DASNET

Well, okay, not quite his first cache find, but at least his first cache adventure. It all happened yesterday...

Earlier in the day, I'd finally begun working on the puzzle cache Top Rock. After finishing the puzzle, and verifying the coordinates, I plotted it on a map and saw that it was along some nice trails near a creek. When I got home, I mentioned it to Andrea, and told her I'd like to get it soon so she could actually see a White Jeep Travel Bug (the last ones I found never actually made it home with me). She seemed up for it, so we got Dominic all suited up and took off.

It took us a little while to get there, seeing as how this was Rush Hour. Once we got to the right area and found a parking spot, we thought, "hey, this isn't too hot after all." Put him in his stroller, keyed the coords into my GPS, and we took off down a paved trail in the woods.

Turns out the trail isn't in as great shape as I'd hoped....bumpy, rutted, frequently covered with leaves, twigs, and sticks. Also, there were mosquitoes. Anyway, we went down into the woods, turned onto another trail, down some more, over some rocks, through some sand, onto a wider gravel trail, and stopped, looking straight at what the final cache location was. It wasn't a place the stroller could go, so I clambered off, trying to avoid getting stung, bitten, or rubbing too much on poison ivy. Took about 30 seconds to find the cache (yay!) Then I came down the back face, met up with Andrea and Dominic on the return trail, and we headed back to the car.

Oh, yeah -- the "not so hot after all" was a bit premature. We were both soaked by the time we got back to the parking lot. Then our car flashed the "Add Fuel" warning, so we had to find a gas station. Then Dominic needed to get changed. Then he had to get fed -- which didn't work too well, either, in the car at the gas station. So we got him partially fed, buckled back up, and drove home as fast as we could. All in all, about a 3-hour trip, but he got his first travel bug, and we got some valuable "long trip without real stops" experience, too. :)