Still going strong

I'm still going strong with my daily geocaching. My goal is one per day until I hit 100 total finds. I'm currently at 84 so just 16 more to go. I've actually got several places to be away from home this weekend so anticipate adding a couple more distant ones to the list.

I even went out on Mother's Day. My sister hosted the entire family for brunch so it was a houseful. I had agreed to make my Cheddar Bay Cheese Biscuits so made a run to the local grocery store for some needed ingredients. Before I headed in I thought it might be interesting to see if there were any hides nearby. Wouldn't you know? There was one in the parking lot of the store.

The interesting thing about this hiding hole is that the electrical outlet box is really a hollowed out magnetic box that sits on a piece of PVC pipe that also has a magnet inside. I have found several hides from this couple and they always have really interesting items used to hide the cache. I didn't try it, but assume that if I had tried, I could have pulled that piece of PVC right out of the ground. Again, this is why I love geocaching. You could literally be feet away from one and not even know it.

Brunch was fabulous, of course. I get my love of cooking from a long line of cooks. We had a host of goodies to choose from including triple berry muffins, cheddar cheese biscuits, eggs and bacon over hashbrowns, fresh fruit, and many more items. After brunch, my nieces and youngest sister took to the trail looking for hidden caches. There were several within walking distance so decided to start with the closest one. Unfortunately we got skunked at both places. I later learned that one of them had to be archived as the find was no longer there. Fortunately I had found the correct spot, it was just empty. So once it's up and running again, that should make an easy find.

The rest of the week I was up and at 'em early to do a little caching before work. Some were successful, some not so much.

This one was at a local dining hot spot. I tried looking for it previously but didn't have a good GPS device so didn't spend much time searching. To give some perspective, this little monkey is only about 3" tall when sitting down. But even this little guy isn't the smallest one I've ever found.

There are so many caches hidden within a mile of my house that I decided I would try to hit some of the ones further away and then work my way back to my place.

This one was quite unexpected. It's just a little thoroughfare in a quiet residential neighborhood (my least favorite to look for by the way). I never did find the darned thing here though.

The one I found most interesting was the one below. This was an interesting bench and fence the home owners had built and was called cob (a building material consisting of clay, sand, straw, water, and earth, similar to adobe). It was right near a bus stop so I was careful not to look like I was waiting for Tri-Met. The find actually took me a good bit since the cache was hidden about 80 feet way. I was able to hone in on where it was located but there were several cars parked in the way so I was a little paranoid about getting too close to people's vehicles. I eventually got over myself and made a quick snag.

The last find also had a wonderful bunch of flowers blooming including this poppy. 

  
The best part of continuing to push myself to log some more finds is that I've averaged at least 7,500 steps per day. Quite an improvement over the typical 4,000 I was getting in before.