250 Finds

We knew that we were close to the 250 finds milestone so we set ourselves the goal of reaching this target.

 Looking at the geocache map we could see a lot of caches from one of our favourite cachers, Haksu10.

He is not only a cache hunter but a breeder of caches, and has bred some of the best caches in the area, if not the best, upon closer investigation we found that Haksu10 also had a pet cache on his ranch (Haksulandia), so armed with this knowledge we thought we should make this cache our 250th find, and at the same time try and meet with the Lord of the manor.

We got his phone number and sent him a text message laying out our plan, he replied by saying that he would be pleased to meet with us and would be in residence.

We have a function on our gps that alerts us when we are close to a cache or waypoint such as a parking place, it sets off a loud "ping" sound, it did not take us that long to find the needed caches to take us to 249 finds, just 1 away from our target.

Now we headed towards Haksulandia, nearing our target location our trusty gps let out the alert, but it did not just "ping" the once, in fact it would not stop going "ping", there were so many waypoints around that in the end we had to mute the gps.

There in the grounds of Haksulandia was the Lord of the manor, waiting to welcome us.

This is where the pressure was really on us, trying to find his pet cache, whilst the owner was following our every footstep.

He informed us that this cache has never had a single "did not find" logged on it, great just what we needed more pressure.

Then grazing in the shade we found his pet cache, and what a magnificent specimen it was. Mrs Geocacher logged the cache, and noted down all the travel bugs that were in residence, replenished our stock of silica gel bags from a large tub that is provided so that cachers are able to replace damp bags in other caches.

Then we went inside for refreshing coffee, biscuits and a chat with the Lord of the manor.

He showed us his collection of Geocoins and gave us a list of the tracking numbers so that we could log them, we also chatted about how new cachers are not being so accurate with terrain difficulty levels or coordinates (sometimes being up to 100 meters or 300ft away from the actual location), and how some are using unclean ice cream containers or margarine tubs.

We left feeling very pleased that we had made this our 250 finds milestone, and headed off to find a couple more to start us on our way to the next milestone.

Mr and Mrs Geocachers 250 Finds Geocoins

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.

We hide our first cache

We had been thinking about when and where to hide our first GeoCache. Well we decided on the when, that being once we had reached our 100 finds, and would therefore be a kind of celebration Cache.
So as you have read previously we reached that target, so next we had to decide upon where we were going to hide the Cache.
After a lot of head scratching, and rejecting of ideas for one reason or another, we rested on the idea that it should be at a location that had some meaning for the both of us, once that was settled, it became much easier.
We chose a location that was close to where we met for the very first time, this being a small park called Lampipuisto (Pond Park).
We visited the potential location to find a good hiding place, we spent a long time there choosing the location very carefully, this done we then collected all the things together and returned later to hide the Cache.

Lampipuisto (Pond Park)

Small wooden bridge over the pond

View of the pond from the bridge

A couple of ducks enjoying the good life

After all it is hard to be a duck (yeah riiiiight)

So we added the cache to the website and waited eagerly for it to be made public.
Soon enough it was, and the first find log soon followed.
These logs have been, and still remain to be, interesting, it seems a lot of the cachers finding the cache have some kind of story to tell about the park, and others who even though they might pass the area everyday were not aware the park was even there. So we are very happy with our choice of location, and the cache seems to be a bit of a hit and success.

Mr Geocacher has one weeks summer holiday left, so we checked on flight prices to England, and found a pair of really cheap tickets, so we took the bull by the horns and booked them.
So the last week of September/first week of October we will be in England.
We do plan to do some GeoCaching whilst we are there, and intend to compare English ways of caching to the Finnish ways. So more on this subject at a later date, plus Mr Geocacher has to start adding the caches to the navigator.

After all this excitement we took a trip to hunt down another of those caches that has been eluding us.
Last time we had visited this location we had spent a long time searching and had to admit that at that time the cache had managed to avoid detection.
But on this occasion it was not so lucky, with no berries around to distract Mrs Geocacher, she demonstrated just how good her Geo-eye has developed and soon hunted down the poor unfortunate micro-cache, despite its cunning camouflage.

Although well camouflaged it could not escape Mrs Geocacher (it should have tried hiding in the berries)

Don't forget to join us again to find out what we have been up to.

Navigators

I thought I would talk a little about Navigators.
To go Geocaching you do not need a high range top of the line model, most models will do, of course some are better than others.
But at the end of the day price is an issue for most of us.
You can go with just your mobile phone, Trimble make a really good software for today's mobile phones, you do however need a phone with a built in GPS, or one with bluetooth and a small cheap bluetooth adaptor GPS.
Some handheld Navigators come with cache coordinates already inside (the most I have seen advertised is with 250,000 caches pre-installed).
Whilst other units are able to download direct from the internet, but at the end of the day all will allow you to input them manually, although time consuming, the reward of a fun time is worth the time.
So to sum up, when it comes to the cost of this hobby, it can be as cheap or as expensive as you want, there is a way to do this for every pocket.

Encounters with mother Nature and other scenic things

What have I got for you today?

Well we have not been out for a couple of days, work and real life coming into play, so I thought I would show you some more of the sights we have encountered on our travels so far.

This first set is of some interesting signs...I will of course translate them for those of you that do not understand Finnish.

What? "oh how dull" I hear you cry, "we can see signs anywhere".
Well maybe you can, but some of these signs are quiet old, and others are just unexpected, I will try and explain in the captions.

Sign reads "End of Public Road"

Although this sign may not seem that strange, it comes as a bit of a surprise when you are driving down a country road, and come to a lovely beauty spot with a lake and coffee shop, the road continues on over a lovely bridge, and "bam" on the other side of the bridge you see this sign

(Top) Summer Headlands Road
(Bottom) Jawbones

Now here you drive down Summer Headlands Road (there is another sign further down the road, but sadly we did not get a picture, that read "15 kmh whole island"), and you arrive on the little island of Jawbones, I really do not know how it got this name, and I am not sure I want to.
Interestingly although cars are limited to 15kmh there is a railway going across part of the island, and I do not know if they have to stick to a slow speed limit. Trains used to stop here, as you will see in a later picture.
We found the locals of this island to be very pleasant and friendly, all smiles and waving, comes as another surprise, but very refreshing change.

Old Chalk mine

(although we feel it should have read "mosquito central")

We walked into this area and were greeted like the meals on wheels lady being greeted by the elderly, we were totally mobbed by the mosquito's.
We located the cache as fast as we could, Mrs Geocacher logging the find, as I waved my arms around like a demented windmill, trying to stop us from becoming an all you can eat buffet, and made our escape as quick as possible.

This next set are just a few of nice scenery and pretty places.

The old Railway Halt in Jawbones

Although no longer in use, as you can see the locals still keep it well maintained.

No real title here, just a pretty picture of an old pier with a wonderful view

Again no title, just a quaint cottage in the middle of nowhere

This believe it or not was mentioned in the cache description as a pointer to being on the right path

A rather lovely little shop, again in the middle of nowhere

Well this was the first, but not the last time we had to walk the plank to get to a cache, as you can see on this day we had the perfect weather to go hunting

Just one of the many graveyards we have visited whilst on our hunts for Geocaches