Thursday, August 9, 2012

First Nano, First Multi, and more!

Happy early birthday GPS, Batman!  My parents let me know today that they are getting me a Garmin eTrex 20 for my birthday in October, and as an early present I'll actually be picking it up from them next week. This allows me to use it on our upcoming vacation to the Jersey Shore.  We'll be visiting Wildwood and Cape May, so I'm hoping to pick up quite a few caches, especially since I will have the GPS.  Woohoo!

I've been picking up caches both on the way to work and on lunch break.  As a rule, I don't actually eat at lunch, for no real reason other than force of habit.  This gives me enough time to get out and pick up a few caches near work, maybe not on a daily basis, but often enough to keep me busy.

I actually have two work sites in PA - Rosemont and Southwest Philadelphia.  I spend 90% of my time in Rosemont, and my range at lunch goes from Springfield to the south, Wayne to the west, a little past Ardmore (almost to Narberth) to the east, and possibly as far as Plymouth Meeting to the north.  There are several hundred caches in that range, so if I budget my time properly I should be able to get to a cache (or several), find it, and get back within an hour.

Recent notable finds - I found my first nano sized cache a few days ago, Old Marple School Playground.  Wow, I knew that these existed and were small, but I didn't expect them to be that small.  I also managed to find another one this morning.  I can see how there is a love/hate thing with nano caches, as they are super easy to hide, but also super easy to find.  It would be easy to flood an area with them and block out potentially more creative hides, but from what I see around here they are almost all in parking lots anyway, so options there are pretty limited.

I also found my first multi cache with help from Jack - Hangin' Here Watchin' Traffic.  I live in an area with loads of trains, and this one required driving to a few train stations and getting some numbers from mileage markers, doing a tiny bit of math, and then picking up the hide.  I was able to swing by both stations on the way to work to get the numbers, and then picked the final stage up after picking Jack up from summer camp.

I've been checking out some of the other local multis, and this falls on the easy side of the scale.  Some of them require quite a bit of driving, so I'll need to reserve them for weekend trips, or spread them out over several work days.

Did not find - I have had several DNFs recently, but I'm chalking this up to experience. I logged one of them where I legitimately thought I was searching the right spot, but not the others where I'm less sure. Compared to what I knew that first day out, all of 2.5 weeks ago, I have learned a ton, and there is nowhere to go but up from here.  I've been reading loads of logs on nearby caches, and we have some local cachers with thousands upon thousands of finds.  I can't wait to crack 100 - hopefully within the next month or so!

Recent caches found:

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