47 Caches in 12 Hours!

This weekend I visited my sister who lives in Santa Claus, IN.  She has a great little lake to fish in, and I spent all day Saturday on the lake getting sunburned and catching the occasional bluegill.  The fish weren't biting like they usual do, but a bad day fishing is better than a good day at work.  Usually the fish there don't even give you time to sip on your drink.  Every time you reach for your can, a fish notices this and gets itself hooked on your line.  This time we only caught about 50 bluegill.  Which gave me plenty of time to down my frosty libations.  Hooray for beer.

Before I went down to Santa Clause I pulled up Google Earth to see what the caching scene was like in that area.  Boy was I surprised.  There are over 50 caches within 5 miles of my sisters house!  Well I couldn't miss this opportunity.  So I called up my caching brother Tommy (Lyncher) and told him to get down to Santa Claus on Sunday and let's spend the day caching.  Tommy was so excited about the idea he came on Saturday and camped out in the cold so we could get an early start.  We had to start early or we would have froze to death.  We were more than happy to start at first light, just to get in the car and out of the cold.

The first cache we attempted was Agent P by Odyssey Posse.  It's an interesting puzzle that took me a while to figure out.  I was on the right track but couldn't quite figure out the last part of the West coordinates.  I tried a few different things, but every time I would check my answer with Geochecker.com it would say I was incorrect.  I showed a friend the puzzle and he immediately came up with the same idea that I had, and after a few minutes he figured out the whole thing.  Now came what I thought would be the easy part, finding the thing.  But as I would learn through out the day, no hide is easy when it come to Odyssey Posse.  Tommy and I arrived in the area, and it was relatively muggle free.  I let Tommy circle around the cache area for a bit while I fished out my phone/GPSr.  He looked all over where he thought it ought to be but he didn't have any luck.  So now it was my turn.  I walked right up to the spot and said, "Here it is Tommy." and retrieved the cache.  Experience pays off, because I had seen a hide like this before (Thanks Prarie Partners).  One Odyssey Posse puzzle down, now off to Framed!

Framed! is going to go down as one of my all time favorite caches.  The puzzle part I figured out with a little help from Google and Odyssey Posse's hint.  The find was a whole other problem.  Tommy and I kept circling and prying and proding in this one particular area, over and over again, with no luck.  One thing we learned over the day, is don't try to find any of OP's caches with a preconcieved notion of where to look.  Because it's not going to be there!  I had in my head that it was going to be in this certain area, and I looked and looked, and looked, but no luck.  I even double checked the coordinates in my phone, making sure they were the solved puzzle's coordinates, and not the incorrect ones posted on geocaching.com.  Finally I grabbed Tommy's GPSr and I walked around with both of our GPS units in my hands until I came to a spot where they both agreed upon, which was about 60 feet away from where I had been looking.  Doh!  This brought me to a whole other object that I had to search all over, but still no luck, when finally after about another 10 minutes of searching in vain, I looked over and saw it about 20' away, somewhere Tommy and I thought it could never be.  But there it was.    Diabolical came to mind, and not for the last time that day.  This has got to be the most unique cache container ever.  I wish I could share but I don't want to ruin the find.

Before the day was up we found 47 caches, 25 of them by Odyssey Posse.  Almost of all of them were unique in some way.  Tommy couldn't retreive the Ultimate Sacrafice because he was too hungry and his hands were shaking.  After reading the words on the bench he felt the same way as OP, and was a little leary of eating there, but the food inside was just fine.  Who Let the Dogs Out was another one that gave us fits for about 15 minutes until Tommy spotted the little devil.  It took us another 15 minutes to sign the log and get the bloody thing put back in it's container.  We cursed OP's name for hours after that one.  Signs was another find that we assumed where it was going to be and we weren't even close.  Rural Legends had us stumped for a quite a while until Lyncher spotted the needle in the haystack.  Odyssey Posse gave us one of the best days of caching anyone could ask for.  Any one of his caches could be considered a destination in of itself, and Tommy and I got to find 25 of OP's well thought out, interesting caches in one day.  Hooray for us.  Hooray of Odyssey Posse!

Odyssey Posse isn't the only great hider around though.  We found some great ones in the woods hidden by Daggy.  Four of them near the beautiful Colonel Jones Home located in part of Lincoln State Park. Trailside Tower was one of our favorites.  We looked for quite awhile on this one until Tommy happened to spot it.  Spotting it was one thing, actually putting our hands on it and signing the log was another.  Weee.  Kermit was another fun one.  Tommy was standing right next to it, and I said, "Check along there.  I bet judging from the name your close to it."  So he walks on by it and looks in some stump, (he said he was peeing, but I don't believe him)  I walked up to where he was and found it right away.  It was also in a very neat container. 

We found some neat caches hidden by Dr. Who and K-9, and some difficult ones hidden by Squire Boone.  Dr. Who and K-9's caches took us to a little park in Santa Claus called Yellig Park, where all the roads nearby have football names.  Tommy and I are suckers for football.  But we were a little disappointed to see a soccer field on Super Bowl Rd.  I hate soccer.  Squire Boone had a few devious hides.  We thought Riverwalk I in Jasper was going to be a cakewalk from the description, but no such luck.  Fortunately (I think) it had just stormed and there was no one on the trail, so Tommy and I had plenty of muggle free time with this cache.  It would be hard to explain what you were doing if you were caught red handed on this hide.  Sub was another neat cache from Squire Boone.  On the way to it I read the hint and told Tommy what I thought it was going to be, and I'm sure he thought I was a little crazy.  As soon as we pulled next to it, I told Lyncher, "There it is!" and I had it in my hands before he could hardly get out of the car.  Experience strikes again.  Another one of note was Movie Cache: Hard Rain by Squire Boone.  It was based on the movie Hard Rain shot in Huntingburg at the cemetery the cache is located in.  We had no sooner put our ink on the log and shut the ammo can when it started pouring down rain.  The day had started out as being a glorious 65 degrees and sunny, but this cache lived up to it's name and put a slight damper on part of the day.  We were kind of hoping it would rain enough to be able to ride jet skis through the school, but it quit in a couple of hours.  Since we were in Huntingburg and doing movie themed caches, we decided to find A Cache of their Own, another hide by Odyssey Posse.  I had never seen this stadium in the flesh.  It's pretty neat.  My sister was an extra in the movie they shot here A League of their Own.  This cache is probably one of OP's easier caches except for the fact that it was pouring down rain.  Tommy and I didn't mind getting a little wet since we were properly kitted out, but my phone/GPSr is not waterproof.  So I took a bearing from the car, judged the distance and swam over to the cache area.  Did I mention it was storming?  Tommy had came to the same conclusion and OP's hint matched what we thought ,so we started poking around.  Somehow, an animal of some sort, a dog maybe?, had done it's business mere inches from the cache.  After seeing all of these crazy containers OP had thrown at us all day, I thought maybe this was one of those fake dog doo hide a key containers, but after poking it with my boot I was sadly mistaken.  Fortunately it was raining hard enough that in the swim back to the car my boots were pretty clean.

After the day was through, we had found 47 caches, 15 ticks, 4 other Geocachers, no mushrooms, and one awesome sunburn.  My new personal best for a one day total.  We averaged finding a cache every 15 minutes for 12 straight hours.  Not bad considering 12 of the caches we had to hike to in order to find, and we stopped and ate for about an hour.  Now to log all of these.  TFTH OPYMB

Marathon Weekend

My wife's brother Tommy came up from French Lick and wanted to do some caching, so since it was spring break, we decided to do the ones on the IU campus.  The campus was pretty much a ghost town.  The only students left were the ones that couldn't afford to go anywhere.  I wondered if this recession has spoiled some parents plans.  Instead of getting to go on vacation and send their spoiled kids to San Padre, if they just sent their spoiled kids.

We started out with the web cam cache 'X' marks the spot This was my first web cam cache.  Interesting, it's not an ammo can in the woods interesting, but still interesting.  I had tried this one a while back but the web cam page wasn't working.  This time everything went smooth with my wife capturing the photo back home.  There were still a few weirdos around but when made our big Xs and made fools of our selves in public, the weirdos saw we were one of them, and left us alone.  After that everything else was your normal geocaching afternoon in an urban area.

So it was about 8pm and we still wanted a few more finds so we decided to find some more around Bloomington.    I loaded up all the caches around Bloomington that I thought were park and grabs into our GPSr and we lifted light pole skirts until 12:30 am! 

Then for some ungodly reason, the next morning we decided to do it again, and we found geocaches from here to the north side of Indianapolis and back, making our grand total for the weekend 40 I think.  We found 34 in a 24 hour period!  Most of our finds were uneventful, but nice.  We found the Indiana Cache Across America cache which is a real interesting series.  There is a cache hidden in all 50 states and if you find them all there is a bonus cache in Washington D.C..  Now that would be a challenge. 

Along the way we found a nice park in Mooresville, IN that has 10 caches hidden in close proximity.  It has a great mix of ammo cans, micros, and my favorite, a puzzle cache called "Gift"ed.  I had solved the puzzle and deciphered the coordinates from home, but when I updated cachemate in my Q it showed the original coordinates, not the solved coordinates.  (Spoiler Alert)  So Tommy and I decided to solve the puzzle again on the spot, which required the recital of a famous christmas song.  We gathered quite a few stares singing carols to each other in the midst of this busy park.  Then after we deciphered the puzzle again, I realized that cachemate had a check box in the options to show the corrected coordinates, and the answer was already there.  So that was fun, and Tommy thought I was an idiot, which probably isn't far from the truth.  The park also has a devious find called Pioneer Gazebo.  Somewhere hidden on a 10' diameter gazebo is hidden a micro.  Tommy and I thought we looked everywhere and we came up empty handed.  I was convinced that it must not be there anymore, until we came home and logged it, and someone else logged it found that same day.  I'll have to go back and try that one again.  I hope this doesn't end up being another Phoney Cache!  At least phoney cache was near my route for my daily commute to and from work, and I could spend a few minutes each day looking for it.  This Gazebo cache is nowhere near anywhere I travel regularly, ...at least not yet anyway! 

Then we made our way up to the Indianapolis Colts Training Facility to find Go Colts!  Tommy and I are huge Colts fans so we wanted to pay hommage to our team.  By this time I was pretty beat, so Tommy did most of the retreiving on this one.  Then since we were in Indianapolis, I wanted to try one that I have at least 3 DNF's maybe 4.  P.P.S.S. #4 Monument Circle This one I am convinced is not there and you can't tell me otherwise!

So we ended our day on a down note, so I decided we had better go eat at Shapiro's Deli to make us feel better.  I'm not sure an $11 turkey sandwich fit the bill.  Two sandwiches with chips and a drink.  $26!  I could buy 4 foot longs with chips and drinks at Subway for the same amount.  But at Subway I  wouldn't get that NY city asshole attitude like I do at Shapiro's.

Blue Laws

I think the ban of alcohol sales on Sunday in my state of Indiana is ridiculous. Why do we have this law? This outdated law does not benefit anyone. I recently heard someone say that after prohibition was repealed, the law makers at the time made a compromise to the religious "right" by not allowing Sunday sales. I wonder what happens if your priest forgets to buy the blood of jesus on Saturday? If it is true that the ban on Sunday sales of alcohol is for religious reasons, then that law is in violation of the First Amendment, the separation of church and state. In 2007, christmas was on a Tuesday, and you couldn't buy any carry-out alcohol what so ever. To me that is a clear violation of the First Amendment. Why else could you not buy alcohol on that particular Tuesday if not for the anniversary of the birth of a mythological creature. What ever the reason may be, a group called Hoosiers for Beverage Choices is trying to change our laws. Please visit thier website and sign the petition to help change this antiquated law.

Indiana is the only state that discriminates against drug, grocery and convenience store customers by limiting the sale of cold beer to a single segment of the industry (package liquor stores).

This monopoly granted to package liquor stores not only defies common sense but also acts as a hidden tax on consumers- ever wonder why you are required to pay more at a liquor store for cold beer versus the same product warm?

Indiana is one of only fifteen states that completely prohibits the carry-out sale of alcoholic beverages on Sundays.

Since 2002, thirteen states have repealed laws restricting alcohol sales on Sundays.

Indiana is one of only three states that prohibits retailers from selling alcohol on Sunday yet allows restaurants, taverns and numerous sports and community events to sell alcohol by the drink on Sunday.

Sunday is the 2nd busiest grocery shopping day of the week, yet customers are inconvenienced by Indiana’s antiquated prohibition on Sunday carry-out sales.

Indiana loses tax revenue when Hoosiers that live in bordering communities travel to our neighboring states to purchase alcohol on Sunday.

In recent years, the Indiana General Assembly has passed a law extending the hours that bars, taverns and restaurants can sell alcohol on New Year’s Eve even if it falls on a Sunday and a law allowing carry-out sales on New Year’s Day, yet continues to prohibit carry-out sales on Sunday.

We take our dogs over to the spillway on Lake Monroe quite often. This morning the weather was perfect for a walk. But I'm guessing that who ever was there last night probably had a little more fun than us. Seems like they got fucked and fucked up.

Nick's

We went to Nick’s English Hut last night and had a good meal. They have decent food at a decent price, with a pretty good selection of beers. But in all the years that I have been going there I never knew they had Bratwurst on the menu. I don’t know if I overlooked it or if it was new on the menu. But none the less Jon orders it. Here I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.