"I need a name! Batboy, Nightwing, I dunno. What's a good sidekick name?"

 

Batman Forever

 

I hardly know what to say. I hardly know what to DO. Here I am, used to adventuring alone, and suddenly... not one, but two... TWO... fellow adventurers.

 

Help.

 

Here they are:

 

 

 

Sioncat the Trackable GeoKitten                                       The Untrackable GeoDad

 

Sioncat, as you see, has wasted no time in subjugating all lesser beanie babies beneath her. I could not bear to watch how completely she broke their spirit. That poor turtle is scarred for life, and the purple platypus still wakes up screaming from nightmares.

 

GeoDad wears a mask, prefers walking on the beach., and absolutely refuses to be trackable.

 

I will figure out what to do with them. Sidekicks are supposed to handle all the grunt work.... Right?

 

 

"Leave all that can be spared behind. We travel light. Let's hunt some Cobbler."

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (sort of)

 

Sioncat's supernatural power seems to include precognition. When she informed me that there was a high probability that COBBLER would appear at the 6^th Annual Kearney Geopicnic, I alerted the Geodad, and we laid our plans. Only thwarted by bad weather, we set off at 7 a.m. Saturday morning to conquer some caches, vanquish the cobbler, and somehow get our tent up, sometime that night. Our chosen route was I-80, which parallels the Platte River for most of the state.

 

The picnic was scheduled for 11:30, and the drive was about 2.5 hours... leaving at 7 AM, that did not leave my hondacar much time for unexpected detours. But it tried hard all the same! We found two caches on the way up. I was tempted to stop in Lincoln for an EarthCache, but told myself I would find it on the way home.

 

ETA at the Kearney picnic site - roughly 10:30 a.m. Cachers were already gathering....

 

 

 

... but I had some business to attend to first.  Of the catsnfish Earth-Cachy variety.

 

 

"As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured"

Jeremiah 22:33

 

Well, they do say that a picture is worth a thousand words. In that case... I'm about to write a 4000 word novella.

 

                       

 

                     

 

These were taken at the new Borrow Pits EarthCache, out by Ft. Kearny State Recreation Area. Near sunset, actually - after the picnic, but well before the cobbler. I was not first to find, but I guarantee I was first to write 'Sioneva' in the sand. Notice the butterfly in the flowers. It wasn't easy, catching him in the picture!

 

The EarthCache was done between picnic and cobbler, like I said... more food then any hundred people could eat - we counted 105, actually, and there was still plenty of food left over. Good conversation, speeches, awards, and a Nebraskache exec meeting made up most of the day.

 

We did meet an unexpected guest:                          And took a walk across the Platte at sunset:

                 

 

Night time is traditionally reserved for chili, crockpot soup, and the cobbler of course. Everyone comes back, and stays until nearly the wee hours. No night caching for me this year - geodad was not up for it, and I was pretty tired from being up early. I suspect Sioncat snuck out for a nightcatnip and a late night mouse, but I can't prove it.

 

"Are we going home now?"

"That's right."

"I don't want to go home."

 

Father Goose

 

7:30 a.m. found me awake and ready to pop out of the tent to visiting over camping cachers. Geodad rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour, but was eventually willing to emerge after I tempted him with promises of coffee, donuts, and breakfast casserole! We hung around until about 10, but then had to be on our way - had to be back in Bellevue by 5, and there were caches crying out for me to find them.

 

Except one. On the way home, I stopped to try to find the oddly named "Do Not Find This Cache." I... well, I have a hard time listening to instructions, usually, but um... I DID NOT FIND THAT CACHE! Curse you, Red Baron! I DID, however, find the nearby "Don't Waste Your Time On This Cache".  We made it home an hour ahead of schedule (unusual for me), and spent the rest of the day unwinding!

 

Oh, and that EarthCache in Lincoln I meant to get? We never managed to get on the right roads to the entrance to the park. Pretty sad, when you score on a DNF on an entire conservation center. I ascribe it to my encounter with Dr. Horrible in Kearney.

 

By Sioneva

 

 

 

 A strangelet is a hypothetical object consisting of a bound state of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. An equivalent description is that a strangelet is a small fragment of strange matter. The term "strangelet" originates with E. Farhi and R. Jaffe. Strangelets have been suggested as a dark matter candidate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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