Geocaching Adventure

To catch you up to speed, here's the basic idea of geocaching. You hide some sort of container with a little log book in it and you mark the coordinates with your GPS. Next, go to www. geocaching.com and make an entry describing your cache container, how hard it is to find based on a predefined scale and enter the coordinates from your GPS. Now other people can go to the web site, download the coordinates and look for your cache. Once they find it, they sign the little log book and then log back onto the web page and log their find. When they log their find, it is courteous to put a little note about the hunt...to share a story.

Some goecaches are "muliti's". This means there may be 4 stages. The coordinates on the web site take you to stage 1. You find stage 1, but instead of a log book inside you will find the coordinates to stage 2. Stage 2 had coordinates for stage 3. Stage 3 has coordinates for stage 4. Stage 4 is the actual geocache where you sign the log.

All that to share this story with you. There is a particularly well-known, popular and difficult multi-cache about 10 miles outside of Huntsville, TX called Four Cache Loop. I wanted to the most recent online log from this geocache. Like I said, this is a long, difficult cache so most stories are not this exciting, but this gives you a glimpse into some of the "adventure" of geocaching. What follows is the story of this couples' find of this multi-stage geocache today.

Yea!!!! We found it in 7 Hours. Not bad for a pair of old farts stumbling around in the woods. We ended up bushwhacking most of it since I wasn’t sure what trail was what. After we finished the last cache I took us in the wrong direction to the car. I was basking in the glory of doing this multi-cache that I didn’t even notice that my GPS kept telling me we were .75 mile from the car. That means we were going in a circle around the car. My wife’s feet were hurting so I told her to hang out by this Frisbee golf course we were by. I told her I would walk the ¾ of mile or so up the street to get the car. When I was about ½ mile down the road my iPhone died so GPS and I had forgotten to grab my wife’s GPS when I left. But I kept thinking “it’s just up over the next hill”. Wrong. About 3 or so miles later I think I must be doing something wrong so I turned around and walked back. Turns out IT WAS JUST “just over the next hill” when I turn around. When I get back to where I left my wife I couldn’t find her!!! I freak for awhile and then I start hoping she some how got back to the car. I had the only key so I knew she couldn’t come get me. So I figured I would go back to the last spot where I had a fix on my car and was going straight for it. So I went back into the woods to find that spot. Was hoping I could cut through the woods and head straight for the car. But when I get there the direction I needed to go has real thick underbrush. I know I have about ¾ of a mile to go and I’m too tired to go bushwhacking anymore so I turned around AGAIN. When I get back to where I had left my wife I was so dehydrated all my muscles start cramping up. I had done all this back and fourth without any water. So I walked up to a house and knocked on the door and this guy saves me. He gave me couple bottles of cold water and a ride to my car. Bless you sir. When I get to my car I see my wife on her phone talking to her daughter. My incredible Geowife had Googled her location on her iPhone after I’d left and figured out that the car was about a ½ mile back up this other road in the another direction. Sorry Honey, I promise not to loose you again out in the middle nowhere. She had gone to the car figuring I would show up. I had the only key so she waited by the car and sent dozens of messages to my phone which was dead.
Hey we are still alive and we have a great story to tell the grand kids. Thank-you so much for the great patches and for the great cache. It was well worth the 10 ½ hours we went through. We left some swag and signed the log.