Archive for April, 2006

There are these amazing flower fields in Carlsbad where, for $8.00, one can take a stroll and see them up close. If you’re broke like us, then you can go on a street just east of the flower fields and see them for free from nice lookout points.

This was the first cache that Krissy and I found together on our first try! She’s starting to like this so much that she requested we go today after she got off work. This cache was hidden just off of the sidewalk under a rock. There were tons of muggles around, so we followed the advice given by kawikaturn and pretended we were tying our shoes as we searched. The flowers were so pretty that we hung out for a while.

I left a token my Grandfather gave me for a “free gallon.” I still am not sure what liquid it was redeemable for, though. He gave me all sorts of random worthless tokens to hide in caches. He found them while searching for other things with his metal detector.

Dawn was really excited and didn’t want to go home even though we had already found the caches that I had brought information on, so I fired up the search tool on the GPS and had it point us to the nearest cache. With no details, not even a name, I was surprized that we found this one as quickly as we did.

As with other caches we found today, this one’s logbook was damp, but still signable. I woundered what people thought as the four of us milled about the front of the Wallgreens for no apparent reason and then walked away without going inside.

This was a fun cache that we could practically drive right up to. The ammo box was right in someone’s yard. As the name implies there were two dogs that came and barked at us quite a lot. Dawn said she wanted to hide a cache in her yard when she gets a house.

The cache owner came out and asked Christopher if we were geocaching. In the least enthusiastic voice he could muster, he told him we were.

Outside a tall black metal fence surrounding Taylorsville Park there lies a stagnant drainage canal overgrown with brush. In amongst all of this there is a large lone sprinkler head that almost no one would give a second thought to. We walked past it three times until Dawn voiced some concern over it being there and how out of place it seemed. She opened it up and found it to be the cache we were looking for.

Alas, it was not watertight, and everything inside was damp from the previous day’s rain. This was the most creative way to hide a cache that I’ve seen thus far. No one would suspect it unless they knew it was there and what it was.

We had some hours of daylight left after General Conference on Sunday. We statyed home to watch it because we didn’t have tickets for any of the Sunday sessions. Dawn wanted to see what this geocaching thing was all about, so off we went!

This was the first cache I was able to take my Aunt Dawn and my mom on. This one was hidden well and was a lot of fun for them to discover. I guess I hadn’t talked to them much about stealth around muggles because even though there were people criscrossing the area Dawn got really excited and was making all kinds of noise. In the excitement of it all people were staring at us, but none of them seemed very curious as to what we were doing.

I explained the importance of stealth, and we were able to proceed further without incident. Dawn took some ugly buttons that she had with these clouds and a rainbow. There were pretty big for buttons and we could only fit one in the cache. I guess one is enough.

This was the last cache of the morning that we were able to find. Well, since it was a virtual cache there was no physical box to find, but it was still fun. I’m confused as to how there could be a travel bug on this cache since it’s a virtual cache, but that doesn’t matter.

This cache consists of fifteen questions about temple square that you can find out if you walk around to the various buildings, statues, and monuments. Christopher and I had a lot of fun walking around Temple Square finding all of these. I overheard a conversation between a Sister and two men visiting from Germany. I was tempted to join in, but thought better of it.

It was on this tour that I came across the statue of Joseph and Emma Smith. Someone had put a bouquet of fresh flowers is Joseph’s hand as if he were giving them to Emma. I don’t know if this is something that people always do every day or if it was just for this occasion. Geocaching takes you places you wouldn’t go on your own, and I wouldn’t have seen this if I hadn’t been geocaching.

This one was an unusual cache to say the least. Christopher was getting thirsty already from hiking all around Temple Square. This was only our second cache of the morning, but I had forgotten the batteries on for my camera and was looking for a store that was open at 8:30am in the malls south of Temple Square. Well, I didn’t find any, and when Christopher saw that the description of this cache said there was free ice water, we just had to go here next.

This cache is placed in the Salt Lake City tourism office. The cache is out in the open with a lock on it. It has a description of what geocaching is and why the box is there. In order to open it you have to solve a little puzzle given in the description of the cache. Christopher got his ice water, and I got a few travel bugs. I took a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and a matchbox car called bluebird. Chrstopher said that the model of the car is Bluebird, so I guess that makes sense, even though the car itself is red. The car wanted to go to Japan, so I thought I would bring it to San Diego and see if I could help it along. The next day while traveling around the city I saw banners for a Japanese Culture Festival in Salt Lake at the end of April, so I am having Christopher take it back for me. The Ninja Turtle, on the other hand, is going to end up right near my apartment in San Elijo Hills. I left the Insanity and travel bug and the LLOT Selective Service geocoin.

There was a guy that worked at the tourism office who came over and talked to us for a bit about the cache. He said they get about 12 groups per month coming in looking for the cache.

Christopher took some silver earrings with some Navajo artwork on them to give to Dawn, and I put in the Yankee Stadium keychain from Heber’s Heavenly Hideout. There is a gift shop integrated into the travel office and I was able to get some overpriced batteries for use in my camera.

This one was quite interesting. This was the first geocache of the morning. This was also Christopher’s first geocache. My family had only three tickets for the Saturday morning session of General Conference so it was decided that Christopher and I would go geocaching in the vicinity of Temple Square while Dawn and my grandparents attended the conference. This was probably my favorite cache of the day. This cache is located behind some apartments just to the east of the Conference Center.

On our way there Christopher asked me if it was fun being a missionary. I told him that it was a lot of work, but that you get to do a lot of things you would never have a chance to do otherwise. Just as I was saying this we came upon a group of about twenty Elders standing in front of one of the apartment buildings. I walked up to them and asked if I might ask them all a question. I told them that this young man here would like to know if it’s fun being a missionary. All together they started cheering that it was great! There was one senior Elder who said that it is fun, “even at my age!”

We walked past the missionaries and into the parking lot they were standing in front of. The GPS pointed right up a steep embankment with a fence at the top. Christopher was considering climbing it, but I convinced him that there was probably a much better way. We walked back out of the parking lot and a little further up the street found a walkway between two buildings. behind the northern building we found what looked to be a small fenced-off park. This was the Kimball cemetary. Heber C. Kimball is buried there along with many of his family members and descendants.

When we arrived there were a few muggles looking at the monument in the center of the tiny plot. While we were waiting Christopher pointed out the “No Dogs Allowed” sign. I wondered aloud if anyone had realized that dogs can’t read. In the back corner we found the cache. Christopher got a kick out of the old rusty Altoids container that the loot was hidden in. The logbook was a little damp, but still signable. I took out of it a Yankee Stadium keychain and put in the Keeping An Eye On You travel bug that I got at the meetup on the last Wednesday in March. It was tough getting all the things back in the container, but Christopher got them all in. It still wanted to pop back open, so he wedged a couple of rocks in on top of the container when he hid it again.