Snagged a few geocaches along Hwy 169, including this one. We walked up to the area and as I was sweeping around a bright shiny tube caught my eye. Hey! It’s right here – “hiding” in plain sight.

On our way south toward Gendler Park, GPS shows a cache in a little roadside park. Both of us armed with GPS’s we raced to see who could find it first. Over here. No. Wait. Over here. Dang. No. Maybe back there…..Jen’s knowledge of all things carpentry worked in her advantage to find this cache. Otherwise, I’d still be out there looking for it. This happy little container was tucked under the tree in a cutout piece of wood. Nice fake out!

Well, enough with the easy finds *wink*. Urban caches abandoned we set out in search of Panther Creek’s cache. Ah, the peaceful Iowa jungle….we go tromping thru here – bushwacking with our shins – when we hit a big patch of stinging nettles. I’ve never know firey pain like that before. It’s like being stung by a dozen wasps.

Both Jenny and I must have hit the motherload of stinging nettle patches because we were cussing and dancing around for a good 8 minutes until the pain subsided. Oh, lookie here…..

We were a little gentler in our steps on the way back to the car. Really should have worn long pants. And shin guards.

Took a week to fly east in search of nice beaches and good times with the family and hey, they were up for going geocaching! *wink*

Family’s first find at a home improvement store parking lot. Not pretty but we sure had fun doing the “Drunken Bee Dance” geocachers are known for….gps was bouncing the location of this cache quite a bit but we came up with it. I know my hair looks like I crawled into that storm drain to get the cache but no….that’s just the infamous “humid hair”:

On to the next find, everyone getting pretty jazzed now. A tough find but the nephew spots it – ah, he’s a natural – I’m so proud!

We find 4 more geocache’s that day and finished it off with a round of extra large slurpees.

Full of brash and sass from our geocaching conquests, we took time to relax at the beach.

Was up near Ankeny volunteering with Easter Seals at Crop for Camp on a sunny Sunday when we got a mini break in the afternoon. I had about an hour and a half before we started end of event cleanup. Hum….I’m Craving Chocolate Sauce. Good thing I packed my GPS. The Outback Steakhouse across the street from this cache has reportedly the best chocolate sauce in Des Moines. Now that’ll warm the body real good.

GPS pointing at that tree….yes, that one surrounded by the ice sheet sidewalk. Oh well, I’ve always wanted to try the luge.

Ha ha – a great UPS (“unnatural pile of sticks”) here:

Time to go warm up and hit that chocolate sauce! UPS peace!

‘Cause they’ll never stay home and they’re always cachin’, even on day’s like this:

A race to the top to find this nano cache… hee hee, we’re the Outlaws:

Gloves, I don’t need no stinkin’ gloves. Well, actually that would have been nice. Never you mind – on to the next cache titled “Willie Nelson”. Oh, look, more snow…. well, if you got the gps honey, i’ve got the time.

I left this little German Police Travel Bug here to try and keep Willie out of trouble. Good luck with that.

I can’t wait to get on the road again…

Relatively warm yesterday….well, relatively being 31 degrees, I loaded a few urban caches in my GPS to see if I could find them downtown Des Moines. With urban cache’s I’ve got a chance that they won’t be completely buried in snow. Ok, let’s go!

Did a loop around the Library to head back west on Grand and the proximity alarm on the GPS goes off (wow, Jen I love this feature!) so I make a quick left and park at the top of the block. No muggles to speak of, it’s a wet, cold, gloomy Saturday, so I’ve the run of the block.

GPS bouncing quite a bit on this one as I’m walking between two very tall buildings – one being the namesake of this cache – The Meredith Corporation.

Did a few laps up and down the street. GPS still fussy so had to use my jedi geosense – aaaah, there she is!

Walking back to the truck, I pulled up the nearest cache to my location – no way! It’s just at the next block! Jumped in the truck and squared around to go west again on Grand. Quick right turn at the WHO headquarters and the proximity alarm sounds again. Nice. Pull over at a parking meter and open the door – oh, ha, there’s piled snow waist high here. Hey, I’m not leaving without finding this cache, so I slide out of the truck into the snow. A few steps later and I’m free of the white beast.

Hum, gotta be around here somewhere…..

I take a peek at my notes for this cache. Clue is Matthew 27:51. Fortunately I wrote down this verse in my notebook. Well, that was absolutely no help whatsoever. I need a sign God – a sign! Oh, there it is.

Quick trip down to Florida to visit friends and family – with a Geocaching adventure of course!

In my little town there is a Veteran’s Memorial park on Main Street. All these years I’ve driven by here I didn’t know there was a geocache right up under this truck in a cammo’d film canister!

Yes, it’s real. A real Hughy Heli that you can walk up to and climb about.

Next stop – an “icon” in our small town – the WALMART! Cache was called “Always” but the difficulty level was a 2 with a terrain of 1. Hum, can’t be that hard right?  Had to use geo-fake (the pretend use of the gps as a cell phone) to get a good look “around”. Finally spotted this after a good 15 minutes scrubbing the bushes with my feet – oy! Pull this hook and a long coat hanger device comes out with a film canister attached to the end of it – niiiiice! Now getting it out for this vertically challenged human, there was the difficulty rating right there.

Met Dad for lunch at a local favorite restaurant. Just so happens there’s a cache here too so I introduced Dad to Geocaching.

Fried caches not on the menu. Boo!

That concludes this Florida geocaching adventure with “the sign of the catfish”.

Alright, so that’s not exactly how Shakespeare wrote the verse in Merchants of Venice, but none-the-less n’ere snow nor freezing fog shall reign the cruel maddness that is a winter gone too long without geocaching.

Drove out towards Gray’s Lake / DSM Water Works hoping to find a few caches that were not submerged under feet of snow. Oh, this looks promising. After wading out to this gazebo and climbing up to reach above one of the roof timbers, I was able to fetch the cache!

With this “boost” to the ego and ignoring the numbing return of feeling in my toes, I proceeded to the next cache across the street. What are all these people doing out walking around a frozen lake at noon already?! I used my super decoy of “hey, lets take a picture of the sign” to swoop in and grab the cache – a small magnet attached to the bottom of this sign:

Stopped by one of my favie cafe’s downtown, Ritual Cafe, to warm up a bit and “steel” myself for this find. Took forever to locate this little guy. As you can see, it’s barely the size of my fingernail, magnetically attached to the backing of one of these steel beams:

“Oh, I am fortune’s fool!” – from Romeo and Juliet

I notice that most of my winter, aka “snow”, pictures have this dull gray color to them. For quick white balance correction in Gimp, open the image. Now from the menu on the Image, choose COLOR | AUTO | WHITE BALANCE

click image for a larger version

Gimp’s auto white balance has been pretty reliable to quickly set the correct tones in my grayish photos. See the results here:

click image for a larger version

And there you go – one click white balance correction in Gimp!

Some quick pics from my house in Iowa during the Blizzard of 09. Let’s review.

• 14.5 inches of snow
• 40+ mph wind
• 7 degrees

Jenny and I drove up to Ankeny, Iowa to Kidman Tree Farm to pick out a Christmas tree. We spotted a cute spruce with a sparkle in her branches so we took her home.

Oh, you think that’s the whole story huh? Nah! We were out to geocache on one of the last semi-warm days here in Iowa! And a banner day at that – we found all 4 of 4 geocaches.

See how obvious caches are! Take a look thru the Nancy-vision 3000:

Yes, it was prickly but I was not to be denied:

Last one of the day is along a deserted bike path near one of the area lakes. It’s deserted because it’s freezing cold out. Great because this one is a difficulty 2 1/2.  Sweet! No need for stealth. Riiiiight.

I’m up a tree (giving one heck of a monkey impersonation) when two ladies and a baby go strolling by while Jenny is taking this picture. Don’t worry, I’m using my Jedi invisibility cloak.