Snow Bridge Here Trove

23/06/2012 By Kabutroid
One. One new person introduced to Geocaching... ah, ah, ahhh.
Two. TWO new people introduced to Geocaching... ah, ah, ahhh.

Yes, today was a red letter day in the ways of introducing several new people to geocaching. I also had the opportunity to show them their first DNF, but that’s a log for another cache ToungeOut .

So this weekend I was staying in Portage with a friend, for several days of barbecue, sitting around a fire, and most relaxing... fishing. I’m mildly surprised that the description doesn’t indicate as such, but these (as well as the other side of the ex-bridge) are the general locations of quite the popular fishing location. On a related note, if you go closer to the river and look up, you’ll be pleasantly amused by the number of sinkers and other fishing paraphernalia dangling from the power line there. I may not be the best at casting... but you have to screw up pretty bad to launch your line that high. It’s also close to that glass driveway, which is absolutely phenomenal... I’m totally going to pull that off myself if I ever get stupidly rich enough to own a house that doesn’t have a paved driveway. I’m not sure if I’d have had the nerve to take our Sunfire down that pseudo dirt/gravel path that we followed to park though ToungeOut . But that’s besides the point. In either case, when we first went fishing here yesterday evening, I didn’t have my GPS on me. Today, I didn’t bother turning it on until we had already parked ourselves by the river and cast off. At that point I realized... hey... there’s a geocache like... 100 meters from where I’m sitting!

I also realized that my GPS maps need updating, since it still shows this bridge as existing ToungeOut .

But, given the fish were biting pretty decently (although nothing keepable... plenty of catfish, chub (or whatever that was, that’s just what they called this small, pale fish), goldeye (we didn’t have a smoker to smoke it), and one freshwater drum), I bade my time. Eventually, with one friend getting sunburned and our approximate leaving time approaching, we packed up and the three of us headed towards the coordinates. Given this was to be the first geocache experience for two of us three, I was hoping it’d a) not be missing, and b) be interesting. Nailed it on both counts BigSmile . Not without a fight though. So for the next 5 someodd minutes, the three of us scoured as many feasible hiding spots as could be contemplated. Over, under, inside, through... we looked at everything and anything within about 10 meters, coming up dry. With the others beginning to speak of quitting and getting unmotivated, I spotted something that seemed a tad... awry. Poking at it, I discovered that indeed something was quite awry! Calling the others over, I pondered the possible implication of what I had found. It clearly was... something, but a cache container it was not. I explained to them how I had found a cache hidden in a similar manner to this, but couldn’t find any indication that this was that type. As I contemplated leaving a sheet of paper with my name there (boy, would that have been embarrassing) in that first theory, my eyes happened across something else in the immediate vicinity which I immediately switched my line of thinking to. With everyone watching, one hand movement was all that it took to reveal the cache and claim victory BigSmile . Man, I was amazingly pleased that we had finally cracked this nut.

Signing the logbook and showing them my signature chainmail balls that I leave in every cache (a micro sized one in this case), I replaced the cache as found, and the others were immediately hooked on wanting to go after another one! Mission successful... potentially two new geocachers in the making Smile .

Thanks for the absolutely amazing cache. The hide was awesome, and we had a blast doing it. Hopefully, we may see the aliases for a David and Chris registering online soon.

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and micromail ball