Cache Maintenance

It's Friday, and I'm not out geocaching. Weird but I've done enough of it over the last week to last a while. Though I did sorta do some caching. Explanation coming.

Started the day by getting some membership cards finished for the Wood Badge Association. Got them ready to mail, and also started putting together my first Iraq care package for Scott. I had printed off some suggestions from the AFP&S lists last winter when we first thought he was going. (That acronym stands for Air Force Parents & Spouses.) They say - NO porn, booze, or meat. Two out of those three, of course not. But I had bought some beef jerky, thinking it was just a ban on pork, so had to take that out of the box. So far I have some crackers, some trail mix, some reese's pieces, and some powdered gatorade packets. Also some Reader's Digests and a few McStar Wars Toys. There's a little bit of room left, will think it over more for the rest of the weekend.

Went out to the post office, then headed for Roselle Park where there are four geocaches that I've placed there. It was time to do some "owner maintenance" as it's called, since someone had logged the day before that one of my logs was full, plus they couldn't find the one that I already suspected had been washed away in the spring flooding.

First stop was my cached named "Roast Beef Revisited." I should mention that all of my caches in this park have beef somewhere in their name since the former use for the land was for the Ada Beef Co. Just a little tie to the past. Anyway, RBR is tucked into the limb of a tree where I placed my first cache, "Where's the Beef" and was placed when I archived the first cache as it was too prone to floods. Well, today I still had to deal with some water issues; there was some brush under the tree limb which allowed me to stay dry but the cache was really jammed down into the limb so once I finally got it out to change the log, I decided to archive it instead and use the container to place a new cache. The container is a "preform" pop bottle - the heavy plastic that they expand to make a 20-oz pop bottle. Makes a very sturdy cache container! It's about 4" long before it's expanded, you wouldn't know it was to be a pop bottle but for the top that looks just the same.

Went on to the viewing platform, farther down the same path I was walking. Decided to place the new cache (old container) in the viewing platform area. I'm calling it "No More Beef" as this will probably be the last beef cache I'll place as the flooding is really quite the issue more often than usual. Moved on to the location of my AWOL cache, "Roast Beef Sandwich" (it was in a tupperware sandwich container) and, sure enough, it was gone. I wasn't surprised, I had a feeling it had been washed away in the flooding. So moved on around the path.

Finally came to my oldest cache in the park, "Here's the Beef." It was the 2nd cache, after Where's the Beef, and is my best placement in the park, up high enough that the floods won't affect it. There may be times when the trail is flooded, but it won't reach the cache. BUT - there's still a scooped-out area very near the cache that still had some flood waters in it. Seems to be the Olympic swimming pool for the newly-hatched mosquitoes, as I was fighting them off the entire time I was at Here's the Beef. Traded travel bugs there as the bug that had been placed yesterday, Scout Bug, was a scouting/geocaching bug and I really wanted to get it! Probably one of my motivational reasons for doing the maintenance today, I'm sure!

I walked back to the parking area, and would have checked on my puzzle cache, "Scrabeefle," which is in that area, but muggles were in the area and there's no way I could have done it discreetly. So will save that for another time.

Then a trip to the garden center where I (finally) bought flowers for our planters - purple and yellow pansies this year. Did a little browsing for an anniversary present for Steve - I'm thinking about an Ipod touch, trying to decide if he'd use it enough. He'd be able to access the internet on it, would be good for trips. Decided to gather more information and wait to see if they go on sale the first of the week. He's definitely not a techno-geek but I think he could use this. Or is it just wishful thinking on my part? (Yeah, I know, that's how I ended up with my first GPS - bought it for Steve, he didn't like it and with my blessing regifted it to me for my birthday that year. )