Saintvi and I went geocaching again yesterday to cheer me up after the dog bit me. I requested we find big, easy caches. She made sure to look up caches with travel bugs and geocoins in them, too. I had fun chucking my old broken cell phone (SIM card removed) in a cache in the woods behind McDonalds. It kind of looked like a crackhead gathering area, but what do I know? The battery in the phone still works, so maybe someone will consider it a lucky find, be they geocachers or crackheads.
My favorite find of the day was the last one. It was just my speed of caching. We had to hike through three meadows and the woods to get to it. Each meadow was beautiful! There were weeds and wild flowers growing over our heads in the first one, mostly goldenrod. The second meadow had a lot of purple and yellow flowers and some big butterflies fluttering about. To get to the third meadow we had to hike through the woods. Luckily I was wearing work boots and blue jeans so I didn't have to worry too much about poison ivy. I just tramped on through the poison junk, over fallen branches, and across a ditch. I found myself on a little farm road and said, "Huh. I'll bet there was an easier way to get here!" Mom assured me it's a heck of a lot easier to get to this cache in a different season, when all the plants are dead. You see, she and dad found it before, in early spring when the meadows were empty and the woods were bare trunks and branches.
The little farm road in the woods led us into the third meadow. It didn't have the pretty flowers of the first two, but it had its own beauty. The occasional tree dotted the landscape and we could see a brook chuckling around the far end, reflecting the sunlight in its ripples. We only crossed about a hundred feet of that meadow before we had to traipse back into the woods. Once there, the cache was pretty easy to find. It was just sitting on a tree stump. The challenge was to get that far.
On the way back, I scooped up a thin branch, snapped the weakest part off, and used it as a makeshift hiking staff. This was particularly nice for pushing aside a nasty thorny plant I had previously carefully stepped on to hold it down. Thankfully, I had had the presence of mind while walking through the woods on the way to the cache to check the cardinal direction we were traveling on my GPS so on the way back we didn't wander off in the wrong direction and get lost. That would have sucked.
I wish more caches were like that one! I like the ones that are a little tricky to get to, but easy to find once you get there. It's annoying as heck when you walk up to where a cache should be and can't find it anywhere. I'm excited. I think late summer/early fall might be the best time to go caching! It's not hotter than Hades and there's not piles of leaves or snow adding to the discovery difficulty.
Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to plan the epic trail of caches Mom and I are planning to hide! But first, before I go, here's a couple dorky pictures of me hangin' in the meadows.
Something about the shape of my face looks weird to me in this picture. Maybe it's just the sunglasses.
I'm really surprised my allergies didn't act up around here. I took a big sniff to be sure, but everything was wonderfully clear. 
Haha! This is typical "Mom, hurry up and take the picture - the sun's in my eyes!"