Geocaching

401

We grabbed a cache on the way home from dinner out in Augusta on Friday. We got a find and removed one of our DNFs. We didn’t find this one a while back, but we weren’t the only ones, the container had gone missing. The owner has since replaced it and we found it.

Saturday we got up early and headed north and east with the goal of finishing up our SC Challenges in that part of the state. One of the counties we needed was Chesterfield which is where Cousin Laurie resides, so instead of our typical breakfast at Cracker Barrel meets in Florence, we did a lunch at Subway in her home town of Chesterfield. She even joined us on a caching expedition behind the town’s high school. We were gone for almost exactly 12 hours, covered a touch over 400 miles and got to check off the 3 counties and 4 DeLorme pages that we needed with the 11 caches we found.

After yesterday we were at 392 total. We needed to get just 8 to get to the next milestone and there were 8 relatively fresh caches along the bike lane they added along side the new I-520 section in North Augusta. Seemed like somebody was trying to tell us something. At first we tried to resist, but by after lunch the pull was too strong. We parked at the DMV and started along the trail. Donna’s idea was to walk to the furthest cache and work our way back (this strategy worked well yesterday when we went all the way north and east before working our way back home.) And that is almost exactly what we did, the pent up desire to do something caused us to pick up #2 before walking the whole way. We found all eight giving us exactly 400 finds. Turns out there was a cache right there behind the DMV building where we had parked, oh what the heck, might as well start on the next hundred, plus 401 is a prime number. By the time we were done we had walked 4.7 miles.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, up again, down once more, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 612

106,000 Patrons

Once a year Donna and become golf fans, we watch the Master’s on TV. I guess because we have been there in person…

On our way home from Georgetown this morning we made two quick caching stops to pick up the last DeLorme pages we needed for the eastern part of the state. And just outside the town of Eutawville (YOO • tah • vil) the Emperor passed the 106,00 mile mark.

Started up, went down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 588

Spellcheck Anyone?

Sign on the wall outside a Breakers, a convenience store, near Marion, SC.

Four for four on Friday. Thirteen for 14 with one change of heart on Saturday and we can cross off 4 more counties and four more DeLorme pages.

Started down, went up, went down, back up, down again, up once more, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 585

Geocaching Trifecta

I have often spoken here of hitting the trifecta, but that is in reference to eating out all three meals in a single day. Today we hit the Geocaching Trifecta. We hid a cache, found a cache and we DNF’d a cache.

In other Tri news our neighbor the ultra-marathoner saw us dragging out the tandem for our caching adventure and mentioned that she had gone for bike ride yesterday and has given some consideration to maybe trying Triathlons.

This prompted Donna to say later in the day we had done our own triathlon today, we rode 14 miles on the bike, took a 1/2 mile walk checking on a cache and then taken a shower.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 580

Page 20

Burned up almost a full tank of gas and drove around 300 miles just to find an ammo can hidden near the Museum of Western York County. We found 7 others today, but the Museum was the real objective, you see, it is located on Page 20 of the DeLorme atlas of South Carolina.

Tonight after entering all the data and running the macro that produces the image on the Challenge Page appears broke. It showed we only had 3 pages completed, a far cry from the actual 34 we have done. I updated GSAK the other day and when it did it gave a warning about backing up your database because it was going to be making big changes. Those changes must have hosed something in the macro.

Because we drove all that way just to fill the square, I manually photoshopped the image and hacked the HTML to make it look like it should. Only then did I think that maybe I should check the forums to see if the macro had been updated, it had. At least I’ll be ready for the next square.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 579

MMMM…Pancakes

Early morning run for Pancakes with the MMC followed geocaching on foot around North Augusta and finished off by finishing off the paneling of the laundry room (thanks Mark.)

Speaking of finishing off, West Virginia just finished off any chance I had in the company basketball pool by beating Kentucky.

Started down, went up, down again, up again, down again, up, down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 570

Carriage Ride

We were 5 of 7 in geocaching this morning. This afternoon I finally did change the oil and rotate the tires on the Emperor. While I was at it I gave him a bath too. He got quite dirty yesterday when Donna had me drive up and down the local dirt roads trying to catch a glimpse of horse drawn carriages.

Before yesterday’s running of the first “jewel” of Aiken’s Triple Crown (the flat races) there was supposed to be a carriage parade. Seeing as we were not interested in the races and too cheap to spend the $10 a piece to get in and watch the actual parade, we guessed at the start point and cruised the dirt roads looking for it. Alas, there was no external parade, the carriages came to the horse track in there own good time. We stopped near the entrance where Donna jumped out to take a couple photos of the two carriages already inside the grounds and then we drove down a rutty, muddy road looking for more. we did find two more making their way to the track, including these two ladies all dressed in purple.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 557