The first thing I think about when going anywhere?? Maybe there's a cache along the way! I mean, who doesn't think that as your either grabbing your coat or buckling up? I was once told I had an addictive personality. maybe I do. when I do something, I do it 100%....so yeah, Geocaching is ALWAYS in my head.
So. When Quincy got to ride with me on our way to Kamryn's London BBQ, I knew the perfect one to grab. I'd been driving past it for months. Just never taking the time to stop. Luckily, all of my grandkids are up for stopping for a cache with Nana. They all have their own accounts, and even though they don't do it as regularly as me, they are always eager! Its just kinda our thing I guess. So, we pull off the road, and since this is a P&G (park and grab), we find it rather quickly. Imagine our surprise when we open it up and find a dollar bill all rolled up nicely and tucked inside! Gotta smile about that! We tuck in a couple of coins, and sign the log and are soon back on our way. Even though this was a quick one, it's still pretty special. Not only because it ups my numbers by one more, but because I had one of my most special people doing it with me. All I want to do is spend time with these kids of my kids. They are growing up way too fast, and soon will be young women, and then... what if it isn't cool to hang with Nana? Or it's still cool, but they are too far away going to school or working? Sure there's social media, facetime, phones, all the ways to keep in touch. But, it's just not the same. So, I'll always think about grabbing a cache when I climb in my car. And if I have one of my grands with me, then that just makes the hunt more fun! It's just one more chance to share a smile, have an adventure and make a memory. After all, that's what it's all about. Right? Go grab a special person. Go find a cache. Make a memory. GO!Koko-Geocacher
If you know me, you know I geocache. Alot. It's my Jam! I geocache with my grandkids, my daughters, basically anyone willing to go with me, and sometimes even by myself. To date I have 753. Now you may think that's alot. but in the big scheme of geocaching, not so much. There are MILLIONS out there, and I have to find more. Along with these treasure hunts, are some very cool adventures that I want to share! So, if you're intrigued, follow along with me.
Thursday, March 9, 2023
Saturday, August 13, 2022
A Walk to Ankeney's Iron Horse
Saturday, July 30, 2022
Meeting fellow cachers!!!
New friends |
"Beav-a-saurus" |
Friday, February 25, 2022
I found the Bigfoots!!!!
I grew up in Idaho. Yep, until I married my muggle and moved to Washington I was a spud girl. Most of those years were around Kellogg, but we lived in a multitude of all those small towns. Spent a lot of time camping, hiking and just being outdoors. Now if you have heard anything about the Northwest, you've more than likely heard of Bigfoot. Right? Mythical (?) creature, stays hidden from humans, leaves HUGE footprints in the woods. Never really showing his self, but always lurking around. I've grown up listening to those stories. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across a "Bigfoot Geotour" (GT3E)!!I was intrigued to say the least. Seems there is a community in North Bonneville Washington that has a whole family of Bigfoots, just waiting for you to come and discover them (and the caches they hide)! Let me tell you, I was so excited I'm sure my muggle thought something bit me. And truthfully, something did! That nasty adventure bug got me again.....I couldn't wait to go see these guys up close and personal FINALLY!!! I had to call Squinch:). So we plan our trip, and make all of the arrangements. It was going to be a 5 hour drive, so we obviously needed a motel. And snacks. And a map of all the
One of our many along the way! |
they welcome us!!!! |
just gotta love this big guy! |
big boys |
*of the places it takes me
*of the wonderful people I meet (we met some cool railroad guys a couple of weeks ago, watch for that post)
*of the things I learn about myself while out in the world searching for Tupperware in the woods
*and because today, this weekend with my friends, I learned that not all Bigfoots (or Sasquatches) are big hairy scary legends that only walk around in the woods leaving HUGE footprints at night.
Some are cute little guys that play golf, watch baseball games, hang from trees, sit and watch the river go by, and have a big smile and a little surprise hidden in a little compartment for you to discover and write your name. To prove that you, too, searched and found them. The Bonneville Bigfoots!!
***September 13, 2021
Just hangin' around! |
Watching the ball game!! |
Hidden well |
Friday, January 7, 2022
Reaching the peak in 12 degrees...with my muggle
OK, so who all is participating in the "Reach the Peak" challenge? ME! And Squinch:) of course lol. So far we have reached them all, but this month kinda
crept up on me. Squinch:) is on a road trip. It's cold outside. I got sick. And then all of a sudden I had 3 days to reach all my points? Heck, it ain't happening. I had resigned myself to the fact that I was not going to reach Denali basecamp, let alone the PEAK! But I held out a small bit of hope, and asked my muggle to take me on a date. Where to he asked. So, I simply said I need to go to River Front Park and walk around and find 3 Adventure Labs to reach my peak! His response? "How cold is it supposed to be?" I agreed thatThe Looff Carousel |
BloomsDay Runners |
The Litter Goat |
My wonderful good hearted MUGGLE! |
Friday, December 24, 2021
Road Trips ... and caches!
I've always loved road trips. Load a cooler, map out a route and grab the camera. Thankfully, since we didn't really do the road trip thing till the girls were almost all grown, the youngest two were all for it! We did so many. Looking for small no-wake lakes when we got our canoe. Going back to one of my childhood homes and sharing those memories. I loved it. Imagine my glee when I discovered geocaching and realized I could combine the two! Now, before we pack the cooler and load the car, I search for any caches that might be grabbed along the way. And there always are some! We all know they are EVERYWHERE, right? Have you read my previous post about the "Seven magic Mountains"? Perfect road trip! Even with my muggle husband, I can always find a few caches. We've taken day trips, where we just get in the car when we wake up and go. We've taken weekend trips where we actually make a plan ahead of time. I want to see it all, do it all and now of course....find them all! This picture was taken on one of our day trips. I thin, I found about 5 caches that day. But it's not always about the caches either. I mean, they are pretty important, but so is the actual road trip. Seeing new places and things, and sometimes seeing things you've seen before as well. You should see all of my travel journals. I keep track of everything we do and see. Oooooo, I see a blog post about that coming soon, ya think? Anyways......
This past summer, Squinch:) and I decided to finally drive to Sprague, Washington and complete the Washington Star. We are road trip fanatics, I tell ya. We loaded up the car, grabbed her Geo-Pup (I have my own now and you can read about him in a previous post), and headed out. We ended up grabbing over 100 caches that day, completing the Washington Star and also the Historic Hwy 10 series. A lot of stop and go, a lot of sagebrush and scab rock and a lot of log signing! But we found them all! It was just a funfilled day. I have a couple of more road trips planned for Squinch:) and I that are sitting in the to-do part of my brain. One is a post that I saw on facebook, a place in Oregon that has a big BIG ammo can and a big BIG rock painted like a green frog. I mean, who doesn't want to go find that? The other is in Colorado, a sweet little girl and her daddy are building a free little library gadget cache and I MUST go there, just to be a part of it. Since I'm in Washington State, that's gonna be a FUN road trip for sure! That one, we may have to let my muggle tag along. We just might need a driver because it's hard to drive and cache without one LoL. He may be a muggle, but he is always up for a road trip adventure, even if it involves caching. Speaking of Squinch:), my geo-buddy is on her own road trip, visiting her mom in Kansas. So we are caching apart this month, hoping to reach the peak of Denali by the deadline. I'm kinda missing her, and I don't think it's quite fair that she is in sunshine to complete this task, while I am in 30 degree windy cold snowy stuff. I mean, c'mon. I want some warmth and sunshine as well. Makes caching much more enjoyable if you ask me. Seriously tho, I hope she is having a blast with her family. One last photo I'm gonna add to this post, only because I love it so much. It's a virtual cache along the Columbia river, in Carson Washington. We found this cache while on the Bigfoot Geotour road trip. It's called "We love Highway 14:It's a what? I don't see it!" The description, kinda like my elephants, is the legend about the mountain that a family told their boy every time they drove by. He didn't see it till he was 10! I saw it right away. Do you see it?
*taken fron the actual cache description: . Local lore says this is the profile of a Native American man looking towards the heavens in the Southern skies. A jutting brow and large nose are the most prominent features. Depending on the angle of the sun, however, the face is sometimes easier to distinguish than others. This spot was pointed out to me (Dan) by my parents and grandparents on every trip past Wind Mountain, but until I was about 10 years old, my response was always the same: "I don't see it!"
Wednesday, November 24, 2021
"Log your Dog" ... Yep! You can!
Meet Max. My GeoPup! He's still a baby, and he has a lot to learn in regards to geocaching and helping me find all the caches we can. I've only had him a month or so, therefore he hasn't really been on any adventures with me yet, only because I haven't had any time to go play.
focused on that puppachino |
cutest tag ever!!! |
Monday, November 15, 2021
Life ... with my muggle!
Muggle. Noun. A person who is not familiar with a certain subject. A word I had never paid attention to. Being a non "Harry Potter" folk, I guess I WAS one?? I mean, my girls have all watched the movies. I just never have (no judgement please). And even though I must have heard the word, it was never important, until I learned that's what a "non-geocacher" was called. That's when the 'A-HA' moment hit me. My husband and I found our first one together, thanks to our daughter, Cassie. (Read my previous post about my first cache and our Blair Witch experience!). I'll admit it was exciting to think about us loving this hobby together. Just imagine the fun we could have, and places we could go!
But, back at camp, when us gals were looking on the laptop for more, and all the fellas were like "Oh NO!" ... and my fella just looked at the other fellas and jokingly said "I'm just wondering how much this is gonna cost me?". Yeah. I knew I was in it by myself lol. And that's ok! He takes me to find them. And he walks up mountains and hikes trails with me, too. Heck, he's even found a few before I did! But mostly, he'll be waving from the front seat, or like in this particular instance, reading his book. When we pulled into this rest area, I remember saying I was going to check to see if there was a cache here. Duh. Of course there was, almost every rest area has one. BUT, what was exciting to me was the fact that a trackable had just been dropped here earlier in the day! I don't think he shared in my enthusiasm, but that's ok, because I wasI found it! |
The trackable was still there! |
Treasures inside the trackable |
On our waterfall hike |
Tuesday, November 2, 2021
A cache for Squinch:)
Just two gals and a cache |
"I got it!" "No I got it!" |
The perfect place to put this.... |
...right here! |
Mission accomplished! |
I got a text from her a few days later. It took a couple days for her to make it to the park. She found it, and LOVED it. I was so happy that I could make this lady smile like that! And I learned something. You don't have to physically be with your geo-buddy to cache with them. All you have to do is use your imagination. Well, and eat all those chocolate covered almonds, buy silly little trinket crap that doesn't cost much, trek through some bees and bushes, check your latitude and longitude, write a sappy note, send a quick text and then let nature take it's course. Easy Peasy!
*July 2018*
Sunday, October 31, 2021
Neither snow nor soggy caches.....
A blustery spring day |
Untangling myself again |
A soggy one... |
My caching buddies for the day |
Thursday, October 28, 2021
SPIDERS ... and a D5T2
It's my birthday weekend, and I want to go South. As always, I love two things. Geocaching and being with my family, so I made some calls and invited who ever wanted to tag along. DDCA and Clairum both were up for a road trip and some caching along the way. I did some research and found a cache that would get me my souvenir in the "Let's Get Extreme" category in the "Geocaching Road Trip '15" challenge that I was currently trying to complete. Now, when I read the description, I took note of two things. First, we would need a TOTT (tool of the trade). And second, so many of the previous logs mentioned the spiders. SO many spiders. Ok, so I was prepared for some spiders. What I wasn't prepared for was .. well, I'll get to that in a second. We get to Lewiston, go to the cemetery and say hello. Do a little house keeping, you know, sweep off the leaves, clean up the sod edges, cry a little. Then we are off to find this cache that I've scoped out. It's up the river from Clarkston Washington, and it's a D5T2. In muggle lingo, that means that the difficulty is a 5 (the hardest) and the terrain is a 2. Ok, doable for sure. The difficulty, we figured that part out pretty quickly.
can you see it? |
TOTT |
Got it!!! |
all cohabitating together! |
spiders-0 koko-geo-1 |
I did secure my souvenir and log my first D5. I'm pretty proud of that!