The Caching Bag: #hiddencreatures

Showing posts with label #hiddencreatures. Show all posts

Saturday, July 7, 2018

HBUSA: Happy 4th of Geo-ly!

Happy Birthday USA

TaGeez and I put out a call in May to all Michigan Geocachers (via social media or direct email) to hide geocaches for the Independence Day holiday, and, WOW! Did they come through!

On the 4th of July, 200* HBUSA geocaches plus 3 events were published (or hosted) across the state of Michigan! WOWWEE! What a thrill to wake up and have new cache notifications popping up on our smartphones like fireworks from 2 am to 8 pm across the mitten!

They ran the gamut from Traditionals to Multis and Puzzles plus Wherigos. We even had some first time hiders like Detour429, B-Rat and TitanCacher09! Congratulations, gang!

TaGeez and I ran into a few first-to-finders on our own 18 caches.

Detour, ACLCoordinator and LincolnsAunt

CITOcacher and SCOOK

To kick off the day, Team Gates hosted a flash mob (and listed it under my name... hmmmm... ) at Veteran's Memorial Park in Warren.

FTF Crew!

Around 40 local cachers braved the heat for a puzzle FTF, a social half-hour, and a group picture.

Team GMMP and Team Lareau

Note to everyone: You can get fun, themed photo booth props from Amazon on the cheap!

Alona Spiegel and Team Gates

DarrylW4 and ReneeW4

June17, BWY Gang, GSIXX, and DougPeterson

After the event many cachers teamed up and went on a new cache run around the tri-county area. I felt bad for RayQix, Probob and TaGeez, who had to watch from the sidelines due to work and family commitments, but each scored FTF's within the next 24 hours, too!

scrapcat and TaGeez

Thank you to all the hiders and finders and reviewers for your part in the day! Several people are already talking about next year (I don't remember saying anything ABOUT next year - LOL). I guess it was a hit!

Oh, and the winners?

The Winners Are....

Congratulations to LucyLee (first place, winning the Signal America geocoin) and LincolnsAunt (second place, winning the Ducktales trackable donated by ShelleyJean)!

*Oh, and with a late publication by RayQix, final cache count was 204!

Visit the HBUSA bookmark list on geocaching.com

Sunday, July 1, 2018

World Turtle is in the Bag!

TaGeez and I decided not to mess around. We wanted our 13 souvenirs from Geocaching.com's Hidden Creatures challenge, and we wanted them now! Ok, maybe not that forceful, but we've had busy lives and a run up to Ortonville for a little geoart fun seemed just the ticket!

Our original intent was to complete both Syfun's Honeybee and Honeycomb, but the U.S. was under a heat advisory so we scaled back our efforts and left home before sun-up on Saturday to beat the heat!

As you can see, we were victorious! We needed 88 caches to earn all 13 souvenirs, and we came home with 90 including 85 puzzles and 5 high-favorited ones.

Lovely tour of country back roads, mainly dirt. In addition to 85 power drink containers, there were over a dozen wild turkeys, deer, horses, swans, chipmunks, blue jays, cardinals, biting deer flies and one pissed off next of hornets (TaGeez was attacked and two made contact - ouch!) There was also lots and lots and lots of poison ivy.

Not much Roadside America in this region of the state - all we saw was the Statue of Liberty north of Milford. There were, however, a number of historic cemeteries and one pioneer home site.

This one was quite sad. Dozens of victims of a cyclone at the turn of the last century. Poor little pup-pup waiting for a young master who will never return home.

This was the 88th find of the day and the one that earned us the World Turtle souvenir! Woot!

But my favorite was the TB Hotel near Highland. We didn't want to leave it empty and had no trackables to leave so we just discovered the trackables and left them behind.

It was a lovely tour of the countryside, and we enjoyed earning every last souvenir. With weather "feels like" 105 degrees and the poison ivy so lush, maybe we'll wait until Fall for the Honeycomb. Victory dinner at Buddy's Pizza in Novi - yummy!