New Mexico's Oldest

Finding the oldest active cache in a state seems to be a thing now. I don't remember when it became a thing, or maybe it has always been a thing and I've just noticed it. Whatever the case is, I learned that the oldest caches in New Mexico are really close by to our new home in Santa Fe, and conveniently located off of I-25 such that I could go out and find them after dropping off family at Albuquerque Sunport [airport]. Which is exactly what I did this morning.

Placitas Open Spaces as viewed from GC3C8KX

The oldest cache in new Mexico is actually a little difficult to determine. There are a group of caches placed in an area called Placitas open Space, a little juniper desert area on the outskirts of a suburban neighborhood. There are three caches that are all listed as being placed on January 15, 2001, GC190, GC192 and GC193. Oddly, GC191 is listed as being placed in April 2001. so which one is the oldest? And does it even matter? They are all in the same little cluster and can be found with a nice little 2 mile hike. Well, nice if you go early in the morning while it is still cool. I showed up about 6:30 and had a very enjoyable hour and a half of walking through the desert hills, finding those old caches and a number of others.

Sasha chases bunnies and helps me hunt caches

One of the coolest things was seeing the stamps from my fellow MOGA team-mates, Sequoia and Kimpossible. They were in New Mexico on a big road trip, and actually hiked the highest point in NM the day after we arrived in Santa Fe. I was invited, but couldn't go since we were unpacking. We are still unpacking... it's an ongoing effort. It was cool to see their stamps in the letterbox caches and know that they were here just a week ago.

The other fun thing from my morning was discovering a snake curled up right underneath a tupperware geocache. I didn't even notice the snake as I picked up the cache and signed my name in the log. It wasn't until I was about to set the cache back in the hiding spot that I saw this cute little snake all coiled up, waiting for the day to warm up. Good thing it wasn't a rattle snake.

I ended up hiking a nice 3.5 mile loop and finding ten of the geocaches in the area. There must be a couple dozen more out here. Looks like I'll have to make some more trips to the airport.

At virtual cache GC635

A little cross country cachin'

Moving from Tennessee to New Mexico offers all sorts of geocaching possibilities, not to mention a chance to see all sorts of new sites and attractions. But for me, the move was going to be a grueling 2 1/2 day slog with little time for fun stops. Unlike our last move, where I planned a few geocache stops along the way, I had nothing planned for this trip. We were just going to drive straight on the I-40, leaving Wednesday around noon and trying to arrive in Santa Fe early Friday afternoon. It would be a lot fo driving, with my dog and our 5 birds in the car with us. We'd stop when we got tired, and that was about it for planning. But since I now own a smartphone, I couldn't resist looking up a few caches where ever we stopped. And in this way geocaching provided a little bit of relief from the long-haul drive.

Our first stop was at a rest-station in Tennessee, near Carthage. As we sat and munched snacks, I checked the geocaching app and sure enough, there was a traditional cache and virtual right in the rest stop. I went and visited the Virtual, but decided not to hunt the traditional, a micro placed right in front of the visitor information center and swarming with people. The Virtual cache, Saddler's Rest, was at a small cemetery, and just far enough away from the rest area that no one seemed to bother visiting it. It took the dog over and we made the find.

Saddler's Rest

Our big Yellow Penske at the Rest stop

From Carthage we booked it across the state and ended up near Memphis in the evening. While stopped for gas, I looked up pet-friendly hotels and found one nearby, A Days Inn on Elvis Rd. I booked us a room and we made our way over, only to find out that we were in a seriously Elvis themed hotel, only two blocks from Graceland. It was gaudy and ridiculous, but it was a room, and we slept of the day's miles.

Before leaving the next morning, I made a little geocaching expedition down across the Mississippi border. Finding a geocache in each state is one of those things that geocachers can't seem to help themselves from doing, myself included. We weer only 2 miles from the border anyways. We ended up finding two geocaches, although one was still in Tennessee. Rock-N-Roll Ghosttown and one just over the border in Southhaven. The excursion took about a half an hour, but it was nice and cool in the early morning, and we were back on the road soon enough.

Hamming it up at GC2TVNP

Sasha looks on at the Southhaven cache. 

Just some of the kitsch at our hotel in Graceland.

We scooted through Arkansas with barely a stop, and I didn't find any geocaches there. Some geocachers might think this weird of me, to pass through the whole state and not try to find at least one cache, but since I had found an Arkansas cache when we moved to Tennessee two years ago, I didn't feel any strong urge to make a find this time through. We did make one pit-stop in Arkansas, but there weren't any geocaches nearby. Pretty soon we found ourselves in Oklahoma, which is a big big state to cross. We ate lunch at one of the highway rest-stops and once again there happenend to be a geocache nearby. Actually there were three geocaches at this one rest-stop, but I only went on a walk to find one. The dog needed to go for a bathroom break so off we went in search of fertilized ground and a geocache. I found the geocache, GCRQG4, and much to my surprise, it had been found only the day before by one of my friends from Oak Ridge TN, Geoboater! I couldn't help but call him up and see if he was still in Oklahoma. He wasn't, he was already in Dallas, but it was still surreal that we made the same stop on our respective road trips only a day apart. especially weird since I had seen him in Knoxville just 5 days earlier at a geocaching event.

All the pets got out at this rest stop in Oklahoma

We made it as far as Elk City Oklahoma before calling it a day. There weren't any geocaches near our hotel, and nothing in town that seemed all that interesting to go find, so I didn't make a find in Elk City. The next day put us through Texas and into New Mexico. Just an hour into our drive that morning, my dad, who was in the other car, got really drowsy, so we pulled off at a gas station about 20 miles east of Amarillo. After filling up gas, my dad took a quick cat nap and I checked the geocaching app to see if there was something nearby to pass the time. There was a geocache across the interstate called the Bug Ranch so I put the dog on a leash and we walked over. I don't know what I was expecting, but the row of half-buried on-end VW bugs, spray-painted a rainbow of colors was not it. This just is one of those nice surprises, a neat little local attraction that I would have missed entirely if not for seeking out a geocache here. The other funny thing is that the rest of my family was visiting the Cadillac Ranch on the west side of Amarillo at about the same time.

The logbook is the VWs. here's my sig

And that was it for geocaching. We caught up with the rest of my family at the Blue Hole in Santa Rosa, NM. There is an awesome earthcache here, but we found it a few years ago. That didn't stop us from jumping into the icy waters once again. The Blue hole left us feeling clean and refreshed as we finished the last hour of our trip to Santa Fe. All said, I found 5 geocaches over 1000 miles of driving and 5 states. Nothing to boast about, but each cache was a nice little diversion from the monotony of driving, and well worth the effort. Geocaching earns its keep once again!

Jumping into New Mexico, Head First!

Adopting out caches

When I moved away from new Mexico, I adopted out a few of my caches, but for the most part left them under my name. A large portion of my caches placed in new Mexico were remote, rugged, and seldom found caches, and I figured that they would be ok left under my name. Also, I was highly into the Lonely Cache Project, and keeping the caches in my names helped me keep the points for those lonely caches. On the few caches I adopted out, I made the cheesy decision to log them as found by me in order to keep them in my LCP stats. Cheesy, but that’s what I did.

Now that we are moving away from Tennessee, I am faced with little different situation. There is no Lonely Cache Project here, but I still feel a strong connection to my caches. I realize that leaving them under my name is still a possibility, but the caches will survive much longer if I can find local cachers to adopt them. So at the CITO I hosted a month ago, I mentioned that I would be adopting out caches, and wow, I did not expect the response I got. Several local geocachers offered to adopt my caches, and many more told me that they enjoyed my cache hides in the area and hope that they will live on after I leave. It was really flattering to hear this. Many of my local caches do not get found often, but when they do I usually get really good logs. And many of my caches I am pretty darn proud of too. I had some good ideas while I was here, and was able to execute some of them pretty well. So I’ve been adopting out most of my caches, maybe even I’ll get them all adopted out. I am still a little hesitant to adopt out the Whereigos, as those can be tricky to do maintenance on since you need all the Cartridge details. And even after I adopt out caches, I add them all to a bookmark list I have called Adopted Out Caches, so that I continue to get notifications when the caches get logged. I love seeing logs on my caches, and I won’t let being a few states away stop me from hearing about what is going on with them.

Here’s a summary of my Tennessee Geocaches

Cache name	# of Finds	# of Favorite Points	Adopter	My thoughts on this cache
A blast from the past	10	8	Lullabye4u	The idea for this cache puzzle came from finding the container, which is fairly unique… but I can’t go into too much detail about that without giving away some spoilers. There is more to the story as well, my college friend Diana Silverman, who is in the puzzle, actually is the daughter of one of the inventors of “the software” that the puzzle is based on. A little personal connection I have for this puzzle.
Clinton Crossword Puzzle	16	10	Yomegranate	Yomegranate wrote in her log that this was one of her all-time favorite puzzle caches to find. That was a while back, and I’m not sure if that is still the case, but I’ll never forget that wonderful log. It only felt proper that she adopt this one.
Geocaching and Invasive Plants: A Study	8	7	Quarter-Master	The write-up for this puzzle is probably my favorite of all my hides. I had a blast coming up with it, and even got really good feedback from the Reviewer about this write-up, which hasn’t happened to me before. The log from Magkirk is pretty awesome as well.
Inception Challenge	3	3	Black*dot	A really bizarre challenge cache idea I had that was meant to be a meta, kind of a statement about how ridiculous challenge caches were getting. It just so happened that it got published shortly before the moratorium on Challenge Caches occurred in late 2014. Now that has lifted, I am curious to see if Black*dot will pursue making an online checker for this challenge. Might be pretty tricky to do. The cache itself is placed at one of my favorite local hiking spots.
Irresistible	21	13	Black*dot	Oddly one of my more frequently found caches. Unlike most of my caches, there wasn’t much thought that went into this cache placement. It was merely an irresistible location to me. It does have a slightly unusual D/T rating, which may account for its “popularity”. I think the rating is spot-on, and the cache is definitely not for everyone.
Lost quadcopter	9	5	Black*dot	After receiving a quadcopter for my birthday (and losing it for several months), I really wanted to find a way to use the quadcopter for geocaching. Building the container was half the fun. I hope it weathers well, I’d love to see it get found more.
Riding the Dragon	13	5	Lullabye4u	This cache is all about the theme. The location, container, story and stamp are all about dragons. It had a rather unfortunate start since it was discovered by bears at least twice. Hopefully it survives a good long time. I put a lot of work into carving the stamp.
TVG Game Night	12	9	Ol’Fogies	Another themed cache that I had a great time putting together. In a bit more of a muggle prone area than I usually like to hide stuff, but hopefully it lasts. Ol’Fogies and some others have mentioned making spin-offs of this cache puzzle, other TVG Game-night style puzzle caches. I can definitely see something like that happening.
Thermodynamics: bull Run Fossil Plant	10	4	Pokerluck?	Another themed cache, and one that gets way more technical in engineering problems than a cache really out to. But I still had fun reviewing my thermodynamics material for creating the puzzle. It was also fulfilling when I got permission from TVA for this hide. Took me out of my comfort zone to have to approach a big corporation for permission for a geocache.
Hiking through History: The Indian Rock Loop Trail	4	3	Kaput360	Lot’s of stages on this multi, on trails that goecachers don’t seem that interested in. On the plus side, the State Park was really friendly about signing the geocaching permits.
Sharp’s Station	7	2	Kaput360	Just a simply hide that is a decent hike out on a trail in Big Ridge State park. I was hoping that placing some more caches would bring some more geocaching traffic to this park. That doesn’t appear to have been the case.
Obed River Swimming Holes	2	2	Kaput360	Great long hike in one of my favorite lcoal areas
CT: Obed River Section	2	2	Kaput360
CT: Eagle Bluff Section	0	2	Not adopting yet	This was my second Whereigo hiking cache, and another long one, a twelve mile thru-hike. Not that difficult a hike if you ask me, but then not many geocachers have asked me. It is also in a region that doesn’t appear to have a lot of geocaching activity. I expect it to remain pretty lonely.
CT: Cross Mountain Day hike	2	2	??	A little different spin on the standard Multi cache. I designed it to be done from either trailhead, but still require the same amount of hiking either way. Only two finders so far… it’s another off-the-beaten track trail.
Lilly and Princesses Kid Cache	35	2	??	I might actually archive this one. It is placed near our house in Tennessee, and with the intention of being something that the kids and I could go check frequently to see what kind of toys kids are trading in and out. The two horses it was placed near have both passed away though, so it makes me a little sad now. It may also be my most found cache, which isn’t much of a distinction, as it is my only real drive-up park and grab.
Holston River Cave	2	2	GISpuma?	In a cave, and a long way to paddle. Yet it was found recently by my friends MTippetts and GISpuma. Might have to see if they would like to adopt it.
Ridge hiking Frozen Head State Park	4	4	Not adopting yet	One of my first caches placed in Tennessee, and a doozie, since it involves 17+ miles of hiking. Kind of my introductory hike to the area. I’d love to see it get found a few more times.
Boulder Bars and the Power of Water	7	3	Not adopting	My only Earthcache placed in TN. I really wanted to do some research for an earthcache in this location (Obed River WSR) and found a cool article about alluvial beds that was published by the Park Service. The area has some wonderful hikes.
Songbird Trail	5	3	??	Birdsong theme, and a techno-gadget field puzzle too. This is another one of my favorite hides that I’ve put together out here. I like birds, and this area. Hopefully it brings some more cachers out too.
TOTALS	172	91		172 finds on 20 caches. Ton’s of really good logs and a good amount of favorite points. Not too shabby for two years.

Considering I also hosted 4 CITOs and one Event, I consider myself a pretty busy cache owner. And despite my reputation for putting out caches that rarely get found, and are in difficult places, my caches here in Tennessee are way more accessible than my hides in New Mexico. At least it feels that way.

It's My Party and I'll Cry if I Want To...

....you would cry too if you were leaving the TVG. The cachers here are exceptionally nice, and they threw an event cache titled Festive Fun Farewell For Friend Fugads. I am slightly embarrassed really, I've only been living in the area for two years and don't really know everyone all that well. But I guess my cache placements, and logs on caches I've hunted here have earned me a reputation, maybe notoriety even. Enough so that when folks from TVG heard I was moving back to New Mexico they threw me a party.

Parting is always tough, but it is easier when you have a great send-off. I took the whole family with me and we played with the other cachers both in the water at the park, and around the tents set-up. We even snuck off for a group hunt on a cache I had DNF'd a couple times. I definitely will miss this group. *sniff*, I'm tearing up already.

Event "Log Book"

Paddling White Oak Pond

A few years ago I noticed a new series of puzzle caches pop up on a lake near my dad’s house in New Hampshire. It was a series of 10 puzzle caches, all micros, placed on quiet White Oak Pond. The puzzles ran the gamut from easy to devilishly tricky. And every so often I take a look at them. I’ve managed to solve 5 of them, and feel like I am close on a few others. And every time I visit my dad, which isn’t that often, I think about going out to try to find them. This year, it actually looked like a good possibility. We had several days to lounge at my dad’s house, with very little planned agenda. My dad has several small boats, kayaks, canoes and even a small rowboat, all perfect for the quiet White Oaks Pond. The fact that the whole family was excited to go out with me to find these caches was even better. My dad, my brother, my wife, son and daughter, we all headed out for an afternoon on the lake. My dad and brother ended up taking the canoe, the rest of us piled into my dad’s brand new Adirondak Guide rowboat. I have to say, the row boat is very smooth, and efficient. We easily sped away from the canoe, and I wasn’t even rowing that hard.

White Oak Pond in style with an Adirondak Guide Row Boat

We made it to the first cache location and I learned that a rowboat is actually pretty tough for tight maneuvers near the shore. With my wife calling out the distance to GZ from the GPSr, I addled my way into getting the nose of the boat where we thought the cache should be, and voila, my wife spotted the tether, and then the cache.

I've got ... Moxie!

We got to row through a lovely patch of lily pads and flowers to get to the next GZ and for this one I decided we’d actually hop out of the boat to make our search. My son and I both hopped out and squished in the marshy mud and started our search. This time we were not so lucky. My dad and brother joined in the search and we squished all over, swatting at mosquitos and not finding the cache. After a little bit of time, and some near-misses with falling into the water (which wouldn’t have been so bad if you asked me), we decided to get back in the boats and try the next cache location. We ended up switching boats, I got into the canoe, and my brother hopped in the row boat. A bit of a breeze was blowing now, and we had to paddle right into it. It wasn’t tough going, but it wasn’t fast. On the plus side, the breeze blew the mosquitos away. The next cache was easy to find, once again my wife spotted it first and signed it for me. I wanted to go after a few more, but it was getting late, so we turned our backs to the wind and has a race back to the boat ramp. I’m pleased to say that my dad and I won.

Since we only found two of the White Oak Pond puzzle caches, I already was thinking about heading back out in a kayak on my own to grab the rest. I was already getting up early this vacation (see Maine trip). I could easily slip away the next morning, grab a kayak and take quiet paddle to find the rest. And that is exactly what I did.

Back for more

White Oak Pond at 6:00 was a sheet of glass, and it was pure bliss to glide over it. I passed a family of Canadian geese, had a loon swim right by me, and was generally feeling pretty good. I was also taking a bunch of pictures with my phone, and to make it easier to access, I was stowing my phone underneath my life-jacket, simply by lifting it up a bit and letting the phone be pressed between my chest and the foam. This turned out not to be such a great idea, as at the second geocache, I stepped out of the kayak and the phone slipped out and right into the lake. I snatched it up right away and it hardly got wet, but it still wasn’t a good thing. The phone appeared to be working still, but there was some moisture on the inside of the camera lenses. I finished finding the last three caches on the lake, and was back to the house by 8am, just in time for a big breakfast. The phone went into a bag of rice to sit and dry for 24 hours. And I’m happy to say, it is working just fine now.

Now to solve those last 5 puzzles for our next visit.

Caching in on Maine

We were in Maine for a family trip, that is a trip where you visit family with your family, and I really wanted to find a geocache while we were there. Finding a geocache in a new state is just something long-time geocachers want to do. There isn’t a really good reason. Each time you find a geocache in a new state (or country in some instances) that region turns a different color on your “stats map”. And somehow, this little change in the pixel representation of a map on this one obscure little page brings a sense of accomplishment to geocachers. It is rather remarkable. I dunno, maybe not all geocachers feel that way. But based on my conversations with geocachers, I’m pretty sure this is a common occurrence. Anyhow, the point is I was in Maine and everyone knew I wanted to find a geocache. And yet despite driving all over on Memorial day, I didn’t get a cache. This isn’t from lack of opportunity. We visited several towns on our tour, seeing the Alewives running the fish ladders of Damariscotta, tidepooling beneath Pemaquid point lighthouse, eating lunch at a wonderful restaurant in Newport, stopping at the Oxbow Brewery. All locations with geocaches nearby, almost within my reach. But every time I tried to get my family to come over with me, away from whatever fun thing we were doing, to go find a geocache, they were all utterly un-interested. Icould have just nipped off on my ow, but we were really having too much fun. So I went all day without getting my Maine geocache.

Lucky for me we were in Maine for more than one day. And also lucky for me, I was getting up at the crack of daylight, which for Maine this time of year, was 5am. So up I got, while everyone slept snuggled in their beds, and went for a walk around Gardiner, where I got my first Maine geocache, GC4YGWM! Actually a pretty good geocache, in a large cemetery. I proceeded to find a couple more geocaches on my walk, and got back to my sister’s house a 6:30, and the kids were up and already having breakfast.

But the geocaching didn’t stop there! Since my sister and her family had work and school the day after Memorial day, we all took off for the beach, and went to Popham beach where the whole family helped me find GC1WPQ1, a really cool multi cache that involves walking out on a sandbar that is only present at low tide to reach an island. Actually it was mostly just my son who helped me, my daughter and wife fell asleep on our beach blanket. Playing at the beach is tiring!

Near GC1WPQ1

Got it!

I was able to grab a few more caches in Portland also by getting up super early. We stayed at my brother-in-laws girlfriends, AirB&B, which is actually just her apartment. A very cute place right in downtown Portland. I got up at 5am again and wandered the streets of Portland finding some micro caches and also a virtual. 

Portland at 5am

But the best geocache came when we decided to visit just one last place in Maine before heading back to my dad’s house in New Hampshire, Portland Head Light in Fort Williams Park. My brother-in-law told us we had to visit this spot before leaving, and when I went to check out the geocaches there, I saw that there was one cache with hundreds of favorite points. It was the oldest geocache in Maine, GC128. Just my luck we happened to be there. This time, when I plead my case to the family to find this geocache, they agreed, so off we went. It was actually rather easy to get to, with a  well worn geo-trail. The cache was very well hidden. We searched for a while in the likely spots and were not finding it. It wasn’t until I started digging through some leaf litter that I uncovered the cache and we shouted out triumphantly! As it turns out, some geocachers DNF’d the cache recently and contacted me about where it was. They must have been rather disappointed to DNF Maine’s oldest geocache.

Searching for the oldest

Travel bug drop

We left Maine happy, and I got my pixels colored.

Vein of quartz that Ada helped me locate for an earthcache

First-to-find of the Fugads Farewell Ffff..tribute

In Wartburg, ready for adventure!

Couldn't get that alliteration working all the way. Two years ago we were moving from New Mexico to Tennessee. I had made a bunch of geocaching friends in Las Cruces, and the day we were moving a new cache was published called Good Luck Cache, wishing me, and another cacher who was also leaving the area good luck in our new endeavors. It's very touching to have someone place a tribute cache for you. Geocaches can live a long time, and years after I have been gone, folks may still be finding this cache and wondering about who it was placed for. I've found a fair number of tribute caches myself. They are cool to find. But even cooler is when someone thinks well enough of you to place a cache to celebrate you. So it was a bummer for me when I couldn't get away to sign that tribute cache in Las Cruces when we drove out of town.

One of the tunnels. Super cool!

Now, two years later, my family is moving back to New Mexico, although to Santa Fe this time. And once again, I have made some good geocaching friends here in Tennessee and was tickled when I got an email that a tribute cache was being placed for me. But like before it quickly became a source of anxiety for me as to whether I'd be able to actually go and find the cache. let me explain.

Levin reacts to my wonky log signature. Hey, I forgot a pen. But did have a knife.

Glowstick fun

The cache placed for me, GC6J5BR, is the kind of cache I adore. An adventurous hike, exploring one of the lesser known cool areas outside of Wartburg. It involves abandoned train tunnels, river crossings, a nice hike and nearby swimming holes. What is not to love. The one thing it wasn't was a close park-and-grab, and given our current getting-ready-to-move stresses, I seriously doubted I'd be able to get to the cache. I contemplated a night run of the cache, which might have been fun, but a better opportunity emerged. How about play hookie from work to take care of my sick daughter? My wife had actually stayed home with our daughter for the last few days, she was coughing at night and not sleeping well. But during the day she seemed pretty normal, so it probably was allergy related. So the claim of her being sick had some truth... sure... It was easy enough to convince myself of that. What sealed the deal in my mind was another small fact, that almost exactly a year ago, I had visited the same location with my kids and it was one of our most memorable geocaching adventures together. How cool would it be to take one more trip out to the Obed, find a cache, look for critters, frolic in the water. Might be our last chance to do this in Tennessee.

Splashy time

So off we went. I wrote about the trip already on my log, and don't feel like repeating myself here. But in summary, a good time was head. Just me and the kids, out exploring together. It doesn't get much better than that. And if my friends Lullabye and Kaput hadn't placed this tribute cache for me, I probably just would have spent the day at work. BORING! I'll miss them, and all the other great geocachers I've met here in Tennessee. Two years passes too quickly. Tennessee, thanks for all the fun.

Exit from Tennessee