14 March, 2010 -- That's my story and I'm stickin' to it

A little background:
Geocaching is a worldwide treasure hunt, using an internet site to get position information, gps units to find those position locations, and using common sense and puzzlemania gray matter to find little hidden pots-o-gold (trinkets, mostly). In the heat of racking up impressive status for being the First To Find a cache when it goes public, geocachers will stop at nothing to get there and put their geocaching "name" at the top of the logbook. It's one of the most friendly competitive games in the world, open to anyone, especially kids, (and folks with nothing else to do).

Well, late last night, a cache that I had hidden got the blessing of the online reviewer, and Bingo, it's on the geocaching.com site and the wolves start to hunt!

This is the site of the cache in this story; off the 4-lane between towns, just out in the boonies. The container is camouflaged with duct tape and hidden in the ground clutter beneath one of these trees.


The name of the cache is "Treeck... Trock... Which is it?", and that's a "muggle" or in this case a "moo-gle". Muggles are "those other ones, those who don't KNOW". They come up to you and ask "What're ya DOING?". Sometimes you just can't explain it.

And here's the great prize! The treasures are mostly for the kids, but the logbook is the prize for the older hunters. Cache finders can take an item and replace it with another item, or not; or trade a numbered Travel Bug Dog Tag item or souvenir coin that moves from cache to cache and is trackable online.
This is a large cache; some of them are just a little bullet shaped containers that have a rolled-up paper for signing, and you have to bring your own pen. They are usually really difficult to find. I found one at a major retailer in West Plains attached to a tree limb with a twist tie. There's one in Mtn. Grove that I haven't found yet after 6 months of searching.
This cache is an easy big one.


Like I said, at about 11:30 p.m. last night, the great cache reviewer in the sky published my cache and it became public. One of these guys is from Mtn. Grove, and one is from Houston. I've never met them, but they have both found other caches in Mtn. Grove that I've put out.

I'll let them tell the rest of this story. This posting was on the geocache site this morning (daylight savings time rolled in at 2 a.m.):

xring found Treeck... Trock... Which is it? (Traditional Cache)

This one started off with a BIG BIG LAUGH, I was all most to GZ at 2:30 in the morning (new time) and this car passed me and I noticed the license plates said SESKDS and I new who that was, who would have ever guessed that two geocachers would get to a cache in the middle of the night at the same time. So we found the cache in the cold and rain and shared the FTF. That was about the most fun cache I had been on in awhile. Thanks guys for making this find so much fun!!! We must be nuts for getting out at this time of the night in the cold and rain and driving 35 plus miles one way, just to get that FTF. That's what makes this GeoCaching game so much fun, stories just like this one.
TFTC TNLN SL xring

____________________________________

This morning, another posting popped up on the site:

seskds found Treeck... Trock... Which is it? (Traditional Cache)

WOW what a night to pull up to GZ the same time as my bud XRING . We had a good laugh talked some 2:30am cold and raining and we went for the FTF together.This was also my most expensive trip so far on a cache. When i got home i could not find my Garmin 60 CSX
i guess l left it on the trunk of the car. Well back to GZ and yup there it was in the middle of the road smashed so i took a picture of it and put in on the cache page. Thanks XRING for helping with this one.

So, is the game worth all that expense? You betcha!

FTF = first to find

TFTC = Thanks for the cache

GZ = ground zero

TNLN = took nothing, left nothing

SL = signed log

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=f48afe9a-7d1e-4d9f-90cd-f76eec8b5e43