Hibernation

It has been so long since I posted here, sorry for the delay but we have had so much going on that I just have not had much time.

There have been changes at work, leading to my working hours being changed, so I now do shift work and a lot of evening work.

We have moved to a newer apartment. We now have a much bigger balcony and our own private sauna in the apartment (pictures to follow at a later date).

Sadly our pets passed away at the start of the year, although we did not stay petless very long and now have two cute female pet rats (trying to teach them to find caches, but they are more interested in playing).

Before all this happened we did manage to take a short trip to England at the end of September and do a few of the local caches, we would like to thank the English cachers for some very good caches.

Yes, Mrs Geocacher still managed to find berries in England

"Erm, sorry are we suppose to be caching?
Well I thought I saw one run in here and hide"

Well not long after our return all the above happenings started, and added to that the winter arrived.
This is when we went into hibernation, with temperatures dropping to minus 21 degrees Celsius on most days  we put all our caching plans on hold, we had worked out some winter caches to do, but even those got passed over as it was far too cold for us.
Along with the freezing temperatures came the snow, and I for one have not seen this much snow in a long time.

Clearing the snow from the canteen roof
(isn't our uniform wonderful, at least it is warm)

Just a small pile of snow from the canteen roof

So finally around April the winter came to an end, and this is when we came out of hibernation.
Having moved about 6 miles (10 km) from where we were living in the city, to a suburb just outside, and an area we had not done any caching before, we thought we would use it to get our Geocaching eye back in focus, after all it would be a crime to not hunt the new caches on our own doorstep.
It did not take long for our Geocaching eye to zero in and we were soon able to log our first caches of the season. Sadly I did not have my camera with me so I do not have any pictures of that first hunting expedition.


Finally a really nice weekend arrived and we decided to visit Geocaching Mummy, plus work out a nice caching route to do on our way there. Whilst looking at potential caches for the route we came across one amusing log entry, it is in Finnish so here is the translation as best as I can do it, to set the scene for you here in Finland they have grill kiosks, they are kind of like roadside food caravans in England, but they are permanent constructions and are like small shops selling basic supplies, and they are not only on the roadside they are also in the towns as well.
So the log entry went something like this.

Cacher goes to search a cache but is unable to because of GeoMuggles NATSBOG.
Cacher sees a Grill Kiosk near the cache location and decides that he is hungry and will get something to eat.


Hungry Cacher to man behind the counter: "I would like a pizza please"
Man behind counter: "Don't have"
Hungry Cacher: "What do you mean? It says on the menu"
Man behind the counter: "Pizza maker gone shopping"
Hungry cacher: "Well a Kebab then"
Man behind the counter: "6 euros"
Hungry cacher: "but your sign says it is 4 euros"
Man behind the counter: "Yeah that's an add"
Hungry cacher: " OK and then 1 milk please"
Man behind the counter: "Don't have"
Hungry cacher: "but you do, I can see a 1 liter carton in your fridge"
Man behind the counter: "Don't have, thats empty"
So the Hungry cacher left without buying anything.


Any way we added this cache to our trip, but like the Hungry cacher we was unable to catch it as once again it was NATSBOG.
We had a lovely journey and logged every cache that we were able to search for, a few places were NATSBOG, but that was not surprising as it was a wonderfully hot sunny day.
We did however manage to log one cache that was on a bridge. "O wow a bridge cache, big deal" I hear you cry.
This concrete bridge is almost 100 years old and even had a battle fought on it during the Finnish civil war, these days not much traffic flows over the bridge as it has a 4T weight limit, and so a new bridge has been built close by.

The view across the bridge

View from one side of the bridge

View from the other side of the bridge, with the replacement bridge in the near distance

Our next adventure took place one evening.

Seeing as it was a nice evening and we did not have much to do we decided to go out and find a couple of caches that had managed to escape us in the past. The first that we headed for we had tried several times before and for one reason or another we had never been able to hunt it down, muggles, weather or some other thing getting in our way.

The cache was part of a series and this part was a puzzle cache, although we do not normally do puzzle caches this one was different as it is part of the series and the puzzle gets solved as you do the other parts, so a kind of multicache puzzle cache combo.

Here we was again back at the final location, would we this time bring and end to this most tricky of caches.

Arriving at the location we were once again faced with muggles, but they seemed to be preoccupied with their own activities, so the hunt was on.

Hunting high and low, ducking muggles and pretending we was taking photos of the scenery, we searched and searched, searching the same places several times over, when at long last the cry went up "FOUND IT", yes the cache had at last been hunted to it's hiding place and trapped.

Finally the cache is caught

So who was the lucky finder?

 

Yes Mrs Geocacher found it

Yes yes we get it, you found it clever girl, and not a berry in sight yet

The other caches that evening went the same way, although Mr Geocacher had his share of finds, this was the most pleasing having been such a tricky find.

Now we are gearing up for the rest of the summer, and Geocache command center is ready.

Hope you stayed awake through this rather long update, I will try and keep more up to date from here on in.

 

The Puzzle Continues

Sorry for the long break in updating, changes at work have meant less time for hobbies.

So you want to know how it went? Did we find the final location for the puzzle cache?

Ok ok lets get on with the story.

Having captured the final Puzzle Coin we were able to extract the final coordinates we needed from it. We then released it back into the wild.

Once released we have noticed how these pieces have been moving very fast now that they are in more accessible caches.

Ok sorry back to the main story.

Entering the complete coordinates into the navigator we were now ready to hunt down the head quaters and finally log this cache as completed.

Excitedly we set out.

Soon arriving at the location, we parked the car and set off on foot, the navigator leading us to GZ quickly, we started the search.

After what seemed ages, but was in fact a few short minutes the shout went up and the cache had been caught.

We set about logging, only having to dive for cover as some Geo-muggle dog walkers had managed to somehow sneak close to us.

When replacing the cache we decided to leave the ingot at this location, a tempting little prize for the next hunters, and perhaps the start of their next adventure.

An old pier near the cache location

Of course Mr Geo-Cacher had to test it

Happy that we had finally completed this cache we set off on our next hunt.

Did we get to 100?

WARNING PICTURES MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS!!!

Sunday morning dawned and we was up and about early, and preparing for a good days caching.
We had loaded up the navigator with lots of caches in Nokia in the days leading up to Sunday.

Mrs Geocacher preparing for an early start

Well we did manage to get out early, and made our way to a small village near Nokia, we had tried this cache once before but it had turned out NATSBOG. This time with it being early on a Sunday morning we struck gold and hunted down the cache, we had been in the right area before but because of the Geo-muggles, we had not been as observant as we might have otherwise been.
That done we moved on to one we had not done before, but was close by. Here we got a pleasant surprise when we opened the micro-cache container, the makers of the cache had made it from a 35mm film container, but then they had taken the time to use an old 35mm film roll and instead of the film inside they had rolled up the log book.

Mrs Geocacher with the 35mm film roll log book

We continued on, in high spirits, we was 2 for 2 and feeling good.
Our next hunt was to be another surprise and bag us the biggest cache we have ever seen, some how we went from the micro to the huge in leap.

Mrs Geocacher looking really happy and surprised at the size of this cache

We had to drive through this gate to gain access to the cache site, we assume it is to stop the cache from escaping. As you can see Mrs Geocacher seemed to enjoy playing with the levers on our exit.

Whilst we were driving to the next location the navigator alerted us that there was a roadside cache ahead, so we stopped by the side of the road and bagged ourselves this, then continued on our way a lovely cache location of an old stone railway bridge that is no longer in use.

Mr Geocacher "bravely" coaxing a spider away from the cache

Mrs Geocacher walking on the rocks in the stream while she examines the old stone railway bridge

So our day continued as it had started (no not in bed, please do try and keep up), but with us finding all the caches we visited, our navigator kept us informed of more roadside caches whilst we drove from location to location, and we decided if we would stop and do these hunts or if they were just a little far off the side of the road.
The finds just kept on coming, until we was just one short of our 100th find.

Could we do it?

Well with excitement we chose the next location and was feeling good, as we had not failed all day.

We arrived at the location and parked the car, and off we wandered following the navigator, well we came towards the cache location, and very close to it there was a Geo-muggle, so we crept up very carefully towards where the navigator was leading us, keeping a close eye on the muggle, who seemed more interested in his bottle of beer than us thankfully.
After a few minutes we were at the exact coordinates and had our 100th cache in our hands, we excitedly logged and made our way back to the car, being careful not to disturb the Geo-muggle and his beer drinking.

Mrs Geocacher back at the car at the location of our 100th find (woop woop)

So did we have any failures during the day?
To be honest not really, we did go to one cache that turned out to be NATSBOG, we dont count that as a DNF as we were totally unable to search. The cache is located by the side of a lake on the edge of a mooring dock, and of course there was a very big expensive yacht moored there with lots of children swimming in the lake.
We also went to find cache number 101 but when we got towards the cache location the rain started to come down, so we headed for home, to log our finds, write our blogs, and plan our first hide in honour of our 100th find.

All in all it was a great day for us, hope yours was for you.