While thinking about how I'd like to celebrate the milestone of becoming a quinquagenarian, I decided to kick-off this new decade right with another milestone by finally placing my first geocache!
The advice that kept coming to mind was to hide a cache in a location you want folks to see, a spot where there's good reason to bring people.
Since Fred Fletcher Park is one of my favorite oases in Raleigh, I figured what better place to say, "Hey y'all come look at this!"
In fact, it was one of the Music City Audition caches that got me thoroughly exploring Fletcher Park to begin with. Until a couple years ago, I had only seen a small corner of the park for a Sandbox children's music concert, when my kids were still very young. We had fun at the show but unfortunately didn't look around enough at the time. Glad we have now! It even became one of my kids' (now teenagers) favorite destinations during the 2020 quarantine, when we needed to get out of the house and go somewhere special.
Here is a short video produced by Raleigh Parks and Recreation which highlights the history, beauty and uniqueness of Fletcher Park:
https://youtu.be/6Pkv1EhCI5A
This is one of the most well-gardened public parks I've seen and has a wonderful variety of plants, including an amazing array of flowers (many pollinator friendly) which always seems to be in bloom! I really enjoy looking forward to seeing what's blossoming from visit to visit!
There is also a soccer field, baseball field, tennis courts, basketball hoops, a very pleasant Greenway trail, a playground, public art, a marshy Water Garden (which improves City of Raleigh water quality) and some lovely historic buildings available to rent for events.
The cache is a camo'd latch-top rectangular sport-case and is just big enough for a few small swap items. I'm including an unactivated FTF geocoin and a few other little goodies just to get things going.
I'm still trying to find a short pen that actually works well, but until I manage to secure such an elusive item, this is a BYOP cache 🖊
Please be respectful of the natural surroundings, wildlife and wildlife habitat as you're searching for and logging your find. Also, please make sure to latch the container back securely when you're finished.
And as always, if you're feeling sick, please wait until you're all better to go caching. Of course, it's a really good idea to wash your hands before and after each find 🙂
Happy caching!
Congratulations to Calvin_NC for being FTF 😃
Note added on June 1, 2022, just in case you didn't see it in the activity log:
The original container went missing sometime in April, probably either muggled by belligerent high school students (Broughton has so many problems with disrespectful kids that it's made the local news) or perhaps chucked by the grounds crew. That said, best to try to log this when swarms of students aren't going back & forth between the school and the park.
I decided to just go micro as my small case had already been completely swag-raided anyway. Might as well.
Anyway, the new container is a bark-cammo'd bison tube attached to the same tree, different branch.
Hopefully this one will avoid notice by those not there for the purpose of logging the cache. It's just slightly harder to spot but not by much, and I don't want to bump the difficulty level up as I'd like to make sure it's available to both basic and premium members.
Also, please make sure the ○-ring stays in-place so the log doesn't end-up soggy.
Okay y'all, cache on!