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Improving the score: 75%
Jan. 8th, 2009 03:06 pmOK, since today is my day to leave work early, I decided to try for three geocaches that were more or less right on my route for home. The first one was in the park, not far from the one I failed to find Monday but did locate on Tuesday. Placed by the same person, in fact. I did not find it. I spent nearly an hour wandering in the right area, as the GPS seemed to keep changing its mind where I should be. When I started to get frostbitten fingers I abandoned that attempt. At the end the gadget was wanting me to go outside the park boundary and into someone's back yard. If that was correct, nothing doing. But I don't think it was right.
The second was very easy, except for the problem of not being obvious about what I was doing, because it was in a WalMart parking lot. ;p I parked my car so as to shield the site from most of the possible observers and furtively grabbed the thing, sitting in the car to sign the log, and then slipping it back into place. I think that worked. This time the GPS was pretty accurate about the location, so the only puzzle was where to look, and previous log comments had made that fairly clear.
The third was right along the road on my normal route to and from work. I'd already worked out the approximate location, and there are many split and hollow trees right there. I was sure it would be in a hollow, but it wasn't. Fortunately, the GPS was right on target this time, telling me that the car was one foot from the cache. Well, I was on the wrong side of the road to be one foot from it, but that was obvious. Sure enough, it was directly across the road, just not in a tree hollow. It was very tiny, about as small as I imagine you could make one. The log was a strip of paper rolled up tightly and inserted into one of those plastic bullet-shaped containers intended to hang from a pet's collar and hold contact information. I almost missed it because it was too obvious even while not being obvious, if you know what I mean. Clever.
I can see how you'd get better from practice. I started out with no idea what to look for, and now I'm starting to have some idea, at least for the tiny ones. So now I'm three for four, and willing to try some more but not today. Gotta go clean barns and by the time I feed everyone it will be dark (and bitter cold.)
The second was very easy, except for the problem of not being obvious about what I was doing, because it was in a WalMart parking lot. ;p I parked my car so as to shield the site from most of the possible observers and furtively grabbed the thing, sitting in the car to sign the log, and then slipping it back into place. I think that worked. This time the GPS was pretty accurate about the location, so the only puzzle was where to look, and previous log comments had made that fairly clear.
The third was right along the road on my normal route to and from work. I'd already worked out the approximate location, and there are many split and hollow trees right there. I was sure it would be in a hollow, but it wasn't. Fortunately, the GPS was right on target this time, telling me that the car was one foot from the cache. Well, I was on the wrong side of the road to be one foot from it, but that was obvious. Sure enough, it was directly across the road, just not in a tree hollow. It was very tiny, about as small as I imagine you could make one. The log was a strip of paper rolled up tightly and inserted into one of those plastic bullet-shaped containers intended to hang from a pet's collar and hold contact information. I almost missed it because it was too obvious even while not being obvious, if you know what I mean. Clever.
I can see how you'd get better from practice. I started out with no idea what to look for, and now I'm starting to have some idea, at least for the tiny ones. So now I'm three for four, and willing to try some more but not today. Gotta go clean barns and by the time I feed everyone it will be dark (and bitter cold.)
