Bad Tour Guide

I wrote back awhile ago that I wanted to play tour guide to some travel bugs. I wanted to do something special with the travelbugs with photos. I figured that would give the owner a bit of a thrill. But I guess I'm a bad tour guide.

I got an email last week from a travel bug owner asking me to move him along. He said the TB is only 2 months old and I was only the second person to enjoy it. Sure enough, I had the bug for 5 weeks. Man I suck. I felt really bad about it. I was going to move it along to LA, but my caching adventures didn't pan out. I told him that I'd move it along this last weekend and I did. I found a Travel Bug Hotel at the Chamber of Commerce. I dropped it off in hopes that it will move from this city to another. I also told him that I'd post a picture of my dog, as that was the goal of this TB. I couldn't get a nice pose of my dog and the TB, so I'll just have to dig into my photos to find a good pic of my dog.

The second one was this ginormous stuffed heart. This is the one I mentioned in a previous blog entry. I was hoping I'd be able to move him along. But because of his size, it was hard to find a cache that would hold him. It turned out I had him for 2 months! I didn't realize I had him for so long. I was able to get the picture of him on my Birthday Caching Adventure and Photoshop'd him the following week. I made him look like he was about to destroy Billings. I also stuffed him into the TB Hotel. He took up a good bulk of the space. I hope nobody gets mad at me for such a huge TB.

I guess next time I pick up a TB, I'll make sure I can move him in a timely manner. If not, he's staying behind.

Missed Log

Today I went out to the local park near the Yellowstone River. Its a great wildlife refuge with nice hiking trails. I knew there were a couple of caches that I have yet to hit in this area, so I thought I'd grab it.

The first was a quick park 'n grab. It took a bit of time to track it down, but when I found it, I felt a little stupid. It was a film canister and it was full of water. The log was soaked. But on the plus side, the log had a lovely blue tie-dyed look! Anyway, I spread the log out on my car. Since it was in the upper 80's, I figured I could probably dry it out while I searched for another cache.

I found one in the GPS and it looked familiar. But why would GSAK list it as unfound if I didn't find it? So I stared to go after it. I took the hard route and bushwhacked to the cache, only to find out that I have already discovered it awhile back. My name was in the log book. Well, I thought it was a GSAK bug. But when I got to work to double check if I logged it, I realized I didn't. Lucky for me, I had this blog to back me up. I looked for my log entry in the blog so now I know the date I discovered the cache. Log one more for my numbers. It only took me two trips to log it!

When I got back to the car, the log from the park 'n grab was dry. I signed the log and put it back where I found it. I guess that's my good deed for the day!

Chores vs. Playing

Now that I'm back, I had a ton of chores to catch up on. Today, I was going to be responsible and get some parts for a broken toilet during my lunch hour. But at the last minute, I decided I'd rather get a couple caches instead. I had to unload my POI's and Caches on my GPSr and my Palm before heading out. I was able to do that pretty quick and I grabbed a couple. They were pretty easy finds. The first one was in a park. The second was near my home that I've been meaning to grab. But its near a baseball field and usually full of muggles. But today it was quiet. It was a really cool container. It was a nano container with a built in magnet on the bottom and a screw top lid. It was about the size of two Cheerios stacked. The log was horizontal, which is a really great way for this kind of cache. Pretty cool.

I attempted two other caches. One I just drove by so I'd know the location. I'll go back for that one later. The other one was near my work. My lunch hour was winding down, so I didn't have much time to look. But I gave it about 5-10 minutes, but with no luck. Perhaps tomorrow, I'll take a nice long walk on my lunch hour and track that one down.

Scheduled Caching

Well, we got back from our little vacation yesterday. I racked up 3000 miles on the car. As I stated before, it was a family trip and geocaching would be limited. I ended putting 2708 caches into the GPSr and my Palm. I was hoping that if I was in an area, I'd be able to see if there was a cache nearby. So you'd think with that much info at my fingertips, I'd find a lot, right? Nope. I found only 2.

I was expecting to find most of my caches at rest stops. I was a little surprised that the majority of the rest stops didn't have any caches! I thought those would be prime cache locations. I guess not.

Instead, I ended up getting a couple of LPC's in LA area. One was in a grocery store parking lot, and another was in a mall parking lot. Say what you like about LPC's, but when you are in a pinch, hurting for numbers, or just need a quick fix, LPC's are where they're at. If it wasn't for LPC's, I would have found nothing on this trip.

So my vacation was lacking in the geocaching department. I'm a little disappointed despite the fact we had a great time on the trip. I just wish I could have gone out and grabbed a few more. I guess next time, I'll have to schedule some caching time for myself. Otherwise I won't get any done. Oh well. Lesson learned.