Monday, January 3, 2011

The Treasure, The Power... The Journey!

WARNING: The following blog entry contains spoilers to the caches listed within. If you feel you may be caching in Tucson anytime soon and don't want to ruin your hunt, please proceed with caution.

We headed out again with Samantha for another afternoon of geocaching. Some interesting finds this time.























The first cache we visited was one that we had looked for twice and never found. I never mentioned it on this blog, for we only looked for it in passing. It's located at a 50's style establishment called Little Anthony's Diner. We ate there a month or so ago, and looked for the cache really quick before going home. No luck. Then Samantha came to visit Tucson, and we decided to bring her along and dine there again. Again, no luck. The hint said, "Fill `er up," and there was also a mention that it was a few feet from the patio dining area. There's also this picture:
We looked the car over, and up and down. We walked around it until we got dizzy. We thought it would be under the license plate, but that was bolted down on the top side. We could still see under it, only to see that nothing was there. Now that I think of it, the plate did seem a bit bent. Probably caused by fellow cachers! So we were left saying, "Ummm... where's the gas tank? What does this car run on anyway?"

So Nikki and I cheated. We asked her father where this fuel intake might be. He tells her, "Check under the tail light." Really now? Okay...


We went back to the cache, and found he was right! There's a micro hidden in there, held in place by a magnet. This is pretty neat. Here's a classic car, classic location, interesting theme that would take me back if I was alive back then, all adding up to a classic cache. Good job. We signed the logbook and headed on to the next.


We finally found this amidst a maze of roads and houses. Since cutting through strangers' backyards is not an option, we had to go around. There was an argument between two of us and I got fed up and headed off on my own. The others got in their cars and headed down the opposite way. I still got there first.  :P  Samantha pulled up in her vehicle just as I pulled out the cache, asking me if I needed a ride. Oh, wise guy, huh? The Tucson Terrors followed soon after.

Nice spot. There were some rowdy dogs that seemed like they needed to be behind stronger fences, but they at least held out until we got the cache and got out of there. We took a tiny pumpkin eraser, a rubber bug of some sort, and a silly band. We left a horse, a dinosaur toy, and a Bratz doll. Oh, and it said there was a dead pomegranate on top, but it was actually a rock. Unless they meant the dead pomegranate tree... which is sort on top, being high up and all. Hmmm, whatever.

This is a shot from Samantha's camera phone, taken while posing for the picture at the beginning of this post. I think both came out rather nice, so I posted both. Got a problem wit' dat?

The tiniest Terror.


El Shaddai is one of the Judaic names of god. It means, "God Almighty." So this cache is the `Treasure of God Almighty?' I'm not sure it lived up to that name, but it was a pretty cool find. I just want to throw this in:





I'm not religious at all. In fact, I'm agnostic with an interest in Wicca. But I've always loved Amy Grant, and this is a very pretty song. It's religious, but not gospel. (Can't stand gospel! Ack!) I hope I look this good when I'm 50!

But I digress. This cache was in an apartment complex, and contained quite a bit of clues. "Seek and You shall find a treasure under the shade of a tree. Near the bottom of the green pole near it. This is NOT in the courtyard but it is near the outside of building. Red Warning sign on the green pole look low near this and building. only a few steps off the parking lot."

It still took us some time to find this. First we headed into the courtyard. "Hey, wait, didn't the clues say not to enter the courtyard?" Oops. Anyway, we found the green pole, which didn't look like a stereotypical pole. It was much wider. The cache was under some small rocks near the base of the pole. We took a tiny pumpkin eraser (those things breed like rabbits!), a Cox tag of some kind, and a bag of three erasers. We left a rubber "J" charm, a lion stamper, and a Tootie Cutie clip. Sarah didn't want to want to write "Tootie Cutie" for some reason. I won.  :)

Samantha and I.

Now we're on to the DNF's (Did Not Find's). Ugh.


The hints/clues read as such:

"Come on Allen cache-up!
Gramma Betsy is kicking ya bup.
A namesaked (f.t.) find
So you are less left behind
& your spouse will grant you this trump.

It may seem unfair or cheap.
To create a cache within a friend’s reach.
But it’s a birthday, come on…
It can’t be so wrong,
Geocaching’s a skill that we teach.

Additional hint: Pull up!"


We were led by our trusty GPS's to the parking lot of an apartment complex. The coordinates corresponded to being under a carport. We walked around under there and felt up in the rafters quite a bit. I'm only 5'5" and I couldn't reach very high. I could see a rock sitting way up on top of the carport, but nobody could reach that! We gave up on this one.

I later went home and read through the logs of the other vistors, thinking maybe the cache was found by muggles or destroyed. It turns out that "Pull up" means pull your car up to the carport and stand on it! What if one didn't come by car? Kind of ridiculous, but we'll try this next time.


We parked in a church parking lot and headed off to find this one. We came to a fence. It was by an electric power station, and the fence had a security sign on it. We didn't want to get arrested, or who knows, electrified by some stray current hitting the fence, so we left. I was convinced that the cache lay on the other side of this fenced-off area, and that one must approach it from another direction. Samantha verified this, and we'll hit this one from another way next time. If we get both of these DNF's, then Samantha will have made 100 finds. Nice!

After this, we headed on home, and Samantha treated us to Magpie's Pizza. What a doll!

2 comments:

Erika Jean said...

sounds like you are really enjoying the caching!

PS. I just want to let you know that I don't think you're supposed to post the actual cache coordinates, even with a spoiler warning (so people who aren't signed up with the site cant go mess with it) - You might be better off just linking to the cache page. ...you notice if you aren't logged into geocaching.com you can see the cache page but not the coordinates.

Amy K. said...

Erika, thanks for stopping by. We *love* caching, yes! As far as the PS, I had been wondering if that was inappropriate. I think your advice is sound, and I'm going to edit the entries to remove the coordinates. Having the coordinates with the entries was more of a choice of style than anything else. Linking to the cache page is a great idea. :)