It's Finally Out There!

I attended a meeting of geocachers a couple of weeks ago where I met bdramatic.  We were talking and I mentioned I had a cache container taking up space in my garage - it was fun to build but I was not really all that psyched about being a CO.  I showed her a couple of pics and left the meeting (it was outdoors and super cold and windy that day).

A couple of days later I got an email saying that she would like to be the CO for it and she already had a place in mind.  Fantastic!  It gets put to good use and some much needed real-estate in the shop gets freed up - win-win!  We made plans for placing it out in the woods for this past Saturday but the park was closed to let hunters cull some deer.  Crummy luck, but the weather Sunday was going to be awesome, so we re-scheduled for then.

That morning I bundled up the tools I needed (a rock hammer and a cordless drill) for mounting the container on a post off the forest floor. The post looked like a hiking pole and the tools were in a small, nondescript black canvas bag so no worries about drawing attention on that front.  The basketball-sized cedar d20, though, would certainly result in some odd looks if I were to simply walk around with it in the open.

I didn’t have any boxes (as if that would have helped…) so my options were limited.  I had an old white sheet I was using for painting in the garage that I fashioned into a small bag so I could carry the thing around without looking weird…

Because what could be more normal, right, than a couple of people laughing and chatting merrily as they walked into the woods with what looks for all the world like a human head in a makeshift bag?   “Well, officer, they walked off the path into the forest with this… thing… then I heard a bunch of pounding and some power tools, and they came out about an hour later without whatever it was, smiling and sharing pictures.”

I can’t really say too much more about this until the cache officially posts.  I will say, though, we were a little worried about the location being too visible from the road but as soon as we backed away from the cache about 50 feet it basically became invisible.  There is only one angle that we found that the thing stood out at all, but it is a very small angle and you have to know what you are looking for.  The springtime growth and natural weathering should camouflage it even more.  Still, though, the reason that spot was available in the first place was because her giant ammo container was stolen…

I hope it lasts a while (at least 6 months) before nature or people destroy it.  In any case, it’s finally out there and I am excited to call that a “win”.