caching with my new bff's

Well, the breakfast event at Van Buren was to a start at SEVEN AM. I am NOT a morning person, so it is amazing that I was up and semi-functional at 5:00 and was actually there really near to 7:00 am. As I pulled in, I saw lots of excitement around a big red truck. Come to find out it had a huge travel bug sticker on its back glass that was bigger than my car. The owner of which hailed from North Carolina and had came to our event. He works on the road a lot and had seen our eat and greet posted. Great cacher and a great guy.

Genie had it all organized and we all had great little bags of goodies. There was something going on with the door prizes, however. It seemed like a conspiracy was underfoot...with most of the feet going into mouths and prizes going in the family way. It was a real riot with lots of laughter.

While there I met up with two fabulous cachers, Jffok, and cache_me_in. We decided that we three "girls" would team up and make a day of it. All of us were used to caching by ourselves and thought that it would be fun to have more eyes for the hunt. The weather was cool and windy but our spirits were undaunted and we were on a mission. We cached high, and low, on pavement, on trails, in the woods, and yes, even in another state! ...ok, it was Oklahoma, but it still counts.

It was the most fun I've had in years. At 4:30 we found our 3oth cache which was a daily best for all of us. By the time I pulled into my driveway at 8:30 I had found 34 for the day with only 4 DNF's. An awesome day.

Thanks, Genie for the event and for my new BFF's!

so long, banana!

Well, I did it! I upgraded! After 8 months with my faithful little yellow $60. e trex, I have purchased a Garmin 60CSx. ($278 refurbished) Ooooohh Aaaahh, I felt light-headed when I removed it from the package. It was so GREY and buttony, and serious-looking. It even had a manual that had more than 4 pages...many, many, many more than 4 pages.

So, you may be wondering what finally brought me to this point in my change of geoaching gear? Well it was the changes that I was constantly making - that U-turn in the middle of the road after I missed the road, the backing out of the road I did take that ended in a cow pasture with the real road (and cache) in some direction I couldn't get to. The road that led me 10 miles NE of SW of upside of Wherethehellamianyway that I had to drive 20 miles back from to figure out where I was. You see, the little yellow e trex does not have maps. Maps should be a good thing for directionless, clueless, U-turning geocachers like myself. I hope so anyway. Even if if doesn't help, I know those extra buttons are gonna be a real hoot!