Big and Blue is Beautiful!

Seems like we have the Team Lareau seal of approval! We even scored one of his new path tags as a bonus! Woot!

Is Somebody Watching?

TaGeez and I were at Dinosaur Hill, grabbing our daily, when I heard something uncomfortably close to my years.

Hey! Hey! You see it? It's right there!

Tomorrow is the last full day of the Planetary Pursuits Challenge, and I've been tracking our adventures with my Planetary Pursuits Marble. Oh, the things we do for 10 virtual souvenirs!

Kudos to Geocaching.com for updating the marble's icon from the generic travel bug to something more spacey!  

Halo Top Robot: New Trackable Promotion

Look at this cutie! The latest trackable promotion from geocaching.com. You have 7 days to signup to win one of 1,500 Halo Top robots.

If we win one, hopefully it will go further than my last Magic: The Gathering trackable. It made it to one event and then POOF!

#cacheusifyoucan #sweepstakes

Happy Easter, You Fools!

Today was no joke - I released two geocaches, and they couldn't be more different!

PLEASANT RIDGE WORMHOLE 2018

For the third year in a row, Team Gates pressed us into service to hide the annual April Fool's Wormhole cache! Wormholes puzzles are prevalent in Southeastern Michigan - when you access the geocache page, if you click the image (like the one below), you will navigate to the next puzzle in a series. Each of our wormholes features a specific city in the area. 

I've had no finders to date.

Funny thing, though. See those Indians out front of Hedge's Wigwam? Years before I knew Hedge's ever existed, TaGeez and WikidKriket ran across one (Chief Pontiac) outside the delicious Clarkston Union and posed with it! Nice bonus to the cache page :)

Chief Pontiac with WikidKriket and TaGeez.

FERNDALE RECYCLES

On the polar opposite side of the spectrum, this geocache isn't even hidden!

Yeppers! A Difficulty/Terrain 1/1 Large!

Not only that, but it's filled with stuff! As the sign says: 

This is not a "trade even or trade up" geocache. This is a "take it if you can use it" cache!  

This is how we recycle perfectly good stuff in Ferndale :) One man's trash....

Luckily, Tageez and I have really cool neighbors who will not only keep an eye on the house, but greet any new visitors to it. 

We weren't sure how the new neighbor from the North would take strangers showing up to our porch, but, when we told him about it, his face lit it! "Oh, you do that? I just saw that episode on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit!" Hey, maybe we can corrupt him!

Happy Easter, everyone! 

And don't let any fools get the best of you!

Landed our Planetary Pursuits

Bright Saturday morning found us in the freezing (24 degrees) outdoors...

Heading to the North to work on the MOTel-T geo-art (created by TomasDiaz and hidden by GSIXX) on the MOT Apple trial. 

Accompanied by WikidKriket, we happily completed half of them.

It's always a fun adventure with my sister and my Sweetie. What is this thing about bridges, though?

30 caches in 3 hours it was definitely a lovely walk. 

And, with that, we earned our last four souvenirs including the Official Space Explorer!

Then back into the car and race to Harrison Township. Team Gates is hosting a Geocaching 101 event, and TaGeez & I hid the temporary caches for finding.  

As you can see, there were more geocachers than locals! Great time!

Where have you gone, Brummelbear?

Brummelbear, a gentleman and a scholar

I met Brummelbear in 2013 when he sent me the sweetest email. I had just grabbed several FTF's on his new Detroit MLT geocaches. He loved both Detroit history and geocaching so releasing Michigan Lost Town caches was right up his alley. His congratulatory email was my introduction to his passion for telling long, detailed (and did I say "long") narratives about Detroit. He had been a principal in the Detroit Public School system for 20 years! Typical of this smiling, generous soul, Brummelbear ended his email with an admonishment for geocaching this rough area alone.

Brummelbear was one of the Belle Isle Cachers, who host an annual event and bi-annual CITO. You were guaranteed to find him bellied up to the grill, cooking hot dogs (he always picked out the best for me). He always had a smile and a story to tell - he always gave you his full attention and treated even the newbies as if we'd been friends for life.

Spring Belle Isle Event - 2014

Brummelbear, Rattrak, Caching Fire, and Team Rumble

Fall CITO - 2014

Fall CITO - 2014

But things changed last year. TaGeez had broken his leg so he manned the grill with our late friend Othum. Brummelbear had been diagnosed with the same cancer that struck Othum and would only be paying a short visit to the event he loved so much. At that time, he was still looking robust with that lovely twinkle in his eye, but he was moving slower, trailing behind his lovely golden retriever. He had specifically wanted to see me, and he extracted a promise from me as he unloaded his geocaching supplies from his van to my car. And, in his memory, I will be hosting a letterboxing 101 event in his memory later this year. 

We said goodbye to dear Brummelbear today. 

His service was lovely. Admittedly, one of my favorite parts was the priest eulogizing, “Leo and his son, David, enjoyed taking walks in the woods. They liked to find tupperware. What is this thing about finding Tupperware while in the woods? Anyone know what this is? I don’t understand it.”

After leaving the church, TaGeez and I headed to Detroit to hide a cache in his honor. It is, of course, hidden in the woods and in Detroit in his memory. It's 24 days until the annual Belle Isle event; although someone else will be cooking the hot dogs I know we will feel Brummelbear's presence every step we take.

We’re In Pursuit

TaGeez and I have already earned 4 planets in the first two days. This is the fun way to complete this challenge!

Looking at my Friends League, quite a few have already earned all 10 of them. I'm seeing this on the YMBAGI Facebook group, too. Some of my friends decided to save themselves the trouble of earning points by dropping their trackable collection into a geocache - 4 points apiece.  I'm not judging - everybody plays the game their own way.