Tom's Takeover Tuesday - 6/29

It's Tuesday night...time for the weekly recap!

Well, there really isn't much to recap this week. Most of the exciting stuff happened today! The only notable caching feat before today was Keira getting her 100th find! She's a little behind the boys (who are both knocking on 200,) but she has to go to work with Lynette so she misses out on the daily activities during the week.

As for today's exciting news; I hit our 800th find! I needed something to write about this week since there seems to be a cache posting drought in our area! So I went out pretty much every day this last week and did an average of 10 caches a day approx. (I don't have solid data on this, but it's probably close. ;)) We went out caching with WellJointed and his grand-daughter, Princess Frostine, into the Black Diamond area. The goal was 12 in a couple hours, but we ended up with 9 in a little over three hours. Not terrible considering most of the caches were older and placed in a time when terrain ratings were less than accurate. :)

This was just one trip out this week. Others included Fife/Milton (had to fix Tiki...again,) Auburn, Lakewood, U.P, and Point Defiance. I tried to spread out the locales so I could make up some of the miles TheMcMorrows got over us on our travel racer competition by going to Yakima for the day! The ImLuckiest clan also made a trip down to Oregon this week so they have been closing in rapidly. California needs to get here soon so we can log hundreds of miles in a day. :D

There is one more piece of excitement that came today...FTF #60!!! The drought was in full effect, and a cache posted at Frontier Park in Graham (Pierce County Fairgrounds for all you old-schoolers) at about 10 AM. The boys and I were well into our Black Diamond caching tour so there was no way we were going to get down there before any of the other local hounds would snatch this one up. Or so we thought...

We got home around 2 and fozroc (Jay) was asking me if we were out FTFing. I had no idea what he was talking about because geocaching.com went down for maintenance at about the time I logged our final find in Black Diamond (ironically Jay's cache.) He told me that there had been only one log by a rookie (63 finds or something like that) and it was a DNF. I thought a new cache in the middle of all these hounds would never stand for 5 hours! Someone must not have logged it yet!

Well, after telling the boys we were done for the day, and Jackson still in the middle of his cheese puffs, I told them to pack up. It was FTF hunting time! Logan was up like a rocket (and people think I am obsessed :p) while Jackson grumbled a little, but loaded the puffs in a baggie and off we went. We got to Frontier Park and realized we had a little hike ahead of us, but nothing to difficult as most of it is loaded with horse trails and it's been dry lately.

We finally get to GZ...or so the GPS says. The search was on. After a good 15 minute search for something that was supposed to be very obvious I was getting a little perturbed. This would make the third FTF run in 7 days that could result in a DNF because the cache was already muggled. That is not acceptable! So I gave it one more go and realized a hint had been added to the cache that wasn't there before we left the house. It was useless because it described the area we were already looking in anyway, but I wasn't leaving with another DNF! Finally, 30ft SE of the given coordinates by my GPS I finally spotted the ammo can tucked behind a tree/bush. The cache was loaded with red, white, and blue swag as this was a 4th of July cache due to the upcoming holiday. The FTF prize was a giant bison tube with a log and pencil already loaded and a Uncle Sam(Signal the Frog) bobblehead pin. (Lynette has already claimed the bison and attempted to steal the pin... ;p) After signing the log and placing all the contents back in the cache, hiding it as we found it, and noting in our online log how off the coords were, we headed home to share our excitement with the ladies of the house!

So we ended this week with about 65 caches and 1 FTF. Not too shabby!

Next week I'll have tales from the Project A.P.E cache on Friday, Geowoodstock 8 on Saturday, and the Lost & Found Event at Groundspeak HQ commemorating 10 years of geocaching on Sunday. I have also made plans with TheMcMorrows to go to the oldest geocache left in WA tomorrow morning followed by an event in Issaquah at 6. So I guess I better get some sleep because this week is getting hectic!

See you next week!