Caught Out …Twice!

There are several different types of Geocaches, most are simply a camouflaged small container just large enough to hold a small notepad and a few trinkets. Obviously the container should be water and bug proof. But there are some that require following the given coordinates to get information to get to a second cache site, these are called Multi’s. Sometimes you have to take a pic of you at the point to claim the find, or get words or numbers from the cache site to claim the find.
So it was on a nice Saturday afternoon we found ourselves Salmon fishing quite close to a cache… or so my GPS claimed.
We four followed the GPS to a small hut close to the Lighthouse and began the usual hunt, firstly sneaking a look here and there to make sure you aren’t being watched. Then later as desperation sets in, searching every nook and cranny…twice, three, four times.
Over and again we searched the entire area better than a police forensic search party. After two separate searches and nearly an hour wasted I finally stopped looking down and started walking away.(kicking rocks) As I walked past a very small hut near ground zero I noticed a sign on it listing the areas history, as I read the sign it occurred to me there were a lot of dates on it, enough possibly to be used as a code. I took a snap of the sign just in case, and then went back to fishing.
Later at home I went to the web site, looked up the cache and discovered that indeed I had it right…or half right anyway. The numbers were a code which gave another set of co-ordinate numbers, these numbers will take me about six miles further down the coast to the next point and ultimately the cache site.
Its going to have to wait until I’m out that way fishing again but the lesson learned was that I really should have read the site notes before wasting all that time gardening.

Today I had a stack of missed calls and messages from my daughter who was out in the bush near town looking for a cache in which I’d put a trackable tag I’d bought and named for her. Of course she wanted to be first to move it but I’d put it halfway up the only mountain for many miles in a multi cache. She didn’t check the site information before going after it and spent a long hour thrashing the bush around a road sign that they only had to read to get the second site coordinates. They ended up out in the bush with their laptop, broadband dongle, mobiles and GPS just to find a small lunchbox.

I had a really good laugh remembering that I’d done just the same thing last weekend… we both learned a lesson from it. . . maybe!





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