Yeah! We found the medallion!

Very, very early on Friday morning, PJ and I finally found the Lakewood Treasure Hunt’s Treasure chest! You geocachers out there probably guess it… It was a clear plastic Gladware container. It seems that even local municipalities have gone clear! Considering the final location of the medallion, it was a great choice. No way was the bomb squad going to blowup an award winning Veteran’s memorial on accident because of a suspicious package!

This morning we met with Dennis Higashiyama of the Parks and Recreation Department who ran the treasure hunt to collect the “Loot”. As you can see in the photo they were very generous with their prizes! Thanks to the City for the reward for having so much fun!

Dennis was very happy that for their first ever Treasure Hunt, one, that the medallion had been found and two, with their limited advertising abilities that the community had responded so favorably to the idea. He hopes to be able to do it again next spring. He wouldn’t give us any hints on his next idea, but did say they clues would be a bit harder next time around. He was also quite interested to know about any other searchers experiences and would like you to email him and let him know what you thought and how they could make it more fun for the whole family. Visit the Lakewood Parks and Recreation page here to share your story with Dennis. Increased public interaction is what I believe they are really looking for, so toward that end, if you have not yet “liked” the City of Lakewood, Washington’s
facebook page. Go here to do so and let them know specifically about your experiences with the Treasure Hunt and at the many wonderful parks they work so hard to maintain.

The whole Parks and Recreation Department has been working really hard this year to make this weekend’s SummerFEST bigger and better than it has ever been. Make sure to go check it out June 25-27th at Ft. Steilacoom Park.

Dennis also shared with us that the City is indeed aware of geocaching and are planning on including it in their next employee picnic this August at Ft. Steilacoom Park. So all you cachers out there with caches in the park may want to keep an eye out and do a bit of CITO and cache maintenance during the month of August. Let’s show the City how much we appreciate their efforts and reward their children with some updated swag and properly labeled geocaching containers. I’m thinking of doing a round of my special signature magnets just for the city employees who participate in the geocaching aspect of the picinic. One might just be: “Lakewood Geocachers Love Lakewood Parks and Rec’s Dennis Higashiyama!” What do ya think?

Does your city host a Treasure Hunt? I’d love to know if you have participated and how you liked it.

Tupperware Tuesday

So, tell me .. How was your “Tupperware Tuesday”? To find out more and how to participate, follow this link: “Tupperware Tuesday”. If you love geocaching, we’d love to hear from you! Chime in with your comments or your weeks caching highlights. Can’t wait to read what you found today!

Link your Treasure Hunting or Geocaching article to this post:

Monday morning I spent tackling the hedge that runs the length of our property. It is a mammoth creature that I have not so affectionately nicknamed “The Beast”. After, 2 years of cutting and trimming I have it down to about 12-14 ft. tall and 8 ft. wide. The goal this spring is to get it completely cut down on the neighbors side back to the property line and down to about 8 ft. tall. I accomplished that task on the first 15 feet or so by Monday afternoon, just in time to enjoy the late day sun streaming into the yard space that hadn’t seen sunlight for years. Man that felt good.

What could make my day any better you ask?

Well, my sadistic side got a bit of a workout that afternoon. I fired up that Chipper/Shredder for the first time this spring and cut that “Beast” to bits!! The grinding, whirring, whooshing sound of the shredder in high gear was the most beautiful music I have heard in a very long time! It was transcendent! I just kept grinning and shredding, grinning and shredding, grinning and shredding! What a glorious day!

During my transcendent experience, the City of Lakewood published the next clue for their Treasure Hunt. PJ is hooked on this treasure hunt. If you have followed the link above and read the clues, you may notice the they are obtuse to say the least. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. This City is full of possibilities and with this latest clue, PJ rushed out to track some of those possibilites down. Me I was to busy grinning and shredding grinning and shredding… You get the picture. As night fell, PJ rolled in and we both started looking at the clues again. Trying as many different perspectives as we could find to come up with possible search locations. We looked all afternoon and into the evening. No Luck.

We decided to regroup and get dinner at Red Robin. To be honest up until this portion of the day I was leaning toward blowing off geocaching (and thereby this post) to keep looking for the medallion that is the treasure in the Treasure Hunt. But, sitting down to dinner I happened to check facebook and there I saw a very saddening message from a friend and fellow geocacher. His father passed away yesterday. I knew this would have hit him hard. So I decided to go a grab the tribute geocache, Screw You Sean! (GC29MF5) placed lovingly in his honor by Polarbz. It was just our way of showing a fellow geocacher some support. Our best to you and your family Sean.

The next geocache was a quick grab while stocking up on puzzle solving, up all night brainstorming food-like substances and Diet Coke. We found JAM (GC26Y12) by krklnmn. I haven’t met this cacher, but I would like to thank him for being an astute student of the obvious. Ya see, we live in Washington State. It rains here. It rains here a lot. I am constantly stunned by the number of micros that use regular paper as logs here. Regular paper turns to mush when wet. Heck just pulling a log out to sign it on a misty day is enough to get it wet enough to make signing for the next guy a real pain. BUT! krklnmn Didn’t use regular a regular old piece of paper smushed up in a tiny ziplock bag. NO!! Krklnmn is BRILLANT!! He used “Rite in the Rain” or iGage Weatherproof Paper. No need for a irritating little plastic baggie, just a Sharpie or a “Rite in the Rain” Weatherproof Tactical Clicker Pento be able to leave your mark with. I carry a very Fine Sharpie and a Fisher Stowaway Space Pen. If you are going to be a geocacher in Washington, these pens need to be considered “standard equipment”. If you are coming to Geowoodstock VIII in July, you may want to pick up a couple. After all, it is the middle of June and it is still raining here!

Well, here is hoping that tomorrow dawns bright and clear. Part of all that green that is springing up all over are weeds that need pulling. More yard work and mind bending clue deciphering are on the agenda for tomorrow. Until then, sweet dreams out there in geo-land!

The links to products on this page are affilate in nature. If you purchase items from these links I may or may not receive a small compensations. The Federal Trade Commision made me say that. Really. They did!

Tupperware Tuesday

So, tell me .. How was your “Tupperware Tuesday”? To find out more and how to participate, follow this link: “Tupperware Tuesday”. If you love geocaching, we’d love to hear from you! Chime in with your comments or your weeks caching highlights. Can’t wait to read what you found today!

So, Tupperware Tuesday geocaching adventure reports will begin again after this long break. If you would like to participate, you can learn how here. Today’s geocaching had a couple of new twists: A real Treasure Hunt and my first full day of geocaching without using my DeLorme PN40 GPS.

Geocaching with my iPhone has its advantages. In a crowded park no one seems to pay any attention to me walking around holding it right in front of me and paying so much attention to the device. People have become so used to seeing people outside and yet ‘plugged in” that once the identify the device, they ignore you. This greatly enhances the stealth factor in my geocaching arsenal! I love that! Not that I really needed the increase at the 340 acre Ft. Steilacoom Park, but watching people’s reactions certainly gives me more confidence that the iPhone purchase was worth the price. I just wish the accuracy and signal lock were better. I’m sure with the 4G coming out those things can be improved. 

The geocache that I went to find is  Ft. Steilacoom Monument – GC25NZB by StealthBountyhunters. With one hide and one find, I’m pretty sure this is a “sock puppet” account, but a nice hide none the less. The cache has been there since March and there is a geo-trail forming. As spring progresses lets see if we can’t let that heal a bit by just walking over as much green as possible instead of stepping on it. I’d like this one to last for a while, since it would be very conveient for the trading of TB’s. The size and the hide are good for a trading spot if the geocache is not compromised. Just remember to keep an eye on the trail and you should be able to see anyone before they see you.

The other geocache search took me to the American Lake Park on the other end of town. I had never been to this park and it’s nice, but there seems to be a lot of people just parked in their cars sitting there. I don’t get that. If you go to a park why stay in the car? Are the afraid of too much fresh air? Sunshine? What? I’m so baffled by it. The geocache there is American Lake Park  – GC1792X by Spookdawg13. A park and grab, but not quite that easy with everyone sitting in their cars. 

Did you know that the City of Lakewood Parks and Recreation Department has a Treasure Hunt going on? Yep. This is week three of ten. I spent the rest of the daylight hours driveing around the city looking at things and comparing what I saw to the 3 clues. No luck though. You can find the clues and links to all the great stuff they have going on this spring at www.lakewoodparksandrec.com. You’d think that as geocachers we’d have the best chance to find this. Well, after today, I’m just not so sure of that. Anyone else out there following this Treasure Hunt? Having any luck? Got any ideas? I’m stumped so far.

Well, that was my Tuesday. Tomorrow is another day and I have an empty fridge, so you know what that means. Costco. My checkbook is trembling already!

It’s late. Or early if you like. 12:20 am. It’s raining. And the sound of the rain hitting the roof has made your mind tired and groggy. You are getting ready for bed, but feel compelled to check your email one more time and… There it is. A Puzzle Cache. Should you go for it? Aptly named I’Dunno (GC240W2), it’s listed less than a mile from your house by a cacher you know. A fellow cacher with a great big-brother-teasing type sense of humor and you know, you just know, that if you don’t go get this one you may never hear the end of it!

You open the page and… shit. It looks like a multi. But wait! You read on: “There is no container to find at the Reference Points. They are for Reference. You don’t need to bother anyone. Reference Points are for Reference.” Ok… Google Earth. You see the locations and it clicks. You know exactly where to go online to get the desired information and in less than the time it took you to open your email, you have the coordinates in hand! Success!!

That’s exactly how it happened to me! But…

Oh, wait… The water pump on my truck is acting up. No driving that far, at night, alone. Hmmm, not good. PJ seems really busy, so I calmly mention a possible FTF on a Douglas_Clan puzzle and the next thing I know, PJ, Karma and I pile into the jeep and away we go! Co-FTF on a very early Tuesday morning is a fantastic way to start the day!

Late That Afternoon

If you read last weeks post, you know I was working on a Multi-Cache named, Lakewood Historic Markers(GC1P8KZ) by Subman123. With only a couple of hours to cache we decided to finish up the remaining waypoints and take the dog with us to the final cache site. We had enough information without the last waypoint to know that the final was going to be near the Ft. Steilacoom Park Dog Park. It seemed like a good plan. Dog. Dog park. You’d think that would be a perfect fit! Well, Karma had other ideas today.

When you adopt a dog from the Humane Society, you don’t always know how they will react to new situations, places or people. Rose and Karma had just recently finished the beginner class of dog training at the local Pets-Mart. From it, we learned that Karma had never been socialized with other dogs and that her barking and acting up seems to be fear based. It was one of the things that we have been working on with her consistently over the last eight weeks. She had been doing really well. She has learned to be comfortable and responsive to tours of Pets-Mart and is getting better with the parking lots. We had even been to this dog park area before and she had calmed down after her initial barking, whining and lunging episodes to really rather enjoy her walk. Today, she was having none of it. Every dog, human, bird or gust of wind, was setting her off. She was shaking and not from the cold. We did our best to calm her and work her through it. We had parked near the last waypoint, which is located in the cemetery. I have to wonder if maybe that was an issue for her. We got back in the Jeep and moved to park closer to the actual final and to help Karma calm down. It made some difference, but she was still pretty worked up. I still have no idea why today was so different than the other days here, but it was.

We made it to the final as the sun set. PJ made a quick grab and we signed the log and dropped some Travel Bugs. It wasn’t until we got home that we discovered that the cache has a TB listed in it that is not there. Sad. The cache did not appear to be compromised, so I’m hoping that someone just picked that one up and forgot to log it. Geocacher Responsibility! Oh wait.. that’s another blog post.

So! If any of you local geocachers have not done this Multi yet, I would encourage you to do so! If while you are there, you would pick up and log the TB’s we dropped off today, it would be greatly appreciated! It seems we’ll be spending quite a bit of time there with the dog, so I’ll keep a lookout for ya!

Happy Caching!

Tupperware Tuesday

So, tell me .. How was your “Tupperware Tuesday”? To find out more and how to participate, follow this link: “Tupperware Tuesday”. If you love geocaching, we’d love to hear from you! Chime in with your comments or your weeks caching highlights. Can’t wait to read what you found today!

N 47° 10.567 W 122° 29.590

The Hidden View

My next stop was The Life Cycle of Leach Creek Salmon (GC1G3BV) by Subman123. I had checked the logs before I left and knew that people were having a hard time opening this one. So I made sure to bring a couple of small Pocket MultiTools with me in case I actually found it. I have driven past this art installation a few thousand times by now and never really looked at it. It really is massive when you get up next to it. So I burned up a lot of time just looking and trying to find angles to get a good shot of it to no avail. It’s too big and the street is just too close. The next thing I noticed that I had never seen, because the art covers the view, is the creek behind it. As you can see it’s a beautiful little spot. After taking more than a few pictures of the creek for future drawing material, I started looking for the cache. I wasn’t able to really search for it, because the city work trucks and the local police kept coming by and you can only pretend to be be taking pictures for so long. And apparently, from the looks I was getting, I had been there long enough. So even though I didn’t find the cache, what I did find in inspiration and materials for future use, made the visit memorable. I’ll go back tomorrow and actually look for the cache, now that I won’t be as distracted by all the scenery!

Prep Work

The rest of the afternoon was spent doing prep work for a multi-cache. I visited half of the required waypoints and gathered the required information. I’ll finish the rest up this week sometime. I won’t be able to share much on this one without compromising the cache, but maybe I can write up the final location. I’ll figure that out when I find it. I like this type of multi. I get to learn and see new things and earn a smiley at the same time. Win-Win in my world.

Well, it’s nearly midnight and all the daily mundane tasks of life have been finished. The dog has been out for the last time and the cats are sleeping peacefully. I think I have seen enough of the world for one day.

Happy Caching

Tupperware Tuesday

So, tell me .. How was your “Tupperware Tuesday”? To find out more and how to participate, follow this link: “Tupperware Tuesday”. If you love geocaching, we’d love to hear from you! Chime in with your comments or your weeks caching highlights. Can’t wait to read what you found today!