Jump to content

COINTEST! Cache Wars Gamepiece Cointest!


avroair

Recommended Posts

My event is over so I can Cointest away an extra Cache Wars gamepiece coin. See below:

 

Rules:

Tell us about the Light side of caching, something funny or light that happened to you while geocaching. Or tell us about the darkside when you did something you weren't particularly proud of or was funny or dangerous...

 

1. one post per person per 4 hour period

2. 7 day cointest

3. each story post must be a totally separate incident

4. winner picked by random number generator

5. no whining, or it's off to the mines of kessel or worse!

6. only comment on someone else's post if you also have a story to share

 

1bcba1b5-b234-42fe-abf1-b1d8ef466ce2.jpg

Link to comment

Thanks for the cointest Mark!

 

OK - my first post is a darkside post for me, but was a Light side for the members of my family who were out caching with me on this particular day.

 

We were doing a inland South Canterbury day trip to grab a few caches and this particular cache was in a hole in a roadside limestone bluff. There was a sharp ditch/hollow right in front of the hiding spot so I dropped into the ditch and reach up and around to grab the cache. Quick grab and turned to rush back up the bank and outta the ditch - but in the process caught my head on a sharp piece of limestone and got a nice bloody gash in my scalp for my haste and efforts.

 

Everyone thought it was hilarious... me, I was s4!ty and sheepish!!! There was a few really good words muttered under my breath. :laughing:

Link to comment

Thank you Mark for the cointest! :D

 

Ok... A funny story that can happen to anyone.... and I am sure it will happen again to me!

 

In the caches near the city I usually go with my father... he knows the game and he actually found 1-2 caches! :) He is a member of the Gatoulis team... all under my name...

 

anyway... we go with his tiny motorbike... a 50cc old suzuki... not a motorcycle... the poor machine is trying hard even to move! :lol:

 

Well.. ifthere are muggles in the area..... we have a trick... the bike has a problem and we just have to fix it there....

 

one day, we were trying to maintain a cache..... we went with the bike very close to it but we saw that there was a couple there..... we thought that they were muggles.. so we did the trick....

 

they were watching us all the time and then they left... we were watching them leaving and when the area was clean we tried to put a new logbook etc... huh! we couldn't! someone else was coming so... we continued...fixing the bike...

 

after 10 minutes.... (the cache is in an area with a lot of muggles!), I saw the couple coming again! when they saw us... they turned and left! I;ve got suspicious... but...

 

we stayed there for a long time until the area was 100% free... and the thing with the couple happen once again.... when they left with a look of dissapointment...

 

I changed the logbook, fixed the cache and left.... while we were leaving we saw the couple coming again... we went a little further and we saw them headng to the area where the cache was....

 

later I saw in the caches page their log! :laughing: they were cachers...who thought that we were muggles... and we thought they were muggles too! oh boy....!!! :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

Link to comment

Sweet! Thanks for the cointest.

 

Yesterday, A new cache popped up a mere 0.4 miles from home. I quickly put my baby to bed and headed out. I got to GZ and met a couple of newer cachers that I haven't met before. After saying our howdies, The search began. I looked here, they looked there, then I found it right near the hint object. WOOHOO FTF. Skip ahead to today. I was looking at the profile of my new friends and they only have 3 hides. All of them are kinda close, so I loaded them up and went for them. I found all 3 caches and all 3 were different, unique and deserving of a favorite point. Even though I only gave 2. So the moral of the story...Chase FTFs, you get to meet new people and maybe even find some fun caches.

 

Thanks again.

Link to comment

~ Not sure IF this counts as either . . . While caching in Marysville, CA with my newbie cousin, we were greeted by 2 of the communities finest. Luckily, I was wearing one of my "geocaching" T-shirts ( they sure come in handy at times) well they warned us that it was getting dusk and this was a dangerous area to be in when that occurs. Good thing we found the cache and was coming back to the car. I explained what we were doing and one said they had heard of it ~ Thank goodness, eh !

Link to comment

Our funny story really isn't funny to my husband if you ask him. We heard about a new cache that was first posted and it was a rock cache. So naturally we decided to run out and see if we could find it. Mind you we were still fairly new to Geocaching and not sure how rock caches worked. So by the time we get there it is dark outside and we had our children in the car. Someplaces here you cannot have kids walking around (especially young ones with no sense to not touch things) so I opted to stay in the car while the hubbers goes to look. I gave him the hints and showed him the picture of "THE Rock" and off he went. Well about 30 minutes later he finally returns saying he overturned every single rock in that destination and no luck. Naturally he was pretty frustrated about it but given that it was dark and using a small flashlight and still being fairly new to geocaching, well what do you expect? So the next morning I decided to run out there and try my luck with it. I get out there and there are a ton of rocks...everywhere. So I use the GPS to get to the coordinates and look down at the listed coordinates and turn over the first rock and VIOLA, there is the cache. I was tickled pink but dh was pretty pissed about it so I went out and bought him a really nice/big flashlight to have on hand for future geocaching. :laughing:

Link to comment

My wife thanks this would be the dark side

 

So during our honeymoon... I found a couple of geocaches in Florida after the cruise. She was not very happy. Actually... we walked about 8 miles round trip in Ft. Lauderdale finding caches. I still get the evil eye when she talks about it. :ph34r:

 

Thanks for the cointest!

Link to comment

Thanks for the cointest!

 

My dark story-

 

Indiana Anthony & I decided it was time to hide our first cache. It was around Halloween and we had been at the costume store and spotted some rubber rats....hummm wheels started turning. I hollowed out the belly and hid a micro in there and and hid it in the crook of a tree. Some of the logs have cracked me up! Including the FTF couple that had scared me to death at a new cache a few weeks prior, acting like utility workers wanting to know What I was doing....turn about is fair play! Anyway that poor rat has been thrown so many times & scared so many people, evil I know. ;)

Link to comment

Okay, here I go. My story is a little light since I think it is perfectly normal geocaching behavior, funny even. Then it's also maybe a little dark since the wife wasn't exactly thrilled about how the boys and I spent our day. So when the time came to go after cache #1000, I picked a fun new pirate themed puzzle. That's all well and good, but I generally cache with my two sons (18mo & 3 yr) and this one was a 4.5T. :unsure: Oh well, it has to be done, they're tough and can handle whatever is thrown at us. Needless to say, by the end of our adventure I had carried the boys almost 2 miles, climbed a tree with the youngest strapped to my chest in a baby bjorn and waded to an island in the middle of a river. All for one smiley - any day! Of course, the muggle on the bridge that watched me wade into the water carrying the boys needed a little reassuring that everything was okay. :blink::lol: My log on GC2MQ0X tells the tale much better. :lol: Thanks for the cointest! Awesome coins you've got there.

Link to comment

cheers for the cointest...

 

so one weekend i was hunting for a cache near where my girlfriend lived that was hidden near a disused railway bridge and so we got to within a couple of metres of GZ...obviously the cache was up on the bridge which we were standing over...so I decided to scramble up the rocks at the side to get the cache while in the fading evening light my girlfriend patiently waited along the river bank below the bridge...well me being me got carried away and after I found the cache I decided to scale a wall that was stopping people going on to the bridge a bit naughty to say the least and after taking some obligatory pictures headed back down to the river bank to meet my girlfriend who was no where to be seen so i figured that she had gone back to the car after being annoyed at the long wait for me so I walked back (about 1.5miles) and got to the car expecting to see my girl waiting but there was no sign of her so I realised that she was probably still at GZ"!!!!!!

 

At this stage it was almost dark and boy does she hate the dark so I made the quickest mile I could torch in hand only to find her along the way scared out of her wits! A bit funny for me but really dark side for her!!!!!

Link to comment

dark side story....

 

We were in a place here in rhodes to collect wild fruits that we call koumara (strawberry tree).

picture00051.jpgpicture00052.jpg

 

a part of the area is used by the army.... there is a cache there and it was a good time to visit it while the others were collecting the fruits...

 

on my way back, my family moved a little further.. so I had to walk the road to reach them... the road is a normal asphalt one... that many tourists and locals pass during summer!

 

on my way... I had to go to the bathroom... since it was winter... there was none passing... so I went behind a bush.... there I saw....

 

....I saw that the ground had opened because of the rain and many mortar shells and other military things were in the mud!

the mud was dry but you cound see that these mortars were complete!

 

I was stupid enough to go down and took 2 of them... I started clening them to see the dates.... one had the date 1944 ad the other 1953...

 

then I sudently realized that I was so stupid and what I was doing was extremelly dangerous!!!! Even if some of the mortars didn't have their top... they were still filled with a strange material... like gray-yellow... most probably the explosives!!! If they explode, everything is breaking... but they were complete! I left the area after I shoot some photos with my mobile!

 

picture00053-1.jpg

picture00054-1.jpg

picture00055.jpg these arethe ones I picked...and let down again....

Link to comment

A mystery geocache created by my brother gave me this Lighter side moment...

 

After working out the clues and hints I finally had the geocache location pegged down to a man-made pond at the entrance to an up market housing estate. It had taken quite so time to get this far as the time of day was late afternoon - when many residents were returning home. Every time another car came down the entrance driveway I had to stop what I was doing and "act cool"... which was every minute it two over a half hour period. I was still getting some odd looks for time to time, and some of the residents of the houses closer to me were starting to watch me...

 

Finally I a clear patch, saw the geocache in the middle of the pond, rolled my jeans up, took shoes and socks off and hopped in to the very cool autumn water. Brrrrr.

 

Waterproofed Ammo can in hand I hurriedly got the log signed and the geocache returned to it watery resting place. Saw a security patrol heading my way so quickly threw my shoes on, jumped in the car and got outta there before I had any explaining to do! :laughing:

Link to comment

Thanx for the cointest! I look forward to reading everyone's stories more closely. For now, I will share a "dark side" experience that I had.

 

One cold, rainy December day, after picking up my son from school, we decided to go look for a cache that had just been published, but no one had logged it yet. He was excited at the prospects of a FTF, but we ended up being third to find. We also ended up being LAST to find, as the police arrived moments after I left, and summoned the bomb squad as well.

 

It turns out that one of the neighbors saw me looking for, retrieving, and then replacing a "suspicious object" into the bushes outside of an abandoned warehouse/factory, and called the police. The part that bummed me out the most is that if it had not been raining, he probably would have come outside to investigate what I was doing, and I could have told him about the game and avoided this whole situation. In addition, if I had stayed there for only a couple of minutes longer, the police would have arrived, and I could have explained it to them, and again avoided the whole situation.

 

Here is a link to the cache in question. In the logs is a link to the write-up in the local paper. I feel badly about this, as it was truly a simple misunderstanding, but I can also understand everyone's point of view as well.

 

GC1JM7P - Christmas Folklore - France

Edited by SgtMikal
Link to comment

an other great time and very funny story that happent to us during geocaching....

 

I have posted this story many times and it is in the online geocacher magazine too..

 

We wanted to find some caches at that day, so we wanted to be quick! There are not many caches in Rhodes, but they have some distance between them!

 

Anyway... We were going to Archangelos village, were it was a cache at a place called Profitis Ilias! Well, we knew that this place had a small church, and all the churches with that name are in mountains!

 

Unfortunately we didn't know where it was! We had never visited that place! I searched in books, and in the net, and found that there was a big festival and celebrations once a year when it was the name of the saint and it was quite famous for the villagers of all nearby villages and Archangelos of course!

So...it was going to be an easy find!!!!

 

HA!!! Only in our dreams!!!

 

When we arrived, we entered in the village and started searching for a sign or something, to help us find the way! Nothing!!! GPS was not helping us, we were very new with the GPS, so...

 

We took all roads in the village; we were making rounds...rounds... nothing!!!! We had to ask a local to help us!

To the first man we saw sitting, we stopped to ask him about this church! He was looking us strangely! Then he said...."sorry I am from Albania, I do not speak good Greek and I do not know"!!!!

Well...ok! Many foreigners are working in Rhodes!

 

We left from there and some minutes later, we saw 2 women sitting! We stopped to ask them but.... one was from Bulgaria and the other was from Russia!!!

Where were the Greeks?? We are in an island... how we passed the borders??

 

Then we saw a guy! We asked him but he was mute!!!! Can you believe that???? Someone was joking with us!!!

 

We decided to go in an other area of the village! There, we found a young girl (hmm... pretty too! ), we asked were the "Profitis Ilias" small church was, but she was sending us to Profitis Ilias in Salakos, an other village far away from Archangelos!!!

No, no! We said to her! There is a church here in Archangelos with that name! There is a big festival in his name day!!! Don't you know it???

- No! I never heard that before! She told us!

- Are you from here? We asked her! Well, we had already seen enough so...

She was from the village!!!

 

We were driving in the village trying to find a way for more than an hour! Maybe even more than 1:30 hours, so we were about to forget this cache! Then we saw 2 old women coming from the cemetery!!

Hey!!! They are old, they are from the village and they know about churches for sure!!!

Oh yes! They told us were to go!!!!!!!!

When we told them what we had been through they laughed!

- Are you from here or you are from an other place of Greece? They asked!

Oups! That question sounds familiar!!!

 

- We are from Rhodes! We do not know this church and we were told that it is in a nice place..... (Oh boy!!!)

 

The road didn't have a sign! We took it and saw that at the half of it was the place they used to throw their garbage!! A lovely place and ... At least they stopped...I think!

We continued our way up, to find the church at the top of the mountain! Jesus! The road was full of goat droppings!!! Ok there were many goats there but the road was almost black!!!

 

We went to the top and the view was excellent!!! The church was very old!

There were some locals there eating in the yard of the church! We continued to find the cache and we were careful not to be seen! They didn't see us because they were busy with their food!

 

The cache was an easy find! We logged quickly, we enjoyed the view and then we went to the church to light a candle!

There was an old woman in there! We spoke to her, and she started talking to us! She talked, talked...

then she asked us why we were there! We told her that we didn't know the place, and we accidentally found it!

- Oh! a lot of tourists are coming like that! She told us! They like going there! And showed us the area with the hidden cache!

We said nothing except that the view is fantastic there, so..

 

We thanked her and we were leaving but she wanted to give us food to eat! We didn't want and we politely told her that we were going to a tavern but she insisted!!!

She took a plate that was dirty, she cleaned (?) it with a dirty piece of cloth and put something inside!!!!

It was spaghetti with warmed goat milk and goat cheese in pieces (she cut the cheese with her hand). It smelt really bad! A sour thing was coming from the plate!

She was forcing us to eat!

I was looking at my sister, she was looking at my brother in law, and he was looking at me!!! Then were started looking at the plate!!! Who was going to be the hero????

 

Then we told her that we really had to leave, and she took the plate which was full in that kind of food, and put it in a used plastic bag, to take it with us!! We politely refused but...without any success! We told her...what about the plate?

 

- It is yours!

 

Ok! I admit she was extremely polite, but...

 

We put the plate in the car and left! Oh my.... The terrible smell was in the car now! I still remember that smell!

 

It was winter time, it was cold, but.... the smell was terrible, so we had to leave the windows open, otherwise we were going to faint from the smell!!!!!

 

Some kilometres away, we stopped and throw the food to some stray cats! At least the food was not wasted! There is only one thing that I did not understand! Why the cats ran away when they smell the food??!!?? No Joking!!!!

 

My brother in law went to clean the plate to return it in a later visit, but while he was cleaning it, the plate fell from his hand and broke! The leftovers of the food went on him and he was.....

We laughed so much!!!

 

 

Of course now we were facing another problem now....... My brother in law started smelling like a goat, but we couldn't do anything about it!!! .....After all he was the driver!!!

 

 

What a day!!!

 

**** believe it or not... everything in the story is true!!!

Link to comment

Dark side..... IMF... the crisis in greece and the gas price are killing geocaching here in Greece... cachers stop, and I can not keep maintanse in caches that are far away of the city... :( That includes a cache that I am co owner! :cry: Some caches here in greece, including some in my island will be archived in some weeks or months...

 

I am not driving...and I do not have a GPS... my brother in law has a GPS and he was the driver... but now.. things are not so easy to go whenever it is needed to maintain the caches.... :cry:

 

I hope things will change... but reality says... that things will go worse here in Greece...

I will not give up... I will still try to maintain the caches near the city and as far the motorbike of my father can go... (mostly in the north triangle of the island) and if I have a chance... I will maintain the other caches!

 

I am so sad because these caches belong to good friends of mine... from other countries! I haven't told them anything yet.. I will see how things will go... maybe other cachers... tourists who are visitng my island and do some caching here... will help in the maintance too...

Link to comment

On the lighter side here ... I seem to carry some sort of Geo-Jinx, with a knack for hunting for caches that turn out not to actually be there at all. Sometimes it seems to be 50/50 whether we find it or whether it was muggled. (And yeah, we have regular DNFs where we simply missed it the first few times .... but we also have this knack for the muggled ones that haven't yet been noted.)

 

I'm on a quest to hit 100 at the GPS Maze event in Nashville this weekend, so have been hunting hard to bring my numbers up lately (much to the dismay of my kids). I scouted out some easy ones and went out on my own Sunday, only to find two of 5 attempts. The GPS was just wacky that day. Oh well, at least there were a couple. I dutifully posted my DNFs on the ones I had spent a fair amount of time searching, and started planning for my next day.

 

Later I get an email ... one of the cache owners had gone to check since I was her second DNF in a row (on a cache that had never had ANY before, good for her!), and it turned out that ... you guessed it ... the cache was gone. I joked with my family about the jinx and added the cache back to my list.

 

Went to look for it today ... the GPS was better behaved ... and it turns out I had been looking in COMPLETELY the wrong place! In a way I felt bad for sending the owner out to check a cache where the fault was actually mine ... but on the other hand, the cache had actually disappeared, so my mis-hunting simply sped up the notification process and saved other cachers the dismay of a DNF.

 

Funny to me, and funnier with our history of such mishaps. :)

 

Love the other stories too!

Link to comment

On only our second day out, we had what turned out to be a "lighter" moment, though my son would probably classify it as dark. He and his mom had just found a cache and were in the process of signing the log when he screamed out in pain and started dancing around stomping his feet. Little did they know, they had decided to stand right in the middle of a fire ant hill and the ants did not appreciate the invasion. Fortunately, he only got a couple of bites, but hopefully it will be a lesson learned to watch your surroundings at all times -- even after you find the cache!!

 

BTW, we are huge Star Wars fans as well as LEGO and MINI fans, so we love this giveaway!

Link to comment

Light Side...

 

Last year while searching for a cache in the middle of nowhere, an older couple sneaked up on me. Being out in BFE... I asked "are you guys geocaching".

 

Older Couple "nope... just looking for blackberries"

 

Funny part of the story... this was like the beginning of May. Blackberries don't come on the bush til beginning of July here. So... what were they really doing? :blink:

Link to comment

Lighter side, although I am not proud of it. Caching while on vacation, I found my 600th cache. The weather had been on and off drizzle that day. As I was finishing up my trackable trades, it started to get a bit drippy. So I hastily repacked the ammo can and returned to the car. That evening, as I am setting up my pack for the next day, I realize there are two spiral notebooks on the table. One contained my notes about the various geocaches during our vacation, the other contained the names of the geocachers that had found that ammo can. Uh oh. My non-caching family kindly gave up an hour out of their vacation the next morning to drive me back to the cache so I could return the log book.

Link to comment

Lighter side!

 

I have been to my first event! ok, it was a small one but the first here in rhodes!! :D

I was the only greek cacher...

I saw some good friends again, I met new ones... it was lovely! I came back with 16 trackables... and i have placed the 8 already! the other will probably go to a TB hotel when the new cache container will arrive..

 

I hope to attent in a new event soon... and why not... one day to be in a mega event! :D

Link to comment

On only our second day out, we had what turned out to be a "lighter" moment, though my son would probably classify it as dark. He and his mom had just found a cache and were in the process of signing the log when he screamed out in pain and started dancing around stomping his feet. Little did they know, they had decided to stand right in the middle of a fire ant hill and the ants did not appreciate the invasion. Fortunately, he only got a couple of bites, but hopefully it will be a lesson learned to watch your surroundings at all times -- even after you find the cache!!

 

BTW, we are huge Star Wars fans as well as LEGO and MINI fans, so we love this giveaway!

 

Oh, I know the pain. Been there, done that! Luckily I was right next to the ocean and could jump in to get them off. They hurt!

Link to comment

A darkside of caching......

When I was foolish enough to take my kids caching in the woods, with flip-flops on. We got out there and my 8 year old daughter walked through some thorny stuff, and her feet and legs were hurting for the rest of the adventure. But we were too far out there to quit, so we pressed on and got 5 caches in that patch of woods. We all learned that it's not beneficial to cache in the woods with shorts or flip flops. Now whenever we go caching and we know it's going ot be in nature, I get asked about thorns.

Link to comment

Thanks for the contest...

 

On the lighter side...and probably something that can be related to by many. New to this sport, I went looking for a cache down by the waters edge figuring how hard can this be...there can't be that many places along the water. Well I narrowed it down to a clumping of trees, but then spent a half hour looking about....contimplating climbing a tree....and almost falling into the water. As those with me were looking at me even wierder that usual, and giving up on the cache...I decided to climb out from the middle of the trees and leave. When I grabbed a branch to assist myself in climbing out....well...you guessed it...there was the cache! Signed and then made them buy me lunch!

Link to comment

Dark side....

 

You were probably making plans for this day for a long time ago and you were anxiously waiting this day to come! And… when everything looks great… some strange events makes you realize that this is definitely not your day!!! Everything goes wrong and the hits are coming like waves….

 

That happened to us one geocaching day too…..

 

We wanted to go for geocaching soooo much… the last days, were not so good, it was raining. It was windy… so when we saw that this weekend the weather was going to be fine we started making plans!!!

 

….. Oh… we will go for geocaching, we will change a cache from micro into a regular and then we were going to have a barbeque near the sea… sausages and hotdogs…. Everything was going to be perfect…. or not???

 

My sister and my brother in law came with their car and took us! We were holding bags etc like we were going on a cruise!

 

Everything was so perfect! We decided to go first to find a cache in Prasonisi, which is at the end of Rhodes and change a cache from micro to a normal size (I am co owner of this cache!)! Prasonisi is a small island that is connected with Rhodes with a sand road! Of course during winter, this road is not always above water!!! Many times the island is not connected! The stream there is quite strong and in older times accidents happen there, so….

 

When we went there we saw that it was impossible to pass the road and go to Prasonisi! The sand road was under water and we were not dressed properly to pass…

 

So… we decided to go back to an area some kilometers back, where a cache was! We wanted to find it quickly and then to eat near the sea…

 

Our parents couldn’t follow because the place was rocky, but they had no problem at all! My mother saw that the area was clean and that she could relax, see the beautiful view, and maybe collect some snails!

 

Oh yes! She loves to eat snails!!! Hmm… I do not!!!

 

It was not summer anymore, so we had to hurry! We started our way and some meters away we realized that the area was a snail paradise!!! WOW!!! Ok, we couldn’t stop geocaching for them, but we were collecting all the snails that were ok, in our way!

 

Of course we were following the red spots the area had, marking the way! The owners of the cache had done this to help the cachers to find the way!

 

There were some goats there guarding the area! They looked surprised to see us there!

 

My brother in law started telling us to hurry up a little… collecting snails may take more time than you can imagine!!! Anyway… we came in the area where the cache was…. But.. Where was the cache??? We started searching the caves there because the hint was saying that it was hidden in a small cave! My brother in law, walk a little farther, and he continued to see red spots…. I knew that the geocachers who placed the cache there continued their way but… I started having thoughts that we were searching the wrong place… but… the stone arch that was in the cache area was there… the GPS was saying that we were in the destination…..

 

We started searching and searching but the only thing we could see was snails!

 

We climbed on rocks, we went close to the edge of the rocks (it was tall enough and the cliff ended in a rocky area in the sea!!) Unfortunately we couldn’t find it and we realized that the sun was leaving! Night was coming!!! WOW! We were away for too long!!! We started our way back disappointed for the DNF, and we were so hungry… Cold or the moisture started falling and we were talking about my parents… oh… they will be worried and hungry too!! I was saying… how we will eat now? If night falls…. Well there was some light left, so if we were in a hurry… we could eat….

 

After some time my brother in law turned to us with fear in his eyes!!!!

 

- Where is my mobile phone???

 

- Where did you have it??? Isn’t there???

 

My brother in law made a mistake! He had his mobile hanging from the belt of his banana bag (the bad we wear around our waist…)

 

Oh and where the mobile phone had fallen???? Why he didn’t put the phone in the bag??? Questions like that were coming in our minds but we did not expect any answers…..

 

My brother in law wanted to go back but it was late enough! He asked if we could call his number so we could hear the ring…. Then we realized some unexpected things…. My sister didn’t have her mobile phone with her, she had forgotten it at home, and my mobile phone had low battery!!!!! Well… at least did we have any flash lights??? Nope!!!!

 

We decided to go to the car and see because my brother in law said that the mobile may had forgotten inside!

 

On our way back, I found a relic of WWII! It was an iron head of a mortar shell! WOW! I picked it up for my millitaria collection! It was not something dangerous so it was ok! It was quite heavy!!!

 

When we reached the car it was almost dark! Our parents were so worried…. They asked us what happen and we told them the whole thing!

 

Nothing was in the car, so we had to see what to do!!! It was dark, it was cold and we saw that heavy clouds were coming in the area!!! Oh boy…. If it started raining…. The mobile was going to die!!! Ok, it was in a leather mobile case, but the water….

 

So… everyone decided to go back home, take jackets, mobile phones, flashlights etc, and come back! There was no time to eat now! Even if we were starving, we had to rescue the mobile phone first! After all… it was a very expensive one!!!!!

 

We reached home and we started our preparations! We left my mother at home at least to cook something for later, and we left to go back! Me, my brother in law, my sister, and my father who brought a strong flashlight and his mobile phone too!

 

On our way it started raining!!! What a heavy rain!!!!

 

My brother in law was desperate! He was saying to go back and forget the mobile phone, but we insisted!!! We brought the car as close as possible, from another road, and we were waiting for the rain to pass! The area was very dangerous to go at night, so it was extremely dangerous to go with or after a rain!!!! When we reached the area we had left the car the first time, it was raining cats and dogs! We couldn’t see clearly, so we decided to wait until the rain stops!

 

While we were waiting in the car, we made our plan…. Me and my brother in law were going to search for the mobile phone, and.. My sister and my father would stay in the car and my sister would call my brother in law's phone number so we can hear it if we were close! Since the mobile was dark colored and…in black leather case…..

 

There was a little problem with that….

 

Ok, my brother’s in law mobile battery was full, but…. With all that rain…. The mobile phone might not work anymore….

 

Well. We didn’t have any other choice… did we?

 

After about half an hour, the rain stopped! It was time to move…time to go and find this mobile phone!

 

We put our jackets (it was cold after the rain), we opened our flash lights and left the car! WOW! During night, the area looked so different!!! Because of the rain it was very slippery too! One wrong step on the rocks…

 

My sister was calling the number all the time and we were trying to hear the mobile ringing! I hoped that it was somewhere close!

 

Snails were everywhere now! Everything was wet, there was no sunlight, so it was the best time for them to come out and eat! We couldn’t avoid all of them when we were walking… I still remember the sound of their shell breaking because we stepped on them!

 

We took a path but after a while we realized that it was a wrong one! Instead of going to the arch, we were going up on a mountain! So, we went back and started again, and this time we were on the right path!

 

We passed a wire fence and after some time we had to climb down a little… there, I slipped on a rock! I didn’t fell but from that time my anklebone was hurting me….

 

Where we started seeing the arch we heard a strange noise… a song!!! Oh boy!!! It was the ring tone of the mobile phone!!! We went quickly to the area we were hearing the song louder and YES!!!! The mobile phone was about 30 meters away from the place we first heard the ring tone! It was close to a rock, and that actually saved it!!!

 

There were only 2 – 3 drops of water on the case!!! WOW!!! We were lucky!!!

 

My brother in law was so happy! He saw that the battery was running low! After so many calls from my sister (counted more than 100!!!) the battery had only one line….

 

At that time the phone started ringing again! My sister didn’t know that we found it so she was still trying….

 

My brother in law answered it but he changed his voice! My sister didn’t recognize him and when she asked who was answering the call, my brother in law told her….. “It’s me… the goat from the mountain!”!!! My sister was a little shocked but after some seconds of silence, she started laughing! We were all so happy!!!!

 

Now we could go and eat!!!!

 

On our way back, I had once again a small accident! Huh!! Why all these things happen to me????

 

The area was full of wire fences, but one of them was so strange… it was tall like it was not there to keep animals out, but humans!!! I didn’t see it in the night and I fell on it! The wire with the iron thorns was on my throat but didn’t hurt me… thank God!!!

 

We were close to the car when we realized that the sky was clean!!!! Clean??? So it rained only to make things harder???? Hmmmmm……

 

In our home, my mother prepared food to eat! My sister called her from the car and told her the whole story! Yammies!!!! Plates with spaghetti were waiting us on the table!!!! We ate so quickly!!! We were starving….

 

I took a shower and then I opened my PC to se if I had any emails and to log the DNF! We were not feeling ok with that and we agreed to go back the next Sunday! This time we were going earlier to find the cache!!!

 

The owners saw my log and helped a little with the hint photo! We were waiting the days to pass and Sunday came! This time nothing was going to stop us!!! We went in the area and we found the cache quickly!!! ….Yes!!! We collected some snails again!!!

 

This time things were different! We had time to eat and relax after geocaching, in the area near the sea…!

 

Now that all these passed, we remember them and laugh…. WOW!! What a day!!! Hey… we went there at night?? …does this considered to be night caching???

Link to comment

we had just started geocaching when my husband's birthday rolled around. We were going to the city to meet some friends and have some drinks at the pub. I noticed that there was a cache literally outside the door of the pub. As I was walking out the door I grabbed my bag with my new GPS in it and got in the car.

 

He shook his head and simply said "Absolutely Not". I sulked but brought the bag anyhow.

 

As the night got longer I eventually convinced him to just do that one quick.. well one turned into 3. *sheepish grin*

Link to comment

My husband and I found our favorite cache not too long ago. I wanted to drop off a newly activated traveling coin that I sent out into the world and carefully choose a good cache to do so in. While we were there I asked if he wanted to try our first multi cache. He agreed and we went off hunting for it.

 

We found the spot and weirdly enough both of our GPS units (his phone and my hand held) alerted to one particular spot. But there was nothing anywhere near that spot. We searched and searched to no avail. Then as we were getting ready to leave we both looked up and thought.. no way.. He climbed a tree and there was the first leg to the multi! A very clever hide! Wish there was more of them!

Link to comment

bright side... :)

 

well... in geocaching... we also have the forums.. is it not only the game but it is also communication with the whole world!! :D

 

I made lots of friends here, some are mystery ones that I do not know who they are... and I started remembering my English.... there were about 19-20 years since I stoped my english lessons so...! Because of posting a lot in the forums... I've got my cerrtificate in English with a very high score (thehighest in Greece for the November 2010 exams...) not bad huh? :lol: of course now I am addicted to the forum and to the cointests because I have lots of fun, but... :D

Link to comment

dark side...

 

I recently hid a multi-cache that I had planned for many months. I walked the path several times, making sure that my coordinates for each point were as close as I could get them. I double and triple checked and when I felt everything was set, I posted the cache. The cache got published and it wasnt long before the DNFs started getting logged. Puzzled, I went back out to check my coordinates and found that I had transposed a couple of the numbers in my posted coordinates. :rolleyes:

 

I went home, made my corrections, and emailed the folks that had logged DNFs. Thinking that my folly was now resolved, I went to bed. I woke up the next day and checked the cache page - the same people had logged another set of DNFs (One fellow seemed outright upset about it). This made no sense - I had checked and double checked....verified and fixed - what could be wrong? I went back out, checked everything again - checked my numbers and everything was matching up.

 

I went back to the cache page, looked over my waypoints...and I realized - Instead of fixing my transposed numbers, I transposed another set of numbers for another waypoint - instead of one mistake, now there were 2. :blink:

 

I fixed them again, wrote the folks that had logged DNFs and then waited. The next day, The FTF was logged - and then another...whew!

 

I still think the Cacher that had logged the not-so-nice note is angry with me....I guess I will find out someday when we meet on the trail. ;)

 

(Thank you so much for the cointest - I am enjoying reading the stories)

Link to comment

Thanks for the cointest! My first one :P

 

Light side...We took a long caching trip last summer to attend our first GeoWoodstock and to do the Triad. On our way home, we spent a couple of days caching around Portland. At the end of a very long caching day, we were tired and stopped to grab some fast food for dinner. Got a notification as we were getting back in the GeoJeep and saw a new cache publish that was 453 feet from where we were standing. Four minutes later we were signing a blank log for an FTF! Our fastest record yet. :lol: :lol:

Link to comment

Darker side:

Our first month caching we'd decided to go up to Vallecito Lake. We didn't have a PM then and were really just figuring things out.

We'd been doing well with our caching, found the caches and using some of that info we were supposed to find a puzzle cache.

We'd gotten all the points, done the math. Parked. Gotten all buttoned up and headed out.

It started to rain, cold almost snow (in June mind you). We hiked up a hill (all the other caches had been park and grabs by the lake- with the theme of these really nice carvings made from the trees that had been burnt down in the Missionary Ridge fire) and thought, well maybe this is the way.

Back and forth arguing as we climbed up the road- No Tresspassing sign- well caches are supposed to be placed with permission so on we went. :blink:

Around 1,000 feet of elevation gain later, soaked and annoyed with the CO and with our selves. We hunted around for a half hour on top of this hill/mountain- in the now snow.

So we finally decided to call it good and assume it is missing.

We get back to the car and I start looking at the paper we've been making notes on. I see a transposed number, in the W position's first seconds place (does that have a name?).

We change the number real quick. Drive down the road. Drive across the main road. Get out of the car (now snowing down in the valley) walk 50 feet and find the cache- wheelchair accessable.

I'm not sure if we were angry or what about that. But we started a policy of checking eachothers math and logic on multi and puzzles after that! :rolleyes:

Link to comment

Lighter side:

When Spruce's brother moved from Denver to Portland we went up to Denver to help him pack.

At the time I drove an '88 Jeep and we left on a Friday. I'd loaded the GPS up with caches (along the route, but for some super odd reason none in Denver- missed out on some great caching but no problem there).

As we're driving along (well Spruce is driving I'm playing with the GPS watching caches go by) Spruce asks me "What does this little gauge mean?". I of course ask her what it looks like and where it is.

And about that time I start smelling hot anti-freeze. The Jeep was overheating fast(of course noticing it when we're 50 miles from the nearest town) so I tell her I'm going to look on the TOPO maps for the next road.

We just barely make it into a turn off when the car starts to try steaming us out. We pop the hood (or try to but the hood's too hot to touch) and decide to wait for it to cool. I carried extra fluids for that thing (along with extra belts, etc).

While we're waiting we notice we've pulled into some BLM land. Reading the sign we decide that since we've got an hour or so to kill we might as well go for a walk. I look for some caches- and there are two! that we can walk to.

So we start on our walk down the road and notice that it is mooooOOOOooving day- cowboys on horse back moving cattle. I've got a certain dislike for cows (well dairy cows in herds but these are just regular beef cattle) so we press on. The GPS points straight into the middle of the herd. So we opt to walk towards the next cache.

Over hill and dale we go. Avoiding the cows, the cowboys and now ATVs. Of course we take the direct route towards the cache and end up stepping in cow pats, getting prickles and just overall hot and dusty.

We find the first cache. Great find, nice veiw. Worth it entirely. We walk out of the little stand of trees and find a road. Of course there was a road... we just didn't take it.

So on the way back we take the road.

The cattle have been moved on and we get down into ground zero. There we find a grave, for a dog from the mid 1900's. Oddest grave I've ever been to.

We made the find, stepped in a few more cow pats and fell in the creek.

Wandered back to the car and filled it up with anti-freeze and away we went.

Memorable caches that made sitting by the road waiting for the car to cool off a nice side trip.

Link to comment

My husband is a noncacher, but he likes remote areas, historical sites, and hiking--all of which merge well with geocaching. A game I would play with him is after we reached one of his stopping spots, I would turn on the GPSr to see if there were any caches in the area. Informal rules were any geocache less than 530' away meant I could go search for it. If the GPSr was loaded for that area, I would usually win.

 

One day we were out on some dust bunny of a road in the middle of a sagebrushy no where. It was flat, with no water features, rock outcroppings, overlooks, trees, building foundations. Nothing visually distinctive for miles. I take out the GPSr and he looks at me sideways and assures me it is a waste of time because there is nothing here!. "Just curious how far away the closest one is" I mumbled while watching the Garmin blink, blink, blink while picking up satellites. He is still shaking his head that I am even checking. "Nothing here." I push a few buttons for the nearest cache info, see the result and silently look over at him. With his best better-not-be return look he just said, "No." Apologetically, I whispered the verdict. "About 75 feet."

 

My husband won't play that game with me anymore. Now he just quietly watches while the results come up on the Garmin, then asks "Which direction are you going?"

Link to comment

Our first attempt at a FTF was interesting. We’d gotten a heads up from a local cacher at an event that he’d be placing some caches out at Navajo Lake soon-ish and we should make sure to try and go for them. Of course, weeks came and went and still no sign of the new caches.

And then, one morning the notification popped into the inbox at 5:30 AM. It was a little cold and grey (and never mind we’d never been to Navajo Lake) but we figured we had to go for it.

So I called into work and said I’d be late- but still in.

We head out to the Lake, going East from Durango and following the signs. We arrive at the park and pay our entry fee. Turn on the GPS and low and behold we’re miles away… but on the map provided we’re in the right area. So we go back and show the nice lady and the guard shack where we want to go. She laughs a bit at us and points out that we are still in Colorado- we need to be at the other end of the park that is in NM.

So we back track a half hour or more, head down the lake, and finally get in the right area.

I still owned the Jeep at the time so we took some oil field roads to get there (raining a little now and the road has turned into clay), but we’re still headed in the right direction.

We park, change into swimsuits (did I mention this cache is in the lake… right it is) and walk down. We start looking around, working towards ground zero and then get into the water. And while Navajo lake is used as a reservoir it happens to be manmade- so it is a little murky and all that. Neither of us really wants to be in the water, it is starting to rain and the wind is picking up. But overall still having a good time.

Half hour later, not so much fun. It is cold and still no cache, and I’ve been treading water for most of that time holding the GPS above the water trying to figure out where we’re supposed to be.

We decide to give up.

Walking up the rocks I decide that maybe, just maybe we’ll be able to see the cache from above. There about 15 feet from the furthest point that we’d made it swimming is a funny light blue spot against the dark water.

We go back down to the water’s edge- swim in and there it is- our first FTF, so cold we both had blue knees and lips!

We ended up going for a few other caches in the area (getting lost and going to Dulce… opps) and I didn’t go to work. That TB is the one on my bag as my personal tracker.

Link to comment

I was trying to convince one of my friends that she should try geocaching. I invited her along on a day when Eli and I were going to try out a series of tunnel caches. It seemed like a fun thing to try!

 

Well, these tunnels were all accessed from beaches, and were created for the drain water that ran to the ocean, and we didn't think to look at tide charts... All the logs had mentioned the water was about knee deep at worst, and you could stand on the sides of the tunnels and not worry about the water at all! So that's what we were prepared for.

 

You can probably tell where this is going...

We roll up, and the tunnel has a river about waist deep running through it. The sides of the tunnel were about knee deep, so we decided to go for it. We start walking and as soon as we get to the concrete part of the tunnel where it gets really dark, I put my hand on the wall to steady myself and pull out my flashlight. I point it towards the wall and find out it's COVERED in CRAWLY THINGS. EEEEEUGHHHhhhhhh. My friend makes the same discovery and she immediately slipped on the mossy ground and fell into the river. We laugh (nicely) at her (when we realize she's okay) and then two steps later I do the SAME thing. Now we're both drenched and in water waist high. We pull ourselves out and take a few more steps before falling in again. So we gave up and just walked up the middle of the river where there were no crawly things to put our hands on.

 

We managed to make it up the tunnel and find the cache and I only slipped one more time >_>. Eli never slipped, that jerk! My friend, who'd had her cell phone in her pocket the first time she'd fallen in, found that her phone no longer worked, and in fact it never recovered. So she ended up getting an iPhone and surprisingly enough, she even downloaded the geocaching app. Amazingly enough, the crazy event hadn't totally dissuaded her from geocaching. :)

Link to comment

I have lots of light funny things happen while caching with my daughter and those things increase when the rest of the family come along but one time we were all out in a wooded area searching for about 45 minutes with no luck. My wife wanted to give up and my son had quit looking about 15 minutes earlier but my daughter never quit. she climbed over a log and placed her hand on another log to steady herself but the end of the log moved and she fell. she looked up at the log that had moved and discovered the end had been cut off, hallowed out, and replaced with a cache inside. was a funny way to make a difficult discovery.

 

thanks for the cointest, I wanted to make your event but had something come up so was unable to.

 

k

Link to comment

Dark side....

 

I was still a new cacher and I wanted to find a cache in my island....

while I was searching...on the rocky landscape.. and a hill... I steped on an unstable rock.... the rock fell and I fell with it too..I went dwon for some metres and I landed with my face on a thorny bush! I was lucky that i was wearing my eye glasses... so my eyes were protected... but.. I was lucky and they didn't break!

 

anyway... I continued caching even if I was injured and with blood... my sister and my brother in law kept saying that it would had been a good idea to go to the hospital... but I didn't...

 

the next day things were not so good... because I was full of scratches, bruises and it was hard for me to walk, write...

 

Oh.. did I mention that one of my shoes destroyed? huh! But... there is a light side of this story... that day I found 4 caches... if I remember well! :D

Link to comment

Light side:

 

This past month we hosted our first event, and published our first caches.

We'd been registered with GS for exactly two years (okay one day short of a year but this works for a better story).

 

I was super nervous about hosting an event (memories of middle school came flooding back), but 35 people showed up! And they had a good time, the weather held and we'll host again.

 

Now we've almost been actually caching for 2 years and my goal (which will more then likely go un-achieved) is to have 250 finds by that date.

 

For us caching has been a great way to get out and about our area. I only wish we'd found out about it before we'd moved. It would have been awsome to cache in the NW.

Link to comment

My first to find cache I went out not expecting to be the first one to find it. After quickly finding it and realizing that I was the first I decided to stop at a local diner for a bite to eat.

 

The light side is that I was amazed to find this diner had an amazing fish friday with a great homemade style buffet. I got fried calamari with mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, pasta salad, clam chowder, salad, rice.. and the kicker homemade rice pudding or a sundae for dessert.. all for $8!

Link to comment

Light side.... About a year ago, I found a tb in a an old container..... It had been lost for 2 years rusting in the bottom of this cache. So.... I cleaned the bug up.... Posted a tb log and released it into one of my caches. Before it could be picked up, the cache was destroyed by a piece of heavy machinery that was cleaning out brush in the Park (guess where the bug was). It just seems as though that tb was not meant to travel.

Link to comment

I had two different DNFs for this one very near our house. I spent hours looking through the bushes for this little pill bottle. I gave up! Two weeks later, the wife and I went out walking the dogs and as we passed by the GZ I told her about my misfortune on this. She is not into caching, but she walked over to the bushes and found the cache in less than 10 seconds! Boy did that made me feel dumb! But the smile on her face was priceless! how is that for the lighter side?

Link to comment

Maybe a light side, but done during the dark story. :)

 

I have a habit of looking at the forums pretty late at night, and one night at around 1:30a, I saw a post from the cache reaper that he had left a mystery coin in a cache with a link to it. I clicked on it for kicks, and saw that the cache was only 45 minutes away!! The post had been left a few hours before, but I didn't see any comments on the cache so there was some chance the coin was still there.

 

I messaged the same friend who I'd dumped into a lake, and asked her if she was up for some very late night shenanigans. Eli looked at me like I was insane, but he also agreed to go along. So that's how I found myself driving over the mountain road between Santa Cruz and San Jose at 2am. We managed to find the cache (it doesn't look suspicious AT ALL to be roaming around the grounds in front of a company at 2:30a) and the coin was STILL THERE!! I was so excited!! That coin is one of my very prized coins in my collection partly because of the insanity surrounded in getting it.

 

And while we were at it, we decided we might as well do a nearby cache... ;)

Link to comment

From the light side:

 

After our very first cache find (which was just last week), we all piled back into the car on our way to a nearby park that had several caches. The kids were in the backseat talking, and my son (6) asked my daughter (2) what she hoped to find inside the next cache. Being a baby/toddler, she immediately answered "Gugga!", her word for pacifier. We all laughed.

 

Sure enough, we found a pacifier not inside but near the next cache (we didn't pick it up because it was old and dirty, but it was still amusing to find it). And a couple days later, we actually found what appeared to be a brand new pacifier inside a cache at another park.

 

I'm wondering if this is going to be a trend with us... :D

Link to comment

So, last summer we traveled to Park City, Utah to visit with Spruce's family.

We'd been hiking all around the Uintas Mountains. We'd been all over the place, some very nice caches up in the Lake Country. Of course on our way out of our hike we'd started seeing clouds and the weather didn't look good.

We ended up driving down towards Salt Lake instead of towards Park City. Gee, even with a GPS we couldn't quite figure out the correct way out of the park.

As we went down the mountian the weather got worse. As we live in the high mountains of Colorado this didn't see odd, just a reason to find a place to pull over. Flash floods, lightning and of course wind all started to pick up and we've got a driver from Seattle with a rental card.

So instead of just pulling over and waiting it out we worked our way slowely down the mountain- stopping whenever the rain/hail got too thick to see through. And we're in the back seat watching caches go by- ones that we'd wanted to find with her parents (they'd helped us find one earlier in the day).

We stop, again... and again.

And finally we decide that next time if we are under 200 feet from the next cache we'll go for it.

And then we stop again, not far from a cache. Wearing hiking gear (fleeces, not rain coats and Chacos) we head out into the blinding hail- following the gps. We head up the hill and start having to jump over the now large streams of water with rocks. Grit in the Chacos and more water, but the GPS shows up the trail.

We find GZ and start to look. We find the cache, sign the log and head down the now stream running down the trail.

Slipping and sliding, I end up falling down (I do it alot however usually I don't float/slid in mud).

We hope back into the car, grinning like mad, and try to explain to these two very sophiticated proffessionals why we just ran in hail, lightening and fell in a muddy creek to sign a peice of paper for a digital smilie. So all we did was laugh and pose for a very unflattering picture.

Then down the road a bit and we did it all over again.

Link to comment

My story is from our first night cache. We were in a park in a nearby city, it is kind of on the borderline between the good and bad areas of town. We were following the reflectors when suddenly the park (it's a big one) gets surrounded by police! They start shutting off streets and flying down the road, my wife and I had our kids with us and we were a bit (understatement!) nervous so as we hightailed it back to where we parked my wife spots the cache...and stops to sign it for all of us!

Come to find out there had been a robbery nearby, as the suspect was fleeing he ran a red light and got in an accident, so they DID end up catching him! Probably my MOST memorable night caching.

Link to comment

One of our good friends also geocaches with his geodog so we all got together and took the dogs to a park that has hundreds of caches. We sought out 9 and found 8. It was a great day of hiking almost 10 miles and we didn't even realize we had gone that far!

 

The darkside is sadly he just lost his dog suddenly so we won't be able to replicate that day.. The light side is someone graciously sent me a rainbow bridge coin to give him in her memory that I know meant alot to him.

Link to comment
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...