The month of November has proved to be quite a challenge, both in actually finding caches and in writing this month’s Caching Three Stars. With all of the bad weather, short hours of daylight, and the everyday commitments of this peculiar thing called life, we were not able to find one cache. That’s right! Another milestone achieved, or not. Since we have seriously started caching, there has never been a goose egg in our monthly tallies. So here is my dilemma. How do I write the Three Stars of November when there are none? While contemplating what I was going to do, I started reminiscing about our most memorable caches – the ones with the most story behind them. Then it hit me. Why not write on my three most memorable caches. So here we go. I will endeavour to tell you the interesting stories behind our three most memorable caches.
____________________________________________
Jessica’s First Cache
I have seen these guys twice since I started caching! (click to enlarge)
We have been caching for almost two years and
Jessica’s First Cache (GC330DB) is the winner of our first star for our most memorable cache finds. The cache was placed by
Fast Finders and is located near a high school. Can you already see where this may be going? Normally, Geocaching.com doesn’t allow caches to be placed near schools unless you have special permission. The cache owners were students and were allowed to place it there. Well, the cache was released after midnight and, with us loving late night caching, we set out to find it. When we arrived near the school, I parked up on the road as to not create suspicion. My wife and I walked down an embankment and proceeded to ground zero. While we were standing in the parking lot, I looked up at the car and seen a police woman looking in the car with a flashlight. We just stood there waiting for her to notice us. She must not have seen us as she got in her car and drove away. We took off in the woods to find the cache. While we were searching, I heard the sound of brakes whistling followed by a car door closing. We stood and waited. After hearing another door closing followed by a car leaving, I decided to check it out. As I looked out from the trees, I seen the police car driving away again. I told my wife that if she came back, we would have to talk to her. Sure enough, the cop came back so we walked out to explain to her what we were doing. I told her we were geocaching and showed her our GPS device. She didn’t know what geocaching was and didn’t seem interested in knowing. She thought we were drinking in the woods. At 41 years of age, I assured her we could do that at home. At that moment, another police car showed up and a male cop got out and knew about caching. After that the K9 dog unit showed up followed by a fourth police car. I remember thinking that it was a bit overkill for two forty-something geocachers. The male cop told the female cop to let us get the cache and we would leave. The police woman would have none of that. She insisted that we leave. We told her it wasn’t a problem and apologized for our actions. The next morning, I came back, on my way to work, and still managed to get an FTF. To this day, this has been our most memorable geocaching experience.
____________________________________________
Thinking Outside The Box – It’s Your Lucky Day
Imagine trying to find a nano here. (click to enlarge)
In the summer of 2011, we travelled down the Burin Peninsula to attend a caching event that was being held by shantrent and shermandkim. There was an overabundance of caches placed for this event. Some were easy and a few were very difficult. Placed by
shantrent,
Thinking Outside The Box – It’s Your Lucky Day (GC30E8G) happened to be a very tough hide. It was a nano cache that was placed somewhere on the beach. I will not divulge the cache container. All I can say is that it was like finding a needle in a haystack. Upon arriving near ground zero, we started searching for the container. We knew it was hard but were excited. Our son, tiny seeker, got bored and started picking up pieces of wood and throwing them. There was one lone rock in the area and he picked it up and threw it. We told him to get back to searching again. After a fair bit of searching, we gave up and moved on to other caches. After finding a few more, we ran into the cache owners and told them we couldn’t find the nano on the beach. They decided to come over and see if it was still there. They couldn’t find it, their own cache. Been there, done that many times. The cache owners were puzzled. They said that they laid a rock next to the cache. I spoke up and said “Do you mean this rock that my son picked up and threw away?” We all had a great laugh as the rock was now one hundred meters away from ground zero with no idea where it used to be. We helped them look for it for awhile before moving on. We found out that they found it shortly after we left. We had a great time at the event and fondly remember the laughs we had at this cache site.
____________________________________________
Protect and Serve
Not an actual photo of the crash. (click to enlarge)
While attending the Coast Guard College in Sydney, NS in January of 2012, I went out in the town to do a bit of night caching. The cache I was looking for was called
Protect and Serve (GCWCJY) and was placed at an abandoned police station. The cache was placed by
bmn747 and was located in the front parking lot, near an intersection. When I arrived at ground zero, I quickly realized that not only was the cache buried under a bank of snow, its location was probably frozen shut. Without being seen by the traffic driving by, I proceeded to dig the cache location out. It didn’t take too long to uncover but my second assumption was right. It was frozen. Without drawing too much attention, I started to kick the cover until it broke free. I retrieved the container and proceeded to sign the log. While taking the log out of the bag, I looked up at the intersection just in time to witness a car T-boning a pickup truck. The police showed up mere minutes later. I quickly signed the log and put the cache back. I, then, stood around for awhile. As the police was questioning the drivers, I heard the truck driver blame it on the woman in the car. The truth was, the truck driver turned left and cut off the car coming towards it. The woman in the car tried to stop but couldn’t. It was then that I stepped forward and gave the woman my contact information. I also explained it to the policeman. That was the funny part of it. After I told him why I was there, he was trying to comprehend why I would sit there digging in the snow just to sign a log. I told him he wouldn’t understand unless he was a geocacher. This was my first time seeing a car accident firsthand and up close. Truly memorable!
____________________________________________
What about you? Do you have a great story behind one of you finds, or hides? If so, please tell us. We would love to hear about it! Use the comment space below.
Until my next post, I hope that the short days, heaps of snow, and life doesn’t prevent you from getting some caching done. Happy Caching!
Frank (Jewel)
Caching Heaven 