Tom's Takeover Tuesday - 3/30

Ok, so it's not Tuesday the 30th right now, but yesterday was Lynette's birthday so that took precedent over blog posts! :p Without further adieu, on to this week's update.

The wood carving project got a snag in it called Spring Break! I had almost finished it on Thursday, but Friday was Jackson's field trip to the Seattle Aquarium. Guess who was asked to chaperon. :) So here is a couple pictures from that experience...one active, one not so active. :D

I also will be out of town for three weeks starting on Monday so hopefully I can make it down to finish up the carving part tonight or tomorrow and then get the container, camouflage, and hide done before I leave Monday morning. Friday also marked the beginning of the church's annual Easter production which the whole family is involved in. So late nights during the weekend!

Amidst all that craziness I did manage to get out and do some caching...

On Saturday we went out with our caching friends WindingPath to Grand Mound and finish off one of our challenges. There was a bird dog hunting group at the park shooting live ammo and training dogs. This made our search a bit more complicated which included a 400 ft stretch of almost all severe down hill in the brush. After that we headed back toward Olympia and found a puzzle I had solved a couple weeks ago. Then we had to get back for the performance.

There were a couple FTF's this week. One was hidden in a tree in the woods in Fife Heights. It took a group of 4 of us to pull this one out! (WindingPath missed out on co-FTF by about 10 minutes even though they were in the park.) :( Then while the boys and I were out yesterday one popped up 1.4 miles away from where we were. We co-FTF'd that one with a couple local FTF cachers. :) I also was co-FTF on a couple in Tacoma that were real bears. One took almost a week and a half for anyone to find (it also involved translating Japanese, Lynette contacted the high school Japanese teacher,) and a multi-cache by the golf course on 19th that had some crazy good camouflage!

One more notable cache this week was the Victor Falls - Revisited cache. Lynette's birthday noted our 65th day of our 65 day streak challenge. So at naptime Lynette and I headed to the falls to grab this one. We had been putting it off because it isn't quite kid friendly due to the proximity to the falls and steep slopes. Now the only "local" caches we have left require wading or boating. :) We also snuck in a puzzle hide for Lynette's birthday...it's evil! (GC25WY4) Lynette's Looney, Obscurely Referenced Trickery (Good luck, Ryan) ;)

That's it for this week. Next's week update will be coming from Everett....joy.

Tom's Takeover Tuesday - 3/23

Has another week gone by already?! How time flies by when 3 days are spent in Everett for drill weekend. That didn't prevent me from getting some caching in though! Here's this week's news:

Starting with the wood carving project, 75% of the carving is completed. Now I'm just working on some finish work. This week's pictures will be by far the most exciting to me. There was some epoxy, some tear dropped beads, and some clear coating. One of the portions is not turning out so hot, but I should be able to get it fixed by the end of the week. After all the carving and finish work is done then it's just a matter of getting the camouflage done. There will be no photos of that part...(Nice try Ryan!) So here are this week's pics!

 
So on to this week's worth of milestones. We made our 400th find! We like to make major milestones hides by local cachers...eventually that won't be possible, but we got one at the old Sumner Cemetery. We also managed to make that find on our "Geocaching birthday." A year ago yesterday Lynette was out with a couple Coast Guard wives and found her first cache. (I allowed her to come on this find for sentimental value at least. :p) I also was able to find a couple FTF's. 5 caches posted in South Hill last week and I kept one guy from getting FTF on all 5...1 out of 5 I guess is better than none. :) A few caches posted while we were in Everett as well, but it's hard to get the ones 5 miles from our house when I'm 60 miles away. :p

That's about it for this week. Hopefully next week I'll be able to tell you all about my newest hide in the woods!

Tom's Takeover Tuesday - 3/16

Well, this week was pretty uneventful on the geocaching front. I managed to only squeak out one FTF last week, and there were no major milestones to speak of. We did attend our first geocaching event on Saturday though. It was the "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" event in Kirkland. Apparently the host has been doing these events for 5 years in NY, but has recently moved to the area so decided to carry on the tradition in our area. We got a really cool coin from the event with Celtic designs. I didn't take any pictures of it though so you'll just have to believe me that it looks really cool!

I have been making progress on my woodworking project this week though. It would be hard to explain all the work I've been doing, but there has been some cutting, sanding, and dremeling involved! Oh yeah and some woodburning. Today's work was a little impeded after I slammed my pinky in the car door this morning, but I pushed forward anyway!

That's it for this week so here come the pictures, and I'll be back next week!

 

Tom's Takeover Tuesday - 3/9

It's that time again for the week that was in Tom's geocaching-land. Not a whole lot to report this week. We made our 350th find, we got a couple more FTF's (we're now winning the race against our caching friends WindingPath,) and last night I placed another cache that came in the mail.

Our newest hide comes from eBay. I'm not overly fond of the product I bought, and Lynette and I both thought it be a little...more. Regardless, when we got home last night, and it was in the mail Logan and I ran out and placed it. This one is just at the end of our road at the intersection of 190th and S. Tapps. Of course WindingPath was up and found it first about an hour after it posted (and two trips as the teenager portion of their team had to go to bed for school,) but at the same time I was up in Maple Valley getting an FTF on a cache that posted at the same time as our cache getting a really cool coin!
In hindsight the coin wasn't worth walking along dark unknown trails in Maple Valley, but it is pretty neat. The photos are a little blurry, but the front is a compass face with a "working" compass in the center. The back is an underwater scene in the middle with shipwreck and sunken treasure, and around the edges it says "Fifth Anniversary" and "The Compass Rose Geocoin."

Today, however, did mark the official start of the wood working project with my uncle for our multi-cache to be place in Milton. I printed off some of the sketches, he cut a couple pieces of the wood flooring material we are going to use, he sanded them down to mostly square smooth pieces, and I transferred two of the sketches to the wood. I have a couple pictures of today's process, but mostly it was just talking and prepping the work area. More on this (with photos) to come next week!

I have another (supposedly evil) cache coming in the mail later this week. The original version of it was hidden in Tennessee and took 15 months for the first person to find! So with those two, I still have containers for at least 8 more hides.

So I close this week's geocaching recap. Hope you enjoyed it, and I'll post again next week!

Tom's Takeover Tuesday

After last week, Lynette decided I need to just make this a weekly segment. That of course brought me to wonder who is really reading this and if anyone is interested in what I have going on here. Lynette informed me that some of you have expressed at least a little enjoyment from my adventures...so here we go!

So I have started the wheels in motion to get our next cache made and planted. We were waiting for a disabled cache to get archived so we can use the spot, and that should be later this week! More on this project to come! I also ordered some caching supplies which will allow me to hide at least 6 or 7 more after that one. Now the hard part...where am I going to put them all?

Last week marked another FTF-hunt extravaganza as we pulled in another 5! This week is off to a pretty good start too, as I have 2 FTF's already. This ties us with a fellow caching family/blogger that lives in downtown Sumner with 15. The competition is now truely on! (The teenager threw down the gauntlet last night when I drove all the way to the Federal Way Home Depot during dinner to grab one with the boys. :p)

Another milestone for me today was finding our 300th traditional cache. This just means that I get the coordinates, the cache is located at the coordinates, and I sign the log. Other types of caches include multiple stages (like the upcoming project,) and mystery caches with dummy coordinates and the need to solve for the actual ones. There are a few other types, but these are the basic type that we come across the most.

That's pretty much it for this week...I'm going to try and throw in some pics of the upcoming project as it progresses, but I'm horrible about visual documentation so I won't promise anything. :) Tune in next week!