Geocaching December 2021

Another round of geocaching successes and failures!

My son and I tried to find Eagle's Nest in High Ridge Park near our home. The hike down to the Little Patuxent River was fun and challenging. 

Off the paved trail fairly quickly

Climbing down the ridge

A holy tree!

Close to the river

By the time we made it down to the river, the GPS was pointing back uphill, which was up a lot of rocks. We tried a couple of different ways to climb, eventually getting to an area that seemed like a spot for eagles to nest. We looked all over but did not make the find. It was fun to hike there anyway.

On the wrong side of the boulder

On another day, after delivering some Christmas packages, I found a couple of caches in the Clemens Crossing neighborhood of Columbia, Maryland. The first was Clemens Crossing Navidad #2-Oblong Cul-de-sacs. The cache owner has made a series of caches themed on the neighborhood and the fact that they are hosting Christmas for their out-of-country family. The other half of the name refers to the Clemens Crossing cul-de-sacs that have little islands in the middle. This cache is hidden on one such island!

Talk about an exposed hiding spot!

The next cache was Walk to Clemens #1. Unfortunately, #2 had a ton of "did not find" logs, so I did not even try. This one was easy to find once I looked at the logs and discovered others had been misdirected by the coordinates. One of the other cachers left a photo which was a dead giveaway for the location. 

Somewhere in there

Another Navidad cache was nearby, Clemens Crossing Navidad #5-Bridges. Unfortunately, the parks service was washing the bridges right where the cache is! I planned to come back to the neighborhood to find some more of the Navidad caches.

I hope the cache isn't power-washed away!

A couple of trees were recently cut down, the stumps were interesting.

A hollow trunk?

My last cache for this excursion was YES Outlet #3 (Bradley Lane). I parked near some fake dear that fooled me at first glance.

So still!

This cache is part of a series about "No Outlet" signs that are misinformation. Presumably the roads changed since the sign was put up. The cacher suspects an overly-agressive (or maybe overly-shy) home owners association trying to keep traffic out of their neighborhood. It seems like a fun series, I will have to research where #1 and #2 are.

Take the top sign off!

While shopping one day, I finally found Bread Basket 2 which is in the middle of a small, busy parking lot. The cache is named after the restaurant in the picture below.

The hiding spot is in here some where, but not inside the store

I went back to the Clemons Crossing neighborhood with my son and my father-in-law to find more of the Navidad caches. The first one was Clemons Crossing Navidad #1 - Tot Lots. The cache commemorates all the playground in the area. The cache was a little challenging to find. I used the hint since regular searching was not working.

One of many local public playgrounds

The next cache, Clemons Crossing Navidad #7 - Recreation, was another tricky find. The coordinates pointed us toward to a small hole in the wall that looked like it had a plastic container. The hint for the cache mentioned magnetics, which did not fit with our find. With a little more looking, we found the cache in an entirely other location!

A recreation park!

The next navidad, Clemons Crossing Navidad #6 - Schools, is near the Atholton High School. The cache is located in the woods just behind the baseball field. Grandpa found a bunch of foul balls while my son and I found the cache.

Neighborhood trails behind the school

Our next stop was my nemesis from the week before, Clemons Crossing Navidad #5 - Bridges, which is by a patch of bridges along the trail. The bridge was easy to find, the cache not so much. We wound up talking to a couple of muggles about what we were doing. This cache also required checking the hint. We had to get closer to the water to make the find.

One of the many bridges in Clemons Crossing

I ended the year with a total find count of 526 finds. It was a good year of geocaching and maybe I'll make it to 600 in the next year. My ambition is to find five caches a month, which is not enough to make it to 600. Maybe I will be an overachiever?