Geocaching Log - Sept. 13, 2007 - Morning Trip

Cache Overview
1) Rusting Buddies @ N 38° 57.254 W 095° 16.425
2) Tsar Nicholas' McToy Gulag @ N 38° 57.074 W 095° 16.065
3) This cache is the BOMB!!! @ N 38° 58.221 W 095° 15.872
4) Logan's Run @ N 38° 59.408 W 095° 17.812

Acquired: Knight figurine, John Deere TB, Carabeener
Left: Stuffed Spongebob, Goofy bobblehead

Forgive me for the lack of photos on my first day of geocaching! The thought of blogging my adventures was just a flicker in my mind yesterday and in my excitement to get out and find some caches, I neglected to bring my camera. Nevertheless, here's what happened on my inaugural caching trip.

Rusting Buddies @ N 38° 57.254 W 095° 16.425

Rusting buddies was my first stop of four planned caches for the day. After scouting out the location on Google Earth (something I do for all caches that I plan to search for) I ended up parking in a KU parking lot (no permit required, phew!) as my starting point. After firing up the GPS, I started heading toward the cache (which, according to the GPS unit, was only about 350 feet away) into a pocket of woods which lined the parking lot. It was obvious that the wooded area wasn't very deep, as I could see open skies on the far side of it.

About 20 feet in, however, I realized why this area was left wooded. It was veiling a big friggin' drainage ditch. Furthermore, the ditch was so eroded that I was faced with a 1o' vertical descent down into the little valley. What I thought was just going to be a quick hack through some trees was now made a little more tricky. Not wanting to jump and risk, you know, falling into the water at the bottom, I was able to locate some tree roots and use them as a rope to let myself down.

Luckily, once I was down, I found a spot that I could cross using my mad white man jumping skillz, and the ascent back up this side was not nearly as steep. After watching a school of minnows run away from my shadow in the water for a bit, I made my way up the slope. From the top of the slope I made way through a few more trees and some underbrush into an open field. Following my GPS signals, I made my way along the edge of the field until coming across two rusted out old cars.

"Aha! So these are the Rusting Buddies!", I thought as the GPS beeped at me, telling me I was arriving at my destination. I proceeded to inspect the cars for the cache. These cars were not going to be cruising down the road any time soon. In fact, they were much more suited to a future as a critter hotel judging from the look and smell of the place. After a little more searching, I found the cache, an ammo box tucked into the rear driver side of one of the buddies.

After searching through the contents of the cache, I decided to take with me a little knight figurine dude that had been left my another cacher, and in return I left a little stuffed Spongebob. After signing the logbook and hiding the cache back away, I bid the rusting buddies goodbye. A few more of the required acrobatics later, I was back to my car and on my way to the next cache!

Tsar Nicholas' McToy Gulag @ N 38° 57.074 W 095° 16.065

This cache was just a hop, skip, and a jump away from my parking spot for the Rusting Buddies, and once again I found myself parked in a KU lot, only this time parked illegally due to a lack of the necessary permitage. Oh well. While firing up the GPS, I noticed a grassy mowed trail leading into the woods where I knew the cache was located, so off I went.

While I was on the trail, I noticed a funny thing about the spiders on this trail: they love catching humans. I must have taken about 5 spider webs to the face in a tenth of a mile. Luckily, I was able to use my super-human strength to narrowly escape certain death at the hands of my 8-legged adversaries, and continued down the path until I noticed that I had somehow walked past the cache location while trying to wipe the webs off my face. Upon backtracking, I found that the closest I could get to the cache using the marked trail was 300', so off into the woods I went!

After following my through the woods GPS to the supposed cache location, I walked in circles for a good 15 minutes. I kicked every log I could find, flipped every rock, inspected every tree trunk until voila! I kicked an old rotting log, causing it to split in half to reveal the ammo box that had been placed inside of it.

Upon opening the cache, I found why it was named "McToy Goulag"; it was full of McDonald's Toys! It also contained two TB's (short for travel bug). For those of you that aren't into caching, a travel bug is a trackable object that is placed in a cache, usually having some sort of goal in mind (such as travelling to California for instance). The TB's can be anything, and in this case were a Mr. Potato Head and a small replica John Deere Tractor. Accompanying these objects are the travel bug tags with the bug's ID number so it can be tracked it online. They are also accompanied by an info sheet explaining what goal the bug is trying to accomplish.

Anyways, seeing that neither bug really had a goal in mind (the creators must just enjoy seeing where their objects are travelling), I settled on picking up the John Deere tractor, signed the log, and proceeded to head back to my car. It was at this point I learned my first lesson of geocaching: when leaving a marked trail, make sure to record that point on your GPS so you can find your way back. You wouldn't think it would be too tough to remember your way out only 300 feet into the woods, but after running in circles looking for the cache, it is! Luckily, I remembered that my GPS model has a feature where it tracks all of your travels with what is effectively an electronic bread crumb trail (which is awesome, since the animals won't eat electronic crumbs) and I was able to turn that feature on and follow the little pixels back to the trail. Phew!

This cache is the BOMB!!! @ N 38° 58.221 W 095° 15.872

This cache was by far the easiest of the day, located at Centennial Park where I frequently disc golf. After scouting the location on Google Earth, I knew exactly where this cache was so no GPS wizardry was needed for this location.

The location of this cache is a landmark that most people that live in Lawrence know about. For some reason, there is an old submarine missile casing permanently residing in the parking lot of Centennial park. The casing is mounted vertically, resembling some sort of space ship, and is mounted about 5 feet off the ground. Since the casing is hollow (guess it might be a little dangerous if it was still live), you can reach up inside of the missile. I knew ahead of time that this cache was a microcache (a cache with only room for a tiny logbook for you to sign), and was probably some sort of magnetic case stuck inside the missile. So, I reached inside. It was at this point I learned lesson #2 of the day: look before sticking your hand somewhere. For most people, this is just common sense; apparently not so for me.

As I was feeling around, I sense something kinda papery feeling protruding from the inside of the missile. Wondering what the crap I had just felt, I looked inside to find a hornets' nest! After nearly crapping my pants, I realized the nest had long been abandoned. So, I stuck my head into the missile again and saw my target, a little black box. After signing the logbook, I stuck it back in the missile just above the hornets' nest just to be a turd and took off.

Logan's Run @ N 38° 59.408 W 095° 17.812

I now made my way across town up to Martin Park, which is basically just a fairly large wooded area in north-western Lawrence. I was easily able to park my car at the trail head and take off on the wooded trail which I followed about a half mile to about 150 feet of the cache location.

Remembering lesson #1 learned earlier in the day, I marked my location as a waypoint on the GPS before proceeding to trample into the woods. However, unlike my last trek into the woods, this find was really quite uneventful as I was able to find the cache right away, another ammo box hidden under a fallen tree and covered with some tree bark for extra camouflage effect. I did learn another lesson on this find however. Don't wear shorts for geocaching! This forest had a heck of a lot of thorny crap in it, causing my legs to bleed in a few locations. For those of you counting, that's lesson #3 for the day.

Anyways, after searching through the loot, I decided on a bright blue carabeener and left behind a plastic Goofy bobblehead doll that I most likely pillaged from a Rice Crispies box at my college cafeteria a few years ago. I was always a big fan of searching through all the cereal boxes in pursuit of the fame and fortune that comes with a cereal box treasure. Perhaps cereal-caching was an ominous sign of this current hobby of mine? At any rate, I locked Goofy in his new less cereal-y but more musty smelling cell and hoofed it back to the car, ending my first morning of hot hot caching action.