Todays entry comes courtesy of “The Wife”

Hi everyone! Wife here. I had a meeting in Whyalla today and then a bit of shopping planned. I knew that I would have some free time before having to be home for the kids (time I could spend shopping for shoes or books or shoes) but today I let the credit card cool off and went geocaching. Mr ThisMechaniCan gave me a crash course in GPS operation last night and today I was off.

Meeting, lunch and food shopping out of the way, I still had nearly 90 minutes to pick up as many caches as I could. So I started with the one closest to the shops – Round Here. I have taken the kids to the park here before, but I didn’t know that there was such a pretty rose garden just behind it. I poked around in the bushes and after about 10 minutes I resorted to phoning Mr ThisMechaniCan to find out what the hint was. Well no wonder I couldn’t find it, I was looking in the wrong spot. I had spied the cache several times on my hunt, but had decided that it was “out of the zone”.  It was just a matter of fighting my way through brambles and spider webs and ants, but the cache was now mine. Since I was on a tight time limit, I had already decided on no swaps. So I signed the log and then I was out of there.

Heading up towards the City Centre (why is it called this, when it is on the edge?) I made a quick detour to see Cannonball Days  but the council were laying pavers around the cannon, so I didn’t even bother to slow down. A quick bit of tech shopping on Essington Lewis Ave and then up to the lookout for Point De Vue. Even though I had read the hints for this one, I spent far too much time here. A quick call to Mr ThisMechanican to make sure that I had remembered the hints properly and I determined that this would be a Did Not Find. The ants were crawling up inside my jeans, the wind was blowing a gale and yet I was determined. I didn’t leave the path, but I did attack a few bushes (just in case) but I just wasn’t meant to get this one.

A quick trip though the centre and I headed up Hummock Hill to Why Whyalla. The view is magnificent from up here, I remember coming up here for lunch somedays when I used to live here just to watch the water. There were a few muggles about so I just pretended to be a tourist for a while, waiting for them to leave. I crawled and I climbed, but this one eluded me too.

On the way back to Westlands to meet a friend, I passed the Whyalla Wetlands and thought I’d give it a try. There were a few cars parked here with a small number of people just sitting in them watching the water.  (At least I hope that’s what they were doing). I found GZ by pretending that the GPS was a phone (I’m sneaky! – but I bet there’s some old guy sitting at home tonight saying to his wife “You know I saw the darndest thing today, some crazy woman was talking into her GPS down at the wetlands…”), but alas there were too many people in the area for me to do a proper search, so I’ll leave this one for another day.

Met my friend in Westlands to exchange birthday pressies, filled the car up with petrol, picked up Hungry Jacks for the kids for tea and then headed for home. I had this vague recollection that there was a cache about halfway between Whyalla and Iron Knob, so I pulled over and turned on the GPS. For some reason, it always tells us that we are driving on the rail line on this stretch of road, so this made predicting where the cache would be a bit tricky. When I arrived at The Iron Track I pulled onto the dirt access road, got out of the car and then when the GPS re-aligned itself it decided that I was on the wrong side of the road. It only took a few minutes to find this one, so I signed the log, and got out of there fast.

Got home a little after the kids, but they hadn’t killed each other and they devoured the burgers in record time. My geocaching record isn’t too good  – 50% - could definitely use some improvement. But it was a fun day, if you don’t count the ants, the wind, the sun, the brambles, the spiderwebs and the bushes with flowers that made me sneeze. But it was still more fun than shoe shopping.  Really!! Honest!! Cross my heart!! Why won’t you believe me?