These Are the Caches in Your Neighborhood

Howdy. It's been a while. The holidays played havoc with our caching schedule but this week we're back in the saddle again. This week, Mad Mike couldn't join us and Tserof had to work until noon so we decided to do some caches close to home. Surprisingly, we hadn't cleaned out Lincoln County completely so we had those on the list as well as a few in the north Alabama area.

We also had another reason for this week's trip. After scrimping, saving, and begging every relative we have for Christmas cash, Ashlynne and I finally managed to buy our own GPS. And just in time for my business trip to Jackson, Tn at the end of the month. Anyone know some good caches in that area? We had planned to get a Magellan 400 since we figured that's all our budget would afford but we managed to find a Magellan 500 bundled with topo software at Costco for $179 so we grabbed it.

The soundtrack for this week is "Ramones Mania!" by The Ramones.

Since Tserof was working, Fish met Ashlynne and I early to hit a couple of the Lincoln County caches that he hasn't gotten. Now, before I get into the week's caching, I have to tell you that Fish will no longer be known as Fish in the blog. Fish, who has been Fish as long as I've known him, has asked that I begin referring to him by his GC.com name, Vorin. I guess he doesn't think he's getting the riches and notoriety of the rest of the Bassmasters, due to confusion over his name. *looks about for the fame and notoriety* Or maybe he's going through a mid-life crisis. In any case, I am nothing if not accommodating, so please take note that Fish is now Vorin, aka "The Geocacher Formerly Known as Fish" or, as he likes to be known to his friends, "&". It's all good, so long as he doesn't start asking me to call him V-Diddy.

Anyway, Vorin wasn't with us when our group did Froglegz's caches so we took him around to do those. These caches are detailed in another blog so if you haven't read about them, skip down a few pages. We hit Elk River Access #1, #2, and #3 as well as Cowley Bridge Cache, which is one of my favorites in Lincoln County. Vorin was appropriately impressed and I used the Cowley Bridge cache to drop off a travel bug looking for good fishing spots (as this most certainly is) and pick up a Night Caching coin.

From there, we headed back to pick up Tserof. Our next cache was Fish Hatchery Rest Area. This is a fairly recent cache, set out by Wildthing73. I had thought about putting a cache out here, but Wildthing beat me to it. Not too much to say about this cache. Fairly standard micro hide. We found it without much trouble. I did take note of the wooded area nearby though, as I have a cache hide in mind that is looking for some woods to live in. These may be the ones.

Next up was Hwy 64 TB Rest Area, which promised not one but two Green Jeep TB. I can't remember much about the cache hide itself, as we did a bunch of them this week and they've all begun to run together in my little brain. I left a TB I had with me and took the Jeep, which I have plans for. More on that later...

Our next cache was Chrysalis, by noted hobbit sympathizer Rick618. This one was a hard hide for us. The GPS led us to the wrong spot and I was determined that Rick was just the evil kind of person who would hide a micro in the kudzu-coated tree and so picked over every leaf looking for it. As always, we over-analyzed the cache name, the clue, and the logs, looking for any idea of Rick's evil machinations (we were flashing back to his satanic "16" cache a few weeks ago). In the end, as usual, the cache was right under our noses. Well hidden, but not enough that we shouldn't have been able to get it. Apparently, these hobbits have studied us and found our weakness... easy caches. We must get better at being bad...

Next up was Circa 1950's, which is an old Highway Patrol building. This is another cache where it was right in front of our faces, we even put our hands next to it several times, but we missed it completely. It just happened as we were about to give up that I saw it right out in front of us and grabbed it. For those of you fearing that we might get good at this and the blog might get boring, never fear. The blog may get boring because I'm nearly too tired to write these days, but it won't get boring because we've gotten good. Anything but, I'm afraid...

Next was a set of three caches in a series called "Cappy's Park." The park gave us some fits as we consistently drove into the wrong entrance, through the wrong gate, and down the wrong path. Tserof, driving his Titan today, made numerous "semi-circular course corrections" while Vorin attempted to navigate. Not a lot to say about these caches beyond that. Fairly easy micros. Evidently getting to them is the hard part...

Next up was Spelce Landing. This one may not be a cache much longer as it's right smack in the middle of the area where they're working on widening Hwy 64. In fact, Tserof had to ignore the orange barrels telling us not to enter the work area to even get to the cache. Hey, what's a little law breaking among friends. Again, not a terribly hard cache but a nice one in a nice spot. Be a shame if the construction ate this one.

Our next cache is Gone to the Dogs. We were a little apprehensive about this one since it's on private land and the logs said it was pretty difficult. There were several DNF from cachers much better than us. As we pulled up, the owner was outside on a go-cart and came driving over. We hoped that the person who placed the cache really had gotten permission. Sure enough, the first thing the owner asked was if we were geocachers. He told us that "it must be real hard to find. I don't even know where it is but lots of people come look for it and hardly anyone finds it..." He didn't even get half of this sentence out before Vorin came up with the cache. The property owner was amazed and declared us "really good". He don't know us very well. These tough caches we can do but give us a lampskirt micro, and we're stumped...

Next was Green Water. This was a Cacheburns cache and it showed (although we later discovered that it had been muggled). Thorns were everywhere and both Vorin and I donated the required blood to the caching day. It was also quite wet and we all got soaked feet. The denizens of Mordor hate wet feet...

Our next cache was Tea Snob. This was another urban micro that gave us fits. To be fair to us, it was a really good hide but it's still embarassing to nearly DNF an urban micro. But Vorin eventually found it and we moved on.

Our final cache of the day was Holy Cache. Holy Cache is the oldest cache in Lincoln County, having been put out in 2002, but somehow we always managed to miss it. Too bad for us, as it's a really neat cache. The log's full and we've been told the people who hid it don't cache anymore so we may try to contact them and see about adopting it. If you haven't done this cache yet, go do it. Cool hide and pretty historic as old as it is.

That's it for the day, cache-wise. 12 for us and 16 for &. I think that may be a record.

From there, Mad Mike joined us and we headed over to the Elk River Coffee shop to meet up with our mortal enemy, Cacheburns, about a kind of "cold war" co-event we're planning. I can tell you that, if this event goes off like we plan it to, it's going to be a good one. Don't miss it if you can make it by at all. The event is here.

I'm hoping all our friends and nemeses can come. We've spent a lot of time populating Well's Hill Park with caches and we'd like to show them off. We've got a whole Lord of the Rings theme going and people coming for the hike will be tour guided by either a Zen Bassmaster or an evil hobbit. From there we'll be headed to the Zen Bassmasters' favorite hang-out, La Fuente Mexican restaurant.

No blog next week as we're forgoing caching to spend some time out at Well's Hill and make sure all of our guides actually know where we're going. Come see us on the 27th at 11:00 am and hike with us. We'll have high impact groups and low impact groups so no one has to feel bad about being a little slower than our "pro" hikers. I will personally be leading one group and anyone who's cached with me knows how slow I walk.

Until next time...