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  That doesn't count caches that have been archived or deleted.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???)