Nikki and I went for a ride to Greenville today to go have a picnic at Kristie and Brad's Moosehead Camp. Of course, you can't go for a long ride like that without mapping out some waypoints along the way to find some caches! And...Nikki's never been, so I thought this would be a great introduction for her.
Our first stop was on the Greenville Road on the ride there. What should have been relatively easy to find, was not found by us! It's listed as "What a spectacle" and I suspect, I must have been quite a spectacle to Nikki as I was tramping through the woods in my flip-flops (yes, I did bring sneakers, just didn't think I actually needed them on this nice wooded trail)! According to the GPS, I was within 1 foot of the cache, but after going around and around, getting gouged by trees and possibly walking through poison ivy, I gave up. I lifted every single log in there and found a spot it should have been under, so I'm quite sure this one has been muggled.
After a rainy lunch at camp, we headed back home and took a side-trip to Dexter for a Reny's fix and what I thought would be a Dunkin Donuts coffee for the ride home. Guess what...Dexter doesn't have a DD and they never did. What dream was I in where I actually drank a cup of DD coffee that I bought in Dexter??
Back on the road, we had a few caches to look for in Guilford. The first took us to this historical covered bridge. According to my coordinates, we we supposed to jump 50 feet to the water to find this one. I don't think so. The coordinates were going crazy and we walked back and forth to find a logical spot, but here again, we left without a find. At this point, I was quite sure Nikki must be thinking I had no idea what I was doing! She even got her phone out and started texting as soon as we got in the car. I said, "Are you telling everyone what a loser your mother is?" (She wasn't, or so she said.)
We had several others to check, but it was raining so we settled on one last one, called Deer Crossing. Here the land was posted, but the owner placed it, so it was A-OK to be there! I must tell you, Mark wrote the clues for me last night, and Nikki and I tried to read them. Here's how I read this clue, "Easy peasy-bone of a tree-just look around and you'll find me!" As soon as we rode by the spot, Nikki said, "Hey, I bet it's by that tree right there." I looked in the direction she pointed and headed there as soon as we got out of the car. "That tree right there" that I saw her pointing to turned out to be about 20 feet from the actual tree she was pointing to! So, I was dumbfounded. Here's where I read the clue out loud again and said, "What the heck is a 'bone of a tree'? Nikki said, "I dunno" as Guinness, her dog, was pulling her everywhere except where she wanted to be! I began mumbling, "Bone, bone, bone. Oh, I get it. Bone means dead, so there must be a dead tree somewhere." That's when I walked over to the dead tree stump Nikki had originally pointed out and I immediately saw it and accidentally yelled, "I found it!" Then I moved away and told Nikki to head over this way to find it. And then Guinness helped her out by dragging her right through the geocache site until she let go of his leash and he did a little exploring of his own.
So, we found our first (and last) cache of the day. Nikki humored me by being silly while taking all the trinkets out of the ammo box, we both got our feet dirty, and we laughed a lot. I'd call this day a success, even if we did find just one measly cache! And by the way...there was no "bone of a tree," according to Mark, he wrote, "Base of a tree." Silly me.
