Neither snow nor soggy caches.....

It's that time again.  Spring.  Which, in Debbie world, means geocaching season is upon us!  Today is June 2nd, 2009.  Now when you think of June, you think sunshine, warmth and maybe a day at the park.  You know.  Kids just getting out of school for summer break.  Summer vacation plans in the works.  Nope.  Not today.  It's cold. Windy.  And if you live in the Palouse Region of the Northwest 

A blustery spring day

you know that wind stings and BITES!  And it's not bad enough we have dang cold wind, but this weekend we have that white stuff as well!  SNOW?  What the heck.  All I wanted was a day with my girls to get the caching season underway.  Did we cancel or reschedule?  Absolutely not!  Nope, we made a date to cache and by gosh we are gonna cache.  Besides, last fall, I bought my first pair of waterproof Keens just for a day like today.  I'm gonna try them out for sure! We planned out a few, and we start with the one at the bottom of Steptoe Butte.  Whitman County has a couple Buttes, and of the two, this one is the most unique I think.  Just a big mound with a spiral road that winds up around it. (Thought I had a pic handy, but can't find it).  And from the top?  Oh man.  You can see forever.  So, we park at the bottom in the designated area, and realize you have to have a Discover Pass to enjoy the Butte.  Yep, It's a State  Park.  Well, that is also not going to dissuade us, so we get the wallet out.  Put the money in the envelope, put the envelope in the box and hope we did it right and there's no

Untangling myself again

no ticket waiting for us at the car when we return.  Looking at our GPS gadget, we have to cross a downed barbwire fence and head up the hillside.  It's obvious at this point tat no one has come looking for this cache since the snow fall, there are no footprints at all.  Lots of deer tracks though.  We start navigating through the weeds and soon I'm all caught up in thorns and stickers.  The more I got my jeans untangled, the dang things would snag my gloves.  Sheesh, the troubles we go through just to find a Tupperware in the wild!  I get myself unstuck and catch up while Cassie and Darci have gotten us pointed in the right direction. We know we're getting close and soon we see a pond.  Sure enough!  We spy the cache.  All snug as a bug under a tree.    As soon as we scooped it up, we knew there were issues.  You could feel the water sloshing around  in there.  I've read this is  when

A soggy one...

 you open your geo-bag, and pull out your trusty repair kit baggie.  In it you've got replacement logs, baby wipes, little ziplock baggies, and other TOTT.  And I also read that it's a good idea to mention all of this when you log your find on the website too, which lets the cache owner know that there may be a problem with the container.  Maybe a crack in the lid or something, that's keeping it from being watertight.  I make a mental note to do that! We dump out the swag (more on this in another post), dry the container, add a new log and then see if anything is salvageable to do some trading.  For me, that's the second best part.  The first, of course, is finding it.  Honing your Spidey sense  to find something that has set out in the snow all winter! We finish up, replace the cache and I grab a quick picture of my girls by the pond. We are off to find another!  We head up the 

My caching buddies for the day

spiral road to the top of the Butte, because there are two up there!  A traditional cache AND an earth cache.  Once up at the top, we make quick work of the traditional, there isn't a buffer up here for the wind, and it's COLD!  We read the informational signs to answer the questions for the earth cache, so we can log it later.  Done!  For our reward, we stand and gaze in awe at the Palouse.  Like I said before, you can see forever from up here.  And even though our nice pleasant spring day caching, turned into an overcast, cold, windy and drizzly day, it was amazing! We found both that we set out to find and we learned about the Butte by doing the earth cache. We also learned that not all caches are snug as a bug all winter.  Some need a little help when you find them. We may have left it nice and dry and warm, but we were not as fortunate.  We had trudged through snow, soggy meadow, and wet high weeds.  I think my jeans were wet up past the knees.  Was I cold and wet?  Yes.  Was I miserable?  Maybe a little.  But was I absolutely giddy?  YES!  Nothing beats a day caching.  It doesn't matter what the weather's like.  Or, if you read my Blair Witch post, weather it's daytime or nighttime!  Well, ok, that was a little scary, lol. But mostly, when you're in the moment, it's all sunshine and happiness!

The view from the top.  Breathtaking for sure!