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Most memorable day or cache


HD_Diva

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Just another curiosity topic. What was your most memorable day or cache? For me so far it was a day I was out on a trail on the bicycle picking up a few caches. At times my gps was playing tricks on me and was not being co-operative. I seen this tree and was creeped out. I know its only a tree. I couldn't find the cache until the return trip down the trail. My gps was in a better mood and was finally behaving.

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Probably the day of my best DNF ever.  I was hoping for an FTF 5+ years after the hiding of Nicaragua's first (actually second) cache, in some random spot in the jungle on the Mosquito Coast side.  Enlisted some friendly Sandinistas who had time, curiosity, and machetes.  We couldn't find it.

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I didn't think it qualifies for the worst-day-ever thread, because - to paraphrase - even the most DNFy day in the jungle is better than a good day in the office.

Edited by Viajero Perdido
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I've got so many good memories from geocaching, including (as Viajero Perdido mentions above) some very memorable DNF's. I suppose my most memorable involved a swamp 'cache which my entire crew (consisting of SweetPea, her baby sister, her mom, and me) searched for at night. We forgot to mark our vehicle as a waypoint (BIG rookie mistake), lost our flashlight to dead batteries, and slogged our way through perilous (though appropriately-rated terrain) in the dark for a couple hours before we made our way back to the vehicle wet and muddy. It wasn't much fun at the time, but I recall it fondly now.

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Trying to pick a "favourite of favourites" is tricky as many are memorable for different reasons - a physical challenge, stunning scenery, clever design, great hike, etc., but if I had to nominate one it'd probably be The Goat House (GC5KCMB) on Lord Howe Island - a challenging hike/climb 450 metres up Mount Lidgbird to a well-placed cache in the cave and breathtaking views down over the island.

 

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One day that comes to mind was early in our 'caching career'. An unpaved road that my sedan couldn't handle, so we hoofed it up to find a couple caches at the top. Hadn't done much hiking before caching, so it was a bit tough - especially since we had only 1 water bottle between the two of us. It was 2.5 miles each way, 1500 ft of elevation gain, and a hot summer day. I've made sure to be better prepared since then.

Another time was when we walked out to a cache on a spit. It was an easy walk out to the cache, but then it got dark by the time we started heading back. That 2-mile walk back was a bit miserable. We were walking into the wind, it was getting cold, the tide was coming in, and we were hungry because we'd skipped lunch. No wonder the walk out was so easy, the wind was at our back. The tide wasn't a risk of getting stranded, it just forced us to walk in the higher ground, which was sandier and therefore tougher to walk through.

We've become much more savvy about our 'adventures' since then. More planning and preparation, and spare batteries.   :back:

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My SO and I were hiking through Golden Ears Provincial Park (West Coast Canada), chatting away, about 100m from the next cache on the trail. 

She was deep in conversation, but luckily, I was paying attention - Full grown black bear, less than 75m us. I stopped her walk, but she hadn't yet noticed. 

"why did you stop"

i point...

"holy s***!!"

Turns out she'd never encountered a fuzzy friend before that. 

I scared it off with some noise and movement, and we went on to find the (fairly generic and otherwise unmemorable) cache. 

 

I'll never forget the look on her face. 

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Hmm. I have two memorable ones. The first was a warm summer's day in Salamanca Place, Hobart, Tasmania. Australia. Without giving anything away, when I found the cache I couldn't help but laugh out loud at the sheer audacity of the hide.I gave that cache my very first favourite point and it really made my day. ^^

The second memorable one was an ammo can puzzlecache in the Waterworks Reserve, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. I was solving this puzzle as the sun was setting with a mob of kangaroos further down the hill eating and watching me. I like to think they were cheering me on! Sadly I didn't have a camera with me so I couldn't get a picture of them. It was a fun cache though!

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The day my wife and I paddled out to an island to get a particular cache that completed my Fizzy grid, was my 7000th find, and her 1000th find.  While she was out visiting her sister, I had bought a blowup kayak just so we could do this one.  She was amazed because I am no fan of water, lol.  She passed away on August 7, 2014 so this has more meaning than ever.

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On 8/29/2017 at 8:54 PM, Think Tink said:

My SO and I were hiking through Golden Ears Provincial Park (West Coast Canada), chatting away, about 100m from the next cache on the trail. 

She was deep in conversation, but luckily, I was paying attention - Full grown black bear, less than 75m us. I stopped her walk, but she hadn't yet noticed. 

"why did you stop"

i point...

"holy s***!!"

Turns out she'd never encountered a fuzzy friend before that. 

I scared it off with some noise and movement, and we went on to find the (fairly generic and otherwise unmemorable) cache. 

 

I'll never forget the look on her face. 

Was walking casually on a trail with my husband and 5 kids. Folks in front of suddenly turned around and started hoofing it back to where we all parked. All I heard was " huge rattlesnake". Sure enough, huge enough to have both its head and rattles hidden in the bush on either side of the trail. Hoofed it back ourselves, and when I got to the camp ground/parking spot....I started tossing the 5 kids snacks and water. Trying to regain my blood pressure. Then I glanced over at a tree about 50 feet from me, and I saw a bear cub in it, You all know if there is a cub, mama is not far away....started tossing again, but this time, my kids! Literally throwing them in my car, lets GO LETS GO LETS GO! Yeah, that was memorable!

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I can think of a couple of memorable days.

The first was when I met up with a group for 3 or other geocachers and we went to find a few caches in a couple of different rurual parks.  I think we found 4 caches while doing a loop hike around a small reservoir.  One of them required a little bushwacking through some dense woods.  As it had rained the night before we all got pretty wet making our way through the brush.  We then went to another nearby park where we found 5 more.  After the first one it started raining.  By the third, it was a downpour and we were hovering over the cache while one signed the log to keep it from getting wet.  We got back to our cars after about 4 hours of caching, completely soaked but completely satisfied.  The person that organized that trip left the area a year or so later (around 2008) and moved to Kansas City.  That's where I am now and we went geocaching together again a couple of days ago.  The geocaches themselves weren't that memorable, but the people I did it with were.

The other memorable day was in Tanzania.  I, and a non-geocacher woman from South Africa that I was working with, hired a driver to take us about 50 miles to a Tanzanian National Park for a day safari.   I knew that there was a cache at the entrance and searched a bit before we drove into the park where we saw lots of elephant, zebra, giraffe, water buffalo, hippos, and a few other wild animals.  I didn't find it right away but figured I'd give it another try when we came out.  Since the next closest cache was over 100 miles away I was glad when I found it.  As I was signing the log (my muggle friend did too) I watched three elephant cross the road about 200 feet away.  It was my only find on a week long trip to Africa but it was a very memorable day.

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So many trips down memory lane to choose from.  It's hard to limit it to a single day.  A solo find of a Shelter cache from IMM that had almost a hundred watchers?  A 2 year lonely paddle multi?  Those 2 were high on the list but 2 others stand out. I know you asked for one but it's so hard to do.

The first is a paddle EC in the Dells of Wisconsin.  I was visiting for fall break and the temperature was, according to the car, a toasty 32 degrees.  I had my cold weather paddle gear but forgot my gloves, my hat to keep my head warm, and booties, only having my summer open sandal Keens with me.  It was a gorgeous morning, steam rising off the water, and only a few fishermen launching besides myself.  Still love seeing pictures of the geological feature I was brought to.  My feet, ears, and hands were all numb but the natural beauty of the area was all worth it.

The second was a series of caches along the Ohio river near Madison, IN.  There were 6 in the series and I had done 1 and 2 two days earlier and had another free day 2 days later. Each stage contained a puzzle, most relatively easy to solve, that led you to the next stage.  Each successive stage of the series was an eye opener, with regard to the location that these COs had found.  After each stage, I was certain that there was no way the next stage could be better than the one I had just visited.  I was wrong on all counts and the final was absolutely one of the most stunning locations I have been to.fc273212-86ff-4993-9937-1d54eb07e254.jpg

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Many of the most memorable caches are listed on my profile.   Perhaps Paoha Island in Mono Lake stands out.   I knew I wanted to go there as soon as we had started to kayak in earnest - old resort ruins, an earthcache, and a traditional beckoned me, in that order.  

One piece of advise we had gotten was to be off the water by noon.   My wife suggested that if we were going there, we should spend the night so there would be no need to rush.   She had never wanted to camp before - so it came as a surprise that led to many other adventures.

The other piece of advise was to trust the rangers who knew the lake well.   We arrived on a very windy day.  It was predicted to be calmer the next day when we planned to camp.  Still, they would not give us a permit.  We were disappointed but there were other things to do.   We explored volcanic fissures that we knew about from an earthcache - like mini slot canyons.   We kayaked a smaller lake in the eastern Sierras and went off to find petroglyphs and a virtual.   By then, it seemed like the wind had lessened, so we called the rangers and this time we got what we needed.

The three to four mile kayak across the lake was amazing.   We left at first light, past tufas, across gentle swells and brine to a volcanic island.   My wife had been right.   We needed a day to fully explore the ruins, do the caches, and enjoy the solitude of having an island to ourselves.   The stars burst from the dark skies.  The only sound was from the lake as the winds picked up in the afternoon.   

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It was calm again the next morning so we enjoyed paddling back across the lake and then went out to breakfast, before heading home across the Tioga Pass through Yosemite - stopping for an earthcache or two.  Okay, this was more than a day.  But it was memorable.

 

Edited by geodarts
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Took a friends son out with me to do a long multi.  We just finished the last waypoint when we noticed it was starting to get dark.  We decided to push on to the final.  After the find we realized there was no way we could backtrack and get to the car before dark.  On the gps we noticed there was a street not to far away but we'd have to bushwack.  As we approached the back of a house we noticed a man raking leaves.  He asked what we were doing and we informed him of our predicament.   He motioned us up and offered to give us a ride to our car.   When he went inside to get his keys we noticed a hand (yes a hand) sticking out of the ground not 10 feet away.  We were both thinking serial killer and was about to bolt when we remembered it was Halloween.   Needless to say he dropped us on a side street and told us how to get to our car.  15 minutes later we were at Burger King eating a Wopper and having a good laugh about the whole thing.   The mulit was nothing spectacular but the experience is something we'll never forget.        

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22 hours ago, geodarts said:

The three to four mile kayak across the lake was amazing.   We left at first light, past tufas, across gentle swells and brine to a volcanic island.   My wife had been right.   We needed a day to fully explore the ruins, do the caches, and enjoy the solitude of having an island to ourselves.   The stars burst from the dark skies.  The only sound was from the lake as the winds picked up in the afternoon.

Mono lake is notorious for it's winds and causing havoc to kayakers.  It's also one of my favorite areas in the world.  

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Have had many over the years but the last find, Oregon Mine GC8C6,   was great, see the log included here.

"AT LAST FOUND IT. On 8/21/2001 I DNFed this cache. Over 13 years latter along with Oddlottr I set out to try again. Coming from the North this time we found the trail to the cache good thing as first time I didn't find the trail and climbed up the rocks. I was not doing that again!

Got to GZ and the search was on. We checked out one tunnel after another and another and at last found the right one. Got to the location where the picture of Dezrat was pointing out the cache on 9/30/01, and of course it wasn't there as others have said it wasn't there.

We went back outside and logged into GC.com read logs and looked at pictures. Figured out where the last finder had left their replacement cache so back into the mountain we went dug around and found the cookie tin.

Now what to do? Since we knew where the cache was in 2001 we returned it to it's original location. Took a picture of Oddlottr where Dezrat picture was and one of the entrance. Will post those photos and re-post a couple of old ones.

Figured we spent over 2 hours working this one out but it was more then worth it to get rid of a 13 year old DNF."

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