Yesterday was a public holiday, but the wife had to go to Port Augusta for a meeting, so we grabbed the GPS and had a day of geocaching. On the way, we passed our first cache for the day, “Going West”. We parked off track and started the short trek through the scrub. The wife was the first to spot it and the kids moved in for the usual bootyswap. It was only 10am, but the mercury had already climbed to 36C, so the shade of the tree was more than welcome.

H9 hunting for “Going West”

On our way back to the car, the wife found a plastic ant in the dirt (actually she jumped about 4 foot in the air because she thought it was a spider). H9 thought it would be funny to put the “Soldier Ant” on guard duty. So we have put it on a nearby log to guard againts pesky muggles.

 Our next stop for the day was at the curiously named “Backpacker TB and Geocoin Stopover“. From the location on the GPS, I thought that it would be in the parking bay, but the wife thought that it would be somewhere around the tanks. Turns out that we were both wrong. The wife was on a roll and quickly located this cache as well. Now we understand. It’s a cache to leave your travelbug or geocoins in to have them sent in the direction you want. We took the European Wildlife Series (Red Deer) coin as we were heading east.

We still had a little time to spare, so we headed for the bane of my existance, Krupp Werks. I have attempted this one twice before, and this time I was prepared. I had the clue translated from German. I read all the logs, some of which I thought were pretty helpful. We started searching where we had narrowed it down to and couldn’t find it. Eventually we just re-searched that whole thing again. This cache is really Krupping me off. Short of dismantling the Krupping cannon, I can’t work out where this cache is. Krupp does not WERKS for me. There is no photo because I didn’t want to encourage it.

Took the wife to Macca’s where she was having her meeting with friend from Leigh Creek. I took off with the kids to do some geocaching in the meantime.  Our first stop was “Stay the Night 2!”, near a place where I don’t want to stay the night. Near the cache was a recently moulted Shingleback lizard skin. H9 found it more fascinating than the cache and wanted to take the skin as her booty, but she settled for the bouncy ball instead.

Stay the Night 2 – Not by choice! 

Three minutes after replacing “Stay the night 2″  we arrived, “At the Crossroads“. H9 couldn’t believe how big the cache was, but it made it easy to put some larger goodies into.

Our next cache before meeting back up with the wife for lunch was “Matty & His Mates“. It was a multi-cache taking us to different sites commemorating Matthew Flinders.  It even took us down a road I used to live on!  A fabulous cache! I had lived in PA for 8 1/2 years and never really looked at either of these monuments.

  We headed back to Macca’s for lunch and then did some shopping. It was still pretty early, so we figured we had time for a few more caches. We headed over to the water tower, to check out “Towering Views” but despite climbing up and down several times we didn’t locate the cache. I have a feeling that I know where it is, but just couldn’t see it. Might bring a ladder next time. Our second DNF for the day, looks like my wife’s good luck had run out.

We were going to head out to visit a cache that appeared to be in the middle of the gulf, but on the way we passed by “Sands of Time” . We were having satellite problems and kept losing reception, but eventually we located the cache. The kids who were very tired by now, stayed in the car while I went off in search of GZ. The wife in the meantime was busy taking 50 bazillion photos of an old cemetary. I don’t know the history of this cemetary, I didnt’ even know it existed.  There are more than 20 graves here although less than half are marked. But on a day when there was a northerly wind blowing and the mercury had now risen to over 45C, it was easy to imagine the hardships that these pioneers faced. I’m glad that I had an airconditioned car to return to. We left the European Wildlife Geocoin here.

We then headed off to find “ElectraCute“. We had looked on the map before we left and had worked out that we could most likely approach this from the western side of the gulf. Our GPS was really unhappy with us for taking this route. It wanted us to approach from the eastern side of the gulf which would take us through the power station and then we would need a boat to get to the cache and kept telling us to turn around. We weaved our way around power line towers and even though our lovely GPS kept telling us that we were getting further away from the cache, eventually, it conceded defeat and announced “Arriving at Desination”. Even from a distance we could hear the roar of the turbines across the mangrove swamps. After a few minutes of searching in the bushes, we located the cache.

It was now after 6pm so we went off to have tea and then head for home. We filled up with petrol and then counted up our caches for the day. Seems we had found only 7 out of 9 caches – hardly a good score. Maye the heat was affecting us.  Nearby to the petrol station was the “I’ve Been Everywhere, Man” cache. The kids were already absorbed in a DVD, so the wife kept lookout while I hunted. Surely it wouldn’t be in such an obvious place, so I hunted around in the trees on the hill without luck. Eventually, I just sat on the fence and non-chalantly picked it up. Took it back to the car to log and then climbed the hill again. Made out that I was just leaning on the fence and whipped it back into place without any of the muggles noticing (I hope). 

By now, the sun was well and truly on the horizon, so we made for home with an 80% ( B average grade) for the day. But that bloody stupid amazingly tricky Krupp Werks is still a piece of Krupp.