Happy April, geocachers!!

It's time to thaw out from our lonnnnng winter hibernation & start geocaching once again! Yep, it's finally here...Spring has officially sprung!

The temps here in Milwaukee have been rather decent the past few days, so there is little-to-no snow left on the ground, but still lots of mushy muddy ground to stomp on which can make for some messy caching avdventures.

Yesterday, the boyfriend & I took our dog (Bella) on a 2 mile walk on a nearby walking trail and did 4 new geocaches. A couple nights prior to that, we did a last minute nighttime geocache on the same trail (the 1st one as you enter in the trail). While it was muddy to say the least, it was still not that bad to get to by foot.

There's still a couple more along the same trail we need to find before moving on further south on the walking trail, so those will be on our to-do list this Spring.

Here's a satellite map of what we did recently (the smiley faces are "found" caches we found).

While geocaching is all about the hunt, I was rather disappointed that the caches contained nothing but a log to write down your geocaching nickname. (We skipped that since we had Bella with us, just wanted to keep walking.) I had our geocaching backpack with us in hopes that we could trade some swag (see whats in our our geocaching backpack here). But nope, nothing but logs to write your name down.

With Chris & I working different days, it's hard to have a day off to do some caching together, but I'll keep blogging about our geo adventures as they happen! :)

Spring is here, so dust off your caching gear & get out there!!!

It's the end of February, which means that March (and Spring) is right around the corner! Yayy!! Last night and into this morning, we've had one hell of a snow storm here in Milwaukee. Perfect sled riding weather, but horrible geocaching weather! lol ;)

Since I have some downtime between now & Spring, I've been tooling around on Geocaching.com looking for local geo-events & adding some more "To Do" geocaches to my to-do list once the caching season hits.

This GEOCACHE is on the top of my list! It's a night-time only cache that requires a flashlight in order to see reflectors on trees to point you in the direction of the cache. I LOVE nighttime geocaching all year round! (Even ones that aren't meant for nighttime caching.) Honestly, I've had some of my best memories from nighttime hunting with friends. What's better than hiking through woods at night with friends with a flashlight looking for hidden treasure?!

Though I will admit that you have to be careful because if you're hiking in a park after hours, cops will stop you & ask what you're doing and eventually kick you out. (This happened to us last year lol) The cop was super nice about it though, so we lucked out. ;)

Another cool nighttime geocache adventure we did was when we hiked through the woods to find this tree & climbed to the top...(Chris & 2 friends climbed it. I don't do heights! lol)
If you're interested in doing a nighttime geocache, all ya gotta do is go to Geocaching.com & make a "New Pocket Query" (click on Your Profile--Pocket Queries--New Pocket Query) & from there, you can custom your search for what kind of geocache(s) you want.

Say you're looking for a nighttime geocache, then you'd click the Night Cache symbol only.
Or maybe you want a Night Cache that requires a flashlight, then you'd click on the Flashlight Required symbol.

You get the idea.

Well, that's it for this post! If you guys & gals have any questions/comments, feel free to post'em below! :) I'll be blogging our geocaching adventures when the weather is a little more cache friendly.

While the boyfriend and I are anxiously awaiting Spring to arrive, I decided to do a "Trackables: Where are they now?" update.

Trackables/Travel Bugs  are things that travel around from cache to cache. If you discover one in a cache, you take it, log it on Geocaching.com, then move it along. Most trackables have "goals", as per their description on the website.

So, let's take a look at the ones Chris & found and see "Where are they now?" :)

The "Hot Cold Travel Tag" trackable:

Released: March 2011
Goal: "I want it to travel anywhere but it must travel at least 3,000 miles. DON'T KEEP IT!!"

We found this one on October 28th, 2012 in a Cemetary during a nighttime geocache adventure. (It was around Halloween time, so we mixed geocaching with a dash of spooky ;) ) After we found it, we placed it in our favorite cache at Milwaukee's Safehouse (an old Milwaukee speakeasy). Since then, it has traveled to Texas, then to Honduras, Belize, Mexico and..back to Texas, where it seems to be stuck. It's just traveling all around Texas at this point.

Next up, we have...

The"Web.DE Club Geocoin 2010" trackable:
Released: Oct 2010
Goal: "I want this coin to reach New York and from there to travel to San Francisco. In case it really arrives in SF, I hope it makes its way back to Dresden (Germany) somehow."

We just found this coin last night (at our fav spot again, the Safehouse in Milwaukee), while out with a friend for Valentines Day. This morning I logged it on Geocaching.com and found that this little coin is quite the traveler!! It started in Germany over 2 yrs ago & has traveled to Belgium, Taiwan, Switzerland, then to a few states (so far): Florida, Illinois and now here in Wisconsin.

Amazing how far 1 coin can travel, and especially without being lost! :) We will be placing this in another cache soon to keep it moving along. Since it needs to head West, we will head West to find a good spot for it to keep it going on it's westbound journey.

Well it's mid-February and Spring is right around the corner! Whenever the weather gets nicer, our geocaching adventures will continue. Can't wait!!! :D

With Winter here, I'm finding myself (1) not wanting to geocache in below freezing temps and (2) sick all the time!! I have officially been sick 3 times, back to back..to back. Flu, cold, flu. Fan-freakin-tastic! Tis the season!

Oh, and HAPPY NEW YEAR to y'all!! :D

I'm hoping for a whole new year in geocaching experiences!! I'm comfortable with doing Traditional Caches, now I wanna try Muti-Caches, Series Caches, and higher levels of difficulty caches. As soon as the weather starts becoming more geocache friendly (which is anything over 40 degrees!), then I'm gonna start my 2013 geocaching adventures!! CAN'T WAIT!!!

Alrighty, that's it for now.
I guess in the meantime, I can answer questions or maybe I'll do new tutorials on geocaching basics, so that I have something to do for the next 2 months. ;)

As we wait for a new post, try searching YouTube.com for all kinds of different videos on geocaching! There's some videos that range from learning how to cache, to the most unique finds you couldn't even imagine! :)

I'll start ya off....

Intro to Geocaching:

A Unique cache:


Ta-ta for now!!

Chris & I are itching to do some good geocaching, but it seems that mother nature is making that darn near impossible. The past 2 weeks have been really crappy weather, with the exception of 1 day and we both worked and didn't have the time to go.

Rain, rain..GO AWAY!!!!

I'd rather have snow, because at least I can geocache in snow. I can't geocache in rainy, freezing temps in grass mud. (Well I could, but that'd be highly unpleasant!)

As soon as the weather is geocache'able (yep..totally just made that word up..), and work permits, we'll get out & hit up those caches!! :D

There's a cache that's just over a mile away from us that we've been wanting to do for a few weeks now. It involves climbing a huge tree. This tree, to be exact:

(Pic from listing on Geocaching.com)

Chris is the climber in this family, I don't do heights. ;) lol  But I like the hunt!! Hoping to get this cache checked off of our wish list very, very soon!!

Stay tuned...

I guess everyone has their own "dream" vacation...Vegas, Poconos, Hawaii. But for us, ours is Iowa! Whenever people ask us "Iowa? What's in Iowa?!" and they give us a confused look, we always respond happily with "NOTHING!! And that's the point!" lol For us, a great vacation is a get-the-hell-away trip. There's a lot of land, peace & quiet, and stunning scenic views in Iowa.

So it's only fitting that our dream vacation is just a short 4 hours away. We haven't been there in nearly 2 years (wow..it's been that long already?!), but we're anxious to go!! This year (2012) has been extrememly hard on us, espeically finanically. Frankly, it's been the worst year of my life. It started getting crappy in January, and as of 2 days ago, my streak of horrible luck is still going strong.

We moved from one horrible apartment to another (the lack of management here is unreal), we've had to deal with psycho neighbors, I lost my grandfather to cancer, watched my grandmother sink into sadness that I've never seen & broke my heart (she seems to be A LOT better now though!, thank god!), I was in/out of the hospital for over a month (ER visits for 10-12 hrs at a time, stayed overnight twice) for something they couldn't diagnose at first...turned out that I tore every muscle in my left adominal wall from playing raquetteball and they felt like mini charlie horses in my stomach..very painful.) Oh, and then my car broke down about 5 times in the span of 2 months...shelled out my savings to fix it, and as of 2 days ago, it broke down again. (I'm currently trying to sell it). Sooooo...now we're down to 1 car for at least another year. Oyyy. *head-desk*

Oh, and cap all of that off with taking my dog...my "daughter" (we're pet parents) to the vet ER the other week for a mystery deep gash wound that Chris found in her arm pit. So once again, what little savings I had, was depleted just so that I could pay the vet bill.

Looking to the future...

With 2013 coming up, I just wanna focus on a NEW YEAR with positivity and hope!! :) Chris & I are in dire need of a vacation, and with Iowa being our favorite spot, that's where our dream geocaching vacation spot would be!

And of course, Bella would love it too!! (She loves geocaching!!)



Anyways, we're trying to work as much as we can to save up for the trip in the Spring/Summer. We figure we'll need about $420 for gas, food, & hotel for 2-3 days. If you'd like to throw a couple bucks towards our trip, we'd be so appreciative!!! :)

We'll be taking videos and pictures of journey from start to finish! Worst case scenario, we save up enough money to do an overnight trip somewhere closer to home. Either way, we'll definitley do a getaway trip!

Stay tuned...

Hey guys! Since I made a tutorial about how to get going geocaching with using your smart phone, I figured I'd do a quick post about what's in my geocaching backpack. So I dug everything out of my backpack and took some pics for y'all:

My backpack I got at Spencers at the mall on sale. 

 Contents of my geocaching backpack:
*Batteries
*Flashlights (2 LED, 1 old school, 1 headlight with red or white light option)
* Kleenex
*gloves (you'll want more heavy-duty gloves for thorns & such.)
*hand santizer
*multi-utility tool
*pen
*lighter
*first aid kit
*mini notebook
*treasures we got from inside geocaches we've found (we swap item-for an-item)

 ...and ladies, take note of this....
a red solo cup with the bottom cut out & in a ziplock bag in case nature calls and you're MILES away from any kind of restroom. (My bestie still calls me a genius for this one. lol) Dispose of it when you get home, and pack a new one for just-in-case situations. You'll thank me later.

Geocaching Update:
Chris and I still haven't had the chance to geocaching just yet mainly due to the weather. Last night it thunder-stormed here...in December...in Wisconsin. Weird! And now it's super cold and muddy outside, which are probably the worst conditions to geocache in. I can deal with either, but not both. lol

So that's it for now! I'll update in the next week regardless if we went 'caching or not.

Stay tuned...