No caching this weekend…

…yesterday was a major “spring-cleaning” day at home, after a Saturday morning Bible study. Got much of it done (i.e., our house is ALMOST liveable again – LOL) but it took alllll day. And haven’t even started on the outside yet. Ack!

Today, GeoTeen1 and I went to church as usual, and then off to visit GeoTeen2 up in juvie. Thank God, he’s getting out on Friday and will be home again! Happy about this on multiple levels: (1) My kid will no longer be in jail. Pray he learned his lesson this time!; (2) I no longer have to drive up to Gainesville to visit him… just in time, too – gas was $3.24 a gallon today! Ack! (which is one reason why I didn’t bother to go caching today, but that’s another rant for another time, LOL); (3) I no longer have to wake up and the super-icky hour of 7:00 a.m. to attend the 8:45 a.m. service at church. Yep, it’s back to the good ole, contemporary 11:07 service again…YAY!!!!!!!! Getting UP at 8:45 is so much better than having to BE SOMEWHERE by 8:45 – LOL!

So, my update this week is…that there is no update this week. 😉 Have a super-fantastic Monday and week… see you on the flip side. 🙂

Monday’s Child-Free Adventure!

Wow, what a day!!!! I don’t have a lot of time to blog about it, but suffice it to say, today was AWESOME!!!!!  I was able to find 7 of the eight caches I searched for today, with the majority of them being in Madison, Georgia.  What a gorgeous, amazing place that was!!!! My Inner History Nerd was in HEAVEN!!!!! 🙂  All but one of the geocaches I hunted today had been placed by the Visitor’s Bureau (or whatever the official name is), designed to bring you into the neatest, most historical places of the area.  My first cache (the one not placed by the history folks) was at the cemetery pictured here and was probably the most meaningful to me.  The cache name was “RIP Confederate Soldier.”  Here lay many, many fallen Soldiers and some fallen Hospital Attendants… at least 51 of them UNKNOWN.  I found this cache rather quickly, and my immediate instinct was to log my find and move on to the next.   But… this place got its hooks into me very quickly.  The immense sense of history here was so profound… I couldn’t just cache & leave. I had to wander around and read the headstones, silently paying my respects.  A few in this area had names, but over & over it was just “Unknown CSA Soldier.” Some were from AL, TX, MS… most had no info beyond the “Unknown.”  I looked to see if there was anyone from the 34th GA Infantry, my Greatx3 Grandfather’s unit, but didn’t see anyone from there.  The longer I looked around, the more profoundly SAD I felt (sounds kinda flaky, I know… oh well).  I thought of all the wives, moms, brothers, sisters, children, friends… all those folks who were waiting on word of their loved one.  And waiting for them to come home after the War.  And waiting. And waiting…. and waiting…and….nothing.  Probably some heard second-or-third-hand the fate of their beloved.  In the days before DNA, email, TV, Cable News, or even electricity for that matter….an unknown was pretty much destined to stay unknown.  This made me sad! Anyone who’s known me longer than 2 minutes knows that POW, MIA, and Unknown break my heart, and they are never far from my thoughts.  I found myself saying (yeah, OK, this is cheesy, but it’s my blog, so deal with it, LOL) that though these men were unknown to US, there is no doubt that they are fully known to GOD, and I hope they landed in a place of peace when they fell.   I almost felt as if I was not alone there.  The feeling of heaviness and the immenseness of the history stayed with me in varying degrees for the rest of the day.

After the cemetery, I went to find a cache at an art museum.  It wasn’t open yet, but luckily, it didn’t have to be to find the cache! 😉 This was a quick & easy find (as all the Madison caches were on my list), so it wasn’t long before I was on to search for the cache called “Window Etchings.”  This was in the general vacinity of “Heritage Hall.”   Heritage Hall is a gorgeous old building – huge and elegant! It practically screams “GENTEEL SOUTHERN LIVING!!!” (except, of course, genteel Southern living would expressly prohibit screaming such a thing…but you get the idea.)   😀

I finished the remainder of my caches quickly…they were all really easy. Yay! 😉 Rather than rush home and on to the next area on my list, however, I went back to Heritage Hall and took the tour of the place (along with two other historic homes).  It was simply amazing.  If you are ever there… I highly recommend it! 😀 I love, love, LOVE history and old homes and such… like I said earlier, my Inner History Nerd was a happy camper indeed.  I then had lunch at a great, great restaurant, where I found a tribute to a local man who had sacrificed his life during WW2 in service to our country.  Awe-inspiring and humbling, indeed.  I almost didn’t eat at the restaurant I’d chosen, but fortunately, the fact that the building itself looked old & historic won me over.  Not only was the food great, I learned of  this local hero…another one to pay respects to.

After I was done with Madison (and I can almost guarantee that I WILL be back one day… loved it there!), I headed on over to Stone Mountain to find a cache or two.  As it turned out, I found only one of the two caches I was looking for.  The first one was pretty easy…not as easy as the Madison caches, of course, but it was a nice little walk in the woods.  I almost went home after that one… almost.  But then, I looked on my GPS and noticed that there was another geocache a mere *510* feet from my car.  Really??? That’s it? 510 feet? Oh, I just gotta!!!!

So…. off I went to find this elusive second cache that was sooooo close. Ha.  I was so excited about the “closeness” of this cache that I failed to remember the “terrain” rating on this one was a 4.  For the non-cachers out there… terrain is rated on a scale of 1 (easiest) to 5 (hardest). This was a 4.  I didn’t realize till I got close to where it may have been and I checked my GPS for hints… yes, I really DO have to climb up over those boulders, there… and there… and there, too! My GPS, which had behaved admirably all day, chose this particular cache to start being persnickety.  It jumped all around, taking me 180 feet here (usually, UP!), 85 feet there, 35 feet over yonder, no, wait, 200 feet thataway… and it was jumping around erratically like that without me even moving. It would say 85 feet one minute, then 180 the next second…before I’d even BLINKED, much less MOVED.  Needless to say, the terrain was NOT conducive to my usual “pick a spot and walk in circles around it till you find the cache” trick.  After close to 90 minutes of a really good workout, I was forced to raise the white flag and surrender due to time constraints.   😦

I went back DOWN the hill…then back UP the OTHER hill, back to my car.  I miraculously made it back to the kids’ daycare a full hour earlier than I’d anticipated. Yay!  The kids, of course, realizing that we still had PLENTY of daylight left (like, a whole HOUR!), begged me to please take them to find a geocache since they’d been stuck in school all day long!  Didn’t take much to twist my arm there, so we headed out to a local ball field to track down a nice, easy, kid-friendly geocache.  😉  Aside from a few thorns, we found it quickly. (And yes, *I* found it this time… NOT GeoKid1 for a change, LOL. I’m getting better….! haha).

We signed the logbook, swapped some stuff, then headed home.

(Yeah, GeoKid1 looks less than thrilled in this picture, haha… but it’s just bad photography timing, cuz just a split second before, she was talking and laughing.  I just clicked the camera at exactly the WRONG time, LOL. Oh well. 😉 )

And so ended my very long, very fun day.  It was the perfect “staycation” – all I had to pay for was some lunch and parking at Stone Mountain, and I had a heck of a lot of fun galavanting all over Georgia in search of History and Adventure.  Happily, I found both.

If you want to see all the pics I took today (there are MANY more than what is shown on the blog), just CLICK HERE. 🙂

 

Have a great week everyone!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Another Cache-Less Weekend, but….

Despite the gorgeous weather we had on Saturday, and the cloudy-but-still-nice weather we had today, I restrained myself from geocaching all weekend. (Gasp!) Yesterday, I folded & put away oodles of laundry and did the grocery shopping.  Today was church, then visit GeoTeen2, then come home and do dishes & dinner, and then dishes again.  Then, of course, there was the obligatory ten minutes before bedtime emergency homework project the littlest GeoKid forgot ALL about till JUST THEN…. ***rolling eyes*** So… yeah.  Here I am, not a cache found anywhere.

But…here’s where the good news comes in. 😀 Tomorrow is President’s Day.  School is IN tomorrow…a makeup day for the gazillion and one snowdays we had recently.  Hubby is working as usual. And me? Well, golly gee… my office, for some crazy reason (God bless them!!!!) decided that we’d be CLOSED tomorrow for President’s Day.  And, even rarer still…there is no crazy pressing deadline that is necessitating my presence in the office on the aforementioned official holiday. 😀 So… yeah.  Me, left to myself. No kids, no spouse, just me, the dog and the cats. 😀 WOOT!  So, in anticipation of this brief and exceedingly rare Window of Almost-Complete Freedom… I played at being a grown up all weekend and got a buncha stuff done.

So… Monday…tomorrow…. I’M ESCAPING!!!!!!! I mean, I’ll come BACK and all at the end of the day, but, you know, for a few hours there… I’m making a break for it!!!! 🙂  I’ve plotted out some caches I want to find in gorgeous Madison, Georgia – a town I’ve always WANTED to visit, but never have.  It has a ton of antebellum homes and such…legend has it that Madison was the town that was so beautiful, Gen. William T. Sherman refused to burn it down on his infamous March to the Sea.  One of the caches I’m hunting for is in a Civil-War era graveyard… you know how much I love history and old stuff, so I am soooooooooooooooo excited about the chance to finally explore this town.  It’s not too far from us – actually same distance or even a little closer than my office is to home, so… it’s easily doable. 🙂  Then, once I’m done in Madison, my GOAL is to head the opposite direction down to Stone Mountain Park.  There are oodles of caches hidden there, too, with a little more physical effort required to reach them.  I’ve wanted to do these for a while, as well, but as they are a bit more physically challenging than the ones I usually do, I wanted to wait until a day the GeoTeens were with me, or a day when I otherwise didn’t have the little kidlets with me.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to do many – or even ANY – of the Stone Mountain ones, but what the heck… it’s a goal, I’ll aim for it. 😀

My plan is to head directly to Madison after dropping off the little kids for school.  This will be really early in the day and traffic should be a breeze (everyone is going TO Atlanta, not AWAY from it like I will be), so I’m HOPING I can be done there and in Stone Mountain by like 1 or 1:30. …find one or two caches there at  Stone Mountain, then back to the daycare by 5 or 6 at the latest to pick up the littlest GeoKids… just like on a “normal” Monday.

I know I could stay home and sleep instead.  Or, if I wanted to be a real grownup, I know there are still plenty of chores here I could be doing.  But….

naaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!! 😀

That’s why I stayed home all weekend (aside from visiting GeoTeen2 in juvie)…so I could get enough stuff done & taken care of so that I could ESCAPE tomorrow with a clear conscience. 😀  And, happily, I now have a camera to tote along to get pics of all my adventures, since, as you know, hubby very kindly got me one for valentine’s day.   Woot! 😀

I think this is very possibly the first time EVER I’ve actually LOOKED FORWARD to a MONDAY! Scary! LOL

Have a great night, y’all!!!! Adventure stories to follow….. 🙂

Our Bamboo Forest Adventure

Well, after a reasonably successful day of geocaching yesterday, I was more than ready to attack the bamboo forest in Gainesville today following our visit with my son at the YDC.

After visiting hours were over, GeoTeen1 (“GT1”) and I headed out for the forest. I’m very NOT familiar with this area, so I got a little turned around here & there till we finally found where we were supposed to be.  Parked our GeoVan at about 10 till 3, and away we went.

The forest itself was WAY COOL! It was smaller than I expected… for some reason, I’d thought it would be acres & acres of winding, serene trails.  It was much smaller than that, but nonetheless, it was still gorgeous. It was also several degrees cooler in the forest, which was good…I’d worn a long-sleeve shirt, and with it being in the low 60s today (yay – FINALLY!) it was kinda too warm.

We spent the first several minutes just wandering around the forest, enjoying the view.  It was like a whole ‘nother world in there!  A hawk would periodically screech, birds were chirping, etc. 😀 Very serene and pretty!  After our sight-seeing tour, we got down to business to try to find this durn geocache!

I remembered reading in the online logbooks that GPS reception was spotty at best in many places in the forest.  The bamboo, which was sky-high, created a very thick canopy between us and the sky.  The other geocacher’s experience proved to be true for us, as well.  I spent almost an hour zig-zagging back and forth and going into random circles.  Oooh, 38 feet left!….no, wait… 52 feet right…. no…. 23 feet back the other way… up this hill, down this hill, maybe over here, and…. argh! Finally, when the GPS told me AGAIN that it was 26 feet from me, I decided to give up using the durn thing (yes, still learning, slowly, not to rely too much on it!).  I randomly picked a spot (a tree, actually), and started circling around the tree, poking anything & everything with my walking stick to find the buried treasure. 🙂  Every circle around the tree, I went wider and wider until I was reasonably sure that it wasn’t there.  When I was done with that little exercise in dizziness, I picked a new spot to start over in.  After a couple more rotations around the new spot, I stopped and looked around for a minute.  If I were a geocache, where would I hide?  What doesn’t look quite right…what doesn’t quite fit in??? Suddenly, something caught my eye that of course I’d passed by ten billion times before.

I walked over to this area, and using my walking stick, nudged this thing (won’t say what it was so as to not spoil the fun for others) over a bit to see if anything was under it.  And… SUCCESS!!!!!! Yep, there it was, the small geocache container I’d been searching for forever. 🙂 OK, maybe not quite FOREVER, but it was starting to feel that way. 🙂 My GPS still insisted it was 48 feet in the opposite direction though, LOL! GT1 and I signed the logbook, swapped out some trinkets, and headed back home. 🙂

This was definitely an extremely neat, fun, awesome, and UNIQUE cache! 🙂 If you ever happen to be up this way, try to find this one. It’s absolutely beautiful scenery, and, whether you find it or not, you won’t be sorry you visited there. 🙂

If you want to see all the pics I took, click HERE. 🙂

Happy hunting, y’all!

 

Two Outta Three Ain’t Bad…

Busy day today! Bible study in a.m., followed by getting my membership at Snap Fitness finalized, followed by…GEOCACHING!  We had three on our list to find, given our limited time constraints.  And, as the infamous Meatloaf says, “Two Outta Three Ain’t Bad!”

The first was super-easy… a big, ginormous tree that we pass by all the time but (of course) had never really noticed before.  GeoKid1 found that one (no shock there, right???? LOL!) in record time. 🙂 There was a travel bug in this one, which we retrieved to move along to a different cache.

Next, we wandered off to find one called “Spiritual Meditation” that was, of course, located on or near a nice, peaceful path.  This one drove us batty… trampled all over for probably 45 minutes with no luck at all.  *sad face* I was thinking some decidedly NON-spiritual thoughts by the end of it, hahaha!  My seven-year-old, GeoKid2, decided he’d had enough of it and wanted to go home.  Rather than finding a nice tree to go behind, he promptly wet himself instead. Grrr! In his defense, he WAS trying to get to a tree…. but got caught up in some thorns and didn’t get unstuck in time.  Or so he said…. then laughed and said it was really on purpose so I’d quit this one and take him home. (Here’s where the decidedly non-spiritual thoughts come in… haha!) Kids.  *shaking head*

Dropped GeoKid2 off with GeoTeen (who was home working on some homework projects), and GeoKid1 and I took off again, to try to find just ONE MORE cache before we ran out of daylight.  This time, we took off for a local park and searched for “Little Cache in the Big Woods.”  This was a great one!  GeoKid1 especially LOVED climbing over the big boulders at the start of the hunt.  Sure wish I’d had a camera to take pics!  We hiked around in the woods for a little bit, and when the GPS said we were about 26 feet away from it, I started looking around (yes, I’m learning… LOL!).  I saw a pile of pine straw and some sticks that seemed to be laying there just a tad too neatly… and….BAM! There it was. 🙂 Yep, I found one all by myself, yay!!!!!! hahahahaha 😀 We signed the logbook, left Elmer the Elephant travel bug in there, along with a couple trinkets, and reburied it.

And so, here we are – thee searches, two finds, and we’re done for the day.  A good day all around, I believe. 😀  Tomorrow is the day I’ve been waiting for – the BAMBOO FORREST! Four people found the Bamboo Forrest cache today, so hopefully we can continue the lucky streak tomorrow.

And, I’m happy to report that hubby just now came home and finally gave me my birthday gift… a camera! 😀 Yay!!!!! So, my “photojournal blog” really WILL be a “photojournal blog” now…starting tomorrow! Woot!

Gotta run…time for dinner! Have a great night, y’all!

MamaKat & GeoKidz

My Weekend Quest

Yay, it is FINALLY Friday! Thank You, God! 😀 Yesterday was my birthday (I’m old now, 38 – LOL!) and it was a good one.  Thanks to Facebook, I received well over 100 birthday greetings which made me feel all loved & stuff. 🙂 Then, one of my attorneys I work for (and three paralegals) took me to lunch at the new restaraunt in our building.  It was delicious!!!! In fact, I was so stuffed, I didn’t even eat dinner last night… yummy! After I picked up the kids from daycare, I treated myself to not cooking – got them happy meals instead, LOL!We got their Valentine’s cards done for the class parties they are having today, they did their homework, got their baths, etc… I was able to have some actual PEACE AND QUIET, got some reading done, some prayers prayed,  and by 9:30-ish I was snoozing away peacefully.  Nothing like falling asleep early, which almost never happens!  It was fantastic.  So, thanks to everyone for making my birthday great!

When scoping out my weekend, I initially thought that any Geocaching would happen on Saturday only. And Saturday afternoon, at that.  Saturday morning, I have to meet some ladies for a Bible Study group I’m considering joining. After that, I have to run to Snap Fitness to sign my membership agreement and get The Tour.  I am only going to be a member for the next two months or so (not something I can afford long-term) until I get thru this half-marathon I’ve signed up for.  Those of you who have known me for a while know I signed up to do a half-marathon with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program, to help raise $$$ for cancer research and to help families who are currently in the fight.  Well, weather and illness (three+ months of bronchitis) have conspired against me, along with my hectic schedule & commute.  The only way I’m gonna be able to get the rest of my training done is if I have access to a treadmill.   Santa brought me a GPS, not a treadmill (yay for GPS, it was alos on my list, so I’m happy!) so I had to come up with Plan B.  My birthday gift to myself was the month-to-month membership at Snap (which is right across the street from me) so I could finish this dang half-marathon.  It’s been a long fight – last time I signed up, I got bronchitis FIVE DAYS before the event. Five. Days. I was sooooo upset! So… trying this again and won’t quit this time.  If I get sick or hurt or sick again right before the event… I’ll be really REALLY mad! LOL.

Anyway, I figured after the fitness center tour, it would be about 1 or 1:30 – still have enough daylight left for 4-5 hours of local caching. Probably won’t go that long, because I have a whole heap of laundry to do…but at least the GeoKids and I can get some caching done. 🙂 After two weeks, I’m going stir crazy. 🙂

Sunday, my GeoTeen1 (the girl) are going to visit GeoTeen2 (the boy, currently on “forced vacation” in Gainesville).  We’ll have to go to the early service at church (8:45 – ugh! GeoTeen1 said she didn’t think they even made an 8:45 on the clock during weekends –  LOL!) to get to Gainesville by 1:00.  Only two can visit him at any time, so it will be me and her, while hubby stays home wiht the little GeoKids.  I originally figured that, givin the 1:00-2:30 visiting hours, and the fact that it’s a 90-minute drive from home to there, it would be a geocache-free Sunday. (sad!)  Then it dawned on me… Hey! They have Geocaches in and near Gainesville, too! Duh.  So I put in the address of where we’d be, and voila! Several caches popped up.  There didn’t seem to be any that were particularly inspiring… until I found THIS ONE.  The code for this one, if you are looking it up on the Geocaching webiste, is GC2EBQ3.  In case that link doesn’t work, here is a picture from the photo album on that cache page:

Yes, this cache is located deep in the heart of a bamboo forrest!!!!!!! Ginormously tall bamboo, tall as trees! Super-thick forrest!  Trails, nature, and did I mention, ginormously tall bamboo everywhere?! HOW FREAKIN’ COOL IS THAT?????!!!!????? Hopefully I get an early Valentine’s day gift of a digital camera (our old one died… I’d also accept an iPhone now that Verizon has them, LOL… but iPhone costs more dollars than we have in the bank, so that’s pure wishful thinking there, LOL!) so I can take pics of this… it is sure to be fantastically awesome!

So, I am excited to finally be able to get out there and get some geocaching done on Saturday… but I am far, far, FAR more excited about the one on Sunday, smack-dab in the middle of a whole mess of bamboo! That will be mega, mega cool!!!!

Will let y’all know how it all goes…keep your fingers crossed for me & GeoTeen1 that we can find the bamboo forrest one! Will post pics if I can. 🙂

A Cache-less Weekend

Sorry for the long silence everyone. No posts because there’s been no caching…horrors!!!!!!

I fully intended to go caching this past weekend, but Saturday there was a seminar at church that I’d signed up for…an all-day deal. That cancelled out Saturday! But I must admit, it was really a fantastic seminar and I’m very glad I went.

Then, Sunday, I planned on going caching after church ~ there was a potluck supper to celebrate the 7th anniversary of the church after service… I figured I’d have lots of time afterwards to cache, right? Eh, not so much. We got home, then I had to do a bunch of laundry and such… hubby and the two littlest kids took off for his parents’ house for a superbowl party, leaving me and my 17 year old GeoTeen to ourselves (yay! almost-peace-and-quiet). Sadly, I once again forgot to retrieve the GPS from the van before hubby left, so… no caching then either. On the bright side, I thoroughly enjoyed being almost-alone, LOL, and with actuall PEACE and QUIET at home… no tv, no noise, no nothin. 🙂 It was AWESOME!

In other news, things in my GeoWorld have been not-so-fabulous lately. My 15 year old GeoTeen is currently away for the next 24 days, getting a nice little vacation at juvie. He seemed to think that just because the judge ORDERED him to go to after-school bootcamp program, doesn’t really mean he HAS to go….. so he didn’t. OK, he knew he HAD to go, he just didn’t want to. Judges frown on their orders being flagrantly disobeyed and so… bam. Off he went. Too bad, because he’s been doing so much better lately at school and was even starting to show improvement at home. Hopefully, this will be the last time ever for something like this. I only have about three non-gray hairs left, and they are in danger of turning white any second now, dye or no dye. LOL!

So, that’s the super-fast update from my little corner of the satelite grid. 🙂 Here’s to hoping we get some caching done this weekend!

Rock on folks, and have a great week!