Spur of the moment trip means caching opportunities!

[+Okiebryan]

Thursday evening about 8PM I was out caching with my girlfriend, when I got a phone call. A guy in Phoenix who knows a guy I know was looking for a qualified truck driver and was in a BIG hurry. Seems he had sold a truck to someone in Northern IA, and his driver had been stopped at the weigh station going into Kansas, and been put out of service due to license problems. He was looking for someone with a valid CDL and enough time to run to Iowa. He was offering good money if I'd get up there quick.

 

I called the wrecker company I work for and asked them to take me off of the board. I threw together a change of clothes and my girlfriend and I headed north the 2 hours it would take to recover this truck.

 

I get the truck turned loose from DOT at about midnight, and headed through Kansas. All the way I was trying to figure out how I was going to get a cache in the states I was going through. I already had a find in KS.

 

Right as I was leaving NE, using my smartphone and the GC.com website, I found a very cool cache location, "Lunch with Lewis and Clark". It was hidden outside of a very nice and new L&C interpretive center. It was about 4am, so the place was closed. I wouldn't have had time to visit anyway, but I'd like to go there again sometime.

 

The cigarette lighter in the truck didn't work, so I lost access to cache data when my phone went dead. I wasn't able to charge it until I got all the way to Spirit Lake, IA, where I was delivering the truck. I got there aobut 11AM. I told the woman there about geocaching, and that I had noticed a cache about .5 away. She wanted to go! So we got in her van and found a very cleverly camo'd gallon jug. I took a geocoin from there, and I'm taking it to our local geocaching meet and greet on Saturday.

 

She took me to Albert Lea, MN (2 hours away) where I was to catch a bus home. I was there about an hour early, and there was a cache .6 away. I took off on foot once I had bought my ticket. Unfortunately, my only Minnesota find was a leaking film can with a wet log, but it was in a very nice little patch of woods right next to a lake.

 

I arrived back in OKC this morning at 7AM, $500 richer and with finds in 3 new states. Although I have 12 years experience driving a truck, I hadn't driven a big truck in 3 years...so it was fun to see that I still had the skills it took to make a long overnight run.

 

The experience on the bus, is another story that I will spare you...

Edited November 8, 2009 by Okiebryan

[+hukilaulau]

Great story! I love these tales of unusual geocaching. Since you opened it up, here's mine (briefly):

I started caching in Long Island, New York. Soon I read about "Mingo", the oldest active geocache, located in Middle of Nowhere, Kansas. Thought, "How am I ever going to get that one?"

Soon started taking 13 week travel nurse contracts. After doing a couple locally, snagged one in Phoenix, AZ. The road runs right through Middle of Nowhere (actually Mingo), Kansas! Incidentally managed to pick up several new states and had a great 4 months in the desert.

[majormajor42]

caching and making money while doing it. that's great! I sometimes regret that I didn't discover caching until after leaving my job as a Merchant Mariner. If I had, I might still be shipping out just to fill in my world map!

I think I had 16 countries and dozens of states but they were all before discovering geocaching.

[+bittsen]

Sounds like a dash for cache and cash.

 

Great opportunity you had there. Congrats!

[+Okiebryan]

Great story! I love these tales of unusual geocaching. Since you opened it up, here's mine (briefly):

I started caching in Long Island, New York. Soon I read about "Mingo", the oldest active geocache, located in Middle of Nowhere, Kansas. Thought, "How am I ever going to get that one?"

Soon started taking 13 week travel nurse contracts. After doing a couple locally, snagged one in Phoenix, AZ. The road runs right through Middle of Nowhere (actually Mingo), Kansas! Incidentally managed to pick up several new states and had a great 4 months in the desert.

 

Oh, believe me, I know all about Mingo. It's 450 miles away from me, and it WILL be my 2000th find, so long as it's still active when I get there sometime next year. It's been on my watchlist for months. Oh, yeah...got my eyes on that one for sure.

[+webscouter.]

Great story! I love these tales of unusual geocaching. Since you opened it up, here's mine (briefly):

I started caching in Long Island, New York. Soon I read about "Mingo", the oldest active geocache, located in Middle of Nowhere, Kansas. Thought, "How am I ever going to get that one?"

Soon started taking 13 week travel nurse contracts. After doing a couple locally, snagged one in Phoenix, AZ. The road runs right through Middle of Nowhere (actually Mingo), Kansas! Incidentally managed to pick up several new states and had a great 4 months in the desert.

 

Oh, believe me, I know all about Mingo. It's 450 miles away from me, and it WILL be my 2000th find, so long as it's still active when I get there sometime next year. It's been on my watchlist for months. Oh, yeah...got my eyes on that one for sure.

 

I'm certain that Mingo will be active for a very long time.

 

And if the farmer still has an open network you can log the cache on your laptop right from the cache parking.

[+sTeamTraen]

I threw together a change of clothes and my girlfriend

That's some sports holdall.

[+Okiebryan]

I threw together a change of clothes and my girlfriend

That's some sports holdall.

 

I threw together a change of clothes. Then my girlfriend and I headed north the 2 hours it would take to recover this truck.

 

There. I fixed it.