We started our first cacheing day for 2009 by voting to finish a cache which we had started 6 months earlier. Alternative Routes!? is a multi which ends up at the top of Mt Laura. I started to drive to the GZ but the Wife started to froth at the mouth and grab at anything that was bolted down, so we decided to walk. Much safer for me that way. After scrambling over the edge and trying to stop C7 from running falling down the hill, I found the cache hidden under a rock beneath a shrub.

 

Once all the sightseeing that had to be done, was done, we got back into our wannabe 4WD  and continued on down the track to No Country For Old Men. We actually drove a complete circle around this cache trying to find a track or part of the road closer to the cache than where we thought was closest (see photo). In the end we finished back at where we started and the geokids and I walked through the scrubbery to the GZ while the Wife recovered from her heart attack in the car (no head for adventure or cars going down steep slight, bumpy slopes).  Didn’t take long for H10 to dig up the cache and perform the swaps. I covered it back up with more sticks and twigs and we returned to the car and the still, jittery wife.
  

We then drove back around and up another hill to close in on the next cache called Monash Gully. In hind sight there probably was a better way of approaching this cache, but the shortest route seemed the logical choice, which was straight down. I must admit the Outlander handled it admirably but I now have to repair some of the upholstery due to the claw marks left by the Wife as she and the geokids were screaming their heads off.  I turned to the left at the bottom and parked not far from the cache. The Wife got out and started wobbling walking towards the GZ. When quizzed about the wonkiness, she assured me it was due to her legs having turned to jelly. It wasn’t long before we located the cache, again under rocks, under a bush and soon we were on our way again.

 

The drive to Power and Water Available was uneventful and boring. No steep gradients or slippery slopes for the car to slide down or spin it’s way up. We pulled up near the water tank and went for a walk into the bush. By now H10 had worked out how the caches were hidden in these parts and it wasn’t long before she announced that she had found the rocks (after being prodded in the right direction by the wife). She removed the cache and I signed the log. C7 was too busy throwing sticks or SMASHING ants to worry about the cache but took time out from his busy schedule to replace it. From here I figured it was straight out to the highway and onto our next cache. I hadn’t counted on roadworks happening in the area and we couldn’t actually get to the highway without crossing some very iffy terrain.

 

Eventually we navigated our way out of the mess and powered on to Dig? Once we had figured out the clues from the CORRECT sign, we headed on down the road. Whoa, we’ve gone past the GZ. Ah well, there’s a road there that leads towards the GZ. Hang on, that’s going over the number 9(?) fairway. Don’t think those guys playing there would like us doing that. What if we ran over one of their balls? So we did a u-turn and headed back the way we came. I remember seeing a track that looked like it would lead in the general direction of the cache. We parked approximately 150 meters from the cache and walked the rest of the way. Again H10 spotted the, now familiar, pile of rocks and uncovered the cache. Nice views from here and a stop at the nineteenth would have been a godsend nice, but we continued back and on to a cache that had been haunting our dreams for quite a while.

 

Hourly, Daily was proving to be a bit of a headache. The first time we had tried this we ended up in some wild, farout places that we knew just couldn’t be right. The Wife had also tried this one several times on her regular pilgrimages to Whyalla, but was unable to crack it. Well it turned out that The Wife was not as clever as she thought she was and confused the two places as well. Also she overthunk it and made it more confusing by using the Roman numerals. I’m not too sure if it was the adrenalin coursing through her veins or the dopamine high she was on but she re-read the information supplied and the logs, redid the maths with the proper digits and WHYALLA (sic), there it was (Note to mental self, don’t let someone with IQ of 150 near a simple problem). Stick with the KISS method (Keep It Simple Stupid). Now that I had located and retrieved this one from under a nearby tree, we could now sleep a lot easier at night move on to another unfinished cache.

This was one of those caches that appear a lot harder to do than they actually are. Which is why we hadn’t finished this one yet. Flight 904 was one of the original caches that I had downloaded into my GPS when I started caching and the first time we searched for it we had no idea that it had actually been moved. So this was technically our second attempt, and with the new co-ords we were sure to find it. The Wife was looking right at it but still managed to miss it. C7 thought it was the discarded battery until he tried to lift it “wow must be heavy treasure in that” I think I heard him say to H10. That’s when I spotted the container hidden in amongst the bark and leaves. It was now fairly late in the day, but we decided to claim one more cache before we went and had tea.

 

I had found the original cache of Maux Horizons back in October 2007 and decided to do Maux Horizons – 2008 remix after the original was washed away. This time the whole family got out of the car and trekked up the hill. It was a bit easier to find this one , compared to the original, as it’s hidden in a bush next to the fence. This really confused H10 as there were no pile of rocks, so she couldn’t see the container sticking out like dogs balls. In the meantime C7 was planning on moving every stone on the hill an arm throw away. Boys… just gotta throw something, stomp on something or break something. Oh well, he’ll sleep well tonight just like the rest of us.