Sarah's Fallen Washout Treasure

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 did a bit of walking and found some more treasure. Check it out!

WASHOUT

We took the car to this one, and quickly found that the cache was behind a chained-off road. I checked the cache description and saw that it said, in all caps no less, "THIS IS ON PRIVATE PROPERTY. IT IS OK'D BY SIENNA HOME OWNERS. I AM V.P. OF THE ASSOC." Well, allrighty then! Once we were able to find our way over there, past another fence and a gulley, and then a large fallen tree in our path, we found the cache in short order. This was a very small container, with only a tiny monkey face eraser inside. Since we have at least a few of those, we took nothing, and left only a 20-sided die.

Kids' Treasure

I parked behind a row of apartment buildings, and we headed out on foot for the next three caches. We found the first very quickly. I saw the green sticking out from a tee-pee of sticks under a bush. We took a doll and a slinky, and left a 20-sider and something called a "popper." It's this piece of rubber that you turn inside out, and then it flips back to it's original shape, making it fly into the air. Well, look:

Anyway, here's us with our find. Nice container!

Fallen Heroes 2

We walked to this one from Kids' Treasure. Along the way, we found this swing, suspended from what looked to a very old, and very dead, tree. Sarah found that the dessicated branch above would most probably not support her weight...

So she decided to try climbing it instead!

We soon continued our trek through the woods. It was quite a walk, and put us near a small park. I always find it amazing to walk in a wood or forest, and then all of a sudden, you come upon some patch of civilization, or to find that there was a road not far from where you were walking, that had been running parallel to you for quite awhile.

This cache, and the memorial near it, is dedicated to Tucson police officer Eric Hite, who died on June 2, 2008. We found it inside a small fence running around a tree. It's a bison tube attached to a long piece of wire. We TNLNSL (Took Nothing, Left Nothing, Signed Log). Unfortunately, we didn't have time to explore the park, as it was getting late, and we had to walk to our next cache, then trek back to the car and make it home in time for dinner!

You may have to look closely to see the cache. I have the wire in my left hand, and the bison tube is suspended by the wire in front of Sarah.

Sarah's Place

Sarah was rather thrilled, since it almost seemed like this cache was named after her. The family who placed the cache, chose this because of it's location. Their daughter had wandered off into this area when she was younger, and she thought the place was magical. She tried to show them what she had found, but she couldn't locate it again. The directions don't say if they found the "magical place" at a later date, and hid the cache there, or if they just chose this as the closest likely spot. It's another bison tube, cleverly hidden in the "V" of a tree.

I'm not sure what's up with Savannah in this picture! Are you okay, honey?

Four for four! We've been doing well lately. Now we're up to 40 caches found. Sweet! Thanks for reading!

                                                               Caches Found: 40                                                               

Sergeant Electric Glory

 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 had a really nice weekend of caching. We rested on Saturday, and cached on Sunday and Monday (Martin Luther King Day). Here's our Sunday adventure.

Electric Substation

A couple weeks ago, we searched for this cache (last entry on the page) and did not find it (DNF). It appeared as if we came from the wrong direction, since there were fences in the way. We resolved to come at it from a different direction. Take a look at the picture below. The red trail shows our path from the car to the fence (dead end!) when we first looked for this in the beginning of this month. The trail in blue illustrates the easiest and quickest way to the cache. The trail in purple shows the way we ended up going. The cache in the middle of the map is the 123 Book Exchange cache, and the one to the far right is the Goes to Eleven cache. More on those in my next entry.

We parked by a medical building, and we headed southeast from there. We ran into a fence.

We soon found a gap in the fence.

I had no worries since I saw a couple other people walking around in there. We came across a huge crater. It looked like a wash that was deteriorating. We went around that in a large crescent.

 It may be hard to make out, but the land opens up at about the middle of the picture.

 Wrong way, kids!

We then came to a small concrete wash. We got across that without any difficulty. The angle was only about 150 degrees. We just ran down and then back up.

This can be confusing to look at. You're looking down into the concrete wash. There is graffiti on the far wall, and a fence goes over the wash to the right.

 

 Sarah just had to prove that she could climb along the fence. What a fence monkey!

We got near the cache, only to find a fence in our path. Down about 300 feet, there was a gap in the fence. We crossed it, doubled back, and soon after, found the cache. We took a tiny plastic helmet, a plastic fish toy, and this suction-cup ball thingie. We left some kind of red monster toy (I was told it was from the Hercules cartoon), a duck hockey player with wheels (McD's Happy Meal item, boy I love trying to describe these things, lol), and a hippo toy from Madagascar that will probably talk to whoever handles the cache next, so keep your ears open! Ha ha! Interestingly enough, we found our way back much easier (the trail in blue on the map above). I figured out the way we were supposed to go... southwest from the car, not southeast!

Savannah and Sarah with their loot. The fishie was for Skylar.

Me with the cache container and my trusty GPSr.

Upon heading back to our automobile, we found the easy route. I almost fell down when I saw our car... right there, on the other side of the parking lot!

"You've gotta be kidding me!"

This was a fun walk for my two older daughters and I (the other two Tucson Terrors had stayed home). There were plenty of gulleys and hills. The walk was more enjoyable going the way we did. The kids wanted to go back that way anyway, but I wanted to hit two more caches and it was getting late.

Senior Master Sergeant (SMSgt)

This is one of a bunch of caches named after the enlisted ranks of the US Air Force. This one was a "park and grab." It was literally just that: We parked, and we grabbed. Sarah headed toward this cool-looking tree and scurried up. The cache happened to be in that very tree! We found a few tiny items inside, but we took nothing and left nothing.

Sarah and Savannah right near the cache location.

Me with the cache.

Here are two dogs that were barking incessantly as we were seeking the cache. After I took this photo, they seemed to quiet down. I guess they just wanted their picture taken!

Old Glory 2

We had a bit of trouble getting to ground zero on this one. I thought it was on the west side of the road, but then it looked to be on the other side. I parked in an apartment complex on the east side, and then found we had to cross to the west side after all! It took us awhile to find this one. It was up high, hanging on the inside of the pole that Sarah's standing in front of in the picture below. It was hanging by what looked to be a straightened-out paperclip, similar to the Kodak Cache (second to last entry), one of our first finds. Sarah found this one, and in fact, she found all the caches today, three for three!

The cache stated that this is "another fine example of our national symbol of freedom," but I saw no symbol of freedom here. Just a tiny tube with a log sheet inside.

She loves bubble gum and geocaching!

It's dark! Time to go home and make dinner.

Stay tuned for our holiday adventure. Thanks for reading!

Chests o' Trinkets

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 went geocaching again last Sunday, and the whole family came this time. We went after three caches, and we found them all. Read on...

The Safe Way ...234

Our first cache was nearby in the Safeway grocery store parking lot. That's all we knew. I parked in front and let my GPS tell me where to go. We soon learned that the cache was behind the store. We looked behind a tall metal cabinet thingie and found the skeletal remains of a bird. No picture for this one, sorry! The cache turned out to be underneath a metal plate on a lightpost. Nikki saw that it was loose and pulled it upwards. We found a little sardine tin underneath. We took some items and left some of our items, tiny as they were. They had to be, this thing was tiny. I forgot what the items were, sorry.

Cool Place

We got back in the car and headed for the next one. (I would just walk but everyone else gets tired quicker than I do.) This one was in a trail behind a bunch of houses. We found it pretty quickly under a tree. There was what looked like a birdhouse, but upon closer inspection, it most definitely was not. Observe:

The owner of this cache had built the semi-birdhouse himself. That's really neat! I also loved the way the "chest o' trinkets" looked, as well as the log book. These were all hand-made! Here's a picture of me holding both.

We also found our first travel bug in this cache. A travel bug is a trackable dog tag that you can place in a cache. It's usually attached to an item in some way. This allows you to track your item online. The item becomes a hitchhiker that is carried from cache to cache (or person to person) in the real world and you can follow its progress online. The one we found was in a small plastic bag with a lego.

This travel bug is "racing" with another travel bug. Whichever one goes the most miles wins. They both started in the U.K.! The travel bug with the yellow lego is till in the U.K. This red one made it to Florida, then up to Canada, back down to New Mexico, and ended up in Arizona - first partway up Mount Lemmon, and now down here near us. What a trip! The unfortuante thing is, our car is not so good. Otherwise we'd bring it at least 30 miles or something. I'll have to drop it off somewhere else locally. Maybe the next geocacher can do right by it.

Before we headed to the next cache, we decided to take a few miscellaneous pics.

The kiddos!

I really love this picture of me and my snookums!

Oh NO!!! Not Another ##@$$* Micro

Our last cache was a really tricky one. (Yes, this is really the name given to the cache!) It was located by the Pantano Wash, but farther south. Luckily for us, we didn't have do down in the wash, like last time. We looked so long for this damn thing. All that was around were little bushes and dirt. And my GPS was telling me I was 0.0 feet from the cache coordinates! Nikki and the kids kept kicking this log around, picking it up and putting it down, kicking it, etc. I picked it up...

The sun was in our eyes.

Wow! This guy carved a hole in the log and jammed an Altoids tin into it! There wasn't much inside since it was so small. And no wonder the coordinates were off. The Terrors were moving the log from it's original location, so when I was standing there, it was somewhere else. Geez...

We took some time to fool around and climb a tree. I'm a kid at heart, so I had to get in on the fun.  ;)

Yayyyyy!

Sarah, get that thing out of your mouth!

This is really good picture of Sarah.

"Honey, take the picture! Can't... hold on... much... longer...!"

We took the long way around (by mistake) when going back to the car. Skylar was really tired. She kept stopping and sitting down on the sidewalk. I wanted to hit some more caches, but we had to call it a day.