As I had to go to Cleve this morning, I thought why not grab the couple caches that are there. So I logged on to download the co-ordinates into the trusty GPS. To my amazement there was a cache that had only just been published. Woohoo. This could be our first FTF (First To Find). The wife was already at work for the day and I couldn’t leave until after the kids had finished tennis. Once the morning necessaries were out of the way, I loaded the children and geocache bag into the ute and set off for Tickly My Belly. When we arrived there was no sign of anyone, so we marked the ‘X’ on the ground at the co-ordinates, and started to do the circle search. Figured it had to be in the rocks somewhere, but every nook and cranny had too large a rock to move, or that many cobwebs there could not have possibly been anything in the hole. Finally after searching for what seemed like hours, but really was only 10 minutes, we found it under a rock that we had dismissed previously as too big to move and bypassed it several times. When we opened the log book, there was no tickly feeling in our bellies, but rather more like a sinking feeling in our gut as we saw that we had been relegated to 2nd place. The cache had been plundered at 7.40am by diesel 69 and we found it at 11.10am. Oh well, it was great fun anyway.

Tickly My Belly

After finishing the business which we had come to town for, we set out for the 2nd cache of the day, Country School Capers  placed by local geocache legend Tweety2. Upon arriving at the location, we were a little puzzled as there did not seem like a lot of places to put a cache. I ended up triangulating the GZ to get an ‘X’ to mark the spot. It was in the middle of nowhere. After searching under every piece of growth (down to the last buckbush weed), and looking behind every loose stone in the wall, it seemed that we were going to have to give this one up as a “Did Not Find”. The children had got bored with searching about 15 minutes ago and had gone to sit in the ute to play their Gameboys. More out of determination (this one was not going to beat me, unlike un”Lucky Fairy“) and skill I started to think outside the square. Thats when I located the cache in an air vent in a place that I wasn’t expecting. What a great hiding place.

 Country School Capers

Following on from this success, we moved on to the last cache for the day. It was a lovely drive into the hills. A little slippery and corrugated, which made the childrens tummies feel funny (maybe this one should have been called tickly my belly). When we arrived at Gulf View, it wasn’t hard to guess where the cache would be found. Bit like looking for water in the desert. Go to the trees. Once located and argued over for the best trinkets, the cache was replaced. Thats when I realised that it was in a black ant nest and they were crawling all over me. Also was prickled by the shrub next to the bush and ended up with a couple of battle scars for my trouble. Still and all, the view of the Gulf and the windmill farm was worth the effort. Although it may have been a tad better if it had been a bit more of a clear day. Still, three caches for a couple hours of fun wasn’t bad. We ended up back in Cleve where we got lunch and then set out for home.

 

 Gulf View

We got home before the wife finished work. When she got home, we showed her all the booty and the photos of our day. Apparently, (rolls eyes) we didn’t take the right photos. The instructions as she handed me the camera (at 6.30am mind you) was to take photos of the cache. Apparently (rolls eyes again) that means pictures of the actual container, not the scenery around it. Tough. :p