UMR Stonehenge Benchmark Geocoin

After the [LONG] "Walk in the Fen", I rewarded myself with a chocolate shake from Juliann's (which is closing or has been sold I'm not sure which). I decided to try to find this cache again just because it has frustrated ClickChik through so many failed attempts so far (but with recent logs), I had to find this one while she was out of town. I'm fairly sure that we had looked in the hiding place before, but the grass/weeds may have been taller then. It stood out like a sore thumb to me, but I got it easily. 🙂 I also timed my last cache for the day well, as it started to spit a little rain as I was driving home. I managed to log 7 caches without ClickChik this afternoon, so that might help me to close the gap a bit. Of course if I hadn't taken her the spare battery and charger a few weeks ago, she wouldn't have gotten those extra 10-15 caches in West Bend moving her that much out ahead of me. I really should have stayed home and cut the grass today, but finding the caches was so much more fun. 😉

I really need to remember to read the cache details before I start looking for a cache. I was basically at the cache waypoint when I finally read the cache details to see that this was not the cache location, but a waypoint to get the location of the final. I took a picture of the sign (this will prove useful later) and computed the location of the final. I saw another person on the trail and stopped to take some pictures of a tree in the fen as a disguise, and said something about the lighting being difficult to get a good picture to the guy as he passed (he looked familiar to me for some reason). Anyway, I went on to find the final cache. As I got nearer, I saw that there were trails near where I had computed the cache to be, but I couldn't figure out how to get to those trails without leaving the real trail. I found a large deer path and used it to get to the trails I saw and found that it wasn't the right location. After spending too long looking for this one, I decided to call it and head back. As I neared the bridge to head back, my attention was drawn back to a location I thought was a good hiding place and having nothing to lose I checked it. The cache was sitting there staring me in the face. I took a GPSr reading at the cache and double checked that my coordinates were off because I used the number of letters not the number of words, so I quickly changed my waypoint, and it was still off, so I'll have to re-check this one later. I think I walked an extra mile or so looking for this one, but it was still worth it!

In my normal manner, I missed the parking coordinates and got lucky by parking in the right place by accident. Of course, I also did my normal of "taking the long way" to the cache. I like the hide technique, and of course, I pulled a little too had when placing the cache back, so I had to start over and put it back again.

As I walked in to this cache I was speaking with ClickChik on the cell phone, so I wasn't paying as close attention as I should have been. I didn't leave the path, or anything bad, but I almost took a wrong turn on my way out because I hadn't paid attention to the path on the way in. The park was very quiet today.

When I started off the path to this cache, I saw a couple teens walking on the trail towards me so I glanced at my GPSr and started down the trail to where I thought the cache would be. Once the teens were safely past, I re-checked the GPSr and saw that my first guess for the cache placement was wrong, it wasn't on the bridge as I thought it was (no, I don't have a bridge fetish, but I had already found 2 on bridges today, so I quickly assumed the same again here). I found the cache easily and logged it.