This is just a plain old fun cache that earned a Favorite Point from me.  A definite must if you are ever in the Palm Springs area!  I could elaborate, but just watch the video below.     SEVERE SPOILER ALERT: cache container and location revealed below!    

I am a numbers weirdo.  I notice palindromes on my odometer.  I find numerical patterns in phone numbers.  I love dates like 07-08-09 or 12-12-12 or that on the 14th of this month at 9:26:53 it will be pi day – 3.141592635.  Yes, I like numbers. And my obsession with numbers blends great with geocaching.  There are so many number challenges to be had, but how to keep them all straight? There are a ton of great programs and websites that can help us numerically gifted (and slightly OCD) people out: The statistics link on one’s geocaching profile (here’s our stats!) www.mygeocachingprofile.com www.project-gc.com www.gsak.net www.logicweave.com/cachestats.html   What geocaching sites do you visit?  Post your reply below!

Woot woot!  What a way to start the year, an FTF on January 1st! A local cacher had hidden a string of caches in a nearby park on 12/28 and I was unable to get to them.  Finally I had a day off, so I checked the cache pages and they were still unfound.  We loaded up and headed out. A quick 10 minute drive landed us in the first GZ with high hopes.  Kiddo and I hopped out and arg… fresh foot prints in the dirt.  My heart sank.  We quickly found the cache container and sure enough we had been beaten to the first to find by cacher CanyonWildcat. But not all hope was lost.  There were six caches in the series, maybe there was still a chance.  We headed over to the 2nd GZ and as I wandered around in circles waiting for my GPSr to center I was approached by a man with a smile, it was CanyonWildcat! We talked a bit and he had only found the first two, so we cut the conversation short and headed off some more FTF’s!  He went left and I to the right.  I DNF’ed the next cache, but pressed on and finally came up with a clean log sheeting waiting for my signature. The cache was CS20 – Another Rocky Bison and it was a fun find indeed!  Difficulty was 1.5 which might be a little low if one had not seen this kind of hide before, but with the title and hint it made for a great FTF to start the year.     SEVERE SPOILER ALERT: cache container and location revealed below!    

As we roll into a new year, we are forced towards the inevitable New Year’s Resolutions.  Lose some weight, exercise, work less, play more!  Arg. Last year, I tossed a few geocaching resolutions onto the list: Attend WWFM XI Make my 2000th find Continue my streak of at least one FTF a month Looking back over the year, all three were achieved, hooray! With the clock ticking down to the New Year, I am not sure of my resolutions for 2015, but I think the FTF streak will stay on the list. What are your resolutions for 2015?  Feel free to post them on the comments – I am still looking for inspiration        

Yep another FTF!  A clinical psychologist might say that I have an addiction problem.  He might be right.  I cannot help it.  I love the little twinge when I get that new email from Geocaching with the subject “New Traditional Cache”.  I love the bigger twinge when I see that it is close and I have a chance.  I love the anticipation as I (safely & legally) race to the GZ and that final moment of triumph when I see the clean log sheet awaiting my FTF signature.  Ahhhh the rush. Today was that day.  Being that the cache was newly published and a good ways out of the normal FTF “mad-race-to-claim-the-find-first-signature slot” zone of San Diego, I felt pretty confident of my odds, but one can never really know.  I have come in second on an FTF hunt with the first cacher scoring the honors in under 10 minutes from publish time (I was there about 15 minutes after publish!) With today’s find, it was a nice drive out into the country on a gorgeous morning.  The cache is called, “Washed Away.”   SEVERE SPOILER ALERT: cache container and location revealed below!  

    And what a great cache to score our 2000th smiley on!  It was an event cache on 12-13-14 called “For The Numbers: 12.13.14” The event was held down at Mission Bay in San Diego and it was an absolutely B-E-A-utiful day!  There was food, folks and fun with 49 teams posting an Attended log.  A big shout out goes to team habu! for hosting the event – they really went above and beyond with games, food and even some awesome prizes given away in a raffle! The event was co-located/hosted with as a Munzee event – more to come about that in another post 🙂 ! This find also knocked off another one of our New Year’s Resolutions – crest the 2000 find mark… and we still have two weeks left in the year!  

I ended 2013 with an FTF on New Year’s Eve and decided to set a New Year’s Resolution to try to get at least one FTF every month this year! I started 2014 off with a real quick FTF on January 2nd, but some months really came down to the wire. Today concludes my resolution with my December FTF coming on Witch Creek CDF cache. We spotted the cache location as we drove up to the GZ and were rewarded with a clean log sheet to sign!   SEVERE SPOILER ALERT: cache container and location revealed  below!         And just in case you were wondering, here is our FTF list for the year: 1/2/14 GC4W6V3 TSJNAC #3 1/14/14 GC4X049 Too Much to Carry 1/22/14 GC4XCQC Cache of the Day – Cobia 2/12/14 GC4YFB2 Another Beer for my Horses 2/12/14 GC4YFWW Go Green 3/23/14 GC50VPA Mollusk cache of-the-day-atlantic-sea-scallop 3/31/14 GC51CJ5 Calavera Hills Volcanic Plug 4/17/14 GC52GBH Cedar Creek Trail 5/30/14 GC55XC9 Freshwater cache of the day – Largemouth Bass 6/1/14 GC55BT3 PH – Not My Fault 7/2/14 GC582C5 The Legacy of Captain Red 7/2/14 GC582CF Dat Moss Do? 8/12/14 GC5AQ7F SNM 8/24/14 GC58VH1 Helicopter Rescue Viewing Area 9/1/14 GC5C3M7 Mount Gower Open Space Preserve 9/18/14 GC59GHX South Clevenger Trail Head 9/18/14 GC5D610 Are you local? 9/23/14 GC5DFC7 Cows and Airplanes 10/16/14 GC5EXBK Cable Goes Thru 10/16/14 GC5EXCA A Pile With A View 10/27/14 GC5FGTX MRF1 – Point Beach 11/26/14 GC5GT05 Find me, Find me not 12/6/14 GC5HFTX Witch Creek CDF

Sometimes a night cache is unavoidable, such as my 3:15 am FTF.  Other times, we can choose to hunt down a geocache while basking in wonderful sunlight or attempt the find under the cover of darkness. Here is Night Caching Pro/Con list that I have come up with over the years: Day Pro: It’s light out! Night Con: It’s dark out!   Day Con: Muggles – lots of them. Night Pro: Muggles – all in bed by now.   Day Pro: Cache container easy to spot. Night Con: Cache containers may be hard to spot.   Day Con: Containers may be hard to spot. Night Pro: Containers may reflect the light from your torch!   Day Con: All the FTF’s are posted at night. Night Pro: All the FTF’s are posted at night!   Recently SBlookers and I hunted down a cache at night with pretty good success.  Check it our below:   SEVERE SPOILER ALERT: cache container and location revealed  below!    

I love the FTF as you are well aware by now.  For this hunt, team SBlookers and I were in NYC and I saw this one had just published so off we went early the next morning (okay kinda early – noon – but in our defense, we were on west coast time!)  I was a little worried when we arrived at the GZ because there were footprints, very fresh footprints, all over the place.  ARG, had we been beaten to my first New York FTF?  I checked the smart phone app and hooray, they were indeed fresh footprints from a geocacher, but he had DNF’ed!!! Here is my Found it log:    Found it 10/27/2014 FTF baby, oh yeah SBlookers and I headed out from Queens to grab this one this morning. As we arrived at the GZ, I saw a ton of footprints in the sand all around the GZ. Oh no, did someone beat us here? I whipped out the smart phone app and refreshed the listing. A DNF, hooray, there was still a chance – but looking at the area, it could be a tough find, but unlike the first cacher, we had ALL day So with a little perseverance and a lot of looking, we made the find – Woot Woot! A big TFTC SEVERE SPOILER ALERT: cache container and location revealed  below!

Team sblookers and I were out grabbing a few caches in Sedona and we ran across this cool container!  I love the creativity of geocachers… Check out this cache:   SEVERE SPOILER ALERT: cache container and location revealed below!  

I was recently in Telluride, CO and found this cool little cache near my lodging. It was a fun cache find – especially since I was probably hypoxic given that the geocache was hidden around 8600′ above sea level. If you don’t mind a spoiler, check out the cache pictures below! What has been your highest cache find?  Share your high altitude finds here!   SEVERE SPOILER ALERT: cache container and location revealed below!      

  With only days to spare, we completed our 7 Souvenirs of August challenge. We attended an event cache, logged our sixth and final cache requirement and were rewarded with the 7th souvenir – the Achiever.  Some cachers, much more motivated than I, actually knocked all of them out within hours of the challenge. I checked at 7:00 am PST on August 1st and 74 cachers had already completed the challenge. We were the 48,905th ones to complete the challenge, not bad right? You’ll notice my Attended log was very poetic.  I just couldn’t wait any longer! Did you complete the challenge?  Send us your Achiever number and we’ll post it here with all the fame and glory that comes with it      

  Whoohoo, only one more to go!  We knocked out the Sightseer Souvenir by finding a multi-cache. As with puzzle caches, I am not the biggest fan of multi-caches either. I mean, I have to hunt down at a minimum two points (with some multi’s having over 10 waypoints!) and yet I only get a GC credit for one smiley. I know, it’s not about the numbers, it’s about the adventure. But then again, if they (and we) didn’t care about the numbers, then they wouldn’t give us an entire page dedicated to STATISTICS. Anyways… the multi-cache we grabbed was a fun adventure and well worth the effort. Here is our found it log:  Found it Working off our 7 Souvenirs of August.   Arrived at the posted coords and found the data for waypoint two (kiddo doing the counting for me). We crunched the numbers, punched in the coords and headed back towards town.   We parked about 200′ from the GZ and kiddo & I headed for the cache. An easy find when in range. We signed the log and returned the cache to its hiding place.   TFTC SPOILER ALERT:  Cache container and location revealed!    

Yes, another FTF! I love the anticipation of racing (well, obeying all traffic laws in an attempt to get to the GZ as quickly as possible) and the thrill of a clean log sheet. This video pretty much sums it up.     SEVERE SPOILER ALERT: cache container and location revealed below!    

This was a fun geocache I scored while on the road.  I have seen this type of hide before making this find a little easier, but it still is a great cache container!   SEVERE SPOILER ALERT: cache container and location revealed below!  

  Four down, I can smell that final secret souvenir! Today, I knocked out the “Puzzler” souvenir.  It was a tough find, taking close to an hour from start to penning my name down on that log sheet.  Here’s another confession: I hate puzzle caches.  Just give me some coords and clues and I will gladly hike several miles and find a cache, but this ambiguity of puzzles and mysteries can be frustrating. But not to be dissuaded, I searched out a ? cache and headed off to the GZ.  Here is my found it log for GC2QCPR Tranquility: Torah, Torah, Torah:  Found it Whew, found it!I have done other library caches before, but with the hint and my geosenses I knew this one was going to be a little different.I easily found the library! Then I wandered in to start my search. Bummer of a day to attempt this cache; it was over 90 degrees outside and the a/c was broken inside  Being a frequent visitor of this place, I quickly found what I thought was the GZ and started my subtle searching. No container. Hmmm… I headed to the other side of the library looking for my plan 2 location. I looked around GZ #2 and still no luck.After 20 minutes, I broke down I asked the assistant branch manager (who happens to be a friend) for some REF help and he pointed me over the branch librarian… who immediately started asking me about the Torah. Fortunately, I have some knowledge of it and she confirmed my REF idea was close (she was aware of the cache) and a quick return to the GZ proved successful and I found the cache. I penned my name down and returned the container to its hiding spot.So to wrap it all up, I ended up with a tour of the library, a smiley and an appointment to return the to library to teach a class on geocaching that one of the librarians had been wanting to put on! I’d say that was a good caching adventure.TFTC   SPOILER ALERT:  Cache container and location revealed!              

I just received a gentle reminder from Geocaching HQ on my inbox:

Today was International Geocaching Day 2014 and everyone who logged a find today earned a new souvenir.  This one took a little more effort than planned. I started with a DNFA on Magnetic, Green Power Box:  Didn’t find it Well this attempt was not so much a DNF as a DNFA (did not fully attempt).I drive by this cache every day to and from work. I was saving it for a nice simple p-n-g. Yes, I had read the cache name ONLY and been down at the dead end before and figured it was, well on the big green power box as the name implies. An easy 1/1 grab to be had on the way home. I needed my cache for today – International Geocaching Day – and was pretty tired from my day at work, so I figured I would nab the easy smiley and continue home. NOPE! I parked next to what I assumed was the GZ and looked around a bit. No cache. Hmmm… I whipped out the smart phone app and it pointed 160 feet that-a-way –> What?!? In the bushes? No this can’t be… oooohhhhh… D2.5 T2.0, this is starting to make sense now. I walked a ways down, but given that I was in full work attire, I abandoned the hunt to return at a later date more properly prepared. I shall return!  But I was not beaten, oh no!  I cached on.  Attempt #2: Cutie’s Cache  Found it Just what I needed – a quick and easy smiley. I was on my home from work and needed a find for today – International Geocaching Day. I had already attempted another cache enroute to my house, but DNF’ed (that’s another story all together). Fortunately I was able to park nearby, grab the cache, earn my International Geocaching Day 2014 souvenir and be on my way home in under 5 minutes.   SEVERE SPOILER ALERT: cache container and location revealed below!       And now, with no further ado…. drum roll please…. my new souvenir:

  Now we’re on a roll, three souvenirs unlocked – half way there! To unlock the Collector souvenir, we had to find either a virtual, whereigo, letterbox or webcam.  Being the over-achievers, SBlookers and I actually double tapped this one and found a cool webcam cache and an awesome letterbox cache. The webcam cache “Too Weird, Man” was, well, weird… but super fun.  I must admit, I do love webcam caches! GCHQ has archived this cache type, so only the grandfathered ones are left.  They are definitely a rare cache type, so I try to hunt them down whenever I can. This webcam was located inside a warehouse of old electronics – I mean all kinds of old electronics!  I highly recommend planning an extra 30+ minutes cruising around the store after nabbing the webcam photo. Thanks to the cache owner for keeping this one active.  Definitely deserves another favorite point from me! Here is our awesome photo:   We also hunted down a great letterbox cache, but that is a story for another day    

  Alright, there is number two!  I grabbed an Earthcache to unlock the “Nature Lover” souvenir.  This was a cool earthcache in the heart of Sacramento.  Arcade Creek Earthcache brings you to this little creek running through the middle of town. As a bonus, this cache has a traditional cache, benchmark and Munzee all within a 100 feet of it!  Cha-ching!     SPOILER ALERT:  Cache container and location revealed!  

  So I got a later start than I wanted, but now we’re off!  One down, five more to find to unlock lucky number seven! This was an easy p-n-g cache that I grabbed after lunch (yes, the classic post-meal smiley).   SPOILER ALERT:  Cache container and location revealed!    

Friends and fellow cachers “SBlookers” sent me a picture of a super fun cache they recently found.  SBlookers (at least Pappa Looker) and I have nabbed caches all over the country and even found a few abroad! This cache is one of the reasons I love geocaching:  a cool cache highlighting a cool place.  Geocache BB-61 USS IOWA highlights a retired battleship moored in the Port of Los Angeles.  This cache has 62 finds and 17 favorites in only 6 months of being active!   Here is how SBlookers earned this smiley: My parents and I were in San Pedro and we decided to see what geocaches were around us. We loaded the app and it showed one right down the street near the USS Iowa. We followed the bearing to the cache and we ended up in the parking lot of the Iowa. Lucky for us the ship was just closing and most of the visitors were driving away. This was a big help, so we parked right close to GZ.   I walked all around GZ using the coordinates on my phone, but the distance wasn’t lining up. I had read the cache description so I knew I was looking for a magnetic bison tube, but I had no clue where it could be after looking in all the usual places. So I went back to the car to get my Dad. We walked back to the area where the coordinates told us to go.   We were still baffled until we re-read the hint and the description again – it said the code was the year the USS Iowa was deployed. With that hint in mind we glanced over towards the fence and saw this somewhat out of place electrical box with a lock. We walked over to it, put in the four-digit code from the history of the Iowa that was posted in the cache description and -snap- the lock opened 🙂  Inside the box were many trinkets and the bison tube I was looking for earlier with an old log still in it. The new container, the electrical box, looked great and worked well. This was a fun find and a pretty clever and amazing geocache to find.   Oh yeah, that super secret geocaching tip I promised:  Don’t forget to read the full cache description!     SPOILER ALERT:  Cache container and location revealed!      

Geocaching just announced their August 2014 Challenge – the 7 Souvenirs of August. Last year’s challenge was to find a cache a day (sounds familiar eh?) for the entire month.  The reward was a souvenir for each day you found a cache. This year’s challenge is a little more simple… or complex depending on where you live! Here is what GC.com has to say: The 7 Souvenirs of August Traditional geocaches are the delicious bread and butter of geocaching. You look it up, go to the coordinates and — Boom! It’s there. Everyone high fives and it’s on to the next one.   This August, your mission is to explore more of the geocaching universe. Find specific geocache types and earn six unique souvenirs for your geocaching profile. Not sure which geocache type to find first? Take the quiz and discover your geocaching personality. Once you earn all six, you’ll be among the super-cachers that unlock a special seventh souvenir. Then you’ll be all set to show off your status with swag from Shop Geocaching.

I recently found one of TheeDragon’s caches (read all about it here).  Now TheeDragon wanted to share the spot light with another great cache that he had just found.  “Spongebob Square Cache” has been found 42 times with 35 Favorite Points awarded. Here is what TheeDragon had to say and his Found It log: The C/o put some time into the making of this cache.  Near the area where my cache you found in the Chino area.  Made us all laugh when we found it.  A must find for those that haven’t done it yet.  Found it Found with Unsanctified while out for a day of caching in the area. We saw how may favourite points this one had, so we just had to come find out. Wow. Very nice job on this container. We really enjoyed this one. Thanks for all your hard work that you put into this. Gets a fav from me. TFTC   SPOILER ALERT:  Cache container and location revealed!    

I love caches that are placed for a reason… when a CO (cache owner) sees a particular spot and the spot just calls to him to place a cache there! I had just finished working nearby and was about to head home when the urge to score a smiley overcame me – so out came the smart phone and I was rewarded with 2 caches within .5 miles – hooray!  Both caches appeared to be fairly easy by their descriptions and with the sweltering heat – okay maybe 97 degrees isn’t sweltering, but its still pretty warm in my books – I was off to the GZ. The first cache was called “Tanked Cache“.  Here’s why:   SPOILER ALERT:  Cache container and location revealed!    

Yes, another post about an FTF attempt.  What can I say?  I love them. Here is my “Found It” log:    Found it 07/11/2014 FTF baby, oh yeah  I saw this one publish on my way home from Costco. So I hustled up and tossed the cold items in the fridge and jetted back out. I hit the GZ at 2:00 pm and made the quick find on the quiet street. I quickly opened the container and pulled out the log… whoohoo! The #1 line on the log sheet was blank. I did a small happy dance and penned down my name. I was on the phone with fellow cacher finkbr so he could grab the FTF in spirit since he was stuck at work. As I was putting the log sheet back into the container I noticed something…. ARG! Someone had beat me to the cache and the FTF; he had just signed the back side of the log sheet  No FTF for me today… or do I get it since I was the first to sign the log sheet in FTF slot? Yeah, I guess that’s a stretch. Thanks for putting another hide out in our neck of the woods! A big TFTC

Admittedly, I am an FTF hound.  Yep, there it is, out there for everyone to know.  I love FTF’s… and I have hunted them down at all hours, in all locations, through rain and swarms of bees, up hills, down hills and back again. This little FTF adventure was due to an incredibly stupid early show time at work, fortunately that fresh, clean log sheet gave me a little boost – quite important in that not even Starbucks was open yet! SEVERE SPOILER ALERT: cache container and location revealed below!    

Today I am introduced a new cache review: the video cache!  These short 2 minute videos will help you get your needed cache fix without having to leave your computer.  While it might not be quite as fun as actually going out and finding a cache, maybe it will motivate or inspire you today.   SEVERE SPOILER ALERT: cache container and location revealed below!  

We just finished filling in all 366 boxes in our Finds for Each Day of the Year grid.  Yep, we have found a cache on every day of the year including the elusive Leap Day on February 29th! I noticed this stats box about 15 months ago, January 2013, and decided that the grid needed to be all green! A cache for each day of the year is all we needed and so we started.  A cache on January 4th, another on the 15th.  A smiley for February 14th and yet another on February 27th.  Next on the list, March 9th. The funny thing is that last year on this day we were actually well aware that we needed a find for March 9th and the wifey and I even talked about grabbing a cache that fateful day a year ago annnnndddd we were even out and about, but we plain ole forgot.  We got home, looked at each other – arg! So today is sweet redemption one year later! BEFORE:   AFTER:

Here are 10 things that might indicate that your quest to be the first to find on a cache has failed: 10.  The cache already has 215 favorite points. 9.  You see fresh footprints heading up the same trail you are traveling. Picture taken on a three cache STF run!  Yes, those prints are from the FTF’er!   8.  You see head lamps bobbing up and down and all around about 30 feet off the trail. 7.  It is 4:30 am and there is a car coming from the other direction on a dirt road that you are pretty sure is all but abandoned. 6.  You see someone sitting 10 feet from a lamp post that keeps checking their cell phone while waiting for the car parked nearby to vacate. 5.  As you enter the GZ, you notice a fair amount of rocks that have been over-turned. 4. The cache that just published is only 223′ from your buddy’s house… and he is an even worse FTF hound than you! 3.  There is a car parked nearby the GZ and, actually, it is parked exactly where you would have parked.  Hmmm, can you say LPC?   2.  The car parked by the GZ has a geocaching bumper sticker. 1.  You unroll the log sheet and see skydive121’s name already inked on the page! FTF baby, oh yeah 🙂

I love geocaching… and one reason is for the creativity that cachers put into their hides.  This particular cache left me smiling because it is a classic cache container.  I was in the hunt for an FTF on this cache, but ended up as an STF (second to find).  It was still a fun hike on a gorgeous SoCal morning.   SPOILER ALERT:  Cache container and location revealed!   A rare photo of the peanut butter jar in its natural environment… oooohhhh  aaaahhhhhh! Please no flash photography and talk quietly as to not disturb it.    

And everything in its place. My mom said this to my brother and I a million times as we were growing up.  And it actually stuck (thanks mom)!  This great phrase applies to all kinds of situations and yes, even geocaching. First, when you decide to hide a cache, you need to make sure that said place is safe, secure and follows GC’s guidelines.  But it also applies to us finders as well.  The cache hider chose that specific place and hide technique for a reason and we should try to keep it that way. SPOILER ALERT:  a super secret hide type revealed below!       Note how the previous find left this clever hide completely crooked!  Even a muggle might take a second look at this one. When we find a cache, part of our responsibility is to replace it as the original hider intended.  Take that extra minute and square up the fake cover, rebuild that UPR (unusual pile of rocks) or hang that bison tube just right. In the end everyone wins! Thanks readers for listening to my rant on this one 🙂

I nearly died on this cache!

Most of my friends just rolled their eyes. I am a bit of a story teller and who wants to hear a boring story? But seriously… I am almost died… kind of.