Jane left the little Oranje TB in my mailbox before I left for Europe and I thought I recorded it but apparently I didn't. I am not good with trackables and rarely do them. Something always goes wrong for me and this time was no different.
I did a tour of Holland, Belgium, and Normandy, and my main concern was staying in touch with a group of students that I was connected with while going to the highlights of WW1 and WW2 battle sights and memorials and cemeteries that were connected with the Algonquin Regiment of Canada. This was a chore in it self as I had a rented car but because of logistics I wasn't able to stay at the same lodgings as they did and so spent a lot of time driving like mad to catch up and find them, etc. There was little time to do any geocaching and I didn't have the stars align for me to have 1) Wi-Fi for the notepad, 2) batteries for the handheld GPS, 3) satellite service 4) brains and patience, all at the same time. I had found some possible locations at Brugges, Belgium, and Saint Simeon, but then had to put it out of mind 'til I got to England. I would have more time then I thought as I was to do family research rather catching up with a tour bus.
Again I had the same problems of having my stars align until I was leaving Great Torrington. I tried to place the TB again that morning around Great Torrington but after driving in loops etc., for an hour I thought I was close to a suitable cache. I parked the car at a gate entry and locked it up and a) crawled under barbed wire, b) got stung by nettles, c) trekked through mud, d) slipped and fell down e) trudged through a meadow to the aqua-duct. Needless to say I didn’t go the correct route, and after climbing all around the aqua-duct, I realized that I might have found the start of the proper trail and had an easier go of it but too bad for me. I didn’t find the cache, even with the hint, but I was a mess by then. I made my way back to the car only to find a policeman walking around it and using his radio. “Hi, here I am.” When I got to him and the car, I explained that I had needed to pee and got off the road, slipped and fell in the mud and hadn’t been able to get up for a bit after crouching down. The car was still partly on the road and causing an obstruction! After he asked me if I needed an ambulance I assured him I was okay, so to speak, and followed his directions to get out of there! What a waste of time. I had run out of spare time and had to get across England within a few hours.
So I gave up on hiding it overseas and decided that I would do it at home closer to Dorval which I did with Jaktar and Rufus, but now can't find the geocache info into which I put it. I was seriously ill for 2 1/2 weeks after arriving home and am now just getting caught up with things. I pray that Oranje shows up and is alright and I am sorry for being so poor at depositing it where I was hoping to, but if it could talk it would have a great tale to tell for sure.
blessings, mebarb