Santa cache is coming to town.

We received free tickets to the annual Christmas Pageant in Adelaide and figured we could take the geokids to it.

On the way we planned to do a spot of geocaching. It had been threatening to rain all day on the Friday and as we pulled out of the driveway it started to spit. This meant that we may have needed to change our plans and not do any caching on the way to Adelaide. As it happened, it didn’t get much heavier than a drizzle in any one shower, so we continued with our original plans even though it was very muggy now. The first cache we tried was Bruce. I think we made this a lot harder than it was by approaching from the paddock side of the trees. It was an easy enough find as it’s hard to look past a bucket placed strategically under some trees and we did have about a million other sets of eyes looking as well, (mind you I think they were more interested in us than the cache – damn flies, smidgen of rain must have made it the right conditions for them to hatch.)

From here it was just a short romp up the road to the next co-ords being Smelters. With the friendly flies annoying us badly by crawling into every orifice they could physically find, we looked in every obvious place except the right one, so we had to log this as a DNF but vowed we will have another shot at it.

Another hop, step and a jump away and we arrived at the next location known as Port Pirie Travel Bug Holiday Inn. We found the ground was very soft and cushiony here, not sure why, and when arriving at GZ was set upon my big, black meat ants. Not wanting to be their next meal the Wife shot through wondered off to collect a photo while I played “name this dance” with the ants. Didn’t really expect to see too many Tb’s or GC’s in this as it was fairly new but was surprised by the number that were in it. We removed Alocsin’s #1: Trans-Pacific Traveler (from Placentia, California, USA) and then booked in DeltaEcho’s Christ Centered Caching Geocoin #4. I then re-enacted the dance moves, for the benefit of the wife who was in fits, to replace the cache and bolted out of there. The wife suggested she buys a bigger memory card for her camera so that she can video it on our way back from Adelaide. My reply was colourful in the least but basically suggested she could take her camera and fall over Niagara falls with it.

Still another triple jump away was the next cache that we would have a crack at. Take a Break from all accounts on-line, was going to be a challenge. Apparently it is not the best smelling area for a cache to be sited in and it sure lived up to it’s reputation. It’s a wonder these salt bushes aren’t a 100 feet high with all the salt and nutrients they are getting from all who REST here. I started to dismantle the other half of the wall that had been half dismantled already and knew that this was not right. Wishing I had bought a couple of bags of render with me (cement that is), it was only by chance as I was reassembling the wall, that I picked up a rock that wasn’t part of the wall and found the cache in all it’s glory. Shuddering at the thought of how many people and animals had p!ssed rested on it, I picked up the key secreting container and logged my visit. I put it back exactly as I found it wondering why the container wasn’t rustier than it was and thankful I don’t have to come back to this one.

It was more like a marathon than a hop, skip and jump to the next cache that we were going to make an effort to find. At least it gave us a chance to cool down, get rid of the flies out of the car and track down that one ant that had found it’s way up my pants leg and into the car (F*&^%$ thing left a nasty little bite mark). At arriving at Freddohill, we marvelled at the size of the River Red Gums and water in the creek bed. It turned out to be a very serene and quiet spot and we wished we could have stayed a bit longer and hopefully listen to the frogs that may have invariably escaped from the cache bucket and into the marshes, but we were on a schedule and schedules must be adhered too.

Our last find for today would be one that we started some months ago and was only a short marathon away. Which Bank?, for some reason I thought it was a multi, turned out to be quite easy really. After taking ages scouring the sign for the answer and not finding anything I decided to log my visit and there staring me in the face was the answer. The answer being the side of the road on the way to Adelaide, seemed to be a coincidence as well. OR WAS IT??? So it was chalk another find up for us and onto Adelaide to book into a hotel and get a good nights sleep ready for the Christmas Pageant frenzy the following morning.