I am a golden god part 1.

There are some caches out there that just seem to take that little extra. That little extra might be detangling my hair from a tree for hours. Could be those moves that I do that I didn't even know I could do (are legs really supposed to move that way?). Could be the searing heat and humidity. Or the rain. But some of these you get to the point where you finally hit the wall and suddenly it happens. Suddenly there it is and it's over. And suddenly I just want to stand there regardless of who can see or hear me and shout "I am a golden god!" just like the movie Almost Famous.... as if anyone really truly cared.

Here's a collection of those stories.

1. Nanos. For a multi this is pretty straight forward. For someone who is not familiar with nanos and having some GPS bounce on the scene trying to look non-chalant in the midst of a wedding and/or graduation party.... not as straight forward. On my second ever nano. The first one was traumatic enough. My fingers frozen and trying to roll what I have come to call the worlds smallest joint without losing any pieces in the pine straw or down the edge of the cliff. This second nano didn't have frozen fingers but trying to traverse some semi-urban landscape and look like I really needed to be walking in that flower bed (which wasn't heavily bedded with flowers or I wouldn't have even tried). Not my favorite cache type. but when you daintily pluck one off any any hiding spot be it pine tree or signage you can't help but have a moment where you feel like Horton from Horton Hears a Who holding that little tiny flower puff with an entire world inside. In case anyone was wondering the house in question in multi is Bob Dylan's childhood home.

Bob Dylan's Childhood home

2. Puzzles. My first true puzzle cache. I am limited on my ability to solve puzzles but when this logic puzzle dropped on my radar I got right to it. I can logic puzzles right? Of course I can. So after talking it through many times trying ot find that one clue that I just wasn't seeing I finally solved it. I felt like a golden princess at that point. Dropped it into a trip with my mom. Planned some caches in this area in the early morning. Who would have thought that it was going to be like 88 degrees in the early morning with incredible humidity and not a darn cloud in the sky. Entered the coordinates into my unit and took off toward an obvious beacon only to be told the cache is in the middle of the parking lot. Well how could this be? After considerable searching.... gave up. Maybe I wasn't a princess after all. Tried again about a week later in slightly less heat. Sat in the parking lot and entered the coordinates and suddenly was sent 600 feet elsewhere. And up a hill. Well that's strange. Who would have thought something as a simple a miskeying of the coordinates would be such a problem. Found the cache and thusly walked uphill both ways (towards the cache and then back towards the car after another cache. Another phenomena I was not aware was possible.

3. Poison Ivy. And/or mud. First trip out here in the spring in the rain. Nice little walk along the steep edges of the river and a nice steep hill with heavy tree cover to navigate in the rain and mud. I gave up after the second near death experience on the hill. Second time out there mom came with to assure I could find my way out. The weeds had grown considerably. But I wasn't going to just give up this time. I was going to find it. I zig zagged my way down this messy hill. In and out of dead fall. Finally in the humidity and after having to pee for quite some time I found it. I had given up on the GPS long before that. I march out covered in dewy wetness impressed with my cache prowess. But oh. Something is awry. Something is itchy. So I blow it off. It must be mosquitoes. Right? Wrong. Sometime in the middle of the night I had a full on outbreak of poison ivy (or oak but more likely ivy) on the lower half of both of my legs. It would probably be most accurate to say I had 2 giant welts. One fully covering each leg. I stocked up on all that was anti-itch and incredibly smelly in the coming days. Sweated it off at work since I couldn't wear the short pants there with all that going on. Finally cleared up mostly. Showed a coworker who duly noted I should have probably got a shot for that.

4. Migration. Sometimes caches move. One person moves them a little. Then another person. Some people think they shoudl be hidden differently and suddenly you are 40 feet away from where it should have been. Such is the case with this one. Beautiful area. If it was so pretty and relaxing I would have given up on this long before I did. We searched for sometime. In a last ditch effort I made one large circle around ground zero and from a slight hill I saw it. I saw the pen sitting on the log and saw the duct tape in the log. Called mom over and we figured out how to get the log open only to find a massive geocache.  A huge pvc pipe with a non-threaded end. Lessons were learned. There is a suction when you place such a lid on a pipe. Folks with small hands can't manipulate the lid to get it off. But I wasn't going to give up. Threw down the jacket. Wrapped my legs around that beast and proceeded to use a full body effort to remove the lid from the cache because no way was I going to log a DNF on a cache I had in my hands. The owners subsequently brainstormed some ways to make this easier to open and placed the cache back in its original hiding spot.

5. First Multi. My first attempt at a multi did not go so hot. Started in the swamp in the spring before the bugs really came out in force. Spent much time laying on the trail. It said your feet didn't need to leave the trail after all.... made no mention of the rest of your body. This was an important cache for me. This was a little less than half a mile from where Paul Wellstone's plane crashed and the memorial to him.

I spent much time here at one particular sign getting to know that small part of his history intimately. the hours I spent looking at the sign. Looking at the bench. Looking at the path. Looking in the trees... amazing. After a small shove in the right direction for the first step (which is where we were predominantly stuck) we were able to locate it and head off to the next step. The next step had me laying in a bog. Thank goodness it was well after snow melt and pre-heavy rain bog but it was still a bog and it was still moist. And by this point the bug were starting to become bothersome. And what's more fun than a bog on a pseudo-rainy day than one with a burgeoning population of little tiny biting insects. But we found it and laid on the boardwalk elated that we finally found "Paul" as we came to call this cache. Some people said step 2 was harder but we found it easier as we were more familiar with looking for caches than steps at this point. Not to say that it didn't get harder as it got wetter this year.

Paul's log being signed.

We cheered. We sighed. We laid on the boardwalk. We had a long moment of silence realizing that many discussions that were had those evenings were suddenly to be no more. It was nice that there were no other visitors here that day as we sat and took in the gravity of what happened there. I put some inspirational swag into the cache before we left. Even if you don't agree with his political leanings it was still quite the tragedy and absolutely heartbreaking what occurred that cold day.

DuPont Factory

I was doing some of the caches at Carey Lake this summer. This is now a recreational area with a variety of ski and walking trails, a  nice lake to swim in and some nice picnic areas. Through out the property of this park are old DuPont buildings falling into ruin with the largest of them being at the end of a road. All the ruins are able to be accessed and walked around during day light hours.

My first time out here we met Dr. Reynolds on the trail who talked about how the powder factory had exploded. After an hour long conversation with the doctor we opted to not go forth and try to find the largest cache that day as we had a whole host of other caches to get to and it appeared to be a hilly and swampy mess to get to the cache.

It was a while before I got out there again with another friend and we finally made the trek to the cache which turned out to be more hilly than swampy. It was one of those days where it seemed to get hotter and more humid the longer you were out in it and we had the added joy of neck high weeds to get to the cache. We finally get there and into some much needed shade of a small stand of trees only to fish the cache out and open it to find what appeared to be millions of red ants rushing around trying to hide their eggs. Apparently in the summer heat the ants decided to make the same hidey hole the cache was in their hidey hole as well. And apparently ammo cans are not impervious to ants as they had made quite the impressive nest in the can.

With some fancy maneuvers and both of us levitating off the seating area we had found we managed to sign the log and replace the cache. If there was a travel item or good swag in there we would never know as we didn't linger around to find out. This was the summer of giant ant hills we determined as we walked back to the large building. There were so many huge ant hills along the edge of the trail.

We then spent some time in the building unsuccessfully searching for a micro cache. GPS bounce and all those hiding spots did not help at all.

The disappointment to me on these caches are that the history of this area was not reported in any of them. Dr. Reynolds had mentioned that factory had an explosion and after a little research we found that it appears there were two explosions there. The DuPont factory manufactured black powder for the mines to use for blasting the rock to get to the ore. It was not unusual for there to be little black powder factories in various places and for them to have explosions back then. This was before OSHA and Department of Labor standards.

In 1912 was the last explosion of this place killing two men. Before that there was another explosion that also killed 2 men. They were large explosions felt in neighboring towns. It appears that the black powder factory did not last much past the second explosion. The main building and the out buildings are now all falling into ruin and being reclaimed by the earth.

I like history in my geocaches and that little nugget of information would have probably made me a little more enthusiastic about doing the other caches in the area. It's a very cool area regardless and I look forward to returning to do the other caches there. 

The Travel Bugs

The family pets travel bug

The winter elf travel bug

Geocachers will occasionally use these items called trackables. There are a variety of trackable items. The travel bug tag as seen above, geocoins, cachekins, and so on and so forth. These items are typically placed into a geocache to be moved to another geocache and the tracking code is entered on the website as it happens. As the trackable owner I then can see every place that my items have gone and see the mileage they have accumulated in their travels.

I have a few trackables in the "wild" as it's called. I have one geocoin that I use simply to track my own mileage cache to cache as I do them. I have the two items pictured above. I have another elf like item out with a promotional expedia tag on it but it hasn't moved since I placed it. And I have a couple Pink Yime geocoins. I got two. One to release into the wild and one that other people can "discover" as they meet up with me in my travels. Some people are as interested in collecting the unique icons of many geocoins as they are interested in finding geocaches.

I keep my trackables simple. Some people put these complex missions on their trackables wanting to get to an end point by a certain date. They thusly become upset when that trackable moves in the wrong direction. Some people get horribly emotionally attached to their trackables becoming upset if they get stolen or lost (which is not unusual). Or if they are not logged in and out of caches correctly. I take the stance that once in the wild this will not be an object I see again. I bought it for the enjoyment of others and for my own personal amusement to see where it ends up. I'm not completely indifferent to the outcome of this object but I don't let it ruin my day.

And so far it's been nothing but enjoyable for me. I put together my pet travel bug after finding the key chain in a cache before a trip to Yellowstone. I had to have something. My old, arthritic dog was not able to go to this special pet geocache so I grabbed that and thought I could send it out symbolizing my pets. In some strange, sad irony the night I got back from Yellowstone my dog had a stroke and had to be put to sleep. It was heartbreaking as he was my old man and had been through so much with me. I watched my travel bug moving around over the next weeks filled with some sense of sorrow over what the bug signified wondering if I should change its significance to something more applicable to my dog or keep it as is. I kept it as is with many special memories of my old man with it. I watched bug as it went from Wyoming where I left it to Ottawa, and then to of all places around the Mediterranean. My bug saw the Vatican. It saw Bernini's angels. It saw Greece and Italy. And then came back to Canada and started drifting toward where I had memories and loved ones (which is where it sits today). I had hoped it would go back to Slovenia and see the places I saw but where it went was so much cooler. And I felt better. I look at and think what a life the old man had and what a life this bug has had.

The winter elf is somewhere up in Alaska taken there after a flash mob event where I sent it off with the person running the event. I sent that one out with no significance and just to travel to cool places with the hope that pictures will be taken of it in cool places. I can't blame anyone who doesn't take pictures though as I'm not always the best of photographing bugs while out (although I did get a bee travel bug with a live bee last summer).

I've moved a small army of these traveling items. Geocoins and travel bugs alike and occasionally go to their pages to see where they're ending up if anywhere. Or if they have just simply vanished off the face of the earth. Sometimes new cachers take them and fall out of the hobby and suddenly these items vanish. Or they're outright stolen. Or they are destroyed in any number of ways a cache can be destroyed. But it lends itself to some sort of connection to a community when you work on the honor system and keep these items moving. Some of these things have travelled thousands of miles and it's just amazing knowing they have passed hand to hand or cache to cache.

Eli's Farm

Eli's boots

Eli's house

Early last spring in my first attempt at geocaching without a partner I ended up at a pioneer farmstead known to me as Eli's Farm. The Wirtanen farm is considerably out in the country. You turn off the main highway and onto some country roads following signs or you GPS. You drive for what feels like hours sure that you passed whatever you were supposed to be looking for only to finally get to that last road and to the rolling farmland of Old Eli.

This is a guide yourself sort of tour. You wander around his land and take pictures of the buildings and equipment. I've never been there when it was busy but the volunteers take exceptional care of this little historic area. The day I was there I was heading into late evening and losing my sun. I always encountering sprinkles on and off. This was my first wet day geocaching as well.

I took a picture of a travel item I had been carrying around with me on Eli's boots as I wandered back to the cache. It was so peaceful out there that day even the rain wasn't bothersome and the walk was leisurely. I found the cache in good shape just off a mowed strip of land and I found my first pathtag as well.

I had been out here as a youngen and remembered it vaguely and thoroughly enjoyed coming out here again. Apparently later in the summer the cache got hit by some farm equipment because subsequent notes indicate the cache contents scattered about and no container in sight. Hopefully this cache will remain for others to find down the road.

The beginning

I took up geocaching this last spring as my new hobby. I found that since graduating from grad school I had time to do stuff like hobbies again and stumbled on this one while perusing my phone applications for something cool to take up time. I had heard about this years ago but with little knowledge on GPS in general combined with the expense of them I just couldn't bring myself to be involved. Now with the accessibility of the application on a phone and the realization that the hobby had spread and there were finally geocaches by me I took off.

I found my first handful of caches with my phone and upgraded rather quickly to a handheld GPS which added an entirely new learning curve to my hobby. I struggled with learning and a spring a snow storm but eventually got on my feet and running.

This cache season I have found 189 caches which all in all is not that impressive if one keeps track of numbers. But we have low cache density where I live limiting how many caches there are to find basically without travel. And that's fine with me. I also have limited patience for caches in some areas. I'm not exactly enthusiastic about the local bike trail where many seem to be located nor am I entralled with climbing up every mine dump in the area. But that's the beauty of it. I can go to caches that entertain me at any given moment. And I have.

I have crawled in and out of a variety of pine trees, traversed swamps and stepped in things I would rather not remember. I have spent a lot of time laying on trails and board walks of trails trying to get a "different perspective." Thankfully no one ever actually caught me doing this.

Caching was used to break up a road trip to Yellowstone this summer. Who would have thought there were things to see in North Dakota. I was surprised by all we saw in North Dakota while doing this and had such life changing experiences as the cow screaming at me.

So I hope to ultimately use this to put memorable stories of my adventures.