My 300th Find

My 300th Find - Sparky's Hiding Spot

(GC2QYKY)



FTF goodies from my 300th find



Just the other day I was trying to decide which cache I should choose for my 300th find.  I had settled on Bridge Creek Falls (GCVB0H).  It sounded interesting and should have been a nice little hike for me and the boys.  I was all pumped up for going and getting it next weekend but sometimes opportunities present themselves and having my 300th find be another First to Find was just too good to pass up.  The tricky part is, if you're not the FTF on a landmark cache it's just another lack-luster find and not very monumental at all.

The e-mail notification for a newly published cache came across my iPhone while I was running errands in town and since I was only 4.5 miles away I decided to take a chance and head down the road.  With boys in tow the uber-cool minivan was fired up, the shift lever put in drive and the skinny pedal on the right was depressed.  Away we went at near light speed (or 40 miles per hour...)!



Whenever I'm making a run at an FTF opportunity there's always that little voice in my head that says, "I'm too late, I'm too late, I'm too late..."

This time was no exception.  This cache wasn't out in the woods, or on some obscure beach, or even out in the rural farmlands that are prevelant in the area.  This was two blocks from downtown Hillsboro, Oregon.  There was a likelihood that I wouldn't be the FTF on this one.  I kept checking the logs using my Geocaching.com iPhone app but that's no guarantee that someone hasn't found it.  There are still a large number of geocachers that haven't gone paperless and must wait to get home before logging their finds.



Nicely camoed urban cache container

As we neared GZ (ground zero) I flipped the van around and parked next to the white picket fence where the cache is located.  I located an electrical box with the combination lock on it, entered the house number and lowandbehold the cache was stuffed with and electrician themed bag of SWAG (stuff we all get) and an FTF gift.



YES!  FTF AGAIN!

This cache container is perfect for an urban setting.  It's not just an electrical box attached to a fencepost, it's an electrical box complete with conduit running in to the ground and the padlock will help to keep all but the most determined of non-geocaching-type-snoopers at bay.  This cache was nicely done and I may just go back and take a picture so I can post it here.

Anyway on to the contents...

I grabbed the bags and strolled back to the van where the boys were waiting.  Normally I would let them get out and follow me but the road where the cache is located can be busy and I'd rather play it safe, especially since TommyToes has absolutely no sense of mortality.  I browsed through the contents of cache bag and, as is my custom when the boys are with me, signed my, TommyToes and Buggabugga's names as co-FTFs. 

Time to open the FTF prize!

WOW!  This is without a doubt the most generous FTF prize I've come across!  Usually there's no FTF prize or there's a geocoin, or a special trinket of some variety.   I hit the motherload with Sparky's Hiding Spot.  The cacheowner has gifted this FTF with a ball cap with an LED illuminated bill (for difficult night caches where you need your hands free), an immitation rock geocache complete with log (this will turn in to a tribute to the cache owner at some point), a ladybug CacheKinz trackable (for setting free and seeing where it goes), and a compact pen (for signing logs of course!).  Not just one item, not just a trackable, but four items!  All in a bag clearly labeld "For FTF",  I triple checked just to ensure that I wasn't plundering the cache.



Thank you kekoaaloha for my 300th find, my 16th FTF and the best FTF prize I've come across so far!

ODF 2011 Centennial – Back to the Burn

ODF 2011 Centennial - Back to the Burn

(GC2P708)

This was my most recent FTF (First to Find for you laymen) and marked my 15th overall.  This one was a bit of a task.  My first crack at this one consisted of me driving 45 minutes to spend 90 minutes looking for a cache and to ultimately fail. 

I noticed this one when it first came out but, being wintertime in the Pacific Northwest, I wasn't overly motivated to go chasing it down due to distance and time constraints, not to mention a couple of little boys that can get on the whiny side once interest is lost in the hunt.  Well, after watching it for about a month and seeing only one logged (and failed) attempt to find it I decided I would take a crack at it.

So, after loading up my pack, grabbing a hiking a pole, and filling up my coffee cup, out the door I headed!  I figured I would pop in, make quick work of this one, and head across the Wilson River to grab a cache that I had missed last fall.

After driving 45 minutes I arrived at the designated parking area, jumped out of the car and off I went.  I followed the River View trail, a part of the new trail system being created and groomed by the Oregon Department of Forestry until my GPS receiver pointed me in a direction perpendicular to the trail I was on.  So on to the spur I went.  I was following it until I finally realized that this particular spur was curving in such a way as to lead me away from the cache... 

It was time to head in to the bush and whack something!

I should point out, that I'm not using my iPhone for this, I'm using my DeLorme PN-40 to get this cache.  The GPSr has a good sattelite lock and an estimated accuracy of +-9 feet under this thick canopy.  It's rare that this thing gets me way off course or loses a lock once established (short of entering a cave or tunnel).

After cutting cross-country I arrive at ground zero.  Ground zero looks just like the pictures posted by Blazingthrewthewoods on his attempt, minus the snow.  The GPSr has me spinning around in circles and I'm poking in the brush with my hiking pole hoping to hear the familiar "thunk, thunk" of a .30 cal ammo can find...  After an hour of searching, I'm starting to think that that it's not there.  Hmmm... time to check the hint.

"Near the hemlock", it says.

Hmmm... only one hemlock that I saw, and it was a scrawny little thing that had blown over years ago and was barely alive.  I'm guessing that's not it.  Time to widen the search. But, I'm running out of time and need to get home in time to get ready for work.  I'll be back once I rethink my strategy...

So I head home, go to work and ponder...  Perhaps it was just a typo when the cache owner input the coordinates to geocaching.com.  So I do my best to figure out which two numbers were probably transposed...  I settled on a pair of digits that placed the cache about 120 feet away from the original coordinate posting.  The next morning I was off again.

Well, that didn't work.  It didn't take me long to realize that there were absolutely no hemlocks in the new area.  As I sit there pondering my next course of action, along comes a Tillamook Forest Center staff member in a Gator-like ATV...  Thinking that perhaps I don't actually know what a hemlock is I decide to break down and ask a professional.  So after a very brief conversation that confirmed that I was, in fact, correct about what a hemlock looked like and that there were no hemlocks in the area over 8 feet tall, and most of them being freshly planted and less than 18 inches in height, I thanked the Tillamook Forest Center staff member and decided I'd just walk the trails checking out any and all hemlocks I ran in to.

It didn't take too long to nail it down.  It's probably the oldest, if not the only, hemlock in the Tillamook forest and is truly a beautiful specimen.  It's right off a groomed trail and was only 425 feet from the original coordinates!  After about 10 seconds of poking around with my hiking pole I hear the familiar thunk, thunk of a .30 cal ammo can!  EUREKA! Another FTF for yours truly!

I quickly signed the log, admired all the kid-oriented SWAG, and snagged the trackable geocoin to move it on.  I left wondering if someone had tried hiding this with an iPhone (a definite no-no even if it is your only GPSr). 

After getting home I sent a message to the cache maintainer and he posted the new coordinates I gave him.  Ten minutes later he'd adjusted them by 120 feet because the original cache hider went out and took several readings on the cache placement after I found it... We'll see who's closer I guess.  I'm guessing it will be me.

Cache on!

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