Cachin' and Gettin' Soaked

Yesterday I spent the whole day caching with Haily, my niece. That is what she asked for as 'payment' for watching my birds when I went to L.A. We started about 8am and picked what we wanted to do off the Internet. Then we loaded up an ammo box for a multicache we went out and placed. I had three fake rocks that could hold micros, so I came up with the idea of a "shell game". The first coordinates takes them to one of the rocks. Inside is a card with two coordinates on it and they have to pick one. It takes them to one of the two other rocks. Inside again are two coordinates and they have to pick. One would take them to the cache and one would take them to the third rock. Depending on the choices the make they may have to do more walking or less and make have to make three stops or four. So, we'll see how that goes.

We found two new ones in my neighborhood - not first to find, but third, which still isn't bad. Then, we went and found one in a neat quiet park west of highway 115 that had cabochons in it. The guy who owns the cache polishes and cuts semi-precious stones like agates and jaspers. We left various toys and goodies and choose two small red agates. We went over to a jewelry store that does custom work in the southgate shopping center - the one with the Schlotzsky's and Sylvan called Berges. I let Haily pick out a setting for her stone in silver, she chose a pendant setting, and I chose a ring setting. So that will be her birthday gift, insha'allah.

Then we went on to try a newer cache over near Quail Lake. The coordinates kept pointing to the middle of the lake. So we checked what I'd written down and I'd left out a number and Haily had just filled a zero. So, not having the right coordinates available we had to move on to another cache. But, we had a nice walk all the way around the lake. It was a bit nostalgic for me because I used to live in the apartments right next to the lake and would walk around it in the evenings sometimes.

Our last cache of the day was a micro over by the old airport. It was a tiny keychain size toothpick canister covered in camo tape hanging in a tree in a hotel parking lot. We found it right away.

It took all day for that because it took awhile to set up our own cache, we stopped at Dairy Queen for blizzards, and it took us awhile to find the park for the Cabochon cache since we didn't know the neighborhood.

Today, I ended up doing cache-type stuff again. Mark Hampson, the VP of the union board, and I went up to Florissant to set up a caching type team-building game for the board retreat this weekend. We set up three mile and a half courses with six stations. So, the teams will be about six people, and they will have to use a gps to get the first station, find a hidden plastic baggie with the next coordinates, and so-on. The baggies also have letters in them that they will have to unjumble to solve a puzzle. But it was pouring rain today. So we spent a few hours trudging around in mud and wet trees and grass and got soaked to the bone. My jeans were so wet it looked like they'd been soaked in a tub for an hour. :) So it was a bit chilly and wet, but fun. At the main hall of the place we're staying, there were these humming bird feeders and they were literally swarming with humming birds - dozens of them. I love the sound they make when they fly, and they're so pretty. Even though these weren't the pretty-colored ones, they're still awesome. We headed out early so I was back home by 1. I fell asleep in the afternoon - man is it going to be an adjustment going back to a rigid schedule trying to get everything done and still get more than 5 hours of sleep, which just kills me. :)