Third To Find

In geocaching land, it is kind of a sport to try to be First To Find on a new cache. So when a new cache turned up in our neck of the woods, we decided that we were going to log our first FTF. My plan was to leave immediately after breakfast, and get there nice and early. Of course, as usual, life got in the way, and we didn't get to the cache till 1pm or so.

The roads to the cache gradually got worse. First normal paved roads, then smaller paved roads. The paved roads changed into dirt roads, and the last few miles were on a dirt road that was barely wider than my van. I kept praying to the geocaching gods that we wouldn't have any cars coming in the opposite direction, because there was no way that that would have fitted, and I didn't really want to back up for three miles on a tiny dirt road.

We finally arrived at the parking lot, where we found two cars already parked. I knew we were out of luck on the FTF when I noticed the license plate on the first one 'GEOCACH'. Hmmmm, something told me that that was the vehicle of a fellow geocacher. I hoped that the other car maybe wasn't a geocacher, so at least we could be STF.

Got out, admired the nice pond, and started on the hike. On our way to the first waypoint, we met another couple of hikers. One of the kids remarked that they had a GPS too. And yes, there were our fellow geocachers. The FTFer, and the STFer. It was fun to meet them though, and put faces to the screen names. It turns out that one of them had done our own cache that morning and was FTF on our cache. She was in possesion of Tara's travelbug BunBun. The other one planned on doing our cache in the afternoon.

Talked a bit, and then both went our merry way. This was a multi cache, so we didn't get the real coordinates, but instead, the first coordinates led us to a clear plexiglass ring with more coordinates. Do you know how hard it is to find a four inch plexiglass ring in the middle of a HUGE wood? Yes, very difficult. Amazingly difficult. But thanks to a hint of the other geocachers, we eventually found the first ring, which made it easier to find the second one, because now at least we knew what we were looking for. The second ring gave us the coordinates for the cache. Which was another hard to find one, but we did it! Third To Find :-) Next time, we'll try to improve on that and be Second To Find maybe LOL

The pond had a wonderful beach, we played there for quite a while before heading home. And the best thing was that the hike back to the car wasn't even in the dark! Amazing huh? LOL We did get lost on the ride home, in the dark, but that's another story.