Cache Caches everywhere. 4-26-09 cache outing

Yep, I said I would try to post here more often and, of course, I have not. A friend whom also has a blog here has inadvertently given me a kick in the head to get going.

After planning since our last outing, circumstances were such that 2 of our team (TBSM) were unavailable for the day, which left me and kschu to our own devices. Ken now has a mini van that could not be a more perfect vehicle and today was it's geo-virgin outing.

The day started at around 0800 on the west side of Wheaton with overcast skies and threatening weather. After moving my GPSr's, laptop, inverter, etc. over to kschu's vehicle, we were off. No sooner than we started so did the rain. We had decided to stop at the hinsdale oasis on I294 for coffee since 1. kschu had a discount card and 2. there is a cache series at the oasis that he had not done yet. After a quick find, bathroom and coffee (in that order) we were off.

We had intended to stop at the Lincoln oasis on the way down for another in the series, but the rain was too much. As we entered Indiana on the way to Valpo, the rain was still going strong and the conversation turned to a possible trip to Bass Pro Shops to wait for the rain to stop. Luckily it stopped before we got to the first of many caches for the day.

Kschu had one route in mind, I had another. As driver always rules as well as kschu driving this route all the time, we went his way. The first stop or two were very pedestrian caches as would have been the third if the coords did not put us in the middle of asphalt. A dnf our third cache was not desirable.

After a trip to the near by BK to get rid of our earlier coffee (remember the order I mentioned earlier?), we regrouped and went back. Reading the logs indicated it was about 30 feet from the coords. We spread out our search and it popped up. 30 to 50 feet off seemed to be the theme for the rest of the day.

Only two caches were really of note, at least for me. The first was a cache that was less than a foot off a 4 lane busy boulevard that, for the life of me, I can not understand why it has lasted.

The next was a cache at an absolutely amazing little park that is best described as a mini Arboretum. It had one of the most interesting sundials I have seen to date.



All in all it was a great day. We visited about 60 some caches, finding 57 caches (50 unique to kschu, 55 unique to me) with only 4 or 5 DNF's.

Our next group outing looks like it will be the end of May. We have several areas in mind.

Even with a mission statement that says our group is about "Fun with no schedules", Stats to date, with a total of 30 days in 2009 where at least one cache was found are; 165 YTD 1.4 per calendar day and avg 41.9 per month (only 3 or 4 were found in Feb).