Another FTF 12/20/11

ActZollZurn geocache - Our 5th F2F Geocache

Quitely asleep, we got woken up by my phone giving us the F2F (First to Find) alarm just before 6am. We jump into action, and faster than a speeding bullet, race along Rt 202 to the target zone. As we get there we see that someone has beaten had just arrived seconds before us, but luckily he had not found it. We join forces and with flashlights in hand, we soon get our prize, another F2F - our 5th.  It was a small magnetic nano cache near the bottom of the pipe.

600 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - 12/20/11

On a lovely afternoon,playing hookey from work, Melanie, Phil and I decided to get out of the house and go for a hike. We ended up going on the Telegraph Hill Pass hike on South Mountain, Arizona. It was a lovely day, the weather was pretty much perfect. We grabbed 3 geocaches and made it to the top. The 3rd one was our 600th geocache. Melanie and I took our time with Phil racing to the top leaving us in his dust.

Phil finding Total Nut Case deux - It was a giant acorn.

The Three guardians guarding the Feeling Thorny Cache

FTF streak 12/16/11

The other day we happened to see an email  that a new geocache had been published close by so we raced to find it. We looked and looked and could not find. Eventually another geocaching couple "Race2Speed" and together we searched everywhere. WE did find it . It was up a treee, literally. Anyway this got us to thinking about this, and after a bit of geek tech stuff The phone now rings when a new geocache gets published.

A few days later we are relaxing when Phil says it is someones phone. Well, after a bit of naysaying, it turns out he was right, and Melanie says off we go!!!. W raced there and managed to find "Kandoeet" in the dark with our flashlights. We were so happy. When we go thome we realized that there was another published at the same time, but we were too tired and went to bed.

Christmas came early as by the time we got out and about to do some shopping, I noticed that no one had made a log on to the "The Golden Gate" cache and we dedided to go check it out just in case. We really assumed that someone had been out there at the crack of dawn and got it. Low and behold, we got our second F2F (First to Find for you muggles) in a row. That makes it 4 now.

The quest for 500 11/26/11

Back Country ByWay

View from the trail

 In our quest to reach our goal of 500 by the end of the year, we decided to go on a long power trail west of Phoenix, called the Eagle Eye Trail. We had a wonderful day, sotpped for a picnic and found a dirt road excursion to the top of the mountains to where the old observatory used to be. That will be a trip for another day. It was a long day, and we found over 252 geocaches in Arizona today!! and reached our goal and then some.

Tarantula spotted at Eagle Eye 151

Signing the last log of the day

Melanie signing the first log

Black Canyon City 11-5-11

Melanie at Bumble Bee Exit

We looked at the goecaching map here in Arizona, and could not beleive the number of geocaches in the Black Canyon area. There is one couple who have hidden over 900 geocaches. So we drove up in the GeoJeep and did some 4 wheelin' along an old mine road and had a blast. Phil and a friend of his Arik came as well. It was a little cold but still was a lot of fun.

I told you we were going to fast at Rock Springs!

Phil brought his friend Arik along. They had a blast.

Phil found a fake snake next to the cache. Made him jump.

Melanie finding another one! - She has got good eyes.

The Bradshaw Mountain from Maggie Mine Road.

Hey guys, It's Right here?

Papago Park and Riverview

Went on a scavenger hunt puzzle cache and finished this one after dark!

Can you see it!

Melanie walked right up to this one.

Can you figure out where the geocache is?

Some are just simple cute

View for Papago Butte

Martin finally finds one

In our drive for 500, we have been getting off the coach and geocaching locally here in Awatukee and the surrounding areas, We have managed to get 200 and blow past that to now 225!!  We  had a lovely day in the Papago Park area and also went to visit some caches created by a geocaching couple Joey2 that we met a whiel back. Boy, did they have some challenges and creative caches.Thankfully we manged to find a quite a few , but we did notice that a bunch of people have troubel with those ones

Peppersauce Cave with Boy Scouts 10-20-11

I went camping with Phil's Boy scout troup to Mt Lemmon, actually Peppersauce cave. We did some hiking on Mint Springs trail after quite a long trip on dirt roads, about a 45 mile round trip. Glad I had the Jeep. We had quite a traffic Jam as you can see below. We visited the cave and maanged to find a coupel of geocaches, including one at the top of Mt Lemon. On the way home we found a couple of others and dropped off a travel bug.

View from the Mint Springs Trail

Traffic Jam

Faul Foliage beginning



Phil was quite ready for his trip into the cave.I had checked it out earlier with the scoutmasters.

Martin at Peppersauce Cave

Travel Bug we dropped off at Mt Lemon

Our First FTF (First to Find)!

Here's Martin finding the cache - My Favorite Watering Hole. It was in a QT parking lot.  We earned $1 for being the FTF.  What a great ending to a wonderful day!  He's glad I pushed him out the door and within 15 minutes we had our first FTF.

185!

Martin had a plan to get a few geocaches today (47!).  His plan was to do the Sonoran Wildlife Animal series of caches.  They were all named after animals native or inhabited in Arizona.  It was quite fun as you will see below.

Our first cache of the day - 7:30 am!  Little did I know that a few feet behind me was a Western Diamondback rattlesnake. I knew something was up when Martin said, "Uh, honey, stand up."  I figured it was a scorpion so I stood up.  Then he said, "Move slowly this way." At that point, he said I jumped and moved behind him (giving him the death grip, of course).  

Here he is.  I'm glad I didn't know what kind of a snake it was at the time.   Look at that rattler!

Here's Martin finding another one!  Way to go, honey.

We found this magnetic one inside the guardrail.  

Another magnetic one!

 

This is the beautiful view we had all day at McDowell Mountain Regional Park.

We found this cache at Tempe Town Lake.  It was a beautiful day there.  By the time we finished the day, we had found 60!!!!

Moving on, but to 500!?!

Semaphore Puzzle Cache

Phil at "Walkway, What wallway?" cache

Bagel Not - So creative

Bagel Not Cache

Melanie has set an ambitious goal of getting to 500 geocaches by the end of the year, which means we will definitely be getting off the couch. I guess we were both kind of lazy over the summer so on a lovely cool evening here in Arizona we decided to go and do some geocaching.  With a bit of help from another geocacher we found one of our nemisis caches that we had tried 3 times to find. We even managed to drag Phil out to help.

Sedona and a Milestone 9/28/11

Way of the Wildcat geocache hiking off a dirt road

Home on the Porch Cache. Can you spot it?

Corder Junction Ghost Town cache site

Cache at the Seven Sacred Pools

Devils Sinkhole

CoffeePot Rock

Melanie with the Spider at Little Miss Muffet cache

Being Stealthy waiting for muggles to leave at Lync cache