As one would expect, it has taken the
Trekking Turtles a looooong time to find 1,000 caches. It's not
easy to open an ammo can without any thumbs.
But, as some cacher famously said, it's not about how many finds
you have, but how many friends you
make along the way.
Now, ® is fond of saying that she "doesn't have any friends,"
and many years ago, I might have believed 
that, because
if you looked at their profile in those early days, you couldn't
find a single picture of them,
and both © & ® seemed to be VERY anti-social. Almost like they wished to remain anonymous.
The thing about ®, though
-- and this is illustrated by the fact that of their 1,000 finds,
nearly half of them are Mystery caches -- is that she can not NOT try and solve a
puzzle, ANY puzzle, once it's out there. Because of this, I soon discovered
that my email exchanges with ® were directly proportional to the
number of puzzles published in any given week,
especially if it was one of mine. And
over time, I came to realize that maybe © & ® weren't so
anti-social after all (Well, ©, at least. ) and certainly not as anonymous as they may have hoped.
Over time, © & ® started poking their heads out of their
shells more and more frequently, and
those of us lucky enough to catch a glimpse 
of them
discovered that they we rather, well, nice, in spite of the fact
that ® has conjured up some devilish 
puzzles
and even more evil hides.
So, as I began reflecting
on their journey to 1,000 cache finds, I got to thinking about how
© & ® have shown a certain reluctance
to be photographed over the years and how much they have come out
of their shells. I looked
through many of their photos and the photos of their friends,
including
Ahuimanu Hui,
Charliewhiskey,
Emmabelle,
Mudder91, and myself, and, to my surprise,
discovered that they had allowed themselves to be photographed
far more than I had ever realized.
Below are just a few of the photos I found.
So, from all of your friends,
congratulations, © & ®, on
hitting 1,000 caches!
