Quest for Pieces was the latest creation by our resident puzzle master, here in southern Maryland. I had worked on each of the nine smaller, lead-in caches and had found those. I got a little help with some and gave some help to others on some as well. But the last puzzle was kind of a doozy. I literally "pieced" the parts together and then spent a couple of hours looking over then hint and the pieces. Then something hit me, no help here by the way, and I tried something. Eureka! The coordinates seemed to jive with the description of the area. After that it was a matter of finding the darn thing, which took about 15 minutes since we, my friend and I, both interpreted the hint incorrectly. But again - another job well done.
July 18th
My good geo-friend was on a streak and wanted a cache for today. A new cache, Bayfront Bounty had been posted the day before so we road up to Chesapeake Beach to find the cache. Being that we both are getting to presumptuous, thinking that everyone is trying to make the game hard, we completely over-looked this one for about 15 minutes or so. But after quoting the hint, in verse, we made the find quickly! (Note to self - not everyone is trying to make the game not fun!)
Hopefully my next post will be about my new earthcache being published! Cross your fingers.
