Geocaching March 2025

The month start with some spotty caching here and there. I am not back into the full swing of things yet after the death of my son.

My first set of caches was during my daughter's robotics competition. I dropped her off early and took an hour to find some caches at nearby John Downs Memorial Park. The Wishing Bench is in a formal garden from back in the day when the land was a summer home. The bench is still there and is supposed to grant wishes if you sit quietly and wish hard.

The wishing bench

The pic with me wishing

Also in the park are Lying Downs on the Job, Downs and Outs, and Ups and Downs. They are scattered around the park, making for some nice walks.

Beach part of the caching

Busted with a bowtie

Outside the park was LSLS #1 Blair Loves Books, a geocache part of the Lake Shore Love Series. I only found this first one.

Later, I returned to the Warriors and Brothers In Arms trail with Tunnel Rat and Dorie Miller. Nearby Glendale's Finest is an easy find behind a fire station.

The "tunnel" in Tunnel Rat

Pointe du Hoc is another WBIA find the next day. The day after was Pi Day (3/14) and I found a round-containered Use Your Head. 

On the second weekend of my daughter's robotic competition, I was close enough to DC to sneak in and find Masonic - Scottish Rite Temple, a wherigo cache that told stories about the Masonic Temple in the nation's capital. 

Locus of the cache

An earthcache took me to Meridian Hill Park to find a statue called "Serenity." Serene But Weathered Carrara Marble describes the deterioration of the statue from vandalism and the elements.

Seen better days

Just outside the park I found a fun container for Slow Going, a traditional cache.

I few days later I picked up two cemetery caches: Chapel Hill - Waterloo and Old Salem Church and Cemetery. 

Chapel Hill Cemetery, on a hill as described

Old Salem Church

Sneak Attack was a tricky find near the church--I needed a photo from a previous finder. 

Notables in Forest Glen Cemetery is part of a series of multicaches focusing on famous people buried in the DC area. It was easy to solve. On the way to the final cache I found Carolina Wren and after the find Can You Hear Me Now #2. 

Reston Rocks is an earthcache next to a lake in Reston, Virginia. The rocky outcropping is unlikely and provides a little info on the ancient history of the area.

A nice lake

Rocks!

I avenged a DNF (Did Not Find) at Check Me Out... by a roadside. Also nearby, I discovered Among the Rocks and Mints-Mints-Mints.... 

Carol 103 west was an easy find during my youngest's orchestra rehearsal. The next day I had CCT - 50 Events - Challenge Cache Trail done.

We went for a kayaking adventure in Annapolis and I was able to get a picture for the Ego Alley virtual cache.

Me not in the water

On a trip to Brookside Gardens, I took a picture for the Welcome to Brookside Gardens virtual cache and the Brookside Gardens Labyrinth multi-cache. I also completed all the stages for the local Adventure Lab but couldn't make it to the bonus cache that day.

For the virtual

At the labyrinth

I finished the month filling another calendar day with a mystery/unknown cache, CCT - 3 Continents, which requires the cacher to have found geocaches on three different continents. We honeymooned in Middle Earth, I mean, New Zealand, so I had credit for Oceana in addition to North America and Europe.

I end the month with 34 finds and a grand total of 1757.

Geocaching February 2025

The geocaching month started off with me visiting my brother in Virginia and squeezing a few caches during the visit. Dunn Loring Cache was an easy find even if the park had more trash than I was expecting.

I guess the lamp didn't fit in the can?

Travel Goodies Cache was nearby and an easy, though unphotogenic, find.

The next day I found Out on a Limb, obviously on a tree, and I'm Watching You!, which involved an eye, not a camera.

The limb location

I went to Rockville for some shopping and made the amazing discover of F. Scott Fitzgerald's grave! The Great Gatsby is a multicache based off the cemetery. Also in the area, I found Foxy, a fun wherigo cache, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, another multicache based off the church where the cemetery is, Across the Street from East Rockville, a simple cache, and J&J Beer, or is it Bear?, another easy regular cache.

Fitzgerald final resting place

The fancier grave I thought was Fitzgerald's

More of the graveyard

The church

It was a slow month with only 11 finds, bringing the grand total to 1723.

Geocaching August 2024

After getting back from the California trip (which had geocaching in August too!), I renewed efforts locally. I found Changes in Latitude Challenge: 15 Degrees, Psychedelic Word Games #2, and Arlington FLAG. The "FLAG" is "Free Little Art Gallery" much like those free little libraries that are all over. Instead of books, there's tiny works of art on display. The gallery has a "take one, leave one" policy. I did not have any art on hand so I only took a picture.

Arlington FLAG

A more typical hiding area for the psychedelic cache

Lunch with Fuzzydave Is Always a Good Idea is a mystery cache that has a GZ near my home. I finally got around to signing the log after a month. Sometimes things are just busy! 

I drove over to Virginia for some errands an found Radio 1999: ....Baby One More Cache. It was an easy puzzle to solve once I figured out the key to the tunes. Too rainy for photos, though!

A challenge cache with a random assortment of requirement is hidden at a rest area on I-95. Challenge -100 Livestock + 100 Stroller + 100 Kids is easy to find, except for needing to find at least 100 caches with a livestock attribute, 100 with the stroller attribute, and 100 with the kids attribute. I didn't really plan to qualify for this but the geochecker showed I did, so I made the find.

Cache is over there!

I avenged a DNF at a cemetery, though the first time I could not make the find because the grave I was looking for was next to a burial in progress. An early weekday morning found the graveyard empty, so I could find Anna Schwarzkopf, a relative of the cache owner. The information on a nearby headstone gave me coordinates to the final find.

Cemetery

Near the cemetery I found a string of geocaches along Route 2. Chloe is a "friendly" geocacher is by a restaurant. Since I visited during the week, I had no problem with the breakfast crowd.

I worked at one of these in Jersey

Maybe I'll come back on the weekend?

I also found Chloe and Pop-Pop go for a walk and DD & BR. 

The next day I made some finds on Columbia trails, including an easy letterbox cache called Forward then Backward and Along Lizzie's Walk. They were both easy finds, nice on a hot afternoon!

Which way do I go?

I finally qualified for the Backyard BBQ Challenge and made the find in Columbia. Then I went over to Virginia and found one of the cornerstones of the District of Columbia, DC Cornerstone. The original layout for the district was a diamond shape including parts of Virginia and Maryland, straddling the Potomac River. The Virginia land was given back to the Commonwealth. The stone is still there. I also found Changes in Longitude Challenge: 25 Degrees, which I easily qualified for. The log was soaked so I could only barely sign it.

The cornerstone and me

A wet log

The Monday morning coffee club had a mega-travel bug that begged for a group picture. 

Photo by BansheeShadow

Beat the Clock in Maryland is a challenge cache that makes cachers go find four other caches hidden in Schooley Mill Park. Two of the other caches have been inactivated, so I did not do the run. I also finally finished A Drive Through Laurel's History 1/6, a multi-cache that goes all over Laurel, Maryland, gathering information for the final find. It was a fun cache that I am glad to have completed.  

That clock is really beaten

After a Saturday morning event, a group of cachers decided to solve the difficult Getting Your Bearing. I joined in the group. We wandered about downtown Sykesville gathering information then drove up to a park a mile away to make the final find. During the excursion, I picked up Black Friday, named after a flood in 1868 that wiped out most of the town but not Saint Joseph's Church and some other higher-up buildings. It's a virtual cache so I had to take a picture there.

View from the church steps

View of the church steps

Playground by the final stage of the multi-cache

The next week, I filled a calendar day with Starfish and Coffee which is near the Monday morning coffee crew meet-up (though I found it on a Sunday). 

Somewhere in there

I found one more bit of the Columbia Villages Adventure Lab, this time gathering information about a fish at the Long Reach Village Center.

Adventure Labs, now with fish!

For my last day of caching, I went to Annapolis for a handful. First was Random Wiki Puzzle: Airspeed Ambassador in the back of an office park. Then I went to a graveyard for Nightbreed Horror Series #3. The next three were all in walking distance of each other by the Parole downtown. Festival of Lights Night 8 (That's All Folks) is the end of a series I will have to start working on. Nearby is the multi-cache She Sell LOBs by the Seashore which was only two stages, so very easy to complete. The final stage put me near Festivus Cachimus (no relation to the Festival of Lights caches!), another easy find. 

The graveyard

The month ends at 38 finds, 418 total for the year, and 1439 overall total caches!

Geocaching May 2023

The month of May started off quietly, especially since I only needed to fill two days on the calendar.

My first find was The Ice Cream Comb..., another cryptically named cache. The container did have a fake ice cream cone in it. I'm not sure what the "comb" part was. Ground zero was in some woods behind an office building. I went straight to the tree below, figuring it was the cache site, but it was not. At least it was picture-worthy.

No cache here

My next find was Columbia Dog Park, which is indeed near the Columbia Dog Park next to Cedar Lane Park. The find was fairly easy in middle Spring, but I feel the undergrowth will take over soon!

View back to civilization from the cache

Then I found my 800th cache, an easy find on a roadside near my kids' orthodontist. Holiday Joy Cache... is yet another "..." cache in my area. The weather was glorious.

Nearby road looks 800 years old!

I am near the cache but not near 800 years old!

#801 was A New Year's Gift, a previous DNF (Did Not Find) for me. The cache owner put out a new container at an easier to reach location. No need to go into the cemetery!

A hidden-away cemetery

Also nearby is Ximenez, an easy find after solving the online puzzle. Too bad it wasn't lunchtime or I'd have had plenty of good options for eats!

Sadly, not hungry

Later on, I found two mystery caches whose final locations were in the same shopping center. First, The Mystery Box was a pandemic-era cache that had me finishing a lot (and I mean a lot) of online jigsaw puzzles to get the final coordinates. It took a couple of weeks of ten minutes here and ten minutes there.

View from the cache

Then I found Fun With Syllables, another puzzle, this time matching together syllables to solve clues and get the coordinates. It was more fun that the previous one.

Far from the muggle shopping

On a day off school, I took the kids to Fairland Regional Park to find some caches. We started by the ball fields and found 42(1-31-19 - 10-24-72), a tribute to Jackie Robinson. 42 was his jersey number and the dates are his birth and death. My youngest made the find before I did!

By the ball field, naturally

On a bridge we found Crash's Lunch Time Cache #4. Sadly, I needed the hint to clue in to the right spot for the find.

Hanging at GZ

Further south in the park we found another bridge with an Earthcache, River Bank Erosion. I learned a bit about how rivers and streams get bendy and have different sides in the bends. Then I looked off the bridge and answered some questions about the erosion happening on the Little Paint Branch (which feeds into the Anacostia River, one of the rivers that go by Washington, D.C.).

Looking serious, or maybe hypnotized

Since we weren't far away, we went for LoZ Series: Forest Temple Intro. This is part of the Legend of Zelda series in the greater Maryland area. This set has five caches in the park, though the rest are further north on the opposite side of the Little Paint Branch from where we parked. We will work on the rest of the series another day. The hide was right by a dirt bike challenge area.

Bike park in the woods

Bush Forest Ruins is the home of some ancient (by American standards) ruins. It's a virtual cache, so there is no container to find and no log to sign. I had to collect some information from a memorial stone and take a picture of me at the ruins.

Self in the ruins

The ruins

I finished off the last empty day on my calendar with two caches in Columbia, Maryland. Spot Runs Again! is a mystery cache that has a logic problem to solve in order to get the right coordinates. I love logic problems, so this was a no-brainer (hmmm...that's not the right adjective) for me. The container was rewarding too!

Such a cute container!

A rest stop in the woods

Frank Ryman (Resurrection) is by a grave in the middle of the woods. Wyman was a Civil War soldier who was born in 1838 in Syracuse, New York. He enlisted in August, 1861, and was discharged in June, 1865, while stationed in Alexandria, Virginia. He married a Virginia lady and moved to the Columbia area (though the town of Columbia did not exist at that point) where he kept a farm. He died in 1880.

Frank Wyman grave

Info on the sign (click to enlarge)

The month ends with a full calendar for May and a grand total of 811 finds.