Pi Day Adventures: And That Makes Two

A smiley, a souvenir and a shiny (coin) at The Ultimate Pi Day Celebration GC5KVF1.

Pi

Pi Day Adventures: One Down...

Got it! Puzzle souvenir earned!

Oh, No! He's Armed! (with a Monterra....)

I’ve been quiet lately. Really… not much to report for this week.  Still doing the Cache-a-day.  I did have a most excellent surprise on Tuesday.  I’m one of seven kids – the “youngest three” are avid geocachers as well as our nieces and nephews.  My older brothers have only expressed polite interest to date.

My older brother, Jim, bought a Garmin Monterra recently.  (We come from a family of gadget-hounds – we love our electronic toys).  It’s a VERY nice unit – good balance and comfortable-sized screen.  It has all the fabulous Garmin features like nearby geocaches, Chirps, waypoint averaging.  It also has the ability to install apps from the Android store!  Really!  Facebook, email, browsers.  I can’t wait to take it out for a field test.

Well, here’s the surprising part: Jim took it caching!  On his own! He’s been along for the ride a few times before (when we take the kids out caching while on vacation), but he’s never expressed an interest in actually taking up this sport/hobby/obsession/pastime! I’m assuming he wanted to take his new toy for a spin. His first cache: he found an ammo can in a cement pipe after hurtling a snowbank.  It was so sweet when he said he spotted my name on the log before his.

Even more exciting is, without guidance (because we Lobsingers have to do EVERYTHING on our own – a bullheaded bunch…. ), he created a geocaching.com account! AND LOGGED HIS FIRST CACHE!  I’m not sure what I’m more proud of…. His first solo find or his first log?  Writing a good log is a soapbox item for me – I will preach it to anyone who listens.  He wrote a good log, sharing his experience, using the correct lingo and even abbreviations. 

His next cache, dedicated to his hockey-playing son, was a DNF.  (Jim has stated he is not a fan of micros) But this log was even better – what a hoot! 

Despite my best efforts, no luck. Micro's are a bit tough for me at my experience level maybe, especially at night. Anyhow, I'll bet that kid is much taller and thinner by now. WHAT.......HEY!! STOP THAT KID!! HE'S DRIVING MY CAR, and wearing my genes;-}

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the family humor rearing its head! Jim’s family does a lot of camping throughout the summer.  I can’t wait to hear about his new adventures.  

Lucky 1100!

My original streaking goal was to surpass my "consecutive days without a find." I guess I can check that off my list.

Geocaching Tokens from Team Mumu

Aren't these cool? Custom swag found in TaGeez's cache called Gone Fishin' (GC55A66). Fitting, right? And the Cacher's last name is Salmon! 

She was visiting from New York and had attended a meet earlier in the week. She was in town for a curling tournament at the Ferndale Curling Club located right across the street from my house. So many coincidences.

You can visit the website to see where they were released and the comments the recipient's left. Great idea!

Western Michigan Adventure with a Kriket, an Indian Chief, Big Red, and a Webcam

There are fabulous people that just enrich our lives.  Have I mentioned my sister, WikidKriket, before?  Or my birthday adventure?

Every year we take each other’s birthdays off for an adventure.  We’ve done this for years.  We’ve toured Meadowbrook, visited the Edsel and Eleanor Ford house, taken a skyscraper tour, explored the Guardian Building, walked the Belle Isle Aquarium, seen Potted Potter in the 2^nd City Theater.  Can’t forget the Richard Avedon exhibit – which turned out neither of us wanted to go to but both were greatly affected by it.  Let’s not forget the amazing meals at Slow’s BBQ, Small Plates, Good Girls go to Paris Crepes, Green Dot Stables and Zehnder’s.  This doesn’t touch half the amazing experiences we’ve had.

This year is a little different.  When Lorna asked what I wanted to do for my birthday, my answer was, “Go for a ride.  Anywhere.”  I have cabin fever, and I needed to see old roads and new experiences.  Boy, did she come through!

On Monday morning, the Lime Squeeze (geo-mobile) pulled into my driveway.  With a twinkle in her eye and a plot… er… plan in her head, my sister sat with her Sphinx-like smile and was silent about today’s plans.  This all occurred after several hours of taunting texts from my brother-in-law about ‘I know where you’re going!’ With the car in drive, we headed WEST! After a short visit and a 2-hour drive, we found ourselves in Kalamazoo!

Our first stop was the fabulous Kalamazoo Valley Museum – first class exhibits packed into a small museum.  As this is my geocaching blog, if you want to read more about this museum, click the link for my museum blog post.  Let’s just say we tried every experience and managed not to get thrown out!

After lunch (and a cache, of course) at the wonderful Old Peninsula Brewpub & Restaurant (yum!  Still craving that burger, the beer battered fries, the house root beer), Kriket asked, “What do you want to do next?”  Ride, baby!  I want to see the sites!  We are so close to Lake Michigan and we were experiencing a very rare, very blue, sunny day.  After dealing with -10° sleet-filled days, this sunny 25° Monday was considered balmy!

First stop, Chief Noonday’s Grave (a Virtual).  This was a memorial on a stick in the middle of farmland.  We missed it at first, and Kriket did a most excellent u-turn.  The first step out of the geo-mobile landed me into knee-deep snow, and it was tiring tromping over to the marker.  We had a bit of problems answering the verification question – it was then I noticed the edges of a low headstone poking out of the deep white.  After clearing with a snow brush, with answers in hand, we were on our way.

BEAUTIFUL rolling hills through horse country.  Pristine red barns framed with pure white snow behind large, white horse fences.  Painted ladies and hundred year-old farmhouses.  Brownstone shoppes flanking the Kalamazoo River and old railroad bridges.  A plow truck plowing through a sedan’s front end.  It was fascinating.  And all through this, Kriket would stop periodically so I could grab a quick cache in the various Western Michigan counties. 

Our next stop was AMAZING!  We visited “Big Red”, a lighthouse (and Virtual) in Holland State Park.  Oh, this is what adventures are made of.  

A local photography buff took this picture.
You think he forgot something?

Big Red sits on the mouth of an inlet.  It is guarded by two piers, one on each side of the inlet.  These piers reach out into the lake and end with two smaller lights.  The bay was frozen over and the ice went out for miles.  It was fascinating.  

The Lighthouse is opposite the red pin

The two lights guarding the bay

A beautiful lighthouse keeping watch over the frozen Lake Michigan.  And there were so many people out there!  Walking along the frozen “pier” (which was just massive ice mounds), climbing up and jumping from massive ice buckles, taking pictures. 

Kriket on the frozen "pier"

Talk about an icy walkway!

Ice plates buckled on Lake Michigan

 

All too soon, though, the light was diminishing so back to the car we went.

Kriket's Panoramic

One final stop.  I haven’t mentioned the other reason for this big day. 

Monday was the 3^rd anniversary of my cache-a-day streak!

Every day (starting on March 2^nd, 2012 during another birthday adventure with Lorna) for 1,095 days I’ve headed out in all sorts of Michigan weather (100°+ to -26°F) to grab a cache.  I’ve found caches in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maine, Michigan, and Ontario.  I’ve found over a 1,000 puzzles and over a 100 Virtuals.  According to my companion trackable, if I went cache to cache as the crow flies, I would’ve traveled around 31,475 miles!  So, on this big day… my birthday and my milestone day…. We needed to end with a special cache.

Just after 7 pm, with the sun just a memory and the temperatures dropping, we headed over to Grand Rapids for School Spirit, one of only three webcams left in Michigan.  Forever the good sport, Kriket followed me to the center of campus (and what felt like miles from parking) to stand in a lonely common, covered in snow, to have our (lousy) picture taken by the webcam.  We moved around to get several pictures, snapped every 60 seconds, to make sure we had at least one in some semblance of light.

After our victory pose, a quick nosh at Chipotle, we headed home from our adventure – 14 hours, 400 miles, and only 6 caches later.  TaGeez was waiting to hear about our adventures – with flowers, an ice cream cake, and his famous sausage rolls. 

I’m blessed with amazing people.

Project-GC: Jasmer Caches

Ooh!  I feel a roadtrip coming on!

I was playing around with Project-GC.com, and I found a nifty tool under Tools > Map Hidden Month.  I plugged in my username, the country, and Hidden Date range.  It popped with this list of caches needed to fill my Jasmer!

Year 2000 caches

Beneath it was a list of missing months (4 to complete my Jasmers) plus caches for me to qualify! Date, GC, Name, Type, Location D/T, size and Favorite Points!  So very exciting!

How I want to get in the car and head off on another adventure!