I found my first geocache today! The weather was chilly, but it was sunny and otherwise pleasant, so I took a walk along one of the local woodland trails. I had a couple of caches in mind: one that had previously eluded me, and another that I had passed on the way back from that first one but which I was too frustrated to make an effort to find. That former one eluded me once again. Supposedly it's an "easy" find, but I just didn't see anything man-made-looking in the area, besides litter. :( Since it was last found only four days ago, I doubt it was stolen.

I did find the other geocache, though, in an area between the paved trail and a creek that used to be home to a couple of beavers.

Now that I have a map of my county's extensive trail system and the weather's getting warmer, I expect to hunt for caches more often.

This morning I decided to make my first foray into geocaching since clahey got me into it up in Cambridge. The sky was clear, the air a relatively pleasant sixty degrees F (~16°C). I collected some trinkets (for exchange) from all over the house and tied them up in a little sack. The cache I had in mind is less than 2500 feet from my house. The lesson I learned today was just how surprisingly far that distance can be.

The first part of my journey was easy enough: follow some high-power lines past a humming substation and into the woods. The problem with these woods is that there wasn't really any apparent path, and it was dense with thorny branches. I could have used a machete and some thick gloves. My progress was very slow, as I was continually snagged by barbs; I was not prepared for that kind of terrain. Why would anyone have put a geocache in a place so punishing to reach?

I was tempted to give up, but the woods finally opened up a little past a rusty old wire fence, at a stream I crossed without much difficulty. And finally, my GPS receiver informed me, I was there. And this was where I realized the foolhardiness of not reading the hint for finding the cache that was provided online with its coordinates. Here I was in the woods, and there was nothing that looked out of place. Trees, branches, a bed of leaves on the ground. I walked around and around—I must have walked practically right over it—but nothing looked suspicious at all. I gave up and found a conveniently paved trail only a few dozen feet away. Doh.

On my way back home I passed another cache, but I was running short on time and didn't want to venture down over some rocks to the sewage pipe that seemed to be in the same place my GPS receiver was telling me the cache was.

So I'm 0 for 2 on caches, but I did get some nice pictures.