I Met Signal Tag - 20 Years of Geocaching

I started this game just over a year ago and was surprised as to the shear number of caches hidden all around me. Just in the tri-city area around my home, the caches must number in the hundreds! I’m gradually working on finding every single one of them! My hometown map is now a sea of happy faces in the Olympia area. What happens if you find all of them within a region? Does it form one massive happy face?!
I still have a little ways to go to find out. Today I’m one step closer. Found another cache near my home in Olympia. It had many DNFs, so I had put it off. However, the trackables and I found it within 15 seconds. The green dots around me are losing ground fast. The menace is the dreaded blue and orange dots.
This cache was a nicely sealed container hidden within a cavity at the base of a tree. It’s camouflage was perfect for the spot. Oddly enough mine was the only signature on the log. I’m a new FTF of sorts! It had some nice swag for kids, but that part of the game is not for me.

Not real far from my home of 30 years, just behind the Lacey Washington Post Office-
The trackables and I went to a pleasant older neighborhood which has been there for as long as I can remember. It has a nice community park with a Geocache that I found today. There is no trace, no remnants, no clue of anything else that ever transpired there. There is nothing special at all about the houses, the park, the surroundings, or the cache (which was a container hidden on the ground, next to a small commemorative plaque on a little podium. It was by some bushes pictured below). The area was all just run of the mill. Or so I thought until I read the plaque….Turns out, that Once Upon a time…long, long ago, in fact many decades before I was even born! (And I’m not a Spring chicken) there was a giant horse race track here! It was quite the place and people would come from all over the Northwest to gamble. All of those people are long since dead and gone. I never would have known anything about that or the rest of the story had it not been for the Geocache that brought me here. One of the many things I like about this game.

Lacey Washington.
Brand new cache in a nice little park. I wasn’t FTF, but I did make number 4. The trackables are pictured on the host. Cache itself is a magnetic around back on the support post.

Olympia Washington
Today was the day that LordMobley Almost registered a DNF! I searched and could not find this cache to save my life!!
I have a good strategy that works quite well in these situations (especially with “hangers”) and I’ll share it with you….walk back about 40’ from the Geozone and then approach it again-But, from a different angle. Problem was, this one wasn’t a “hanger” and it’s located near the end of a dock. My strategy would require the backstroke. Now what? I contemplated messaging the cache owner and asking for mercy. However, my pride prevented that. I continued to search and ultimately found the cache. I awarded this one a favorite point as well. My Trackables are pictured on the rail up top. Cache is near the end of the pier on the left side. I’m always a bit nervous with this type of find that I may accidentally drop it as it would not be recoverable. All went fine and I replaced it as found.

Allyn Washington again.
I wouldn’t normally make a trackable post for a cache down the street from the prior one-because there is no point in it. However, this was unique. Not the cache, but the situation. I had just made the find and was trying to be discreet. A lady walks up and says “oh you found the cache”. I replied-well yes, how did you know what I was doing? She said she was the owner and was there to do maintenance. What are the odds of that? Then we blabbed for a bit.