Fall is a great time.

Enjoying the beginning of the fall colors. This is the best time of the year to be out in the parks and the wooded areas that are all around the city. All we have to do is look for them. The colors are only going to get better as the days progress. Soon there will be a blanket of white and the colors will be gone till next year. Take the time and look for them before their gone, you won't be disappointed.

The Bash!

Well I had been looking forward to the 2009 Midwest Geobash (GC1HKTM) at the Fulton County Fairgrounds in Wauseon Ohio since March of this year. The Bash is my first Mega-Event.

I decided to camp at the fairgrounds, mostly because I could not find a better price than $30.00 for four days and three nights. So I headed out, bought a text and sleeping pad and all the other small creature comforts I would need.

As the day approached I started to feel like I was back on active duty preparing for a major field exercise. Keep in mind when I retired from the Army I swore I would never sleep in a tent, on a sleeping pad again, unless hell had frozen over.

I left out on the morning of the 23rd at 0700 to set up camp and check in by 1000 when the event officially started. I would be there thru Sunday the 26th. I took off an additional day from work to pack up the car.

The morning of the Bash it was raining in Cleveland, and it rained all the way to the Bash. As I set up the tent it was raining and this task took about 10 minutes. The finishing touch to my camp site was the flag pole with the MIA-POW Flag proudly flying in the breeze. Finally the rain stopped and the sun came out.

I had the honor of watching good friends Michael and Maggie of TeamDotOne sign the event logbook . This was a special time as the event was their 5,000 found cache. Then I spent the day caching in the local area with them and enjoying good times. Later we attended all of the event activities as well having a great time sitting around campfires just enjoying everyone’s company. All in all there were about 30 of us from the local area all with our tents clustered in the same area. All in all there were about 1,300 people from all over the country and from Canada there for this great event.

The weather Friday was gorgeous and we spent time swapping PathTags, doing the Poker Run, and making new friends. I headed of to bed around 2300 on Friday night after spending some quality time around the campfire. Friends told me that as I slept soundly in my tent around 0600 on Saturday Mother Nature decided to test everyone’s tent pitching skills. They told me many people were up in the rain trying to put their tents back up. People were heading for cover in their cars as their tents collapsed. May pop-up campers were leaking. All the while I slept thru all of the excitement. At 0700 I awoke to the sound of a light rain on the tent. I thought to my self what a great way to wake up! I had never slept better. As I emerged from my text I stood up and stretched. I filled my lungs with the smell of a fresh rain on the grass. Then I looked around and saw many tents flat on the ground. As I looked around all I could think of was, thank god for Army training in how to properly pitch a tent. Your tax dollars at work! People looked at me and asked - “Didn’t your hear the storm?” “How the heck did you sleep thru all the noise?” and the one I liked the most “How the heck did your tent stay up when the others didn’t make it?”

I looked at them, smiled and replied, “Army Training”.

I spent the rest of the day with friends just enjoying being with everyone. And on Saturday night we watched the space station pass over head. This was the best vacation I have had in over 10 years.

I got up early on Sunday morning, broke camp and headed home. I had a mission to complete. I had to do the cache page write up and hide a very special geocache. I had to hide the geocache honoring TeamDotOne reaching 5K at the 2009 Midwest Geobash. The cache was approved Monday morning and held from being released to the world wide Geocaching community until TeamDotOne were able to claim First to Find honors on their special cache. You can find their cache “TeamDotOne’s 5K Milestone (GC1WD9V)“ by following the link to the cache.

This year was an absolute blast. I fully intend to be at the 2010 bash!

The Road to 3K

Since my last post many caching memories have taken place. I have cached in eight states, and reached my 3,000 finds geocache milestone on February 7th 2009. I also went on to hide 23 geocaches for other geocachers to find. I have cached in Ohio where I live and Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, and West Virginia. During that time I have created my own path tag to give to close caching friends as well as a signature wooden nickel. I have even joined three close friends brewing our own bier that we brewed, bottled, and labeled. It’s know as “Golden Chum Bucket Brew”.

In May I will be going to the Mega Event called GeoWoodstock VII in Bell Buckle Tennessee. I’m looking forward to meeting cachers from far and wide. I hear there will be people from as far away as Nova Scotia. I’ll be spending the four days and three nights in a tent at one of the local camp grounds. Gee just like old times on active duty with the U.S. Army.

There have been more memories created with my extended family the Geochums than I have room to list. And to be sure the caching bug does not die with me, I have gotten two of my daughters, and my granddaughter hooked on the sport as well as my two son-in-laws. They are “The Army-Brats“, Joni & Dave and “Team M.A.N.“ Melissa, Aaliyah, and Nathan. The pictures are some of my favorite memories from the last two years.

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!

Finding Number 500

Today is January 14th 2007. Today I reached a caching milestone. While out caching I realized that I was about to find the 500th cache. Finding 500 caches means I am half way to the major milestone of finding 1,000 caches. I could not have asked for a nicer cache to come in at this milestone. The cache is named Gorgeous Gorge and was placed by the Bedford Historical Society. The cache site is located at 41 degrees 23.050 minutes North by 081 degrees 31.914 minutes West. The area is rich in history and is a beautiful area to spend time outside enjoying an area that can make you feel as though you have stepped back into time. As I listened to the sound of the water rushing over the falls in the gorge I started to think of times past. The sound of the falls made me forget that it was the year 2007. As I listened to the river I began to dream. As I dreamed, I began to travel back in time to when the area was wild and untamed. As I stood near the falls, I dreamed of times long ago. Times when the wilderness stretched so far that the moon would pass thru the night sky more times than you could count. As I dreamed, my head was pounding with the deafening roar of the river; the heavy spray of water from the river soaked thru my clothing, down to my very soul; and the cold… the bone chilling cold that would not go away. As I continued dreaming, I saw times that had past. I saw people and events form a time long, long ago that I did not recognize. As I watched the events play out in my mind, I became more and more confused. How could these things be happening? I asked my self, “Where was I?” “Where had I gone?” As I tried to make sense of all that was happening to me I started to hear a voice. A voice of someone in the distance calling out to me. As I dreamed; I struggled, trying to find the source of the voice. As I strained to hear, and see, I slowly realized that the voice was coming from the river. How could this be? As I strained harder, looking at the base of the falls trying to find the voice. A ghostly image appeared at the bottom of the falls, and was calling out to me. I could not believe what I was seeing; neither man nor beast could survive in that violent area at the base of the falls. The ghostly image seemed to be giving a warning, “careful small and insignificant human, careful; or I will take you from this place. I will take you from this world and you will never return.” As I struggled to wake from the dream like trance, I realized that I had ventured to close to the falls. I look down and became dizzy, stumbling back away from the falls. Later, I tried to make sense of what had happened to me. Could it be that the river has a spirit as the Native Americans believe it does? Is it possible that the spirit of this river saved me with it’s warning? I know what I believe, but you will have to decide for yourself.

The Year 2006 in Pictures

The end of my first year of geocaching is rapidly arriving. To the Geocaching world I am know as Geo-Sarge. Since I first started geocaching in April 2006 I have seen many places I did not know existed and made many new friends along the way. During the year I have found over 418 hidden caches, hidden three caches of my own, and attended three group-caching events. To help keep track of the distance traveled I turned my Army Dog Tags into a travel bug. A travel bug allows the geocaching.com website to track the mileage between each cache as the travel bug moves from cache to cache. Since I first started in April I have traveled over 1,409 miles going from cache to cache using over 50 gallons of gas. Since the year has been filled with many great memories I thought I would share some of the pictures of those memories collected during my journey. Remember, it’s not about the number of caches found or hidden, it’s about the journey.