Up before dawn on a chilly morn we all pull on our coats, (Wedge included, we had made her a nice winter jacket she could wear on her cache adventures) and get out on the road. We had already found caches in the nearer counties south of us so we just cruised for awhile enjoying the ride, watching the sun rise.

First cache of the day, a small, takes us on a dirt road past a barn mural and into a cemetery. We spend a few moments after signing the log looking over some graves, hop back in the van and continue on our journey

  We turned into a park we had never been to in Nebraska city and followed the arrow to a *& tank! We surprised ourselves by actually finding it within 3 minutes. "Yay!" this was the first tank cache that didn't require multiple visits for us to find.

   Further down the highway we are led to a historical marker, we find the cache and then take a moment to read the plaque. We love historical markers and in pre-caching days we would stop to read them as well, but we more often passed them by, travel back then was from point A to point B, A.S.A.P. Now, it's travel down the back roads for all waypoints in between and we enjoy our journey's more than ever before. What a life lesson 35mm canisters and the smiley icon has brought to us.

      The next stop brought us to a levee covered with a sea of winter brown, tall grasses with rippling waves running before the wind. The levees aren't very high but they are very steep sided and since I have Wedges four footed pulling power to help me up I don't have too much trouble and I reach out to help Vic up. She checks the gps and tells me I'm on my own to cross the next ditch and levee to get to the cache. Scrambling down and over, I sign the log, make a trade and snap a pic of the two slackers I left behind. Carefully making my way back, I'm handed the leash and told to go on back to the van. After a few steps I hear a big "Wooo Hooo" as Vic kicked up her feet and slid down the bank like a schoolgirl. Dusting herself off, she got into the driver's seat, looked at me and  said "What?".. I just smiled and shook my head. 

    Turning off onto a country road and driving about a half mile, we approach an ammo can that is next on our list. Parking in a little pull off area, we follow the arrow towards a small creek about 18 inches wide. My unit is telling me it's right about on top of the stream so I forge on through dense undergrowth down about 5 feet then wander a bit searching. Along the way I picked up a few tiny burrs or stickers or tagalongs whatever you'd like to call them on my jeans and coat so I warned Vic not to come down with the dog. I searched for several minutes going up and down stream and toward a culvert pipe but never saw the telltale ammo can green nestled among the straw colored vegetation. "Here it is!" and Vic pointed to the base of a tree.......at the edge of the vegetation, nowhere near the stream. I could even have seen it from where I was if I would have glanced that way. Coming out into the clear area, I am covered in tenacious little tick sized stickers. Did I mention that the coat I wore this morning was pile lined corduroy? Wedge got to wait in the van the ten minutes it took both of us to get me cleaned off enough to keep from being Velcro'd to the seats. Good thing it had warmed enough I could change into a light jacket we had brought, as my coat was placed in a plastic CITO bag to be deburred at home. It only took 4 hours to pick all of the burrs out of the pile.

    Thanksgiving dinner! Roast beef sandwiches, Pringle's potato chips, craisins, and cherry Hostess pies are on the menu, while Wedge dines on Iams and bottled spring water. After disposing of our trash we spend a few minutes tossing a ball around for Wedge to chase. No wobble or glowing eyes apparent, we head back to the van (can't be too careful, the spring water may have originated in a cave.)

    This portion of our route was one that we had traveled before and there weren't many caches along the way. Turning off the legends and turning up the tunes, we chilled while rolling along in search of a penguin's playground.

    Our destination was fast approaching, the ground "0" for this trip. Past logs have mentioned 'fond memories of penguin park', 'nice park' etc. but nothing prepared us for the small fantasyland we found nearby the cache. First things first though, taking Wedge to an area outside the park we began our search knowing this was a "do or die" cache, we had to find this one or our trip will have been technically wasted and logging the Alphanumeric Challenge would be set back quite awhile. Five minutes of looking and we're frustrated, ten minutes, more frustrated, with teeth gnashing and grumbling under our (ok, my) breathe 13.5 minutes......... Duh!! Whew! I did the happy tail dance! We signed the log, swapped swag and headed up to Penguin Park for some photo ops in front of enormous kangaroos, elephants, frogs and of course a penguin. Even the water fountains were small penguins. Everything was bright and colorful and children were joyfully playing among these giant animals. I told Vic I'd hold Wedge if she wanted to go down the kangaroo slide, she replied "No thanks" and absentmindedly rubbed her backside.

We have a little time, so we take a nice walk along a trail to a nearby cache before saddling up for the straight shot home on the interstate. It feels good to not have the laptop warming my thighs and I'm able to stretch out a bit, Wedge never once cocked her head at the floorboards on this trip. Arriving home we don't unpack the van, we'll just be going out again in the morning. As we settle down at the desk I ask Vic what she is thankful for on this holiday, "Being home after a fun trip, how about you?" "Finding the '0' cache,." Vic logs today's caches online as I load the electronics for tomorrow and we call it a day... a long day.

 We sleep in a bit on this Black Friday morning and I ask if Vic wouldn't prefer shopping alongside the bargain seeking mobs that have already been active for hours, instead of a daylong journey up and down Iowa. Snorting out a laugh she says," We're goin' caching!" We had decided not to take Wedge along this day as we had a lot of territory to cover and it does take time to care for her on the trips. Wedge was told to watch the house as we left. It was 6:30 a.m. In less than five minutes we were on Iowa soil seeking a "1", a "7" and adventure.

    We've been down this road before, I guess that happens. We could route a more indirect approach or widen our cache corridor so there could be hunts along the way, but today we wisely opted for the point A to point B, A.S.A.P.

   The small town ahead contains several hides by our number one cacher, but first we had to be welcomed to the town. Personally, I like "Welcome to" caches, they're so....  inviting! The types and styles of these caches have been in our experience, as varied as the signs themselves. Taking a pic of Vic at the sign, I decide to snap one of a cow on the other side of the highway. While walking over, Vic points out a particularly fine specimen. "She's pretty!" I had already chosen that one as the subject for the photo. No wonder we get along so well, we have the same taste in cows!

  A few hundred yards further up the highway is the first "Friendship" cache, which is actually the last on in the series of four, we had started at the wrong end of town, not that it mattered. I looked for a few minutes in a trashy area but came up empty, overlooking a vinyl glove that contained the prescription bottle holding the log and a packet of beads. Vic had checked it out when I had dismissed it as just trash or worse, a possible bio-hazard. She signed the log and we took 2 beads for the "friendship pins" we would make with this series. We later read that a previous finder had found the container with a broken lid and the only thing they had to keep the contents dry was the glove.

     The next closest waypoint was in the public park with a 3 story firecracker slide. This was our weekend for cool playgrounds. Saying "Why didn't we have such neat places to play when I was kid?" I climbed the tower and "Woo hoo'd" as I slid down the spiral. "C'mon Rocket man, we've got caches to find and pins to build."

  Going down a residential area we pass some Christmas decorations including a big birthday cake for Jesus. Vic had always said there should be a birthday cake on Christmas day and these folks must have agreed with that sentiment. We also drove by a few large concrete frogs that I just had to take pics of for my forum friend affectionately known as "Froggie".  Friendship 3 was nearby and we selected our beads after signing. Another friend was just up the road a way and it took me just a few minutes to collect the last of our beads. Now I had all of the beads but they were loose in my pocket, the next cache which was number one, held the brass safety pins to string the beads on. When we found it there was only one pin left. Stringing the beads onto it and making sure it had the orange middle bead instead of the green one, I graciously offered it to Vic (orange is her favorite color)"Awww, does this mean we're friends?" "Yup, sure does! And you're my favorite girlfriend too!" Flashing me a ha-ha you're funny smirk, we start off for the next town.

    "Orange City, you ought a like this place Vic!"  It was a very pleasant town. Our first stop was at a war memorial that was right next door to an authentic looking Dutch windmill that was now operating as a bank. I sought the cache while Vic took pics of the windmill for me to post in the forums. Two of my forum friends, live in the Netherlands so I thought it was neat to show them a little bit of Dutch in Iowa, U.S.A. there was also, just across the street, a restaurant called the Netherlands Grill. We took a pic of the sign and would have considered having lunch there if we had the time. Next we pulled into a parking lot where Vic looked for the cache while I entered notes into the palm. Glancing into the rearview mirror, I see a man talking to Vic, and I hopped out to make sure everything was ok. It was, he introduced himself as pastor of the church, whose parking lot we were in. He knew about the cache and pointed it out to us and we had a short pleasant conversation.

  Back on our route, the last cache we would visit in this town was a bit of a walk. The ammo can when we found it, contained a fairly unusual swag item. It was a rearview mirror meant to be mounted to a computer monitor and........ It was orange. Vic had to trade for that and I walked back to the van for suitable trade goods.

   Now our journey loops us back down through LeMars, where we had gone to our first WWFM and dnf'ed on a particularly tricky micro. In fact we had DNF'd several times since every time we came this way we would give it another try. For this trip Vic had said we were done with that one and wouldn't look for it. No problem, we can pass on it. Coming into town from the north our first find is a small in a container very similar to one I have planned to put out as one of my Guardian series. Then we follow the closest waypoints to a park with a big castle like playground. Taking pics as we searched, we soon had to give up and get moving to keep any semblance of a schedule on this trip. It was well past noon so we did decide to stop at another park for a quick lunch, which just happened to be the place our bothersome multiple DNF was located. "Ok, we can make a quick look". Within the few allotted minutes we had finally conquered this clever cache! I also realized when I found it, that on our first search I had my hands on it and commented to Vic when she put her hands on it a few minutes later that I had already checked it. We felt slightly foolish but also elated and relieved that we would not have finding this cache hanging over our heads anymore.

     Now our long drive began from LeMars west to pick up I-29 then south till we would again point the van east as we sought our last number cache near Corning Iowa. I still had the laptop on my lap, keeping track of where we were. After quite some time driving we had a choice to turn off on a highway that would take us north of Corning and then drop down or take the interstate further and come in from a highway south and go up. We had a short argument about which way to go. Now keep in mind, like I should have, that Vic had done a lot of driving this week and it was taking its toll. I won the argument and we came in the north but Vic wasn't convinced it was the best way. It was a quiet, tense final leg to the state lake where the cache was located.

  It was almost dark when we pulled into the state park and parked along the roadside. Getting out we followed a path a short ways around the lake and were rewarded with the final cache that would qualify us for the challenge. Vic's mood changed like a lifting fog and she began taking pics of the glass smooth lake and geese in flight. We had done it.    

 About 2 hours later we pulled into our driveway and dragged ourselves through the backdoor expecting to find a puddle or mess somewhere in the house, because it had been about 14 hours since Wedge had last been outside. She normally greets us excitedly but this time is whine by the door till we got it open for her. No mess or puddles anywhere!

  We also had to quickly get food portioned out for all of them since normal mealtime was a good 3 hours earlier and the cats are very aggressive when hungry.

  The next morning we go to the monthly upstairs in the basement, meet and greet, then head for the final ammo can. It was quite an interesting hide and was stocked with lots of good swag. We traded for some kitchen towels and went home to unpack the van and get some needed rest.

  Later Vic logged the caches online since she had worked the hardest for them with all the driving OK, OK, she normally logs them, I get to write the stories about them. Any way, here is the final log in Vic's own words and photos. She logged the cache in a much more timely fashion than I have done with the story. Her log:

 We made this one our #700th. We had a great adventure fulfilling the requirements of this cache. One that took us to Wisconsin , Missouri., Iowa, Illinois and back to Nebraska again . We calculated no less than 2ooo miles after we decided to take on this challenge. We saw caves, hawks, too many to count, a penguin or two and a bald eagle. Birds startled us, we dodged deer on the hwy and trees laughed at us. We fell on our butts and got loaded with stickies. We got a cache or two we dnf-ed times prior and we saw a beautiful lake on our last find of the night. We thank you for taking us places we probably wouldn't have gone with out the challenge you put forth.

Re reading her log reminded me of a little thing I had not written about yet. Birds startled us actually means that a hawk came flying up from the ditch and passed directly in front of the passenger window, Of course me being the passenger, I got an upclose, mouse eye view of beating wings and poised talons. I believe I squeaked and then swore as I waited for my pulse rate to go down.

By catsnfish

A couple of empty-nesters who caught the caching bug not realizing it was incurable. So if we’re found in the woods waltzing with Garmins, lifting lampskirts while tying our shoe or looking for “gum” underneath benches, be sure to stay away... it’s contagious and the only temporary relief can be found in finding bison’s, ammo’s, nano’s, or passing coins and spreading travel bugs!

Publisher's Note: Catsnfish write the periodic column The Adventures of Catsnfish. Subscribe (free) to The Online Geocacher to get an email alert when a new article is published.

Comments(1):

1. Love it!

   Another great tale, thanks!

   Tuesday, June 09, 2009 Ed