Geocaching Day

Today I was given a “kitchen pass” and took the opportunity to go geocaching by myself for a few hours. There were a few newish caches that were relatively close to home in the Mount Gower scenic reserve. I planned on getting all 8 caches, and 1 earthcache in the reserve and had earmarked two other caches that were on the way to the reserve.

I took off a little about 10am and got to the first cache at about 10:30am. This one was a multi and required me to answer some questions with the answers coming from a plaque placed at the site commemorating the Yeungroon School which first opened in 1877. We, as a family, had originally tried to get this one some time ago, but didn’t manage it. Today was a different story, and I managed to imput the correct coords into my GPS and took off for a quick stroll down the road and found the cache. One down, 10 to go!

Yeungroon School plaque

Back in the car, a few more kms up the road was the next cache. This particular cache is named “Ingenious fencing – a rock and a hard place” and is very appropriate! 🙂 My GPS was jumping all over the place here, so I did a walk around and eventually found the sneaky little cache in the last place that I looked. Great, one more crossed off, things were going well!

Ingenious fencing

I then started my way towards the Mount Gower reserve and was following my map well, until I got to a part of the road where I should have been able to turn left and continue onwards, but instead a farmer had decided to commandeer the road for himself and had a makeshift fence and closed gate running across the road! So this is where I ran into my first headache. My GPS was not working as it should and my phone navigation said was I was somewhere totally different to where I was! I fluked my way onto a road that I recognised and after a bit of extra driving out of my way, managed to make it to the reserve.

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Initially, I had planned to park the car at the entrance to the reserve and walk to all the caches but the road actually looked quite good so I continued to drive all the way to the top. I confess that my 4wd skills aren’t as honed as my husband’s and I did have a moment (or two) where I wondered if I should have walked as planned but with careful driving, I made it to the top and what a view! The summit has both a traditional cache, and an earthcache. An earthcache usually involves you having to answer questions relating to where you are, which can range from points of interest, to geology of the area etc. You then send your answers to the cache owner who will let you know if you are correct, and then you can log it as a found cache. In this particular instance, most of the questions relate to the weathered rock features here, the main one of which most people have referred to as looking like an eagle with its beak open. I tend to think it resembles a dragon instead especially with the rocks jutting out of what would be its neck. You can be the judge! 🙂

Eagle?

Dragon?

The traditional cache was a relatively easy find not far from the main dragon rock. The grass around here is sort of long, and if I was a snake, I would like to hang around up here…lots of rocks to sun myself and even a water feature for me to drink from! So, I carefully took off on foot following the track to the next cache which was about 200m away. This cache had me walking in circles and still I got nowhere. Being a micro does make it a little more difficult to locate and in the end, I decided to give in and look for it on my way back.

The next cache was another 150m away, through more snakey-looking grass and my GPS went crazy again. No matter how many times I triangulated my position, it was pointing in the same direction which was scrambling up rocks dodging twisted tree bits as I went. After about 40 minutes of searching (yes, you read that right!) I had reached my limit. I was hot, completely frustrated, and had managed to bruise my hip pretty nicely on a large rock so I threw in the towel. Back to the car I stomped, completely annoyed! I didn’t even bother to look for the micro on the way back as planned. I will, of course, come back to find them another day..it’s just that today was not to be that day!

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Oh, and thanks to the losers that decided to take the road name signs from their posts on the proposed way back home…it made my navigating slightly more interesting and scenic!!

Next time, I will pack the portable gear and play radio instead!

New Family Member!

My blog has been neglected of late but I couldn’t help making a post about our newest family member: a 3 year old, Mini Foxy x Jack Russell named Jack!

Jack

We had talked on and off about getting a family pet for a few months, weighing up all the pros and cons of doing so and with the children eagerly adding in their suggestions for ponies, horses, guinea pigs, rabbits etc. the decision was made and I started an online search for a dog. The family had agreed that we “needed” a Jack Russell but we wanted a long-wire or broken-coat breed, and it had to be around 3-7 years old. Simple enough! Yes, but every other person in Victoria wanted to adopt one as well it would seem, because as soon as we found a match, we would ring up and find it had already been taken..so what started off as an every other day search became a twice daily search, morning and night on various animal adoption websites so we would be sure to have a chance of finding a match as soon as they appeared online.

I confess that I became a little obsessed and then after yet another let down, my husband jokingly said “Why don’t you search Gumtree instead?”…so I did, and low and behold, there was a gorgeous little guy in Goulburn, NSW! He was everything we were looking for but was over 8 hours away!! We rang up and yes, he was still available after two other parties had not shown up to collect him. We ummed and aahed, but we had all fallen in love with the dog, so my husband jumped in his car and drove away to collect him and we haven’t regretted that decision since they arrived home the next day. Jack is such a charming little fellow…so playful and full of energy, yet happy and independent enough to have time on his own when he feels like it; is very obedient; sleeps all through the night; loves car rides and walks; comes to us when called by his new name (that took a little over a week for him to master)….and we love him! He has been with us for almost a month now and he is such a perfect fit for our family. 🙂

Snuggle time

Belly-rub time!