Today is International Geocaching Day. I attended my first International Geocaching Day Event on this day in 2011. Heather had just introduced me to Geocaching a few months previously, as a way to get me out of the house after Nid and the children moved out here to Wyoming. I have come a long way since that day in Harrisonburg, in so many aspects of my life.
Today I needed to find one cache in order to get the souvenior badge. I found 13, and did not find 4. Two of them were missing, and two of them I chickened out on trying because the rock climbing was above my abilities to try, especially alone.
This was my first did not try. I'm pretty sure I know which crevice the cache is in, but I could not reach a hand hold that I was confident enough to pull myself up with. It was disappointing on several levels, because it was a strenuous walk just to get to the rocks, so not finding it was even more hard on my heart.
I was thankful that this "bridge" was actually sturdy.
This is my second did not try. I walked up to it. I looked up. I walked around it. I got back in the car. It's on the top. I wasn't going to try to get on the top by myself.
At one of my caches, there was the tiniest of pull offs 50 feet from the cache. It actually wasn't a pull off, it was just the first part of that particular road that had more than one lane. But it was so close to the cache, I parked there anyway. I had just sat down to open the cache and sign the log when a car pulls in behind me. Now, it really wasn't a pull over. so I thought that they must have been cachers. I was only 50 feet away, but pretty straight up the tree covered hillside, so I continued to do what I needed to do. I closed it up, and then got my camera and snapped this photo. As far as I can tell, neither of them ever looked up. I was hoping that when I climbed back down they'd roll the window down and introduce themselves, but they just seemed surprised when I appeared on the road, so I got in my car and left.
Today did have two technology problems that I'm having to deal with. My iPod froze near the beginning of my journey, and a hard reset isn't working. The good news is, at the elevation of the Medicine Bow forest I was at, I could pick up the Fort Collins country station perfectly. Not as good as my pre-loaded soundtrack, but better than nothing. Half way through my journey I got an error on my phone that my sim card was INVALID. I'd never heard of this problem, and so I turned the phone off an on several times. That didn't fix it, but my c:/geo app was working fine, so I continued on. When I got home I rebooted and took out the sim card. That didn't fix it either, so I called Straight Talk. I had already googled that this happened sometimes with Straight Talk phones (this is my first Android with a sim card, none of my others had them). I just got this phone in June when my other one crapped out on me, and I was already not impressed with this particular phone, and wishing I'd chosen a different one. The customer service lady told me that sometimes when you go into areas with no service, it basically breaks the sim card. She's going to mail me another one. Now, it's great that she's going to do that for free, however it takes 2-3 business days, and it's a Saturday. Which means it'll ship out on Monday, and get to me maybe Wednesday. So that's five days without a working phone. That's not cool. I told her than half of Wyoming doesn't have service, and her solution was that when I know I'm going into an area without service I should put my phone into airplane mode. That would be great if I knew where I was going to lose service. I was caching right where I was today last weekend and this didn't happen. In two weeks I'm going on a two-three day caching trip, most of which will be where there is no service. What if I turn it off, but then actually need help, and turn it on, but it breaks again and I can't call for help? I'm pretty disappointed in this new development.
When I got home, Georgia was so excited to see me. It was nice out, so I set up her kennel so she could lay in the sun. I left her there while I showered and made my call, and started logging my caches. I got up for something and looked in the bedroom.
She had abandoned her sunny outdoor spot, and gotten into bed. Crazy girl...
