Graveyard Geocaching

Dave and I recently had a very memorable geocaching run. We cached from about 9:30am until after 6pm. Instead of going for numbers in the high heat and humidity, we did a little planning and decided to go after ones that other cachers had deemed memorable.

The first cache we went after was Not at These Coordinates and we later realized it was rated 4 out of 5 on the difficulty scale. This unique puzzle cache has absolutely no description. The coordinates lead you to a unique place in Raleigh, but you're not really sure why you're there or where to go next. We did find a surveying benchmark, EZ6550, and we now know that's related, but we're not sure why. Even so, we still had fun looking around here for a while before giving up and moving on. We'll have to return to this one after more thought.

Next was Alexander's Ragtime Cache near the Capitol in downtown Raleigh. This is supposed to be one of the most memorable urban cache hides around. I'll have to take their word for it, cause we couldn't find it. There was lots of construction in the area and we looked as long as we could without attracting too much attention. At this point, we were 0 for 2, and while we were still having fun, we were getting a little worried.

Nothing like a return to days of old to change our luck. The next one was Super Crazy Brick Bash Fun Cache, our first multi-cache and it was on the NCSU campus. It was really cool to have a reason to visit campus again and Dave and I knew right where to go to the statue without even needing the GPS. Once there, we had to gather several numbers from the cache and gardens and then use them to decode the next coordinates and another clue. This one was really a lot of fun, as we ended up inside the NCSU library searching for a particular book where the cache was hidden.

Feeling our luck had turned, we made our way to The Defibrillator, an infamous cache several people had said was their favorite. This one was hidden just like many others, nothing special at all. Neither Dave nor I could figure out why everyone was talking about this one so much. Until we opened it. Now it's one we'll never forget. Certainly worth the trip and a lot of fun.

While in the area of Carter Finley stadium, we picked up the virtual cache Wolfpack. It was unusual for them to have the fountains on as well and Dave was able to take lots of pictures with his "real" camera, as opposed to the simple snaps I posted with my Treo. Not far away, we found Desperate Housewives #11 - Shaken Not Stirred to pad our numbers some more.

Then we made our way to a park and followed a trail until it was closed for construction. At this point, we were thinking we might not be able to find Method to My Madness, but we found our way into the woods around the construction area and were able to zero in on this one hidden in an interesting container.

For the last cache of the day we drove around in circles following our TomTom Navigator software that wasn't much help at all. Finally, we figured it out ourselves and found what we thought was the best place to park for Horse Sense. After debating a while and second guessing ourselves, we ventured into the woods and found this amazing horse and mule cemetery with ten huge granite tombstones. We used the dates on the tombstones to find the next stage coordinates, and seeing as they were only a third of a mile away, we decided to continue through the woods. Well, the woods got thicker and the 1/3 mile was as the crow flies, and we're not crows, and it was a hot, humid day. To make things worse, we had planned to only do urban caches and were not dressed or equipped for this venture into the land of bugs and briars. At one point, we seriously contemplated turning around as we didn't seem to be getting any closer and couldn't see a road in any direction. Eventually we made it to the final location and learned that we could have driven right up to the cache site if we had returned to the truck.

Exhausted, we went 7 for 9, and really found some good caches.

Labels: geocaching

Posted by Chris on 7/10/2006 10:21:00 PM :: Permalink   
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