Hiding our first geocache...

Is not nearly as easy as you'd think it would be.

In fact - it's kind of a pain in the ass.

 

So - Xmas 2018 Pat actually bought me a cache container.  That was our 1st year dating and he didn't really know what to get me so since I was so into it (and still am!) what a perfect gift!

 

Problem was I kept forgetting about it.  I did remember at one point, looked into the process to hide a cache and it looked way complicated so it kind of fell by the wayside.

 

Well - here we are in Pandemic Hell so Pat was like "Let's hide the thing!"  

 

The 1st step was we had to get permission from the Land Owner.  Seems odd, and I'm sure most of these cache peeps have not got permission but I wanted to do everything right at least the 1st time.  After months of forgetting, research and finally getting a response from someone legit, we got the OK!

 

Our plan was to hide it across the street from where we live.  We're right there and it would be perfect and easy to maintain it!  

 

Pat thought what a fun family adventure to go hide it!  The place we had in mind was a big pile of large rocks, so we painted it gray and I named it "Rock-A-Billy".  SO - we read all about the process again again and off we went!

 

We found it, hid it and excitedly came back to the house to properly log it into the system. (FYI you apparently can't really maintain a cache page in the app, you need to do it on a PC)

 

How cute is my note I left!

Pat painting the cache to look more like a rock

Resting atop (what we thought would be) our new cache spot

So perfect!

Fancy

Success!  (But not really)

 

As I was logging it into the system I got a "YOU CAN'T HIDE A CACHE HERE" notice.  WTF?!?!  Apparently you can't hide a cache too close to another cache.  Ugh.  I was so annoyed.  There are a shit ton of caches in this area and most of them haven't been found in years so their obvi inactive but still.  So that was quite a wall.  That week I hiked out by myself on a lunch break and retrieved it.

 A couple weeks later Pat had some other spots in mind so we hiked out on a very windy Sat morning.  This was more of an exploratory hike as we were trying to find places there weren't caches close by.  It ended up being about a 6 mile hike round trip but we found a spot that was perfect!  Pat put in the coordinates and we didn't get the angry error!  Yay!  We hid it again and headed back to log it when we got home.

I miss when it's green

Cute little flowers popping through!

Our new spot!

Perfect!!!  (Or so we thought...)

So windy!

Like so perfect!!!

That's our neighborhood over there

The next day we got a notice from the Reviewer Cache Person- "The coordinates seem off, are you sure?"  We looked on the map...WTF?!  Somehow Pat had entered the coordinates of our house.  UUUGGGGGHHHH!  We then found the right place on the map but realized it was literally on top of another cache - an inactive cache mind you - so now we can't hide it there either!!!  FUUUUCCCCCCKKKKK.  This wasn't an easy hike back out either, so I basically cried.

A week or so later off we went again on Saturday morning to retrieve and try to re-hide the damn thing.  I was losing hope that we were going to be able to find a place since the cache is not super small and there's not a lot of good hiding spots that aren't next to other caches, but we had an area in mind.  After another 6 mile-ish round trip hike (That involved a hell of a climb but was fun!) we found another spot.  I'm not super thrilled with it because I'm afraid it's going to slip out, but dammit we're going to try.  It's literally the only place left in this area we could possibly put it.

Climbing

A pretty new path!

Kicking my ass

There's some green!

This little guy scared the shit out of Pat

Ok....we need to get not in one of those red circles....

Please let this work!

Rock a Billy

Hopefully finally successful!!!

And guess what - SUCCESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We got one more email from the Reviewer Cacher Person to double check the coordinates and enter them another way, so we did a quick Tuesday night Dusk Hike and raced the sun to double check the coordinates and make sure all was good.  Came back - re-submitted and it was approved and published that evening!

The crazy thing - I already got an email from someone asking where to park and some dude FOUND IT!  WTF?!  Ha ha!  He must have hiked at night like right after it was published.  So weird but really cool to officially be up and running!!  I look forward to more logs and maintaining our first cache!!

So go find it!!!

Happy Caching!!! 

Final night of hiding!  It's ready to be found!