Hanging with my geo-friends

Yesterday, Mi-DNR celebrated their 90th birthday by having events in many of their state parks. Newaygo State Park, about 40 miles north of me, was no exception. They invited geocachers to be a part of the celebration, and we responded by having an event! About 20 new caches were put out in the park, there was a potluck (the DNR supplied the hot dogs) and there were lots of door prizes as well.

Several geo-friends invited me to ride up there with them. That was great because I didn't have to worry about putting "unnecessary miles" (as Steve declares all geocaching miles to be) on the cachemobile, plus I got to benefit from their more-high-tech-than-mine equipment in addition to my own. I met the carpool at 6:45 a.m. - bright and early after a full week of VBS! We started working our way north and hit nine caches before we got to the park. I didn't have coords for any of them, so just followed along and found about half of them first, after the others narrowed down the search area. We got to the park about 9:45 and stopped at the cache outside the entrance, where we met Macho Homemaker's sister and family, who came up for the event from Indiana. Then we stopped at the event, and were the first to register. After listening to the beginning of the geocaching 101 presentation, we went to find the closest nearby cache. We had some trouble, so the others went back to ask the owners for help (they were at the event.) Meanwhile, I figured out that it was underneath a parking post (hollowed out and placed on two pieces of rebar sticking up out of the ground.) When they came back, I was sitting on a bench with the cache. They had to figure out where I got it from!

From there, a group that quickly expanded to about 12 went on to look for caches on the west side of the park. The first was supposed to be as close to a urban cache as the hider would ever make. Well we got to a clearing and there was a light pole sitting there! Several looked in all the likely places without any luck, so I started expanding the search area and was the first to find the cache, which was hidden in a hollowed out rock. We went on to a couple of other caches, then took a longer hike to get to one only to find it was missing. If 12 cachers with a combined hide total approaching 10,000 can't find it, it's missing. (And yes, that was later confirmed.)

We went back for lunch and the prize drawing. Now there were plenty of prizes, so MAYBE I would finally break my streak of never winning a prize at a geocaching event. Nope. There were only about a dozen tickets left when the prizes were gone, and mine was still in there. My record is intact. Then we went back out to work on a couple of multi stage caches. We were finding some single stage caches along the way - one was suspended in a tree with a rope and pulley that were about 100 feet away. Another was a large PVC pipe with many other pipes sticking through it, you had to figure out where the coords were to the final. (had to figure out which cap came off...) Then back to the event for cake & ice cream, then out to tackle the east side of the park. Highlights included a cache that was full of hollow plastic carrots, only one of which held the log; a cache where the "log" was a log; and a birdhouse suspended in the air with a cable somewhat similar to the cache on the west side. I was able to find my 1700th cache while on this part of the search - it was the cache where the log was actually a log.

When we left the park there was one more cache to find. It was called "build a better..." and was a giant mousetrap with the "cheese" being the ammo can. When you open the ammo can, taps plays. How I don't know. But it does, I have video. Then on the way home it became a quest for my geofriends to set a new personal one day record of caches found. Which they did, their final counts were 30 and 31 respectively. Mine was 29 as I'd found some of the ones they stopped for. My one day record is 42 so knew I wouldn't reach that. Got home about 9 p.m. Long day but fun.

Today I have a rash on my ankle, which I don't think is poison ivy as I'm not usually susceptible to it and it doesn't itch or blister. I was wearing hiking socks and long pants so who knows. I do have a nice blister on my right big toe as well. Usually don't get one there.