Quality caching with my little girl

WARNING: CACHE SPOILERS BELOW. DO NOT READ IF YOU INTEND ON VISITNG KINGSTON TN ANY TIME SOON

I took my daughter for a caching run today targeting a bunch of caches in the Kingston area. A number of these were puzzles I had solved a while back, but hadn't found since I'm not in the area often. It isn't far away, but is also not somewhere we tend to drive by. I packed up a picnic lunch, the dog and a bunch of toys to trade, then we were off, down highway 95 and 58.



Our first few stops where at rather typical caches, but ones that my daughter would enjoy. Traditional type caches with a size designation of Regular, so that there would be a good chance of finding some toys. The first one took us on a nice little stroll in a little park, and we scored our first trade items. The next one was in a thorny area and was full of water.

We finally got to a cache that I was really interested in seeking called !AMAZBALLS! by Lullabye4U and Kaput360. This duo has created some very memorable caches, some of which I have blogged about before on my family blog. This one is another piece of engineering and machining work that is something to behold. A huge slab of aluminum was carefully milled out to have a maze on both sides, with several passages that connect one side to the other. Completing the maze wasn't actually that difficult, and yielded a code which was used to open up a locked box, but I couldn't help but sit and admire the craftsmanship and thought that went into this cache. If it weren't for the swarms of mosquitoes buzzing around us at GZ, we might still be there.

Aftre such an awesome cache I was thikning that the rest of the caches on our tour would be let-downs. But our next stop brought us to another nice cache, one that my daughter fell in love with. It was a simple fire pull station mounted to a dead tree trunk, but what made my daughter really love the cache was how all the toys inside were arranged neatly on little hooks. There were some travel bugs, necklaces, rings, nail paint, all sorts of little princess toys and she was in 3-yr-old-girl heaven. It took her quite a while to finally decide what she wanted to trade for, an emerald ring, and we left a big plastic toy truck for the next lucky kid.

The name of this cache is Fire at Will, and it is by the same COs as !AMAZEBALLS!. We ended up finding two more caches by these COs, GC5NHD3 and GC5JNB9, both fun little puzzles and great hides. This took us to a nice park on the shores of Watts Bar lake, where we had a pleasant picnic under the sun. There may not be a ton of caches in the Kingston area, but there are certainly some very good ones there, making it a worthy destination for any Tennessean cacher.

A hidden in plain sight cache that I am not fond of

A lot of caches in urban settings (and rural, wilderness settings as well) are meant to camouflage well. So well, that they can be in plain sight but you would not suspect them to be a geocache container. From mushrooms, to fake dog-pooh and rocks, or water spigots and coax cable junctions, there are a lot of ways that geocachers get creative in hiding caches out in the open. This is all well and good for people playing this game, but I am not usually a fan of these caches because they end up encouraging some odd behaviors that are at best just suspicious, and at worst kind of dangerous or damaging. I recently found one that was very well done, but left me feeling a bit unnerved. I won't post the GC code so as not to spoil it too much, but of course just posting these pictures is a kind of spoiler... you've been warned.

There are a few subtle hints that alert you to the fact that you are looking at a geocache here.

There are other electrical sockets on this building, but none of them are mounted in this way, with an extra piece of wood between the cover and the wall. That alone makes this socket seem suspicious. The presence of a useful prying tool is another hint, although I suspect that it is not always there. Opening up the outlet cover reveals a very normal looking electric socket. The GFCI buttons can be depressed, but it doesn't have any obvious means of a cache, or place where it can be removed. It does jiggle slightly though, suggesting that you have to pry out the socket.

This is what makes me very nervous. Aside from the subtle clues mentioned above, there isn't a good way to see that this is a geocache and not an actual circuit. I suppose one could plug in some kind of tester plug, but I doubt that most geocachers will have one handy. Instead you are left to start tampering with the socket in order to see if it is a geocache. I very cautiously did so and the whole socket started to come out. That is when I got really nervous. AS the socket began to pull out, not very easily I might add, I could see what appeared to be copper conductors attached to either side. A big red flag went up in my head then, since that could mean that this is actually hooked up to a circuit. IN the end though, I kept working at it since I was getting a "geocache vibe" fromt he outlet, and indeed with a  little more prying the whole outlet popped out, revealing a cavity behind which contained the cache log.

It is apparent that the creators of this geocache went to great lengths to make it look very real, which is what good camouflage should do, but this authenticity also led me into some pretty risky behavior, prying at an electric outlet without really knowing if it was live or not. I really ought to be more careful. On this day, my hunch was correct and the outlet was indeed a geocache, but in other locations I might not have been correct. There are a lot of other geocache locations where there is electrical equipment, or plumbing of various sorts (high pressure gas, water etc...) and if you go into those situations with a mentality that you may need to tinker with components in order to locate the geocache, you could find yourself in serious trouble. I have seen several instances where irrigation sprinklers near geocaches were destroyed, and suspect that it is because cachers tinker with these in their search. I'm guilty of this myself. On these high difficulty, well hidden caches, you begin to get a mentality that it could be anything, and start to tinker with everything in sight, even to the detriment of the equipment.  I feel terrible about this kind of thing, and really ought to curb this behavior in myself. I suppose I have partially, since I do not go after high difficulty urban caches as much anymore.

My final thoughts on these caches is that they can be done very well if they have some kind of geocache identifier placed on the cache, something like a small geocaching log sticker on the inside of the cover, or the GC-code written on it somewhere. Having an identifier like this would let geocachers know that what they have found is indeed the cache, and they needn't worry about destroying public property. It does defeat the purpose of making it difficult to find, although it keeps the cache well hidden from non geocachers still. I think that the cache shown above could have a GC-code written, or labeled somewhere inside the cover and it would still be fun to find. Cachers would then know that they needn't worry about those exposed electrical conductors, that it is just part of the disguise.

Mystery of Fontana: Part 2

It is exceedingly difficult to say something about Part 2 of Mystery of Fontana cache hunt without spoiling some aspects of the cache. I tried to be vague in my previous post and will try again here, but be cautioned, if you intend on tackling this cache it is best experienced without any spoilers. A big part of the fun of a cache like this one is not knowing what lies ahead, and discovering it as you go ahead. That said, I cannot help but post something about finishing this wonderful cache.

Pokerluck deserves a lion's share of the credit for organizing the final hunt. I was all set to try to do it on foot, which would have been a long trek. There is an easier way though, and David took it upon himself to make all the arrangements to finish the cache in style. Once he had made the plans it occurred to me that I could take my whole family with us. There wouldn't be an arduous journey, but rather a pleasant cruise to the remaining stages. I was thinking that my wide and the kids wouldn't be that interested, but they were so we made last minute plans to do an overnight camping weekend up by Fontana lake so we would be there bright and early to hunt the cache on Sunday.

We camped at the Cable Cove campground which turned out to be a great campground. The sites were nicely spaced out, but there were also hardly any other campers there. They may have been scared off by the cooler weather. Instead of being hot swimming weather like our last few trips up to Fontana, a cold front moved in and the temps dropped to the 60s-70s during the day and into the 40s at night. Quite cool, but just about right for our camping gear (sleeping bags). We didn't arrive in the campground until late afternoon, but it was plenty of time to set up and relax for a while. Levin and I took a nature walk to find a nearby geocache and catch some salamanders, we had an excellent dinner of grilled chicken kebabs, and finished the evening with s'mores.

The next morning we got up bright and early to get ready for our adventure. Luckily, we only had to drive 10 minutes down the road to where we were to meet the other cachers.

Breakfast of marshmallows and hot cocoa

If you've ready this far, then you are probably going to keep reading. But here is where the spoilers start. You've been warned.

We met Pokerluck at the Fontana Marina where he had reserved us a pontoon boat. A couple other TVG cachers also met us there, Geologynut, SgtLee and SaltyPirate. Having a group made the boat rental more affordable. We cast off slightly after 8:15 and were headed to our first destination. The morning was cool and mist was vaping off the lake as we sped off. The light was superb, and since we were all bundled up against the cold and wind, it was a pleasant journey.

We only had a short walk to get to the clue for Stage 5, but it was a muddy and steep walk. Luckily, I found a faint trail that made the going much easier, but I didn't find it until half the members of our group got very muddy. We found the clue quickly (it is pretty obvious) and spent a little while poking around before heading back to the boat. Getting to the final involves computing coordinates based on info from this stage and after we did so, we saw that getting to the final by boat would be the easiest way. I had initially thought that we would be able to do this last stage after returning the boat, thus keeping our boat rental expenses to a minimum, but doing so would have been pretty hard, and was definitely much harder than many in our group wanted to tackle. So we motored off for the easy, if not pricey, way to the final.

The location for the final was actually in a place that I had guessed we might have to visit, although I thought we were going to ahve to visit it earlier as part of a different stage. It is a great spot, but we made a mistake of landing the boat in the wrong spot which made our hike to the cache kind of extreme. In fact, it was so extreme that only 3 members of our group tackled it, while the rest retreated to the boat in order to move it to a better spot. I found the cache buried under quite a bit of leaf litter, maybe 6" deep. But otherwise it is in pristine shape.

Not long after the boat showed up with the rest of our crew and we were able to get the cache down to the boat so that everyone could check it out. It contained to conclusion to the Gavin McGinney saga, as well as a number of lonely trackables which we rescued.

Success at last! Every aspect of this cache was well done, from the locations for each stage, to the physical and mental challenge, to the involved story line. It really was a grand adventure and definitely worth a couple trips to complete.

As a little bonus we decided to check out the Hazel Creek Virtual as well. It wasn't too far out of our way and hardly anyone in the group had found it before. Aside from being a neat historic site, we also spotted fresh bear tracks including some baby bear prints. Always cool. But by the time we had finished exploring Hazel Creek, the kids were getting cranky since we hadn't packed lunches. We beat feet back to the marina, said our farewells to our fellow cachers and went back to our campsite for a little PM relaxation. All in all, a great weekend out.

Mystery of Fontana: Part 1

A few months ago we visited Fontana dam for swimming and geocaching and I noticed an interesting unknown cache up there called the Mystery of Fontana. It is a fairly lonely cache, with only 19 finds over 9 years, but the just about everyone who has tackled it goes on and on about how it is one of the best multi cache adventures in North Carolina. Since some of these finders seem to be pretty active cachers, this seemed plausible to me, and multi-cache adventures make up some of my favorite caches of all time. In fact, I keep a bookmark list called Really Awesome Multi Cache Adventures. And after over a year of living in Tennessee, I haven't added one eastern cache to the list. Multi caches seem to be really rare out here, rarer than earthcaches by far. It may also be that I just haven't visited the right areas of the state for these awesome multi cache adventures. But this Fontana Cache appears to be just the kind of cache I love. So I started hacking away at the puzzle.

Beginning the journey

Once I sat down to solve the puzzle, I made pretty good progress. The puzzle is very much detective work, but also lays an entire backstory to set the stage for this cache. There is a fictitious mining company, a mysterious disappearance, company cover-up. Very intriguing. I dug into it and finally got to what I assumed was the puzzle itself, and then got got stymied. After a few weeks, I finally decided to ask for help, reaching out to both the CO, and also a local geocacher friend, Pokerluck, who I thought would be interested in this caching adventure and is also good at solving puzzles. I received responses from both, with the CO giving me a generous hint allowing me to see the solution, and David also solving it and giving me a hint, practically at the same time. I had to slap my head, since the solution was much simpler than I had thought, I was way overthinking it. Oh well, with a solution, David and I made plans to go after the cache.

Rough bushwhacking

Hidden waterfalls along the way

Making those plans was tricky, from the logs we knew that the cache involved 6 stages, and took you all over the place. At least one group of previous finders mentioned using a boat for a stage and neither David or I had access to a boat. But we decided to go after it anyways and get as far as we could. I was hopeful that there would be a non-boat way to complete the cache, maybe with only a short swim and some bushwhacking. So I packed all my swimming gear, as well as headlamps, plenty of water and all my hiking stuff. We had to be prepared for anything.

Cool in theme containers

Some of the trickier terrain

David and I met up at the Deals Gap Motorcycle Resort, where we left one of our vehicles and continued on to the first stage. We made some stops along the way, at a few earthcaches and one traditional, but mostly we were focused on our goal. I'd hate to reveal too much about the cache, since discovering what it is all about is a big part of the fun, but I will say that we were successful in completing the first 4 stages, although one of the stages proved to be too difficult terrain for David. ON that stage, David gave me a half an hour to up ahead and see if I could find the clue. I barely found it in time, it was a doozy and certainly the hardest terrain we did all day. What makes this geocache great is how each stage continues the story that the initial puzzle had started. The containers fit the theme, and even feel authentic, at least the original ones (a few stages had been replaced). The story is very cool. By the time we had completed the fourth stage though, and computed where the next one was, it was 3pm. That next stage is a challenging one, one that having a boat would make things easier. It did appear to be doable on foot, but only with a pretty serious amount of hiking. I was getting myself psyched up to go for it, although David said he was done for the day. Then it started thundering overhead and I decided I didn't want to be out on a long hike in the rain. Especially since I might not get back until after dark. So we both ended up calling it a day.  But we will be back. Now that we know what we are up against, it's only a matter of time.

Somewhere else?

Is this spot related to the Mystery?

How about this spot?

Cooling off after a hot day hiking

Brain Dead Dada

Levin was out from school today so I took both kids on an explore east of Tellico Plains, in the Cherokee National Forest. I visited this area once when I tackled the cache, Wildcat Creek, with a group of Chattanooga area cachers. I had noted two earthcaches highlighting waterfalls not far from where we were, and was hoping that we would have time to visit them after that cache, but we didn't, so I made a mental note to return to the area some day. That day was today, with warm summer temps, and two kids eager for some adventure.

We started at Baby Falls, or Brain Dead Falls, as the earthcache calls it. There was a nice little picnic area that we utilized first, eating a hearty lunch of beanie-weenies, for which I even brought our camp stove. With beans stuck to our ribs, we changed into swim wear and headed down to the waterfall and swimming hole. It turned out to be a great spot for us to hang out and play, with smooth slabs with shallow running water on them for the kids to frolic in, and a deep pool for swimming. The pool underneath the waterfall was too turbulent for the kids, but off on one bank was a calm and deep pool that was perfect for us. We played for a good long time. Another group of bathers were also there and were jumping off the waterfall, and I was just waiting for a good opportunity to do it myself. These same folks told me that they had heard that this was a dangerous waterfall to jump in due to some tricky underwash currents, but I'm not sure if any of them actually believed it. Then again, the CO for this earthcache stated that they think folks who jump off here are braindead, so maybe there is some truth to it. Anyhow, my opportunity came when the kids were shivering cold and deciuded they needed to sunbathe for a while to warm up. I made sure they were good and settled, then scampered over to the waterfall to take the plunge. Definitely worth it! I did it three more times.

After spending a couple hours here, I convinced the kids that we should check out the other waterfall, Bald River Falls, only a stone's throw down the road. This waterfall is much bigger, but did not appear to ahve as friendly a swimming hole, nor was it getting as much warming sunshine. Still, we took the use trail down to the bottom and were quickly in the water again. This time, the kids focused more on catching critters. There was a nice sandy bar near the rock face, only 12" deep or so, and the kids were able to catch crayfish, a minnow and a salamander (or maybe it was a newt, hard to say). So it was different kind of fun here.

After another hour, it was time to get going. The earthcaches themselves didn't have much by way of geology lessons. Seems like there is an overabundance of waterfall earthcaches around these parts. Don't get me wrong, they bring you to great locations. But the geology lessons are very repetitive. How high, how wide, what classification, how was it formed.... Only the last question makes you think much and even for that one most of the waterfalls around here seem to have formed in about the same way. But I had fun, and the kids had fun, so that is all that really matters.

A little bit of caching between wedding festivities

A little while back, I wrote about how I am often unable to resist the urge of geocaching, when traveling, (link).  Well, the time for traveling came again, this time for my brother's wedding in San Francisco. Going geocaching was not forefront for this trip, in fact it was very low on our list of things to do. But I knew I wasn't going to be able to resist the urge, so i made a little plan. This time, I created a bookmark list of only a handful of geocaches that seemed worth visiting. There would be no sorry little park and grabs, just caches that would be interesting. A few virtual caches in Sonoma, a few highly favorited caches, some puzzles I had solved, an unusual D/T combination. No extraordinary caches, but no duds either.

For most of our trip, I kept this plan to grab a few geocaches way in the back of my mind. The days leading up to the wedding were full of fun activities, and the best kind of family stress. You know, stressing over making cupcakes for the wedding, stressing over the rehearsal and whether everyone knew their roles, stressing over getting flowers and making arrangements, stressing over kids getting sick right before the big event, stressing out about playing the violin for your brother and his bride to walk down the aisle to, despite not having played in years. That kind of thing. It was a fun, and intense few days. And the opportunity for finding a few geocaches came up nicely.

The first opportunity was on the day of the wedding, and basically owed itself to my getting up early. Not super early, the sun as already rising, but before the kids were up, or anyone else in the Big house we were staying at had stirred. I had an excuse to be going out too, we needed more milk. So I grabbed my kit, mumbled to my sleeping wife that I was going out to find a cache at a nearby wildlife refuge, and I would pick up milk on my way back. And off I went. The cache I was targeting was a challenge cache called, A Century of Abandonment.  It had an unusual D/T combination of 4.5/3.5 but was also a challenge cache that would be hard for most cachers to accomplish. The challenge is to find caches that have been abandoned (not found) for a year or more, and to accumulate over 100 years of these kinds of finds. I wouldn't say abandoned caches are rare, every area has got some, but they are pretty uncommon. And for the most part, you have to seek these caches out because they are not in places that get visits frequently, if they were they wouldn't be abandoned. Some are way off the beaten track in some area that really has no big draw for geocachers or really anyone. Many are difficult caches that are nearly impossible to solve, or ones that are placed in such difficult terrain that hardly any one has the skills needed to go after them. And lucky for me, and also partly thanks to sites like www.lonelycachproject.com, I seek out these abandoned caches. I've been doing it for years, mostly in New Mexico, but where I live in Tennessee. It took maybe an hour to go through my finds, but I was able to get a list together of caches that would qualify me for this challenge. And I would be only the 8th person to find this cache in about a year, which for the geocacher-rich area of the San Francisco Bay, is saying something.

It was still nice and cool as I pulled up to a trailhead for a a trail system leading out into an estuary along the Bay. To say it was a wildlife refuge is misleading, it is in fact partially protected as an area where waste water treatment flows out. But it has been managed well by the city or county to attract shorebirds and other wildlife and had a nice trail system. I made the hike out, about a mile, watching the shorebirds and various sparrows flit about. The cache was an easy one to find, simply a magnetic nano on a sign. And there were more than 7 signatures on the log sheet, as folks have signed the cache without qualifying in the hopes of some day meeting the criteria. But it was a nice feeling to be out early in the morning, watching wildlife and finding a cache. It was a nice escape from the hectic family fuss, and a moment to relax a bit before the stressful events of the day to come.

I did continue on the trail a bit further to find the step-brother cache to this one, a 50 year abandonment challenge, then turned back to head on to my car and get some milk. I got back to the Big house just in time for the kids clamoring for their breakfast,  with milk in my hands.

After the wedding cam another opportunity to find a cache, this time with the whole family. My new sister-in-law had invited everyone to picnic in Bartholomew park, and our picnic spot happened to be right next to a geocache. It was a regular sized one too, which was good because I wanted to drop off a travel bug that I brought with me from Tennessee.

Note: The small tin is not the cache, just something my daughter traded for from the cache.

The next day, while driving north to Santa Rosa, I dragged the whole family on a small detour to grab a puzzle cache I had solved. It was only a short detour and it gave the kids some toys to play with while at the enxt family event, and let me drop my last travel bug.

So a week long family trip netted me 4 interesting caches, all without interfering with the wedding activities. Not too shabby. I scratched the itch without driving anyone crazy!

When bears attack... geocaches

My most recent geocache was recently routed by a bear. At least, I think it was a bear. I hid it while out with my kids on July 30th, so it had been out in the wild for a out a week. It had already been found by 3 letterboxers (before it was even published on Geocaching.com) and I was getting good feedback. Seems like the letterboxer community appreciated our idea. The first geocachers to find it went on Saturday and reported that it had been torn apart by something. They found the stamp, logbook and toys scattered all around the area, and teeth marks in the containers. The geocachers had spare ziploc baggies and replaced stuff as well as possible. Luckily, nothing was wet, so the animal must have attacked recently.

As chance would have it, we were planning on driving back up to Fontana Lake again, this time with my wife, so I would be able to check on the cache and make repairs. As we walked up to the cache from the road pull off, the dog was definitely smelling something interesting in the area. The cache was definitely messed up, but since I used a large metal mailbox as an outer container, it probably would have been ok for some time. The animal must have smelled something inside the cache, and then pulled off some of the rotted logs I had used to hide the mailbox. It then opened up the mailbox and bit into the peanut-butter container that held the logbook and stamp. Peanut-butter container... that is what I think is the key detail here. I had washed the peanut butter container pretty well and couldn't smell anything from it. I had painted it, and replaced the gasket to make it seal better and used it as a container. I've done this before, and seen it done with good success in other places. But I'm guessing that there was still some lingering peanut butter smell, and that is what clued in this animal. Judging from the teeth puncture marks on the peanut butter jar, it had to be something larger than a raccoon or possum. And a coyote or large cat is highly unlikely. Plus, the cache is located on the Southern boundary of the Smoky Mountain national Park, which is know for having a healthy black bear population.So all evidence points to bear.

What was really cool to see was the teeth marks on the stamp I had carved. The bear had obviously chewed on the stamp, cracking the wooden backing and putting teeth marks into the rubber. I tested out the stamp on my letterboxing book, and it still looked ok. I brought with me a container to replace this one... another peanut butter jar. I've got my fingers crossed that it will survive longer than the first one. One small bit of irony, one of my popular caches in New Mexico is themed around what you should do when caching in bear country, Bear Necessities.