July Geocaching

Hubby's foot was declared healed and the boot came off on July 16th. We (he) chose to geocache on Friday, July 19th; one of the warmest, most humid days of the summer. I don't do heat and humidity, but I can drive and stay in the AC, which is exactly what I did for most of the hunts. My job is to drive and keep track of the finds. And talk to people who stop when we are parked on country roads.

 The little giant ladder came in handy for this one. I did help look for this one, bur Hubby made the find. I even helped carry the ladder down the ditch and back to the truck.

 Then there was this one. It had a higher terrain rating which meant it probably wasn't a magnet cache attached to the top of the culvert, but he looked anyway.

the culvert was hot!

I went down one side of the ditch to check the rocks and he went down the other. He wasn't wearing and didn't have his water boots along on this trip. We decided to just wait and talk to the cache owner when he returned from his honeymoon later this month.

another tree hide

Little giant to the rescue again. The sign post was in water in a very deep ditch. I did climb out of the truck to watch, shake my head, and add words of caution. (You choose the words!) No injuries on this one.

Although this is cat tails and water grasses, it is a good indicator of the grass height in the ditches along this county road. To add to the difficulty element, some of the ditches were very steep and not mowed. So even with a stick, Hubby was often surprised. The tall grass wrapped around his hiking boots and boot laces causing several soft landing tumbles.

He is on the other side of the reeds, looking for a geocache. Can you see him?

 Now can you see him? Thank goodness for the lime green shirt!

 Sometimes it is just easier to walk along the fence line or fields to find a safer ditch crossing.

This culvert was more to my liking!

an easy find

On July 25th we went back out to the same area to find the elusive culvert cache. The temperature was about 20 degrees cooler. We had talked to the cache owner in person and he gave us permission to replace the cache if it was missing. With all the rain we have had this summer, that was a very real possibility. Other geocachers claimed they had found the culvert container since we had been there on the 17th. This time Hubby was more prepared. He wore his water boots and had container replacements if it was needed.

emerging from the 8' culvert

The water boots made climbing the rocks and grassy steep ditch a bit treacherous, but he made it. The geocache container was in the culvert, halfway between the two ends. It was there all the time, but not visible when leaning over the top of the culvert. One HAD to enter the culvert from the water. And just how much water was in the culvert? Was it a stream? River? Lake?

It is a large culvert for the cattle to move from the pasture on one side of the road to the pasture on the other side. The water is simply a water hole made deeper over the years by the cattle moving from one pasture to the another, about 6 to 8 inches of water in the bottom on that day.

We ended the 25th by attending an event in nearby Hartford and a group geocaching find. Several in the group had looked for the cache before and did not find it. One cacher who had found it several years ago joined us to give a hand. He couldn't find it! Hubby made the find. One more smiley!

The 8 foot culvert cache was a big find. It was the last cache we needed to complete this 81 square of caches. Lots, and I mean LOTS of geocachers come to this area to complete this 81 D/T Challenge of caches. Cachers from Quebec had been here between the 19th and 25th of this month! Each cache is this challenge had a puzzle that needed to be solved to get the correct coordinates. I did a lot of the puzzle solving (with some help from other caching friends) so I don't feel too badly when Hubby does most of the leg work. After all, I did the brain work. (He he he.)

The steep ditches with the tall grasses were not that far from the 81 challenge caches. Most of these caches are a series of duckie caches; a mallard group of 10, 10 pintail duck caches, a series of teal duck caches, etc. We did about 15 - 20 of these this month to help with another geocaching challenge, Mystery at the Museum.

This challenge started July 11 and ends August 11. Like with most sports, one tries to compete with others or with themselves, to better their score and improve. Geocaching is like that, too. A contest or challenge is a reason use thinking skills and get outdoors. Unlike many other sports, there is no monetary reward. The reward is the smiley face on the map or...

virtual rewards like the 4 listed here. It only says I am a geocacher and I have participated and completed the challenge. And that is good enough for me!