A wonderfully wander-full day!

Today was our first-ever day that was entirely devoted to geocaching, from start to finish.  The GeoKidz and I were up and out the door by 9:30 a.m. (!!!!) We stopped by Dunkin Donuts for breakfast (the most important meal of the day, you know!) and were on our way.

Our first cache of the day was a large one – it was a ten-gallon bucket! Lots of neat stuff in there! It was not quite six miles from home.  I’d originally planned on this one to be later in the day, until I read that there were several travel bugs residing in that bucket, just waiting to be carried away to new adventures! Since we had a LONG day planned of wandering far & wide, this was a MUST.  🙂 We found the cache easily (kinda hard to miss, hehe!) and left with three travel bugs (and of course, we left other trinkets in their place).

Next stop on the list: Rutledge, Georgia! Had never heard of the place before today, but put the coordinates in the GPS, and away we went! This was one of a series of Historical Georgia Multi-Caches, and the first multi-cache we’d ever attempted.  The idea is that you go to the published coordinates, then look for clues listed in the cache description (in  these cases, the clues were the various years of certain events) to figure out the coordinates of the actual cache location.  I can’t say, of course, where this first one (or any of them, really) took us, but I loved it! Now that I think about it, I wish we’d taken more time to explore that particular spot while we were there! *sigh* Oh well.

The next two caches were in or near Mansfield, GA – yes, another town I’d never heard of, LOL! Can’t describe these two, either, without giving away the final answers of the cache location. But, suffice it to say, Mansfield is another neat, neat little historical town.  Oh, and it’s also The Town Of Awesome BBQ!!!! Seriously. In between caches 2 and 3, we stopped for lunch at this tiny little hole-in-the-wall place, Where There’s Smoke BBQ. Definitely a bit of local flavor, both figuratively and literally. 😀  It. was. AWESOME! Both kids pronounced it to be the BEST LUNCH EVER in the history of the UNIVERSE! hehehe.  If you are ever geocaching or otherwise traveling thru or near Mansfield, EAT THERE! You totally won’t regret it. 😀

After our Mansfield stops, we wandered on a piece till we came to Bostwick, Georgia. (insert the “never-hear-of-it-before-till-now” sentence here!) This may well have been my favorite town of the day.  Absolutely quaint, oozing with history all over the place.  I absolutely adore old, historical buildings (my big goal in life is to live in a historical, antebellum home one day), and this was one neat little town. 🙂  The cache we were after almost didn’t get found… we found the location very, very easily, but were almost foiled by a “muggle” (non-geocacher) who was reading her newspaper literally right on top of the geocache. Like, literally, right on top of it. *rolling eyes*  We wandered around the area some, kinda hoping that the presence of small kids would kinda disrupt the wonderfully serene atmosphere she was enjoying.  No such luck.  We went back to the van, where I called hubby to check in with him.  As I hung up the phone, poof! Muggle-lady got up and left!!!!! Just like that.  Good thing I’d paused to call hubby… otherwise, we would have left and chalked it up to a disappointing “did not find.”  We jumped out of the van and ran over to the place it was hiding, where my daughter found it in no time flat! The hint in the cache description told us exactly where it was, LOL, so we didn’t even need GPS for this one. Sign, re-hide, and back to the van we went….just as Ms. Muggle was returning from wherever she disappeared to. Seriously???? On a 40-degree, windy day, it’s comfortable enough to sit outside and read a paper for a few hours??? Really? Okee dokee then…moving right along… 😉

We had just one more historical multi-cache on our list for the day in this general area.  However, the muggle-watching had eaten up some valuable time. It was now 3:30, and daylight would be fading fast before too long (by 6).  We were just a tad bit over an hour away from home, and there were two traditional ammo box caches we wanted to find near Loganville, our home town.  So, we nixed the last one (another one back in Rutledge – somehow I failed to group it together with the OTHER Rutledge ones… oh well!) and headed back towards the ‘Ville.

The next cache on our list…. was a Did Not Find.  It actually turned into a Did Not Attempt, because the GPS coordinates landed me in the middle of a residential neighborhood…and it was SUPPOSED to put me in a local park!  I’ve noticed that with any Tribble Mill Park cache I’ve tried to find, the coordinates always put me in one of the nearby swanky neighborhoods.  :::facepalm::: I know when I land in a neighborhood,  I need to just tell my GPS to find Tribble Mill Park and go from there, haha. (I do not know ahead of time WHAT park I’m going to…just that it’s “a” park… and any neighborhood I land in has always been very close to Tribble Mill, so… I’m sensing a theme here, LOL.)  By this time, it was  closing in on 5:00.   Tribble Mill is a pretty big park (love love LOVE it there!) and I didn’t feel like there was enough daylight left to safely start wandering thru to find this cache.

There was ONE more in our list of caches we wanted to find, but that one didn’t work out either…my car GPS put me not quite where it should have,and with it being so late, I didn’t want to risk wandering around any longer than I had to.  So, the GeoKidz and I called it a day and headed home.

All in all, it was a solid, full day of geocaching – over 100 miles, round trip.  We found all the ones we actually looked for, and weeded out three that there just wasn’t time for.  If this was warmer weather, we would have left much earlier in the day and been able to find one or two more..but I wanted to wait till the roads started to thaw out a bit before we left home.  😀  Most of the ice is gone, but there are still icy patches and black ice scattered about.  I figured a later start would be the smarter idea.  Goal: 8. Found: 5. Of the three travel bugs we picked up in the morning, we found new homes for two of them along the way.  One remains in my care until I can sneak out and send him back on his journey. 😉 I’d call that a pretty successful day of hunting!

Dinner at a local restaurant (Claude’s Off the Bayou – YUM!) and a quick trip to Kroger to get some groceries finished up our long, fun day. 😀 😀

Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their weekend!

Of GeoCoins and Traffic Stops

Howdy, everyone!  Here it is, finally Thursday.  The weekend is almost here!!!! Very excited about this weekend.  The GeoTeens and I are attending our first-ever meeting of the Georgia Geocachers’ Association on Saturday.  The event is taking place at Callaway Gardens – a place I’ve always wanted to visit but have never been to.  There is, of course, a geocache hunt before the meeting, and there’s food, too.  It’s looking to be a full day!!!  Nervous (I have the social skills of a hermit) but excited too.  Hoping to connect with another geocacher or twelve who know what they are doing and can help us out. 🙂

Anyway, due to my insanely long commute and the limited amount of daylight available during the winter (not to mention the whole “feeding and caring for four kids, two cats and a dog” thing), my geocaching is limited to weekends.  And, given that my weekends are insane, limited to a tiny portion of the weekends, at that.  That’s why I’ve only got five finds so far. Honest. 😉  Midweek geocaching is not practical for me.  That said, I did make a quick stop yesterday, which turned out to be not such a good idea.

Earlier last weekend, the kids and I found our very first-ever GeoCoin! Oh boy, I was all excited abou that! For those who may not know, GeoCoins are non-monetary coins with tracking numbers on them. Their goal is to travel all around the globe, or whatever desitination their original owner sets for them.  For those of you familiar with military stuff, they are kinda like military challenge coins, only with tracking number. Hooah! 🙂

Well, we found the GeoCoin in our first stop on Sunday’s hunt. I made sure to very, very carefully write down the tracking number listed on the clear plastic case the coin was in. Tripple checked it, even.  Then, we did one more hunt than we initially planned just so that we could put our geocoin in it’s new home.

Later on that night, after the kids were more or less in bed, I logged on to Geocaching.com to log my finds and claim my geocoin/note its new home.  I very carefully input the tracking number I’d written down… only to find out that I’d forgotten that there is also a SECOND number, usually on the coin itself, that needs to be logged in order to claim/deposit it anywhere. D’oh!!! I’d totally forgotten about that, and now it was late at night and I’d taken sleep-inducing cough syrup already… so there was no going back out to retrieve the lill thing!

Of course, I did not want to leave a geocoin out there all by its lonesome, when everything on the internet said it was in a place other than where it actually was. D’oh! ::facepalm:: Finally, Wednesday morning, I had a chance to go back to the cache I left it in.  Luckily, it was very close to home, and only a small detour on my way to work. I was going into work a bit late Wednesday because of having to handle something at one of my kids’ schools, and was fortunately running way ahead of schedule and had a couple minutes to spare.

I unfortunately found out why I was way ahead of schedule, though.  As it turns out, the road I was on, where I thought the speed limit was 45 or 50… the speed limit was actually 35. Hmmm… who knew?? Not me…there’s not much by way of signage in that area.  :::baning head against wall::: Yes, that will be one very costly driver education lesson there.. at least $165, possibly more. *sigh*

But, once I was turned loose, I immediately (albeit, MUCH more slowly!) went back to pursuing my geocoin!  I arrived at the cache a few minutes later with no further law enforcemment meet ‘n greets. 🙂 I was very aware of the fact that there were a LOT of stay-at-home moms in the area… almost every garage door was open, and an SUV or car in every one, meaning someone was home.  This was on a public area, but there were a lot of homes nearby.  I could just see myself meeting up with Loganville Cop #2…first speeding, then planting suspicious items in the kudzu patch by the side of the road!

Fortunately, I found the cache with no problem.  Even more fortunately, the above-mentioned geocoin was STILL THERE! **whew** big, big relief! I grabbed that lill critter outta the cache, re-hid the cache, and jumped back in my mini-van.  Went straight to work and still go their earlier than I expected to. Yay!

Later on that day, the GeoCoin was duly logged as being in my possession.  I’ll definitely find a new home for it over this weekend… after making absolutely sure I log both numbers on it. 🙂  Lesson learned, the hard way! haha!

Happy day-before-friday, y’all!