Merry Christmas Geocachers!!

Merry Christmas everyone!  I hope you had a safe and peaceful day...and were able to sneak in a cache or two!

Here is the gift that Jedi of the Woods got for me, and it is perfect! A geocaching charm bracelet, can you guess what all of the charms are?

Wile E Coyote School of Art

I have always found it sad how Wile E Coyote was remembered for his violence rather than his brilliantly realistic tunnel paintings.

So it was a delight to have found someone who was an obvious graduate of his class, Tunnel Painting 101.  This person has painted a strikingly realistic tunnel into a 3 story building, though as far as I can tell, there were no Road Runners in the immediate vicinity.

It was still impressive none the less. Thank you to the CO for placing a cache at this site, or else we might have missed this incredible piece of art!

Also in the same parking lot was a toilet specially designed for Clifford the Big Red Dog.

Clearly, this is a very cartoon-friendly neighborhood.

Sally the Stalker-mander

Do you believe that Santa Claus is watching you?  Well, if you are in the Columbia area, he isn't the only one!  There is a very small and very cute amphibian named Sally who is hiding out in several spots all through SC's capitol city. But don't be afraid, like most Southern Belles, she is quite friendly and happy to help you along your way.

 

Though not placed specifically for this multi cache, you will enjoy following the clues to find Sally at some of the most interesting sites in and around town.  We began our geo tour after taking pictures for the virtual across the street and were soon able to find the first clue that Sally had left for us. 

 

We did not see our amphibian tour guide at every clue, so I can only assume she was practicing her ninja skills (a past time that I, as a NinjaChipmunk, am also familiar with!) and we felt very honored whenever she did make an appearance. 

 

After much walking and many unique sites, we were able to find the cache and the coordinates to the final stage, for which we found would require a short drive.  It took quite a bit of stealth to obtain the first cache, as this is a VERY busy time of year and any appearances of creepiness in this spot would draw more attention than most places.  This is where having a team comes in handy, you can pose in front of a completely confusing sculpture and pretend to have your picture taken while providing cover for your operative to retrieve the target.  On a side note...anyone else notice the strange theme of women and goats in this particular square of town?

 

Local beauty...Rita the Meter Maid

Many thanks to the CO for setting up this grand tour and giving us a chance to discover so many cool and unexpected surprises and teaching us all a little more about your area! A lot of work was put into this and it showed!

 

And thank you to Sally for being so awesome and welcoming us with a smile!

 

Can I Get Your Number?

One of my favorite types of caches, and increasingly one of the hardest to find, would be the Letterbox cache!  Thanks to fellow cachers HoosierSunshine and SCGEONINJA we had the delight, nay the privilege, of finding two of these brilliant caches on Saturday!!

  As I have already posted about the first one of the day, designed by our own friendly Hoosier, this is an account of the extreme joy of finding our second one in the same day! 

And, as the instructions were written in true letterbox fashion, it did not disappoint. I believe that every member of our troupe was excited to find take off into the woods to find this one before the trivia event.

 

The letterbox itself was hidden in a very cool container which was filled with all kinds of happy swag for both the young and the young-at-heart geocacher. However, the essence of the cache was the opportunity to stamp your favorite number onto the log and to enjoy looking back at previous finders' favorites as well.



 

 

 

Here are the favorite numbers of Team Awesomesauce:

 

 

Don't Panic if you do not get this one, just have a towel handy

 

My own personal fave

Favorite shared by 2 team members,
you will now see it everywhere


 



If you get this one, you had an awesome childhood

I am not sure why, but I just love the novelty using stamp and ink for a cache. Thanks to the CO for making this one a fun and easy find.



Every Which Way But Loose....

I must say that some of the most fun to be had on this trip was a fantastic letterbox cache named "I'm Not Lost, I'm Geocaching".  I am not sure who had more fun, those of us following the clues or the CO who just happens to be a member of our team. (Seriously, is there anything more fun than watching a fellow cacher trying to find your hide?!)

This was one of the most ingenious ideas for a hide and was perfectly executed!  It took us on one very wild ride across a gorgeous campus in Rock Hill, and there were many wonderful sights to be found along the way. Here are just a few:

There was a definite frog
theme on campus

Though the final cache had gine missing, the fun sure had not!! I highly recommend this ine when it comes back online soon!! 

Everything is Awesome....

Every couple of months, I am fortunate enough to be able to get together with some of the most amazing and insane cachers that I have ever had

 the good luck of knowing.  Together we make up the troupe known as Team Awesomesauce, easily identifiable by our new matching t-shirts (big thanks to team member Failed Apparatus). 

 

The premise for our adventure in gorgeous The Palmetto State was to fill the daytime hours before we were all to attend the "It's All Just Trivial" event being hosted by our own Hoosier Sunshine and Failed Apparatus that evening at the local Fudruckers.  These geo-trivia contests have become well known and highly anticipated events and this one would prove no exception to the rule!

 

 



While out exploring the area, we came across several creative and amusing caches and I wanted to share a few of them with you:

Southern Black Widow

Do you spot the cache yet?

How about now??



No Credit, No Cache



Must be opened by sliding a credit card
 into the slot to release the internal lock

Though the weather would prove warm later in the day, the morning started off quite cold and the ground was covered in ice.  But neither ice nor cold could keep us from finding the cache!

 



Ice covered slope

 

We had a fantastic time caching our way to SC and I will be posting about several more great caches that we found on this outing which I feel deserve a short post all to themselves. 

I am so thankful for these wonderful friends and am still amazed on regular basis at the level of awesomesauce that I have met while playing this game!

Stay tuned for more adventures!!

A Jedi and his friends

Last weekend was one the one that I tend to both dread and look forward to all year. Last Sunday was the beginning of MDA camp for my son Jedi of the Woods and although I knew he would be too busy having fun to miss me, I would miss him like crazy!

The camp is held in York, South Carolina and since we were headed her way, HoosierSunshine and I thought it would be a perfect time to introduce our kids to each other!

In honor of our visit down, she and her geokids, Lukapotimus and JuliaBiscuits, hid a cache in Alex's honor... Watch Out For The Jedi Of The Woods!  (if you are in the area, please be sure to visit it and leave a cool piece of swag for the next cacher!)


 I am always blown away by how sweet and amazing a person HS is and what a generous heart she has. And she must be doing something right, because her kids are just as awesome as she is!

I have said it before and will say it again now, Geocachers are some of the most amazing and open people you will ever meet!



When we arrived, we got the kids together and they hit it right off and Jedi said he really like hanging out at their house. He thought it was incredible that they had a pet hedgehog and he really loved the Iron Man busting out of Luke's room wall!   Then we all hit the road so that they could watch us trying to find the cache together.  It was such a great cache and such a fun little hunt!  Alex was so touched by their doing such a cool thing for him and his response was that it "made me feel important"! How sweet!! :D

We spent the next little bit going around doing some of the coolest caches you can imagine to begin the 7 Souvenirs of August challenge, but I will save that for the next post!


It was a great visit and we had such fun caching with HoosierSunshine, FailedApparatus, Lukapotimus, and JuliaBiscuits!

 Thank you again to HoosierSunshine for opening you home to us and for setting up that geocache that made Alex's day, what a fantastic start to camp week!!

Hungry Hippos come to life!

As some of you already know, my mini cacher -Jedi of the Woods- is away at MDA camp right now and they do some incredible stuff with the kids. 

Today was one of the more unique things I have seen photos of them doing. 

The generous people of Lowes Hardware Store donated time and materials to the camp and together they built a life-sized version of a beloved childhood game - Hungry Hungry Hippo!!

The kids look like they were having a great time building the hippos.  But the best part was apparently watching the hippos in action trying to gobble up as many beach balls as they can!!  Look how excited and happy all the children are!

Just thought I would share some of the photos with my readers in hopes that examples such generosity and compassion to children with special needs might brighten up your day the way it did mine :)

Hope you all enjoy!!

It's All Just Trivial

Last Saturday I attended my very first every Geocaching-themed Trivia event.  How was it? In a word...AWESOMESAUCE!!


Throughout the weeks following up to the event, I had a crazy fear of not knowing any of the answers and completely embarrassing myself, so I spent hours studying random caching facts and figures.  If you wanted to know what is most watched Travel Bug (Look at Me)  or the name of Geocaching's most famous Sock Puppet (a fresh, young Asian girl named Mitsuko), then I was your girl!!

Found it!!

Took a little bit of
geo-ingenuity
to retrieve this smiley!

The 5 of us (FailedApparatus, HoosierSunshine, tmouse, lmsw and I) started the day out with a little bit of caching during our 2 hour drive to J&S Cafeteria in Asheville, and we had a very successful hunt.

Do you see it?
 Beware the pricklies!

On the way, lmsw and tmouse and I were able to enjoy a little further bonding over our mutual love of books and I can promise you that there will be some new additions to my e-book shelf this week!!

How about this one?
Spotted it yet?

After several cache stops, we finally arrived at our destination and after helping HoosierSunshine and Failed Apparatus to unload the supplies, the rest of us took off to run some errands (and of course grab some more local caches!).

How do you know it was a fun cache run? When you end up giving away more favorite points in under one hour than you have all year!!  Here are a few of the fun caches that we ran into that day!





Yep! That was it!!



This funny little guy and his cute
companion were just so
happy that I had to
snap their picture!

When the time came around, we returned for a little lunch and a little competition.  There ended up being 7 teams in all and everyone brought their "A" games for sure!




Our incomparable hosts!

The questions were a perfect mix of common knowledge and obscure facts and you could definitely tell how much hard work FA had put into his event!!  There was a lot of effort put into making this an event to remember!

FA did a great job as the Coordinators and Master of Ceremonies, and HS did a fantastic job as the enchanting hostess. Together, they made an unbeatable team!



Though not the big winner,
I was more than happy to have
won this cool trackable!!

The winning team posing for a victory photo!

 It was great to see several familiar faces from the event the night before at Tillman Hall, and everyone was in the best of humors as after a couple of hours one of the teams emerged as victors and it was time to congratulate to winners, clean up the event, and head out for some more caches before we had to be home!



There were some fun trackable items to log as "discovered" including our hosts shoes and even a prosthetic leg!! Just goes to show you the positive spirit that embodies this game and its players!








So afterwards, the 5 of us added one more to our little group (Debaere) and left out to nab some nearby caches.  Though not the most creative caches out there, they were at least quick grabs. And after all, it was never about the numbers, but all about the company and the bonding!  The laughs and jokes flowed easy and the time flew by quickly!

 

Beware the bees!!

Here are some of the photos from our quick caching jaunt!



In case you get tired of
looking for the cache and
want to watch a little tv?

A super big thank you to FailedApparatus for organizing and pulling off this event and another big thanks to HoosierSunshine for opening her home and her heart to a hyper little NinjaChipmunk.  You guys are the best!!!