Not too long ago my dad and I were out geocaching on Eglin AFB Reservation. We followed the coordinates to the cache we wanted to find, parked the truck and then off we went, looking for the cache.
It didn’t take long to spot it.
But… How do we sign the log?
We talked for a minute about standing on top of his truck, but Dad knows me well and tries not to encourage some of my “brighter” ideas, so we decided to pass on this one and move along.
The cache stayed on my mind though and a week or so later I sent a message to a caching friend, ShalimarGeoSearchers, and suggested we go grab the cache.
“We can back the truck up to the tree, put a ladder on top of the truck and then send my son up to grab the can” I told her.
She thought it was a great idea, and we decided to plan an adventure.
The next day I saw a picture on FB of other caching friends grabbing a different tree cache and the picture was exactly what I’d been thinking about for our plan.
So, I called SGS, and we decided to drive up to the woods on Sunday and grab the cache. We also decided that the more people we invited the more fun it would be and by Saturday night we had a good number of folks lined up, ready to go with us.
Sunday rolled around, Troy put the ladder in the truck, and we were off. My son backed out on me and even though I’m scared of heights I decided that I would climb the ladder.
I’m going to get this geocache – no matter what!
We met our friends near the cache and after examining the situation, they decided the ladder on top of the truck still wouldn’t be tall enough.
What are we going to do? There are 13 of us and we want to sign that log.
The cache owner lives nearby and always takes pleasure in my misadventures, so he showed up to watch the circus.
Great. Not only have I gathered a group of people out here with my bright idea but now TeamParadise is here to laugh watch – and I have no idea how to get to the cache without having people stand on top of the ladder with other people standing on their shoulders.
Someone suggested we shoot the cable holding the can
And someone else suggested we chop down the tree.
But, before any drastic measures were taken another caching friend, DropHunter, drove up with his handy dandy tree climber.
Yes! That will do it. Except there isn’t enough money on the planet to get ME to climb a tree with that thing.
Luckily, we had a monkey in our group, and he was really excited about using the tree climber.
They attached the climber to the tree, a short lesson on how it works was given and then up the tree our monkey went.
The can is wired to the tree so he sent the log down in a pitcher tied to a rope for all of us to sign and then hauled it back up the tree, secured the ammo can and then made his way down.
Woohoo!
With that success under our belt, we decided to head for the tree we’d seen the picture of. We got this one and felt confident that we could get the other one as well.
I apologized to TeamParadise for not getting stuck, falling off a ladder or sinking the Island King’s truck but he just laughed and told me that the day wasn’t over yet.
DropHunter is the owner of the second geocache we were after, so he decided to follow us over and watch while we grabbed it.
We caravaned to the next spot, expecting to find the same thing but we looked and looked, and no one could see an ammo can in the trees.
DropHunter stood back, watching and laughing while we all scanned the treetops. A few minutes later someone said, “There it is” and we were all shocked at what we found.
This cache is a tiny bison tube tied to a rope and hanging from the top of a thin pine tree.
The tree is too small for the tree climber, but DropHunter tells us he climbed the big tree next to the little one, lassoed it with a rope, pulled it over to him and attached the cache.
Even our monkey looked a little skeptical about pulling that off but luckily the ladder we brought was tall enough, so Troy made the climb.
He isn’t as much of a caching nut as the rest of us and about halfway up the tree I heard him say “You people are crazy!”
He might be right.
We signed the log, grabbed a few more caches and were off to eat dinner.
Most of the group headed home at that point but ShalimarGeoSearchers, Searchers L&J and the Island King and I went to a local restaurant for dinner and margaritas.
It was a wonderful day spent with friends climbing trees and wandering the woods.
The biggest surprise was that I didn’t get stuck, sunk or injured AND we found the caches we were after.
Of course, no one let me lead the caravan which helped. No one has much faith in my directional abilities – which just proves this is a smart group of people.
We really did have fun and I’m sending out a huge thank you to TeamParadise and DropHunter for placing (and helping us grab) these fun geocaches.
