Geocaching Nightmare

Okay, not so much a nightmare as a bad dream. I'll start from the beginning and get to the bad stuff in a minute.

I decided to get out and hit a few caches today since the weather was so nice. Actually, I was hoping to hit 5-6 caches, but ended up only claiming three. My first stop was a second attempt at "End of the Road #15. I had tried this one once before and could not locate the cache. After about ten minutes of walking in circles, I thought I was going to have the same results today. I finally went back to my GPS and walked into the target from three different directions. Each time, it took me to the same spot, plus or minus a few feet. I knew I had to be right on top of it. Come to find out, I was more correct than I knew. It finally hit me where it was hidden and I brushed away a few leaves and there it was! It's nice to succeed when you have failed in the past. I took nothing but left a couple of foriegn coins and signed the log.

Next, I was off to find "Mastermind and Friends". This cache was a nice walk from the parking area to the cache. There was no one around so I took my time and located the cache with ease. The cache was in good shape and I traded a 1943 VF Mercury dime for a small package of zipties. Once the cache was replaced in it's hide spot, I walked back to the pickup. I then headed for "End of the Road #9" which turned into an adventure of it's own.

After arriving at the park and finding a parking spot, I jumped out of the pickup to find the cache. By the reading on my GPS, I had a fairly good idea of where to look for this cache. It was a small hike to the cache and once in the area, I spotted it right away. I retrieved the cache and removed the Thomas' Whistle TB and traded a couple of cool foriegn coins. One was a square coin that was a 2 cent piece from the East Caribbean. The other was a Panama coin from the 1960's. If you see a theme in my trades involving coins, you're correct. I collect coins and I know how much kids enjoy unusual coins, so I try to leave them at caches. As I was walking back to my pickup, I made a horrible discovery. I did not have my keys with me! This is where the bad dream part kicks in. After arriving at my pickup, to my dismay, I do not see the keys in the ignition, or any where else for that matter! After a short time, I figure out that they must be laying in the passenger seat covered up by my cache pages (sounds like a good reason to go paperless to me). I make a couple of attempts to gain entry to my vehicle without success. There were muggles around, so I was limited in what I could do. I ended up calling a good buddy of mine, Mike, and we worked on a couple of options. I was only a couple of blocks from work and we figured out that Gerald was up at work, so I called him. He showed up with various screwdrivers and hanger. This was an exercise in frustration. No luck on getting in to the truck. Gerald took me back up to work and I called Mike back. Mike came to work and picked me up and we again tried to access my truck to no avail. Finally, I ended up calling Pop-a-lock and they were enroute to rescue me. Mike took me up to Quik-Trip and bought me a cappucino and a Snikers because I'm sure I looked pathetic at that point. We returned to the scene of the crime and waited. In the mean time, we chatted and listened to Toby Keith and Kris Kristofferson. Pop-A-Lock finally arrived after dark sometime and let me into my truck. Amazing that it only took them about 15 seconds to gain access to my truck. Needless to say, it was dark and I was cold, so I called it a day and headed home. I'm very blessed to have friends like Mike and Gerald that will take care of me even on a holiday!! True friends like them are hard to come by.

Oh, congrats to stoneposse for being the FTF on my new cache, Polecat Creek Cache !! I was excited to see someone find it on the first day !