Happy Hippie Fools Day 2012 Run

So the boys and I headed out on an April Fools adventure to Watertown and the Happy Hippie Fools Day 2012 Run was born. Spent a couple of hours caching around town and ended the day with 45 finds, no DNFs & 1 TB to move plus we ran into Hearty Soles while working on GC32Y7N. It was a great day to be out, filled with some country road PnGs, some parks in the city where the boys could play, WSQs, a few tricky nanos & a lot of fun.

Still have a bit of work to do in cleaning out the area, including most of the puzzle caches in town and a few more evil little nano hides. I'll have to make plans for another trip out to clear out the remaining 25 or so caches around Watertown. Although I do want to wait and tackle GC11PJ3 for a milestone. It looks like a lot of fun and hopefully I can assemble a group to watch my insanity as I try and tackle this one.







This is TB3DEPB Odgi's Voyage, which has presumably been missing since the summer of 2010. I just pulled him out of a cache container that has been sitting in my basement for the last several months! It seems that he somehow managed to escape Roehl-Carver Park where he was listed and make his way into the final for my very first hide. No one ever logged him into the cache or discovered him while he was there. Probably because the coin part is so small that it just looks like swag. Anyways, several months back, I had removed the original container and replaced it. After glancing in the jar and seeing the logbook and a bunch of swag, it had gone to the workshop. There poor Odgi languished until today when I decided to repurpose the container and as I was looking through the stuff inside, I spotted the coin and saw that there was a tracking code on there. I find it kind of ironic that the boys and I actually found the cache where this was listed when we were at the Happy Hollow Event last year and left a note stating that the coin was gone, and then he he ends up with me after all.

The Assault on Badfish

So with the weather becoming nice for part of last week, the boys and I headed out to Badfish Creek Wildlife Area to do some caching and hiking. This is such a beautiful area and it seems to be somewhat overlooked by cachers. Well, I guess we'll have to see what we can do to change that.

I think that I ended up walking just over 5 miles while hunting down 4 caches scattered across the property. Interspersed on our journey, we hid 4 new caches as well. I have to admit that by the end of the day, I was sore and tired from lugging my pack along with the two boys. Uff!! Definitely worth the effort though as the kids enjoyed walking along the creek and then hunting through the brush to make the find on an ammo can.

I would highly recommend that anyone who is looking for a decent place to cache near Madison check it out. Of course, the weather was a prime factor in making that trip so enjoyable. I had to head out in the freezing rain today to replace one of the caches. Grabbed the geodogs and we trucked it about 2 miles to GZ and back to the geomobile. Not the worst weather to cache in, but there was quite a bit of standing water that we had to navigate on the way in. Of course we found a drier, easier way out but that's life. Of course the dogs loved it and have been crashed out on the couch ever since we got home.

State of the Cachenation

Welcome back everyone, time to take a look at the state of things for Team Hopp Geocaching! Before the new year started, I set a few goals for myself:
1. Hit 1000 caches by my 1 year cachiversary
2. Finish Rustic Road Challenge
3. The Triad
4. Collect counties/DeLorme pages
5. Fill in D/T grid
6. Take caching streak to triple digits
7. Keep having fun with the family
8. Make the Texas Tamale Cache Run a reality

1. I'm well on pace to hit 1000 before May and have completed all the requirements for the Wisconsin Alphabet of Place Challenge, GC1NZNF. This should be a fitting milestone for 1K to look at all the places that geocaching has taken us.

2. Haven't really put much into this one because unfortunately the few I did go after this winter were buried or inaccessible. Planning to wait for warmer weathere to start making some roadtrips and pick these up. I am looking forward to grabbing the final at the 2011 WGA Campout at Hartman Creek, GC2PJZW.

3. Still trying to get a definite timeframe from the wife for this one. Her sister lives in Portland so it's only a matter of time before these are mine!

4. Managed to grab about a dozen new counties in Wisconsin, along with Iowa & Illinois so far. Slowly but surely picking up my counties and pages. Hopefully, I'll be attending MOGA and manage to work on my IL DeLorme while on the way down. I also have plans to grab KY while I'm down there. Lately I've been working on my Jasmer Challenge and right now I only have 20 spots left to finish that up.

5. During the winter months, I was able to fill in a good number of T5 squares along with some others. Currently, I still have 18 spots to fill and most of those are within reach. Just need to solve a few D5 puzzles and walk on water to finish these up!

6. I managed to run my caching streak from 9/26/10 to 2/3/11 and it probably would have kept going if not for my wife's car ending up in the shop during the Snowpocalypse. No car meant no caches for a couple of days, but 131 days is a good enough streak for me.

7. Done! Still having a ton of fun with geocaching. The boys enjoy going out almost every day and we even manage to drag mom along once in a while.

8. Me, the wife, 3 kids under 4 including a newborn, spicy Mexican food and a 1000 mile road trip. What could go wrong?

So far in 2011, I've hit 3 milestones (700, 800 & 900); 6 events in WI & MN; completed and found 3 more challenges. All in all it has been a wonderful start to the new year. Here's looking to many more fun caches in the coming months.