C & J Priddy

Thanks for the input and suggestions. I think that it's definitely important to talk to your kids about safety and feeling safe with the adults and parents. I never thought about the possibility that my younger daughter might have been less trusting then the older one. That is something that would be good to talk to her about. The way you put it makes a lot of sense. Thanks!

That is hilarious!!!! I'll have to remember that line for my kids. They tend to think that the GPS is ALWAYS wrong.

That is absolutely hilarious! I agree, I'd love to have seen the expression on his face when he realized he had the cache in his trunk!!!! LOL

We never submitted the cache. We didn't want others stumbling into the same mess that we were in. The girls have bounced back well though. They hid a couple caches this past weekend. We even went out and looked for some. They were DNF's but at least we're back up and feeling better. I did go buy a couple jogger sprays to carry with us primarily for our own sense of well being. :-)

We are all the time forgetting to bring something to trade. We just end up TN LN and SL. I've walked back to the car I can't count how many times. LOL

I haven't sneezed and found a cache but I did once accidently trip over one on my way out ready to give it up as a DNF. LOL

If you're getting really close to the cache site, you can use your digital camera to zoom in on the area and scan it while you're standing there waiting for muggles to pass. I like the idea of popping the hood for urban caches. I'll have to remember that one.

We were looking for an urban cache in downtown Raleigh when we came across a baggie. It had a woman's scarf and bible in it. Near the spot was also a pair of shoes and socks. When we got home and read the logs, several other people had found the same "cache" that we had. LOL We figured it was someone's stuff so we hid it back under the pine needles where we found it.

It's interesting to read the story with the "shoe on the other foot". I'm sure that people think that we geocachers are a strange lot at times. LOL

It's hard to not get stuck in the victim mode. I guess that the best thing about this whole experience is that I learned a lot. My kids learned a lot too. Fortunately they still want to go caching!

Thanks for all the words of support and encouragement.. plus the tips. I guess I was just a little niave on this one. At least we're safe. The police took an incident report and said that they'd had a call in the area but wouldn't give me any details as to what it was about or the results. The officer said "We're keeping an eye on that area" and suggested that I use the main park entrance instead of that area. I personally don't want to go back there period! I'll find other cool places to keep hiding those caches. I try to hide a variety of caches with different terrian levels because I think it makes it more fun in this sport for people to have a choices about what kinds of caches they want to find. ~~J~~

Yesterday, I took my two girls out with me for them to hide a cache. We picked out a local park that didn't have any caches hidden in it yet and planned on hiding 2 caches in the park. Being the middle of the day we felt safe within the area. We go to the main park entrance and there are muggles everywhere picnicking and playing basketball. So, I drive around to another area near the park. The streets and trips directions took me directly to this location. It was a dead end residential road that was another entrance to the park. We make sure to walk only in the middle section of the area and head down a slight incline. When we get to the bottom there is a shallow creek with a drainage sewer running across it. The teen girls scamper across the creek and head up into the woods still within eyesight of me to hide the cache while I wait on the creek bank. As they are walking back my younger daughter yells to me, "Um Mom!". I turn around and there is a 6 foot, medium build man stumbling around in the woods near me. He picks up a gigantic tree branch and starts swinging it in the air bellowing in the air for us to "Get out!" The girls start to come across the long drainage pipe and he commands them to "GET OFF THE PIPE!" So they do. My younger daughter at this point is standing by the creek edge in sheer terror and frozen. As I head to her to get her across the creek, the insane stranger rushes me with the huge tree branch and swings it toward me, barely missing. His voice is booming, "Come on! Get out! Get Out!" Over and over he screams at us to get out. My older daughter has now rushed across the pipe and is standing behind me. The younger daughter is standing on the other side of the creek begging for help across. I yell to her to get her feet wet and run! The man drops the threatening branch after cracking it in half loudly over his knee. We're all shivering and shaking at this point. He is between us and the only route to the car. With both girls behind me, I start slowly walking toward the car praying for our continued safety. The man dashes to my car, leans over the trunk with both hands and points to a house in the neighborhood hollering "Police"!. Fortunately for us he takes off up to his house and we manage to get in the car and leave. There was obviously something in the woods there that he didn't want us to find or see. It was horrifying experience. To think that in broad daylight at and at a community park area we came so close to being seriously injured or killed. We have vowed that we will not go caching or looking for a place to hide our cache without the C half of the group with us. We didn't even post the coordinates or anything to the cache we hid. We've just decided it is a loss. I don't want to put anyone else in the area of that insane lunatic! ~~J~~

I'll take those odds too!!!

If you're going to put a hint I think it should be somewhat helpful. Not everyone uses the decrypt button before they print their sheets and head out into the "wilds". Just my 2 cents

Um what did you tell the 3 yr old? The clowns left them all? LOL

No hints is so helpful. LOL

I personally think that geocaching helps us to relax. It's a chance to get away from the news and the hustle bustle of everyday life. :-)

Bilbo.... Anyone were to dig up our yard they'd freak. We have and had chickens/roosters. A pack of dogs tore down our chicken wire and got in the pen a couple years ago. We buried all 14 chickens in our yard. Can't imagine what people will think if they were to buy this house and try to plant a garden.

We went to a new cache that was behind a closed down grocery store. It was a magnetic micro. Well, you have to pull in behind the building (which is in a small strip mall area) to get to the cache. We were the 7th to log that day! As we were pulling back around the building a police officer was pulling into the main driveway. We drove right by him and he flipped a U and followed us. We pulled into the neighboring shopping area and parked. He pulled in right behind us and wrote down our license plate as we were getting out and then took off (we assume back to the cache area). The following day, I was on my way home from the store and noticed that at the building where the cache was hidden was one K-9 unit and several other police cars. I'm sure that they thought there was new drug activity in the area! I didn't know if I should drive over and tell them about the geocaching and show them the cache or not. I opted to drive home and stay out of it. Another time we were at the edge of a park at 3am. The police officer came up and asked if our tracker was broken down (which happened to be running at the time). We explained what we were doing and asked him if he wanted to help us. We ended up with a DNF on the cache. LOL Now we use the handy brochure that explains geocaching. We keep several with us in case we need them. Fortunately, we haven't been stopped or questioned lately. We also have a note in our car window that we're not broken down, or abandoned but are geocaching in the area and we have geocaching website address on it. ~~J ~~

We were following the coordinates to a "KIDS" cache. The park ended up being closed and we pulled into the last parking area before the closed gates to turn around. Much to our surprise we stumbled upon a couple in the hot throws of passion with their car door open! After we turned around and were exiting, a truck pulled in to turn around like we'd done! I was glad that I didn't have my kids with me to explain that one too. ~~ J ~~

I forgot to mention that we were out of town in a rental car (thus only one set of keys). Well, they fell out of my husband's pocket and onto the front driver's seat. Usually, I ask "Do you have the keys?" This time I didn't and locked the doors. Of course, the cell phone was in the car too. As luck would have it, my husband found a nice curved twigged and fished the keys out through the cracked driver's side window! Thankfully he was in too big a hurry to snag a cache that he didn't roll his window all the way up when we got there.

Just yesterday while we were caching at a park, we came across a squirrel. The squirrel had darted into a trash barrel. I told my husband that squirrel was in there but he thought I was joking. We were about 5 feet from the barrel when the squirrel popped his head out. Boy was he surprised to see us! He just froze and didn't move. Wish I'd had my camera. We stepped back several feet and the squirrel darted back down into the trashcan. We quickly moved past it to head into the woods for the cache.

The coolest thing we've found was actually while CITO'ing in a cache area.. we got a backpack.

My favorite has been "under a broken log" when the area was full of broken logs and fallen trees. The good old gps jumped around like crazy and sunset overtook us before we had to finally give up on this cache. It was difficulty 1 and terrain 1. Terrain was a 1 after telling us depending on which way you entered the woods you might have to cross a small stream and watch out for the barbed wired area. LOL

My EX husband was concerned when he found out that I was taking our two teenage daughters geocaching and that they'd even created their own screen name to post their finds. His reasoning was also terrorist activity. LOL When I explained to him that WE were more likely to be checked for being terrorists (hmm, digital camera, gps, backpack, cell phone) all in hand he was all for the idea of us geocaching! I agree with previous posts, find several caches and then let them know that they are safe and fun caches to take the kids back to. In our area we've found that there are lots of "kids" caches to choose from. If all else fails, make some cute small caches for your yard and have the kids hunt around there. That can't be any more dangerous then looking for easter eggs. Good luck! --J