What is your best story of a "not found" (come on, we all have at least one)

[+hikemeister]

Generally we find all the caches we hunt for, but this July, missed one in a big way. Now that I look back on it I think it is funny. Perhaps we all have similar (probably even better) stories like this.

 

We were on vacation in the mountains of eastern West Virginia, and I went after a remote cache with a rather high difficulty level. It was July and the last person to find it was in January. Their log said -- looked for quite some time and then saw the corner of the cache sticking up through the snow. They also said -- lots of greenbrier -- would hate to do this one in the summer.

 

So off I went -- about a 15 mile drive up a winding road into the mountains, then a hike up a steep path and a walk up a logging road with weeds up to my neck for about a quarter mile. About 500 ft from the cache location, I had to get through dense (very dense and many thorns!) greenbrier that was like barbed wire. The back of my shirt and pants were covered in thorns, and ditto for my hands. Finally got to the small area of pine trees where the cache was supposed to find. Horray! It was supposed to be a tupperware container with a white lid. I knew that if it stuck out of the snow in winter, it now would be easy to see against the brown forest floor. Looked for over 30 minutes, and finally called it quits.

 

I put this one on my watch list upon return to Florida. The next week it was found !!

The finder wrote -- had a hard time finding this one, since you changed the container to a camoflague ammo box that blended in very well with the area.

 

Oh well, you can't win them all.

 

I'll be back.

 

What is your best story ??

[+worldtraveler]

That's easy for me to answer. It would have to be this one.

 

I've had several more "not founds" since then, but it remains my most memorable.

 

worldtraveler

 

[This message was edited by worldtraveler on September 29, 2003 at 04:32 PM.]

[+briansnat]

I have a lot of not founds. This is probably one of my better not found logs. This is probably one of my more embarrasing ones. There is also this cache, where I have about 50 not founds on it .

"You can't make a man by standing a sheep on his hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position, you can make a crowd of men" - Max Beerbohm

[+Criminal]

....waiting for TravisL.....

 

http://fp1.centurytel.net/Criminal_Page/

[+worldtraveler]

I enjoyed your story, BrianSnat. Hagar the Horrible once said, "Ignorance is the mother of adventure." I think that explains why I'm able to find adventure so easily (or even unintentionally).

 

worldtraveler

[+hikemeister]

quote:

---

Originally posted by BrianSnat:

I have a lot of not founds. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?luid={ADBCC636-6C9A-48B1-85B9-F03C0355CED1} is probably one of my better not found logs. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?luid={A384BA93-4B5A-41E6-8055-B5B7FCDE6B00} is probably one of my more embarrasing ones. There is also http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=19324&log=y&decrypt=, where I have about 50 not founds on it .

_"You can't make a man by standing a sheep on his hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position, you can make a crowd of men" - Max Beerbohm_

---

 

Wow ! What an adventure !

[+drat19]

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?luid={06273ABA-EFBD-4A63-9430-747BAD087195}

[+SerenityNow]

This isn't exactly a no find, because we just ran out of light, since the park closes at dusk, and had to return a few days later. We might have found it before dark, however, if I hadn't decided to do some major acrobatics!

 

You see, we needed to go down a fairly small hill off the path and into the woods. My husband went first... He picked up speed as he headed down the hard, smooth hill but broke his desent by grabbing a tree and finished the trip down the hill uneventfully!

 

Now it was my turn. No problem! If he can make it I can make it. I started down the hill and picked up speed.... LOTS of speed. I buzzed by the tree Tom used to brace himself and managed to give it a really nice "high five" as I whizzed past. Uh Oh! Downed branches ahead and no way to stop...... The ankle turned.... Wasn't there a soap opera by that name???? That was it... the rest of the hill was a blur as I turned into a rolling hedgehog and somersaulted down the remainder of the slope. As I lay at the bottom of the hill in a patch of poison ivy all I heard was.... "Nice style! You fell down loose as a goose!"

 

Needless to say, at that point it was dark so we "picked up our toys and went home".

 

How come you never have a movie camera to record these moments when you need one??

 

Our next trip to the cache was uneventful, since we took the right trail in and found the cache post haste!

 

You know, these can be the best caches with the most fun memories....

 

This world has nothing for me

And this world has everything.

All that I could want

And nothing that I need.

**** Cademan's Call ****

[+Tsegi Mike and Desert Viking]

There is one we couldn't find---it turned out it was missing and later archived. When we first pulled up to this wildlife park/zoo after closing time to look for the cache in the parking lot, a very lonely (VERY lonely)and bored caretaker came running out of his home asking us if we needed help. We explained what we were doing and he decided to help us. I mean help us in a big way. I just wanted out of there. He resembled a guy who just came in from the woods and hadn't seen a girl in 6 months. This particular girl isn't the kind of girl who makes heads spin anymore either.

 

Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes

On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated -- so:

"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges --

"Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!"

 

Rudyard Kipling , The Explorer 1898

[+Team Sand Dollar]

This is one I attempted just before leaving Arizona. The only bright spot is that no one ever did find it and it was assumed missing.

 

My Log entry is below for:

Camelback Cache (GC79E5)

 

Ok only a crazy person would try to find this cache on a day like today. Decided to take the trail from the east since it looked much easier. It was easier, but it is still no walk in the park. Started from the parking space at 9:30Am and 100 degrees. A nice quick 15 minute, .4 mile hike just to reach the trailhaed and I got one of the closer spaces. Another hour and 30 minutes to reach the site. Searched for an hour and a half with no luck. The area that the GPS put me didn't look right and the area near the discription looked like someone had already been there. Left a sand dollar tin in the area I expected the cache to be, as I gave up. Then another hour hike back to the Jeep where the temperature was now 110 degrees.

 

This one was just too much work for a no find. Don't think I'll be trying that again. Then again I did admit I was crazy.

 

Team Sand Dollar

[+RIclimber]

My not-found was in a .25mi train tunnel that I was above and there was no way down into it from that end.They didn't say anything about the tunnel.

[Aksor+Raskol]

I was looking for a cache and concentrating on the GPS for the last few feet when I looked on the ground and saw that my next step would have landed on a 4 foot copperhead. I froze, looked around for any of his companions and immediately decided to abandon my search. The hike back to the car took longer than the hike in because I was literally flailing the ground with my hiking stick as I walked. Guess I'll probably go back for the cache, but in winter.

[+BruceS]

Probably my best not found story is here. I still remember it well, I went back and found cache a few months later (after it had been relocated). My second choice would be this one. Though it was not logged as a no find but as a note, I did not even get to search. I finally got back and found this cache this weekend.

[+hikemeister]

Wow, lots of good ones ---- AND, just one day after posting there is another topic on "what is the farthest you have walked or biked and not found a cache!" Imagine that -- what an original idea for a topic.

[Moun10Bike]

My best no find story comes from this cache (see the last two logs from Hazard and me). With an experience like this, you just have to know that Criminal was involved somehow!

 

[+TAT]

Well this one was 7,000 miles of no finds! But, I wouldn't have seen so many cool places on my own. Another thanks to Geocachers around the world.

[+MoonHerb]

In the time before we had a GPSr we had a few no-finds. Check 'em out here - OurDiary

 

______________________________________________

Please visit our website - http://www.moonspace.co.uk/moonherb

[SombreHippie]

Competition for this standing is close between this one at Troll Stash where we were pummelled with rocks in the dark by what we assumed were the local stoners (no pun intended :/), and this one on Red Dot Tour where I lost Puppy, had to do some impromptu rock climbing, acquired some nasty heat exhaustion while dehydrated, and still had to hike 1km uphill to get back to the car.

 

A great serial killer once said, "Beauty is only skin deep. Trust me, I've looked..."

[+hikemeister]

Regarding the first one -- sounds like a good place to stay away from.

[+TMAN264]

Just last Friday I was on vacation in Colarado. I absolutley KNEW there was a cache behind my uncle's house, I just KNEW it. So I punch the co-ords, and go. well, it's leading me the wrong way, but I trust the GSP'er. It takes me off path, which is weird, since it should be on the path.

 

So anyway, I am going through desert scrub-brushy grab your boots undergrowth type terrain, and come to a barbed wire fence, across form it is the morning rush hour on Hwy 287. I like barbed wire as much as the next guy, but I am not a fan of crossing a 4 foot high fence of it. So I follow the fence, which ends at a horse pen, and the horse fence goes the wrong way. So I had to cross it.

 

Let's just leave the fence crossing by saying I am glad my wife is pregnant, because it might be the last time, that was some big barbed wire.

 

In between the barbed and the highway were some cattails, no biggie. Well, they were tall, and I didn't see the 2 foot deep swamp until I was soaking in it. The good news is that the highway was easy to cross.

 

So the newt .45 miles were easy, I made it to the parking lot I KNEW was the starting area, not the caching area, what's going on here? Well I punched in the wrong co-ords, the ones for the start, not the info where the micro's were. So I .9 miles off again, at least I have the trail. Other then some strange looks from the wet jeans and the blood, I was cool. After all, I am a cacher!

 

So I get there, and peg off the first 2 clues no sweat. And I look. And look. And look. Did I mention my wife said I only have one hour to do this, this was her vacation too? ( Try explaning the mud and a bleeding testicle when you are an hour and a half late).

 

So I score a DNF, but get my uncle out the next morning. within a minute he found where the ammo box WAS buried, and as I looked at the cache page, the last 5 seekers posted DNF's. Not only did I get a DNF ( I did put in a request for it to be archived), but my non-caching uncle totally smoked me at my hobby. What a great day........NOT.

 

Make a sanity check.

[+Markwell]

The Cache

June 6, 2002

June 7, 2002

July 6, 2002 - my personal favorite log on the website.

August 8, 2002 - finally!

 

Markwell

Chicago Geocaching

[+hikemeister]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Moun10Bike:

My best no find story comes from http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=3890a643-beea-40ce-9d91-dab2c82136ef (see the last two logs from Hazard and me). With an experience like this, you just have to know that Criminal was involved somehow!

 

http://geocachingwa.org

http://www.switchbacks.com/files/Geocaching/simple_life.gif

---

 

I like this one best so far !!

[+hikemeister]

Not that it's a contest or anything -- I just like it best.

 

[+BeachBuddies]

Here's mine. It's from DisQuoi's Out of the Frying Pan cache that we finally found, after four tries

 

The first time we tried, we didn't know what a micro-cache was, so we were standing right next to it without finding it

 

The second time, we found the first and second micro-caches, but the third was missing.

 

The third time (after DisQuoi posted the clues on-line), we tried again. Unfortunately, I had mixed up two numbers when transcribing them into my GPS (38'56.CBA instead of 38'56.ABC). So, we ended up in the main parking lot.

 

We knew that wasn't right, but we didn't have access to the original clues (the micro-caches had been removed by this point). So, taking a wild guess at my mistake, I swapped the latitude and longitude decimal parts (38'56.DEF and 77'24.ABC). That lead us to an interesting part of the park, but not to where the main cache was.

 

Our fourth try (after I discoverd my real error) should have been easy. But I forgot I had swapped the lat and long, so when I made the correction (CBA to ABC), they were still swapped in my GPS GoTo point. Argghh...

 

Well, after slogging through the swamp, we realized this can't be right!, and figured out what had happened. After finally getting the right coordinate entered, we found the cache with no problem.

 

-BeachBuddies

[+Brian - Team A.I.]

Well, I can't think of a story of a DNF right now, but I do have a NBTF story. There was one cache in particular that a local team placed outside a JAIL not too far from here. After being questioned by an officer, a team was allowed to find the cache, then the officer immediately confiscated it. Sorry, but to do something like that says you have a few pistons that aren't firing.

 

Brian

Team A.I.

[+hikemeister]

This was a good thread -- too bad the interest has dropped off.

 

Oh well, I guess no one else has a good story about a did not find.

 

[+Leapin' Lizards]

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?luid={E2194042-65E0-4AE8-B3CD-9341B0A19C0A}

 

And the happy ending:

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?luid={1DA88584-1751-4232-80EE-7C457C708D74}

 

[+DavidMac]

One of my first no-finds. This was one of those darn puzzle caches that I finally found on the fourth visit. I had only been into caching for about 3 weeks at the time, and hadn't quite mastered the use of the GPS yet...

Then there's, well, my most random found log of all time...

 

"Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer." - J.R.R. Tolkien, on critics

[cyhan]

This is my no find. Now it has been stolen so I guess I'll never find it now. Woodpecker

but it was fun trying to find it