Celebrate 2009 Event

Took a ride down to Windsor Elementary school this past weekend to attend a great caching pot luck event thats been put on for a couple years now. This was the second time attending this event with my Dad and Wendy came along this year to make it her second overall event. We grabbed 6 or 7 caches on the way down to the school and managed to log DNF on the trip as well. The areas between Bangor and Windsor seem to be filled with little series of caches so when it's warm this summer, there'll be another easy area to get cleaned off the undone list. The event had a Signal the Frog pinata, create your own signature item table, trackable table, and of course a big pot luck table to go fill everyone up.

Dodge Point Caching

Went out to grab a quick 10 caches this past Sunday with my dad PaxMarine, and Cooper. We were able to come up with 9 of the 10 caches at Dodge Point in Edgecomb. Lots of spoiler pictures here so ignore them if you haven't done these caches...We had a great time and Cooper even located a couple of these "all by himself" he'll tell you. The one we couldn't find was DNF'd by plenty of others as its a micro in the woods with a hint that didn't really offer much assistance. Next time we'll get it I guess.

Going South...

I had talked with Wendy about going after all the 2001 caches in one day on Saturday night knowing that it really wouldn't be possible as they are scattered all over the state and it would mean a real solid day of hard driving time. I didn't sleep well Saturday night and ended up waking up at what would be 4am but because of the time change, was really 3am. I started playing with GSAK, updated it with all my PQ's that were sitting in my inbox and loaded the whole state of Maine into my GPS as points of interest. I wanted to make sure I had everything I could loaded so I could just meander around after getting the one that I was really after. The southern most 2001 cache was at Fort Mclarey that was my main target. I finally left the house at at 6 and was at the York rest area by 7:30. Luckily I had remembered to hit an ATM in Augusta to cover the tolls as I forget about that some times where as I almost never go that way. Once at the rest area, I used my current coords and loaded a 50 mile radius of caches as waypoints so I could see them without having to be zoomed to the 800ft view on the GPS. The first cache I attempted was a DNF. It was a cache called "The Way Life Should Be" which stinks because you hate to log a DNF on a cache with a name like that. I finally gave up after about 30 minutes of searching. Next was down the road a piece to "Farbucks 13 MMMMMM" which I was able to find. Farbucks was the name of "Starbucks" in the movie Shrek and I was thankful that the cache wasn't actually at a Starbucks location.
My next location was another DNF. It #97 of the 101 Dalmations series and was missing. There were a lot of DNF's before mine so I'm not sure why I wasted 10 minutes looking. You just never know whether those folks were missing something or not I guess.

Being only 1 for 3, I didn't have a good feeling for how the rest of the day was going to go. It's different caching in an area where you don't know any of the cachers or their hides so I felt like my geosenses were off a little. I decided to go right to the fort next as I was sure that might be something other than a micro. On the way, I traded texts with Chadd Roper (CARoperPhotography on the site) and we decided to meet at a cache when I was done with the fort. I arrived at the grounds and ended up running into another cacher and his son while I was searching. He had seen a GPS in my hand and asked if I was caching. His name was Jackmatt on the site and we had a quick chat about caching, numbers, and things that limit caching time. They walked off and I found the cache only to discover a full log. I found a page with some space and left my mark. Here are some of the views...




After finding this one, Chad was going for Nubble Trouble and that's where we planned on meeting. Getting there was a little slow as I had to go through a detour as well as getting behind some Mass people who were out for what appeared to be a nice slow coastal drive. When I pulled in Chad was parked right in front of the cache which was barely hidden so it was quite the easy find. We signed the log, chatted for couple minutes and I met his girlfriend Emily and their new dog Teddy. They took off and I grabbed some pictures before heading out myself.



I wasn't aware that you couldn't actually get to the lighthouse itself as its on an island. The only way across is restricted for care takers and involves riding in this little single person cable car...Not sure I'd want to take that ride.




This is the view from the "Beach Call". The cache was hidden near a payphone but that's all I'm saying.


After doing a bunch of Chadd's caches in Kennebunk, I went to this final one of his for the day. It was a DNF primarily because I got tired of looking while everyone was watching me. It's located at a very busy intersection but pretty cool to stop and look at. Apparently it had actually seen some action at one point or another as it has some bullet holes in it.


On my way back, I had to make sure I stopped in Scarborough to get the Centrum Challenge cache. Having completed the challenge using the Stud Mill Road series on July 3rd, I figured I had better get this now as I don't know when I'll get down this way again anytime soon. After logging that, I hopped on the turnpike and kept on trucking until I got home. I very rarely do this, but with not another car on the road, I thought I'd do it just quickly...I love my car, even if with the stupid check engine light on. It's just an emissions sensor but has no effect on performace so no worries.

Stud Mill Road

Wendy and I went out last Sunday to try and wrap up all the caches on the Stud Mill Road we missed or logged DNF's for during July. Once again, we saw nothhing in regards to large animals. At one of the locations, Wendy almost stepped on a snake but that was the extent of the wildlife. We ended up with only 32 for the day but could have had more. We were under time constraints and had to cut the trip early to make in back to Bangor / Brewer and ended up being late. I think I used more gas coming back from GC1TMA3 at 90mph all along Route 9 than I did all day along all the side roads off the Stud Mill Rd.
Here's Wendy reaching for Clifford Lake Scenic View...
On the quick walk up to the cache, I picked up what I thought was a piece of trash that had the Avery TM logo on the back and I remember thinking it was odd that stationary would be out here. I picked it up and it was preprinted log stickers from Cano with his QR Code logo on it. Apparently he was out here logging caches at the same time and we just hadn't run into him.

Here's a view of the lake from a little beach area. I put my hands in and it was nice and cold as expected. I half expected my hands to have a lake water smell but the water was crystal clear and looked like you could just drink it up.

There were several spots on the little side roads I probably shouldn't have taken my Passat but did anyway. I mean, c'mon, its for a cache. They really weren't that bad, it was just nothing you really ought to be taking a front wheel drive car designed for the road through. This was one of the spots just before the Clifford Lake area where the road was washed out. I stopped to think about it for a minute, realized if we went through, we didn't have to come back this way, and went for it. This was a picture of afterwards. I did bottom out in the middle but kept on going. There wasn't enough flow there to pull of us off the road or anything but if you stopped in the middle, you might have sunk into the soft parts.


This was the view around GC16VGB. Not much out here but downed trees but the cache was dedicated to a great Red Sox player of the past that I remember seeing play when I was a kid so well worth getting.

After stopping to get a cache off another side road, GCTRAR, I decided to let the other cars out on the road know what we were doing incase they saw the car randomly parked along the way.

I had to actually act like a troll to get this one and luckily stayed dry in the process. I was able to grab the ammo can and toss it to safety, then we logged it and I was able to balance on a couple rocks to get it back into its location. This was found at GC1BFWM. There is a small beaver dam at the location and they had taken this tree down.
Here's a couple of shots of the river at GC1TK0E. We missed this one the first time and made sure to get it this trip.

I had caught a glimps of this sign the first time we were up here but were in a hurry to get caches. This time was a little less of a rush even though we were under time constraints so I stopped.

Stats on My First 500 Caches

Stats for Masterson of The Universe
Total: 500 finds

Total days since first find: 1611 - Overall find Rate: 0.31/day, 2.17/week

Total days with a find: 148 (Every 10.9 days or 9.2% of your total days) - Average finds per caching day: 3.38

Best day: 7/03/09 - 114 finds

Most consecutive days with a find: 3 from 5/27/05 to 5/29/05

Longest caching drought: 173 days from 11/11/07 to 5/02/08

Average total cache difficulty: 1.7 - Average total terrain rating: 1.72

Average physical cache difficulty: 1.72 - Average physical terrain rating: 1.73 (Traditional, Multi, Unknown, Project APE, Letterbox)

Approximate cache-to-cache distance: 3533.72 miles (5686.97 kilometres) (Excludes locationless and known traveling caches)

Active Caches: 450 of the caches you've found are still active (90%)

Average log size: 40.7 words - Biggest log: 327 words - Shortest log: 1 word - Number of one-word logs: 1

Milestone Cache Date Found
1 Cascade Cache (Log) 5/23/05
100 Geo Zoo #5 (Log) 8/31/07
200 Park and Ride Hide (Log) 3/30/09
300 Beavers Tribute (Log) 7/03/09
400 Gateway to Moosehead (Log) 7/18/09
500 EaglEyeStash (Log) 10/18/09

Based on your overall rate of 0.31 finds per day, you'll find number 600 around 9/06/10 and the big 1000 around 3/19/14. However, over the past few months, your find rate has actually been 1.04 finds per day. Based on that, you'll find number 600around 1/23/10 and your 1000th around 2/11/11.

This map is kind of sad as I've only cached in Maine...


This looks a little better.


\