A Challenging Geocache

Some people have dogs as good incentives for long walks. For me, it's geocaching. One of the ones I found this morning was especially challenging. The hint: "No brute force is required. Use the most obvious retrieval method." Well, the thing was firmly attached to a large tree, about a foot above my head. It consisted of a dark green 2" tube about 2 feet long, open at the top, with a water hose contraption attached to the bottom. The most obvious method was to try and unscrew the hose thing - pretty tight but it did work. However, that really didn't help in any way. After pondering the state of the union for a while, I finally found a long, straight tree branch and inserted it into the bottom, pushing up. Gee, what do you know - out popped a small plastic pill bottle from the top of the tube. I had to give it a special shove because I couldn't reach it. It fell to the ground and I filled in my information on the log book. Hmmm. Now to get it back into the tube. The opening was way too high to just drop it in and I couldn't insert it from the bottom as the opening was too narrow. I finally took my life in my hands (or legs, as it turned out) and partially attempted to climb a thin, straight tree next to the cache. Grabbing onto the cache while attempting not to kill myself, I finally managed to drop the little plastic bottle back into the tube. Figuratively patting myself on the back, I started back down the 1/2 mile trail to the car. Halfway there I realized I'd most likely dropped the bottle in upside down. Tough. There's no way I was going back to go through all that again.



Are we having fun yet? Yeah, actually I am. As of today, I've found 36 caches in California, Oregon (well, actually my son found most of those since he kept the GPS from me), and Oklahoma, some challenging, some just plain weird, and some quite easy, especially the ones in shopping center parking lots, believe it or not. Think: light poles.





There was even one up here in the middle of the desert. However, it was just too windy to climb up to find it. Perhaps another time. Lots of great graffiti, though.