Sunday Travel Home

I woke up in pain this morning, my lower back hurting from what I’m assuming was a combination of two days of walking and several hours of sitting in convention chairs. I was slightly miserable for the first few hours, but managed to slog through hotel breakfast and packing and loading the car to head home from OKC.

One thing I forgot to mention in the previous post was that after we got done eating at McDs, we tried to find a geocache in the area. Unfortunately, it was too dark and we had no luck. This morning, we decided to try again, and this time, we had success. The only muggle in the area was a taxi driver taking a nap in his car, and he didn’t wake up until Jon and Drew had made the re-hide.

After a gas top-off, we headed back to Wichita. We didn’t make any stops, which gained us some time but caused more aches in my hips and back. We dropped Drew and his friend off at their respective homes, then we went to Braum’s to grab lunch. While there, we mapped some geocaches we wanted to to try to get on the drive home. Even though we were really tired, I didn’t want to go the whole two hours without getting out and stretching, and I knew caching would give us a good excuse to do that.

We found a cache near a benchmark, one in a cemetery, and two park caches right off the highway. One of the parks was a great discovery, not only for the cache but for an alternative public restroom during future trips along that route (the current option is a gas station bathroom that’s a little sketchy and very uncomfortable).

 

Coming into town, we decided to stop at one of the scenic rest areas that we usually pass.  There were two caches in this area, a traditional and an earth cache, which involved answering some questions and taking a picture in order to legitimately log it.  The stop was worth it. It was a nice walk around the area and the discovery of a new place to walk at some point in the future.

 

I was still debating walking the rec track, but the clouds this way looked ominous and it was chilly, so we decided to just come home and relax for the evening. I used the time to finish my posts, upload pics, and will finish off the evening with a shower and a laundry round-up since tomorrow is laundry day.

All in all, it was a great weekend (even if my last post made it sound like I didn’t have fun at the tourney).  Another adventure down!

A.

Day 2: Mission to 100 Geocaches

I normally split these multi-day excursions up and only post one a day, but since these are just two of these, I’m kicking them both out tonight.

Day 2 was a little bit harder because we were tired from the first day and from staying up later than usual.  We slept in until 9 and didn’t get out of the house until 10, then dawdled some more getting breakfast.  Based on our energy level and Jon’s headache, we decided to stick to caches that had lower ratings for difficulty and terrain.

Our first stop was City Park, where we scored five caches to start the day off. The park is big from the outside, but being on the inside, it seems even larger. It has a splash park and sports fields and water slides…it’s a pretty busy area of MHK. Being that it was early, there weren’t many people out, so we were able to make some stealthy finds.

a  Johnny Kaw

Manhattan started getting busy, so we headed out into the outlying areas to hunt. One of the finds took us down a two-trail type of road that made us feel like we should have a jeep, not an Impala.  The scenery was great though, and the cache was worth the trip.

Another cool cache we found was at an old church and cemetery, but coming upon it from the road, the top looks like a castle tower.

One of the cool things about this cache was that the owners had placed a disposable camera in there for people to take their picture with. I’m pretty sure Jon snapped us before I was ready and was licking my lips or something, so I have a feeling that’s going to be a pretty silly picture.

After finding a few more off the highway, we decided to go to Ogden.  It wasn’t in our original plan, but it seemed like a good way to finish off our finds for the day. Before we resumed hunting, we grabbed lunch at Subway. It was very much needed. We were losing steam and still had a few to go to make sure we both had 100.

One of the caches in Ogden looked like it had been muggled, but the log was intact, so we signed and put it back together. Another one sounded like it was going to be a difficult one, an ode to DNFs, but instead, it ended up being a fun park and grab with a travel bug to discover.

At the end of the day, we’d made our goal to break 100 caches and grabbed a few bonus ones.  The weekend total was 31 found and 0 DNFs. The weather was great, the driving was relaxing, and we just had a good time hanging out together.

This trip also gave us the chance to compare our endurance and stamina levels from when we first started. The first geocaches we found (a few months ago when we first started) that involved walking across uneven terrain were pretty tough. This weekend, we found them challenging, but nothing that kicked our butt completely.  The first time we tried to do a full day of caching, we made it four hours before we went home, sore and needing to crash.  This time we went two days and cached for 7-8 hours each day. Granted, a good portion of that was spent driving, but there is still a decent level of physical activity taking place on these hunts. Jon even ran up a short hill today without getting winded.

I think we’re doing awesome, and it’s exciting to think that at some point in the future, we’re going to be able to find some that are rated at a more difficult terrain level.  Our next big goal is to hit 250, but we’ll probably plan a couple more weekend cache trips before that.

Once we got home, I took a shower and some ibuprofen so I wouldn’t be too sore for the work week. I did some photo editing and uploading to FB, finished the blog posts, and kept half an eye on a couple movies, Clue and Vanilla Sky (which is still in progress and will be watched with both eyes when this is done, because it’s one of my favorites).  We didn’t make it to the gym, but I’m not going to stress on it. It means we missed our gym goal this past week, but I think we made our walking goal, plus some.

I still anticipate being able to sleep well tonight.

A.

 

Tough Finds, Catching Up, and More Zombies

I feel like I have a ton of stuff to do and catch up on, but I can’t seem to get there. It probably didn’t help that I made a massive to-do list today, and just looking it at makes me tired.  I did finish the blog post about the first day of BOW, and it’s scheduled to post tomorrow morning some time. I’ll post the other ones throughout the week, probably. I just need to find some time to finish them and add pictures.

Yesterday after I got home from BOW, I met Jon and Andrew at Hastings. I had some water and coffee to try to get myself through the rest of the day.  I made the guys listen to my stories and look at all the swag I brought home from BOW, swag which is still in the bag, because that’s one of the things I have not yet crossed off the list.  After Andrew left, Jon and I had some time to kill before our gaming session, so we decided to go look for a geocache that we hadn’t been able to find before. I wanted to try again because my geocache and gps instructors at BOW had given me an idea, and I wanted to see if it was something like that.

It wasn’t. But as we were looking, the cache owner and another cacher came out and helped us find it. This one has never been found by anyone without help, though they said even with hints, we found it relatively quickly.  I spotted it and yes, it was extremely difficult. I suppose I might have found it eventually, but I can’t guarantee that. No spoilers (just in case)! Let’s just say it was a very cool cache.

The two were out walking their dog, a geopup with her own trackable. That was pretty awesome. It was fun to finally meet some other local cachers, and they took us down to another one in the area. This meant some more walking, which I did, even though I’d thought I was walked out. It was fun though, and I loved being able to snag a few caches in our down time.

Our Pathfinder game got started late, but it was all good. I did some knitting and got half eaten by the couch. It was around that time I had to finally take some Aleve because I was starting to feel some pain.  We grabbed a bite to eat after the game and came home, where I attempted to get some things done, but nothing really stuck. Things are still a mess.

Today was busy at work with catch up and what not. There were a lot of little annoyances that probably seemed major because I was tired. We did laundry. Jon had a test that went later than normal, so I grabbed the laundry and dropped some books off to be picked up by the silent auction winner of them from Tengaicon.  Once Jon was done, we grabbed some groceries and headed back to Wamego.

For exercise tonight, we decided to do another zombie mission. However, we did it wrong, and now we want to go back and do the last two the right way. Which we probably will. I guess I shouldn’t say we did it wrong. We just forgot to turn on tracking and zombie missions, so it was pretty much a walk listening to a story and some music. However, with that in mind, I’m kind of glad we went that route tonight. That track kicks my butt every time, and it started raining. My ankle was sore. It was a very slow walk for me. Hoping the next time I go out is better, because I really want to do these missions.

Gonna have to call it a night. I’m falling asleep at the computer. Here’s to getting more done tomorrow. Hopefully.

A.