Wednesday, April 25, 2007

The Old Stump




I took a day off from work to get out and enjoy the warm spring weather. The day is Thursday, April 19th 2007. Today is also the day of the monthly Northeast Ohio Geocachers cache and coffee night at Cyber Pete’s in Bedford Ohio. My goal today is to find my 800th cache before going to the coffee night. While I was out enjoying the warm weather today with O-Dis (My GPS Receiver) we came upon a cache named “The Old Stump” that has been hidden by fellow Geocacher snppla. The cache site is located 41 degrees 20.690 minutes North by 081 degrees 27.520 minutes West. As we approached the cache site O-Dis kept leading me toward the broken tree in the distance. The closer we got to the tree the taller the stump became, and we soon realized that the tree broke and fell at a point about 20 feet up from the ground. We looked in all the obvious areas but could not find the elusive geocache container. We were looking for a small Tupperware food storage container that measured about five inches square and about three inches deep. After about 20 minutes with out much success I walked back about twenty feet to get a fresh look at the stump and tree. As I stood there in the woods looking at the tree scratching my head I noticed the corner of something clear and also green. Could it be? Well, we walked back toward the tree and it disappeared from sight. Odd, geocache containers normally don’t move on their own. I backed up and the object reappeared near the break in the tree. This could only mean one thing. I would have to walk up the broken section of the tree toward the area where the tree was still attached to the stump. Well, times wasting, so I walk to the end of the tree that is on the ground. As I walked up the tree and near the break I noticed a three foot gap that would need to be crossed to reach the elusive prize. I carefully stepped across the gap and looked down. Yep, there it is. The prize was at the top of the stump. Once I had the cache in hand I signed the log and left one of my signature Geo-Sarge Wooden Nickels. After I placed the cache back in it’s hiding spot I sat down to think about my adventure. As I was enjoying the warm weather and the feeling of success I looked around enjoying the great view from my perch. It was about this time that I looked down. Holy &$*%@!! What the heck was I thinking? It didn’t look this far up from down there? I must be nuts! What looked like 20 feet from down there, looks like100 feet from up here! No problem, I’ll just stand up and walk down the way I came. Somehow that always sounds easier than it ends up being. Once I had my feet back on the ground I realized that this tree was a very special tree. This tree held my 800th find. What a great old tree!