He Found the Cache, But I Found the Cash

18 November, 2010.  Dreary, drizzly, chilly.  Just the right kind of weather for geocaching!  Yay!  Put on the long johns and a couple of extra layers and I'm ready to go.

Woodhick803 and I found 13 caches today.  Well, actually Woodhick found ALL OF THEM.  No fair - he was jumping out of the car before I even had the engine turned off.  Next time HE drives!  Not only did he find all the caches, I even paid for lunch!  (I prefer brie with that whine, please.)

The most significant part of the day, however, was that we were able to celebrate Woodhick's 100th find.  Here are photos of the momentous occasion.

Woodhick manipulates the lock to open this clever cache which looked just like an electrical box, but had the official geocaching sticker affixed to it.

 Woodhick signs the log.  If he realized this was his 100th find, he didn't let on, although he did make the comment that as of this morning he had made 91 finds.  Wonder if he was subconciously keeping track?

Even though Woodhick may not have been keeping track of his finds today, I was.  And, being the wonderful sister that I am, I had planned ahead and made this wonderful Certificate of Achievement (suitable for framing) to present to him at the appropriate time.

Congratulations, Woodhick!

Woodhick may have found all the caches today, but at the last site I found cash.  Cash!  Alright, it was only 11 cents, but still......

Oh yeah - happy birthday, Mom.  Aren't you delighted that your children are playing together finally?  

 Get outside and play!

2 + 3

Woodhick and I started off early on Tuesday, 11/2/10, with a couple stops at caches I'd already found, but soon found ourselves off on a couple of Waypoint_Wayne hides.  The first one took us to a cemetery near Mabscott, WV, where we had to locate a particular epitaph and count the frequency of certain letters and then assign them numeric values.  That would then give us the co-ordinates to the cache itself. 

This hill is much steeper than it looks.  Poor old Woodhick practically had to scramble up the first 20 feet or so on all fours.  I stayed at the bottom, but Woodhick says he signed my name to the log anyway.  Can you see him up there?








By now it was time for lunch and if you've been following this blog, you know that a good lunch is always a highlight of the day.  This time it was at Calacino's for their supreme pizza.  Very good.  Good crust, too.  (And yes, both of us remember the original Calacino's when "pizza pie" was an exotic food in Beckley.)

Another Waypoint_Wayne geocache had us out seemingly miles away from town, although we were just at the end of Woodlawn Avenue, practically in the center of town!  This one was called Raleigh Coke and Coal #4 and contained a history lesson on the mine and the miners who lost their lives there.

While returning from this cache I got a text message from the Drybees family.  We connected with them at the YMCA soccer fields and did a couple of caches together, with the Drybees daughter making the finds.  Good job!








With the onset of poor weather, I'm wondering how many more geocaching days Woodhick and I will be able to make.  I'd certainly like to hit the 100 finds mark (I'm at 78 now) before I have to hang up the GPS for the winter.  We'll see.

Get outside and play!

If Two Eyes Are Good ......

....... then twenty-two eyes are even better for geocache spotting.

It all started with Drybees' Facebook post that she, family, and friends were going geocaching.  I invited myself along and spent a lovely afternoon with ten others geocaching along Rails to Trails in Beckley.  We hit three caches, two of which I'd already found, and walked a couple of miles along the trail.  A nice afternoon.  Thanks, Drybees and friends, for letting me tag along.

A Perfect Caching Day

100% finds.  Perfect score!

20 October, 2010, was "catch-up" day.  I met up with Woodhick803 and got a few finds that he had already discovered, plus getting a couple of caches he'd put out.  He's still about 10 caches ahead of me, though.  Gotta get more, gotta get more than him.  That ol' sibling rivalry doesn't stop, does it?

Here is Woodhick803 laughing at me.  We'd spent over an hour at Hern's Covered Bridge in Greenbrier County, WV, looking in the wrong place.  On a whim, he moved over to the other side of the bridge.  I told him he wasn't going to find it there and to trust our GPS readings, but, like the brother he is, what did he do but go and find it.  Argh.  Honestly, I think he had this cache in his pocket and pulled it out just to prove his point.

As I've said several times before, geocaching gives me the chance to get out and see sites that I've missed.  Here's the Greenbrier River Trail near Anthony, WV.  Pretty, huh?  I found several gigantic oak leaves along this trail.  Gigantic as in almost 12" long.  Wow!  Lots of acorns and black walnuts too.

We had an unofficial "escort" for this part of the Greenbrier River Trail.  Here you see Woodhick803 and Goldie.

Earthcaches don't offer a cache in the usual sense, but instead teach something about nature.  Here I am at Flowing Spring on Route 19, north of Lewisburg, WV.  I had to figure out the flow rate and magnitude of the spring (hence the bucket) and whether this was an artesian spring or a gravity fed spring.




 I think I logged 14 finds for this perfect geocaching day.  No DNFs!!! Yay!  Perfect score, beautiful autumn weather, good food at WisconGranny and Woodhick's home.

Get outside and play!

10/10/10: Celebrating 10 Years of Geocaching

It's hard to believe that the first geocache was placed only in 2000.  Now in 2010 there are 1,210,622 active caches.  That doesn't count caches that have been archived or deleted.  Today, 10/10/10, was declared geocaching day with the purpose of seeing how many different geocachers would log a find today.  Woodhick803 and I had to join in the fun and fun we indeed had.

Woodhick803 scored his first FTF (First To Find) with "My Body Needs Some Work, Man."  FTFs are hard to get.  Congratulations!

Do you see the cache hidden here at the gate leading to Beckley's Rails to Trails?  No?  It's that bump on the left pole of the gate.  Pretty clever, huh?  This was placed by a geocacher named Waypoint_Wayne.  You'll hear more about him later.

Yes, that's Woodhick803 and yes, he's on the phone, but what's so unusual is that the phone (an old dial phone, at that) was in the middle of the woods.  The name of this cache was "Phone a Friend" and Waypoint_Wayne had attached the phone to a huge, gigantic, enormous concrete block (must have been used by the railroad in some way, I guess).  You should have seen Woodhick's face when he lifted up the receiver and heard a voice giving us the combination to a lock at the final cache location.  This one still makes me outright laugh.  Very clever, Waypoint_Wayne.

You sure do see some strange things when you're out geocaching.  There are actually fourteen satellites in this guy's yard.  Only in West Virginia!  LOL!







It was a great day geocaching, with lunch at Campestre and only one DNF (did not find), but, in the words of the immortal Ahnold, "I'll be back."

Some days are meant for caching........

....  and Friday, 1 October, 2010, was one of them.  A beautiful clear sky, perfect temperature, just right for a geocaching roadtrip with Woodhick803.







I got distracted right away at "No Stone Left Unturned", a cache near Old Stone Presbyterian Church in Lewisburg.  This stone is in memory of a little girl who died at the age of eight.

Here I am, standing at the entrance of Organ Cave, founded in 1704 and containing rocks that may date back as far as 300-500 million years ago.  Wow!  The cave was used during the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and was known as Lee's Underground Ammo Factory during the Civil War.

Woodhick does not get the Eagle Eyes Award for the day.  Here he is (nice view, haha!), prowling through a rock wall near Indian Creek Covered Bridge, Union, WV.  He touched the cache, looked at the cache, but never really saw it.  I finally had to play the old "Hot / Cold" game with him.  The problem for him here was that nothing seemed out of place.

The award for the most clever cache of the day goes to this one, Indian Creek Micro.  Here you see Woodhick holding it in his hand.  Yes, it's a spent bullet (don't ask me what caliber - that was part of my previous life) with another one as the cap.

Probably the best part of geocaching is that it gets you out to see sites that you would have missed otherwise.  This is the view from "In the Middle", a cache on a old, but refurbished, railroad bridge across the Greenbrier River.







So, yes, it was a perfect day for geocaching.  Woodhick and I have another excursion planned for 10/10/10, National Geocaching Day.  Whether or not we make a lot of finds, it'll be a fun one.  (Now where should we eat lunch???)

Erin's First Cache! Congratulations!

I recently spent a few wonderful days with my daughter Erin and her husband Tony in East Northport, NY, out on Long Island.  Like any good geocacher, I had my GPS with me and during one outing took Erin out on her first official geocaching experience.

She had books to return at the local library, so our first stop was there at the cache appropriately named "Bookworm."  Erin, as she said, "took one for the team," crawling not beneath, but into a prickly arborvitae bush.  She could find wrappers, bottles, but no cache.  Bummer.  Fifteen minutes later we both gave up, Erin whining just a bit that she was "no good" at this stuff.

However, things changed at Pitts Park, our next stop.  She grabbed that GPS right out of my hands and led me to the cache just as if she'd been geocaching for years.  She looks pretty pleased with herself, doesn't she?  Congratulations, Erin.  Then she started in on me that I was prouder of her geocaching ability than the fact that she was a paycheck-earning, taxpaying member of society now.  LOL!  Ah well, moms just can't win sometimes.    :-)

What a day, what a day!

13 finds today, 1 DNF (did not find).  How's that for a day well spent!

 Bright and early (at least for me), Woodhick803 (aka my brother) showed up at my house and off we went for what turned out to be a fun and rewarding day.  First stop, Almost Off Your Rocker at Beckley's Cracker Barrel.  He'd hunted for this one once before and I had looked for it twice, but this time I just knew where it had to be and, sure enough, it was.  Yay! 
 
Stop #2 at Tamarack where Woodhick picked up "A Cache for Woobie."  I had already been there, so it was kind of hard to play dumb (no comments, please!) about the cache's whereabouts, but WH walked right up to it.  A very pretty spot - you'd never know it was there.

Next stop - Intersection Cache.  Although I hadn't planned on visiting this site today, Woodhick wanted me to look for it so he could blog about it http://cachingin--geocachingme.blogspot.com/
Poor old Woodhick - I thought he was going to have the proverbial hissy fit when I walked right up to it.  Poor guy had looked there twice earlier and only found it this morning on the way over.  Hehehe!  My turn to gloat!  Hehehe!  However, I do have to admit that it was an extremely clever hide, so maybe I should cut him a break.  (Nah.  I'm his sister, remember?)

 "Peanuts and Crackerjack."  Where would you go looking for a cache so named?  Right!  A ballpark.  A nice visit here to the new Linda K. Epling stadium.  Boy, wouldn't my dad, a true baseball fanatic, have loved to have visited here? Miss you, Daddy.





We then started working on a series called "It Was Here" - seven caches all on sites where Beckley landmarks (if you can call them such) used to be.  Some have changed for the better, others not so much. 

Who remembers Pizza Inn?  Yep, replaced by another drugstore (don't we have enough, yet?) - with a nicely hidden cache. You're really going to date yourself though, if you remember where the old Moonlite Drive-In used to be.  Guess what's there now.  At least it's stayed in the same genre - the Galleria movies are there.  And so is a cleverly hidden cache. Woodhick and I have some disagreement going over who found this one.  He picked up the box that was hiding it, but I actually called out and touched it first.  Eh, I'll let him have it.  After my Intersection Cache find, I guess I should be generous to him, right?

Woodhick had yet to pick up Rock the Cache Mall, so while we were in the area, we drove by.  Nicely hidden, but you can spot it as you drive by, which makes it not so nicely hidden after all, I guess. 

The Vo-Tech Center (what an eyesore) has been replaced by Thornhill Park.  A lovely, clean little park, nice fountain, and a pickup of yet another "It Was Here" clue. 







Our only DNF (did not find) of the day came next (well, after a delicious lunch at Aangan.  I think we choose our geocaching adventures by good restaurants).  It was at the site of the old "Big Bite."  I never remember it being the BB, but I do remember it being the Burger Boy, probably Beckley's first fast food hamburger joint.  I remember it had a big satellite type of light up on the top.  This was WAY before Ray Kroc had ever come to town.  We visited this site three times today, never finding the cache.  It has us stumped, for sure.  :-(

The former sites of Big John's Packette and the Palace Theater were next on our list.  Never went to Big John's; I always thought it looked a bit shady, but I do remember seeing "Rocky Horror" at the Theater.  Yes, there's a cache hidden there. 


Off to Wildwood Cemetery for In Memoriam.  I think I backed-up into something.  Both Woodhick and I felt a bump, but neither of us could find anything that I would have hit and the car was undamaged.  Perhaps a ghost was crossing the road?

I had stopped by New River Park a day or so ago and found this cache.  Thought Woodhick deserved a chance at it too.  It was his cache today, but here I am holding it.  Please notice the Vanna White modeling.  (Too bad I wasn't wearing one of those evening gowns...)


Woodhick also needed Groce 'n Cache at our local friendly Kroger store.  An easy find for him, even with muggles around.

What a day!  13 finds and only 1 DNF.  Pretty good caching.  Now we're planning our outing for Geocaching Day, celebrating 10 years of geocaching on, what else, 10/10/10.

 Get outside and play!

You know you're hooked when.....

You know you're hooked when you plan your errands around what geocaches you can find between here and there.  I'd been feeling out of sorts for a couple of days, so I spent some time with a really good friend - the one who started me on this geocaching craze, actually.  Feeling better after an hour's worth of giggling, I stopped at New River Park and found the cache hidden there.  So peaceful, so quiet.  I watched the squirrels play and gather acorns which were falling by the branchful and even got clunked on the head a couple of times (by the acorns, not by the squirrels).  An easy-to-find cache.

The next stop was up Rt. 16 to a cache near that megastore (boo! hiss!) that has taken over America.  I almost didn't stop for this one as there was trash dumped nearby, but could see the path others had taken, so I went for it.  Walked about 50 yards and quickly found this one.

Woodhick803 and I have a geocaching day planned for tomorrow.  Should be fun! 

Woodhick's Day in the Sun

Today was definitely Woodhick's day.  The only reason he brought me along today was to be his chauffeur.

Our first cache was a 3-parter named The Greenbrier Ghost.  From this marker we traveled to the church at Sam Black Church for part 2 and then to what could have been a nice roadside park.  However, it apparently is the local party spot and was really pretty trashy.  Ugh.

Earthcaches are always pretty interesting.  This one led us to the Meadow River Wetland, an area just a few minutes off of Interstate 64.  Woodhick told me this interesting log is called a nurse log.  See the vegetation growing from the top of the log?  Eventually the log will decay, but the plants will remain. 




At Mundy Park Woodhick walked right to the cache while I was still getting out of the car.  Well, it wasn't quite that bad, but I was still getting my bearings with the GPS.  Obviously he's learned how to use his since our last outing, while I still haven't.

Woodhick was most pleased and giggled like a little kid with his find at Picnic Treasure.  Why?  The last couple of searches for this cache had turned up negative results, but, again, he walked right to it.  (That makes me wonder - maybe he did prior scouting and actually did know where these caches were hidden.  Hmmm.....)

We declined looking for Mountain Mystery, as there was road construction right where we wanted to look.  Onward then to Bingham's Troll.

Even though Woodhick once again found this cache (remember what I said about prior knowledge???), I think I should be given credit for it.  After all, I reminded him that trolls live under bridges, which was where this one was found.  Hmm, wonder if Woodhick was originally one of the Three Billy Goats Gruff? 







Jacob's First Cache was hidden right in plain sight.  I walked right past it, thinking it was trash.  Another score for Woodhick.

By this time, it was a laughing matter that Woodhick had a nose for caches and that maybe he ought to be a drug sniffing dog.  I was beginning to think that he could even find caches without the GPS co-ordinates.  Sheesh..........

The last cache of the day and, yet again, a find for Woodhick was at Spy Rock.  What was so aggravating about this one for me is that my foot literally was within 2" of it, but I just didn't look in the right direction.  Woodhick tried to play it cool and act like he hadn't found it, but the smirk on his face gave him away.  (Hey, maybe I should pick up a poker game with him.)


A good day of geocaching.  West Virginia is so pretty and I'm so glad to be able to get out and see these parts.  Oh yes, we also stopped at Babcock State Park.  Woodhick says there is a state law that says you have to take a photo of the grist mill, so I did and here it is.

I get to choose our next geocaching trip.  Think I should go out and explore beforehand?  LOL!

A cache a day, keeps boredom away? 28 August, 2010

I took a trackable from a cache yesterday and wanted to drop it off ASAP to get it on its way.  What better place to get the little guy traveling than at Tamarack.  This is "A Cache for Woobie" (not sure who or what Woobie is) and you can see what the inside of a cache looks like.  This was in an ammo box and an easy find, except my hand had a slight argument with some barbed wire.  As usual, sustenance was necessary.  I think Tamarack's carrot cake has just replaced their key lime pie as my favorite.

Pipestem State Park, 27 August, 2010

A great day GC'ing today with Woodhick803 and Mrs. WH.  Pleasant temperature, good company, 100% finds.

Someday WH and I will learn to trust our GPS equipment.  We traipsed around in the woods looking for Pipestem Quick Cache for over an hour.  Up the hill and down the hill, around the hill, and back again.  I had already given up when WH said to give him a few more minutes.  You know what he did, right?  He found the cache!  Yay!  Once he trusted his GPS and wasn't arguing with it any longer, he walked right to the cache.  Here he is --

I picked up a small yellow CareBear travel bug and hope to transfer it to A Cache for Woobie later on today.

A quick find at Harris Homestead for me (marked a 2 difficulty, it should have been 1/2) then off to McKeever Lodge for lunch. All that prowling around in the woods works up an appetite, not that I actually need an excuse to eat.  (More about that later.)

After learning our lesson about trusting our GPS, we walked right to the Law Hollow Trail Cache.  Pleasant walk going down the hill, got some exercise going up.  An easy find though.

(Ugh. Those jeans look terrible on me....)

 Mrs. WH claims the final find of the day at Turkey Spur Cache.  Nice going!

 Cool fungus (looks like a sponge, doesn't it?) found on the Turkey Spur Trail.







As in the past, the day ended with a stop at the Hinton Dairy Queen for MORE FOOD!!!

A fun day, good weather, good company, good finds.

Ready to go? 26 August, 2010

I'm ready for tomorrow's day of geocaching with Woodhick803 and Mrs. WH.  We're planning on hitting several sites near Pipestem State Park, WV.

Oh yeah......

Woodhick803 has started a geocaching blog too.  http://cachingin--geocachingme.blogspot.com/

Yes, he's my brother and if anyone tells me we look alike, you're in BIG trouble!  LOL! 

19 August, 2010

Spent a lovely day GC'ing with brother Woodhick803 and SIL.  We started out in the rain at the New River Gorge Visitors Center - Sandstone Falls, getting some information we needed for an Earthcache and also getting the "eyeroll" when we explained to the volunteer what we were doing.  Argh - I guess he'd forgotten the thrill of searching for hidden treasure.  Onward to Cemetery Cache where Woodhick803 found the first cache of the day, hidden in plain sight but, at the same time, very well camouflaged.

After that a quick stop at the Hinton Dairy Queen for lunch - gotta be well fed, ya know - and on to the John Henry statue and Steel Drivin' Cache.  We never did find the cache there, even though we made a return trip to it and searched everywhere we thought it should (and shouldn't) be.  It's a pretty popular stopping place and we all wondered if it had been kidnapped.


I got the second find of the day at TGH-Summer Camp.  Yay me!  Since we had to return through Hinton, another stop at DQ was in order!  GC'ing encourages such an appetite.

The majority of the remainder of the day we spent at Sandstone Falls.  Even though I've lived less than 30 miles from the Falls for most of my life, I'd never been there.  It's beautiful and I'm so glad today's adventure got me there. 

We finished finding the necessary info for the Earthcache and spent more than a few minutes at Roadside Swimmin' Hole, but no luck there.  The last few logs for that site had mentioned that they couldn't find the cache either, so none of us felt too badly that we had to join that list.

Mom always wanted my brother and me to play together and I know she's absolutely beaming that we're enjoying GC'ing together.  

All in all, a good day.

16 August, 2010

Did some scouting today to find Groce 'n Cache, a micro cache hidden about 1/2 mile from my house at the local supermarket.  Way too many people around to actually do a search, but I have a pretty good idea where it is.  Will keep an eye on the store and will look again when things are quieter there.

Day 1: August 14, 2010

Today was my first real foray into geocaching.  My brother went along, while his wife and her friend waited in the car for us.  We stopped at three sites, finding two caches: Tamacache, Almost Off Your Rocker in Beckley (no luck there), and Young Cache Chow's. 

Many thanks to my friend Lisa for getting me started on this new adventure.  I think it will be great fun.

That's my brother at Tamacache.

That's me at Tamacache.