One Sweet Shannon

Argh! (Will catch up logging later.)

Busy day! First I got caught up on back-logging all of Julian's finds (I still have to finish doing that for Ryder.) What we discovered is that Julian has 99 finds and his next one will be 100! So Ryder and I made a surprise for him. We made a big sign of congratulations. The plan was to go out caching, let Julian find the next one, and pull out the sign as a surprise. Well, unfortunately it didn't happen that way. At least not today.

Our first stop was Abbath Doom Occulta. We planned to do that cache, followed by part 2 of Professor Cody, and Part 2 of O RLY?. We never made it any further than the DNF on Abbath Doom Occulta. It was hot on those rocks! We spent 40 minutes looking. Or rather, Ryder and I spent 40 minutes looking. Julian zoned out completely. When I asked him to do anything other than just stand there, he had a fit. I decided to leave and go to the next cache. But that's when Julian made his mistake -- he threw his water bottle and almost hit me. So he forfeited his second chance and I drove him home. His Asperger's Syndrome means he can't control himself sometimes, but even though it's not his fault at times, we send the message that the flip-outs are not acceptable. He was not happy, and Ryder and I were disappointed, too. We were really looking forward to surprising him. But it's been a rough week for Julian, and I wasn't about to make an exception after the last couple days.

After we dropped Julian off, Ryder and I went out and headed in the other direction. We decided to do Fifth Commandment. We had actually scoped out this park and marked several hiding spot possibilities way back in September or October last year. At the time we thought this is where we'd make our first hide. (Well, it took about a year, but we finally did, only in another park.)

This was the coolest time of day to do this cache. It was about 5:30PM, and the shadows created by the sun at this time were just amazing. It gave the whole trip a really cool and spooky feeling. We found the cache and made our trades, and as we were heading out of the woods, Ryder stopped and said, "Do you ever get the feeling like someone is watching you?" LOL, the way he asked that kind of creeped me out and gave me a start. I kicked him in the butt and told him to get moving and not give me the creeps like that! We stopped to play for a while, and then headed home. We still haven't told Julian what his surprise is. Hopefully we'll be able to do that in the next couple days.

We got a very late start tonight, which bummed me out as I wanted to get out early and take advantage of the great weather. I've been out of commission this week with a sprained ankle so this was our first caching trip. The weather was gorgeous, more like the first days of school than early August. It was nice and cool with a swift breeze, perfect for hiking. But with the short time window we didn't go for the longer hike. Instead we opted to try Professor Cody's Geocaching 101, a cache we'd put off because we thought it would better be done in cooler weather.

At Professor Cody's we did our usual thing by not realizing there was a trail, and instead bushwacked up the hill through mostly waist to chest high grass and weeds. Ryder complained the whole way (well, to be fair, it was as high as him!) Imagine our chagrin at reaching the site of part 1 and finding it was on a beautifully mowed wide path! Sigh, typical us. We got our answers to the questions to determine the coordinates for part 2, and enjoyed our walk -- along the trail -- back to the car.

We decided to save part 2 for another day, and instead headed to Hey Rocky! We pulled up across the road and knew immediately where the cache would be. But my first impressions were how similar it looked to the tank micro Julian and I found last fall, and my reaction was one of dread -- that thing took a long dang time to find! Very happily, though, this one was found in the first two minutes. I found it while the boys were busy playing around. We took some pictures, and went down the road a little bit and checked out the swamp. From there it was off to home to pick up Steve and go to the track.

We'll probably finish up part 2 of Professor Cody this weekend, and hopefully do a lot more than that.

Julian decided to stay home so as not to miss the weekend's final balloon launch (even though it was just over four hours away) while Ryder and I ran out to Walmart for some camo tape and laminating pouches that we needed to finish preparations for our first cache hide and travel bug launches. Afterwards we stopped by Rockstar to see if we could grab at least one cache over the weekend. It didn't take that long, but it sure felt like forever standing on the hot rocks with the sun beating down! Eventually we found it -- success! I think this is the first cache hunt that Ryder's done but not Julian. Usually it's the other way around.

I'm hoping now things will get back to normal and we can get some good caching in. We got the car back, the record-breaking heat is gone (although it is still very warm and humid most days), and the Spiedie Fest is over.

I didn't go to the Spiedie Fest this year, but the boys went a couple times, once with their mom, and then on Sunday morning Grandpa took them and they even went up in a balloon. You've never seen a happier kid than Julian! We live so close that we get the best views of the balloons as they fly overhead. Many of them even drop down low enough to talk to the people watching from the street, just missing (usually) the rooftops and trees. It's too crowded at the event itself, so I like to watch from home. This year some of the launches were canceled due to winds, so we didn't get as many as we usually do, and I didn't get any pictures.

Anyway, now that it's over we can relax and get back to our everyday activities. I hope that means more time for caching!

First stop Seven Seals of Silence. Success! I don't know how we missed this on our second attempt. I myself ran my hands along the top of the area where the cache was, and I clearly assigned the underside to one of the cubs who insisted he felt the whole length of the area. Liar! LOL! I was so glad to find this finally. I didn't think there was anywhere else left to look without having to go through the trash. Area definitely needs a CITO. People who litter suck.

After this I gave the boys their choice of Southern Tiers or Parkview Magic. They chose Parkview Magic, then changed their mind after I was already in the other lane. I told them they snooze they lose and we'll try Southern Tiers perhaps tomorrow or some other day this week. That and Professor Cody's Geocaching 101 are the last 2 remaining to be found on the first page of the closest caches. I've just been dying to knock that page off for some reason. I'll tell you, though, it's been a doozy of a page. A bunch of multis, Binghamton Like You've Never Seen It and The Most Glorious...Return of Cody, and the evil that is Southern Tiers. These have most of the toughest out of those we've done. I guess our house is at the epicenter of challenging or something.

Anyway, from Seven Seals off to Parkview Magic...!