weaselmom | Geocaching: Westward Ho!

Today we headed south and west to explore an area we knew very little about--Gig Harbor and the peninsula. We loaded in six gcs, of which we ended up finding five (and bailed on the sixth only because it was positively infested with muggles, not because we couldn't find it). I deliberately chose caches with low difficulty and terrain ratings, nothing more than 2/2, so we'd have a chance of finding them all. As it turned out, we spent most of the time driving around trying to find the general gc locations, let alone fishing around for Altoids tins. When you download a gc into your GPSr, you don't get much information--just the coordinates. The GPSr compass shows the direction you're heading with a swinging arrow showing you where you *should* be going, plus your distance from the gc and how long it should take to arrive at your current speed. But our unit, designed only for geocaching and not for automobile navigation, doesn't tell you which roads to take to get there! It is so frustrating to be half a mile from the site and yet not know how to get there from here! The only reason this works at all is because Shawn is a truly superior navigator. Even in areas that he's never visited before, he has a sense of where roads should be, and how we may need to go north to eventually go south. I'd have given up long ago if it weren't for this peculiar (but welcome) ability of his!

The first gc really should have been a 0/0, as it was basically "go here and look right there in plain view." Still, it was a nice way to start the day before we headed into Gig Harbor proper (Motto: "Blink and You'll Miss It") for some shopping and sightseeing. It's a pretty, genteel little place and I wish we had more time to spend there (and weren't too grubby to dine there). I bought four fantastic pairs of socks (shut up, *I* like them) and some exfoliating scrub that smelled so divine--chocolate orange!--that I had to get it even though I don't exfoliate.

Not much to report for the rest of the day's gcs, really. We TNLN all day as these were mostly small or micros. Oh! There was one where the container itself was so clever and cunning that we just marveled at it. I had actually touched it early on, but so gently that I didn't realize what it was. It's good that it turned out to be so clever, because we drove all over the damned county trying to find the right road to get us there. Plus it had the best blackberries I've yet tasted, so fat and juicy and ripe that they fell into my hand at the slightest touch.

At another gc, the GPSr wasn't reading correctly or the coordinates were off, because it kept insisting we needed to dig straight through the center of the street. We found the gc about six feet away cunningly hidden, but it was definitely a WTF? moment.

We ended the evening at Katie Downs enjoying tasty food and drink (salmon and beer for me) on the deck literally right over the water as the sun went down. It was a wonderfully satisfying end to a pretty good day. I hope you all had a very fine day too!