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.

 

Lord of the Flies

It was another nice weekend here in Finland so we headed out for another of our cache hunts.

Close to when we first started GeoCaching we had found a Geo-Puzzle coin.
What is a Geo-Puzzle coin?
Well they are four coins that make up the GeoCaching logo, but in this case they also lead to a cache once you have all four, as each coin has part of the coordinates for the final cache location.
So this is a very sneaky cache as all four parts travel separately around the region, something around the area of a 100km radius, and hide in other caches.

Our first piece of the puzzle.

Well we kept an eye on the movements of the remaining coins, and when one would come within range we would go and retrieve it, it took some time but we managed to track down three of the coins and upon interrogation get the coordinates from them.
All that was left was the fourth and final coin, well we had noted that the fourth part was deep in the forest, and had not moved for a long time, maybe because of its location deep in the forest, or maybe because the location was some distance out of town.

So back to the main story, sorry but I had to lay the background to this story.

On this particular weekend we had noticed a new cache had been hidden, and it was fairly near to where the fourth puzzle coin was hiding, (see there was a point to the first part of this story), so we set off in search of a possible First to Find and the last piece of the puzzle.

Things started off well, as it did not take us that long to located and capture our first cache, that being the newly hidden, well sadly we were not the First to Find this cache, but we were able to log as Second to Find, although as a bonus we did find a travel ingot.
As it turns out this travel ingot is also part of a series where you have to track down others from its clan and capture the coordinates for the final hunt, although this time they travel in a much smaller radius, just 55km.

The Travel Ingot.

So we entered the coordinates if the cache that the final puzzle coin was using as it's hideout.
We should have known this was not going to be as easy as first thought, when our navigator first sent us one way, and then another, but finally we found the road it wanted us to take.
I say road using the loosest term possible, at first it was not too bad, but soon the tarmac turned to a dirt road, then that turned into what I can only describe as small rocks compacted to make some kind of trail through the forest, clearly only meant for agricultural vehicles.
Well we found the parking location, a very small clearing next to the rocky road.
We were now about 1km from the cache location.
Leaving the car behind us we started to follow the trail, now of course we expected to find some kind of hiking trail, or a little path through the forest, boy were we ever wrong.
The path we were following soon ran out and we had to make our own path, being careful where we stepped, so as not to disappear into a bog or hidden stream.
Do not get me wrong, the forest was gorgeous, and there were mushrooms everywhere, these we were also careful not to step on.
There were a few bugs around, but nothing seemed to take much interest in us, little did we know that these were just the advance guard.
It took us awhile but we found the location, but we could not find the cache.
Then from out of nowhere came squadrons of Deer-Ked a type of Deer Fly, first attacking Mrs GeoCacher, and then Mr GeoCacher.
We bravely fought them off while trying to search, and just as we were about to give up we found our goal.
Logging as fast as we could, we retrieved the Puzzle coin, and made as fast an exit as we could.
We were surrounded, the cache had unleashed its protectors and they were not about to let us escape that easy.
We must have looked a sight as we stumbled and moved as quickly as we could over the poor terrain, all the while our arms waving frantically trying to beat off the attack, and keep the flies out of each other's hair, necks, and clothing.
Finally making it back to the safety of the car we climbed inside and took off as fast as we dare, still finding these flies in our hair, Mrs GeoCacher must have thrown about 12 out of the car window on our trip home.
Once home we dived for the shower, and even then we were still finding more of these flies, Mrs GeoCacher tried washing them down the sink, but the little buggers just climbed back up and were almost grinning at us in our attempts to get rid of them, although thankfully in the end we did.

Home of the Cache and the Deer-Ked. (who stole the path?)

So we now had all four Puzzle coins coordinates, and would soon be able to go on the hunt final cache.

Two more of the Geo-Puzzle coins, as you can see they even gave Mrs GeoCacher trouble when she was trying to photograph them.

That's enough for this time, no seriously it is, do not worry I will return and let you know if we were able to hunt down the final cache.

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.

Nice Weather for Caching

Sorry it has been a little while since I last posted, but the weather has been so nice, and we have both been so busy at work, that there has not been much time left for me to update you all.

So as I said the weather has been really good, so we decided to take a trip to Pori, in the west of Finland. We had a lovely day out, although the town was far too busy for us to get any caching done there, we did go out of the town to Yyteri (pronounced oo-ter-ee). Yyteri has a proper sandy beach, and we soon found out that there is a cache located on the beach, so of course we could not resist this challenge, and was rewarded with a beach hunt success. Sorry to say that we do not have any pictures that we could post of us at the beach, so enjoy the ones of us in Pori.

Mrs GeoCacher with a balloon mouse (yes it is suppose to be a mouse not a poodle).

There is a saying that goes something like "visit Pori and be dragged through the square in a basket". Well we found the square and the basket, but could not find anyone to drag Mrs Geocacher around.

We have also been to visit GeoCaching Mummy, although this time she did not come caching with us as there was not enough time.
We set out a cache route on the way there, and then another for the journey home.
This turned out very successful and bagged us many caches.

Yes this is a Wellington boot hanging upside down hiding a cache.

The building on the right of the picture houses a church boat (and somewhere hidden is a cache), there are many of these boats around Finland. No the boat is not a church, it was owned and used by the villagers to go to the church, and is rowed by a team of locals.

Do I need to comment?

(Ok if I have to comment) Just some lovely shots of the stream next to the church boat.

This is not near the church boat, but was still on the journey home. This rather erm safe? pier is still in use.

Then one evening we thought we would try our hand at finding a cache we had tried finding three times before.
So setting out on our fourth attempt we really did not know if we would indeed find it this time.

Well we still do not know how it happened, but this time we struck lucky and found the cache in a location we could swear we had searched several times already, but this time we found it within ten minutes of arriving at the cache site.

The cache that managed to hide from us so well. This was the second Nano-Cache we have found.

Well that is it for this instalment, there is more to come.
What? you want an example?
Ok then how about this?
Coming in the next action packed episode we hide our first cache, we find another sneaky cache trying to use camouflage, and we book a trip to England (English caches be afraid, be very afraid)

Ok, can I go now? Well tough because I am, so until next time, stay lucky.

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.

Velodrome

So what have we been doing?
Well we went to a Geocache event, this entailed finding the location, as it happened it was on an island, so Mrs Geocacher had to row us about 200 meters, as Mr Geocacher has never rowed a boat.
We met up with fellow cachers, grilled sausages, and swapped stories. A few of us took one of the boats to a near by island where there was a cache hidden. All in all it was a good time. Mrs Geocacher had the good fortune when it came time for us to leave that she did not have to row us back, as some others were leaving at the same time, so we let them do the honours.

On one of our latest cache hunts we were led to a Velodrome, had it not been for Geocaching we would never have known this place was even near to Tampere.

The Velodrome (No I said Velodrome Not Thunderdome, you wont find Tina Turner or Mel Gibson here)

Quiet high and steep banking

The things Mr Geocacher goes through in pursuit of the hunt (nope no Tina Turner or Mel Gibson under here either)

Not the kind of sign you expect to find in the woods

There has been much more going on, but nothing much to really report here.
We have a weekend of caching planned soon, so with any luck there should be plenty more to write about after that.
Of course you can always come back and see what else we have been doing in the meantime.

Updates

Well I had intended to update the blog on Monday, then again today, but it seems life had different plans for me.
First of all we got a notification of a part of a geo-puzzle we are following, so of course we had to go and do that, so there went Monday, then Tuesday (today) my PC decided that it was going to play up and I had to spend the evening fixing and updating that.
So I am only going to post a short update for now.
Lets go back (way back, no further back than that) lets go back to last Friday, as I had said we were getting ready for the weekend, well we found ourselves with some extra time, so we thought we would go and start our caching weekend, and visit a cache we had previously been too and been unlucky.
This time we were certain we knew exactly where the cache was, but alas we were wrong.
Although we was in the correct location and did eventualy find the cache.

No this is not some horrible lake monster, just Mr Geocacher on the hunt

So then we moved two other caches, where at one we was lucky and found a travel bug that we were totally unaware was there, also at this location Mr Geocacher decided to place his very wet and now useless socks in the waste bin, we were however successful at all three caches and started our weekend off well, returning home in time for our Friday evening sauna.

The sign says it all

Now for those of you who might not know about the great Finnish past time of sauna (pronounced sow (as in cow)-nah not saw-nah), this is where you strip off naked, and go to sit in a small room lined with wood.

The entrance to the sauna

Inside there is a stove with warm coals (the stove is heated by wood or like in our building electricity, and these days you can get the really fake infrared, there is also a smoke sauna, but this is a totally different experience, and one Mr Geocacher has yet to try).
You sit in this small room that is heated between 70 and 100 degrees C, and from time to time you throw water onto the warm coals, YES even in the electric sauna (I know, I know these Finns are crazy, but you just have to do it, it is great), although not in the fake infrared ones, now some Finns will slap themselves on the back with birch twigs, this we have both done of course (although not together), and find this is not for us.

The Hot room, notice the wooden benches where you can either sit or lay down and gently boil yourself

Now assuming you are boiled enough you are then supposed to run naked from the sauna and jump into the lake, this we do on occasion when we visit geocaching mummy (more about her in a later post), we just normally shower and go back to the apartment to enjoy our after sauna beer and cider.
This done we then eagerly awaited Saturday.

Close encounters of the legal kind

So we set off early in the morning (well early for us on a day off), around 09:30, our first stop was to a cache we had tried a few days earlier and had been a DNF (did not find), well once again we failed to find this cache, we believe it has fallen from it's location and is in need of repair from the cache owner.
Our next stop was to another failed attempt from a few days earlier, it being rather close to the first cache, we parked and set off on "the hunt". Well we were around the location (this being close to a busy road, a burger fast food outlet and a petrol station), I looked up and spotted the local boys in blue (yes the police) sitting at the traffic lights and watching every move we made. we stopped what we were doing and I sent Mrs Geocacher back to the car to get a document we had downloaded from geocache.fi that explained what we were doing (a rather useful document that we had used once before, but that is another story for another time) as I was sure they were going to come and see what we were doing.
I was correct, we watched them drive around and we calmly waited by our car for them to drive up.
What ensued was probably the single most fun encounter with the police I have ever witnessed, they stopped and wound down the window, the policeman in the passenger seat asked what we were doing (of course everything that was spoken was in Finnish, and I followed as best I could), my partner replied that we were geocaching, whilst offering him the document to read, and a big broad smile came over his face, he waved away the document and proceeded to ask more questions about geocaching, how long had it been going, was it worldwide, how did it work and many other things about it, all of these my girlfriend was happy to answer, the driver meanwhile sat next to him with what looked like the biggest question mark in the world hanging over his head, but also grinning wildly, well they wished us happy hunting and left us to get on with our days caching, and yes we never disclosed the location of the cache to them, after all they are still geomuggles (a term for non geocachers). So back to the hunt we went, soon locating the elusive cache.

An example of a small cache, including a TB (Travel Bug)
and exchangeables

After that we continued on our way and had one of the best days hunting thus far.
Whilst driving out to the next destination we of course discussed our latest close encounter of the legal kind, and came to the conclusion (bearing in mind their broad smiles and apparent pleasure to see us) that the police have a new game. The one had certainly heard about Geocaching, and we can only assume what went on or rather is going on back at the station.
Police log: spotted 2 geocachers to in Tampere, nice couple, had a chat and went on our way. TNLN, TFTG. (Took Nothing Left Nothing, Thanks For The Geocachers).

Below you will find some pictures and explanation's of what went on once we got to our main hunting area.

Mr Geocacher on the hunt

Whilst Mrs Geocacher eats wild berries (but how mean is this? it was Mrs Geocacher who found the cache at this location)

(Different location) I think the caption should read "I know it is around here somewhere"

Some geocachers put a lot of thought and effort into their themes (can you guess the theme of this one?)

As mentioned earlier there can be exchangeables in the caches, normally meant for children (but as you can see big children too can have fun with them, and Mrs Geocacher never misses a photo opportunity)

All however did not go smoothly and we suffered one injury during the day (it can be hard terrain, and only the strong can survive at times), yes Mrs Geocachers phone got damaged and needed emergency medical treatment, we helli lifted it out of the location and rushed it to an operating theatre, where with prompt attention it was fit enough for action once again, although it is now on the waiting list for a cover transplant.

Mrs Geocachers phone in recovery after receiving emergency medical treatment

So now it is time for me to wrap this up for today but don't forget to check back and see what else has been going on