Night Caching

DD was having a sleepover at her Grandpa's house with her cousin last night, and so as usual, on the rare occasion DD is out of the house, we went Night Caching. That's Geocaching at night, folks.

There are two types of night caching. The first is when you are looking for a cache that is specifically set up to be a night cache. These are a LOT of fun. The ones we've done usually involve using flashlights to find "glints" on trees to find your way to the cache. It can be quite tricky. It also can be spooky to be out in a forest (or wherever) in the dark.

The second type of night caching is when you look for a regular cache, but at night. This isn't always possible because the area it's in may be closed at night (for instance most parks). Or it could be too dangerous to attempt in the dark, or might be too difficult to find in the dark. You have to use your own judgment but there ARE plenty of public places accessible at night such as certain trails, caches in park-n-rides, caches along the roadside, etc.

We found two caches last night - one was a true night cache, the other was a cache that we were able to find at night. We had a little trouble with the first one. This particular cache has been around for awhile and over time some of the "glints" had fallen off, so as you can imagine that made it a little more challenging. Also, we left a little too early and it was actually dusk when we found it, and the glints are easier to see when it's dark with your flashlight. However, I'm glad it was not in fact dark when we went because we saw something VERY cool! The thing I'm not glad about is we didn't have our camera - we figured we weren't going to need it because it would be...dark! Anyway, the hiking was mostly through forest but we came to a small clearing where there were THIRTEEN huge ANTHILLS! The biggest one was about 4 feet wide in one direction and about 5 feet wide in the other direction and about 2 to 2 1/2 feet tall. It was totally amazing. We looked at the ants themselves and they looked like ordinary black ants, although I've never seen such a large anthill, nor such a large group of them. We have a cool anthill way in the back of our backyard, but that thing is puny compared to these. We may go back just to show DD, so if we do I will be sure to take pics.

By the time we did the second cache it was actually dark. I also forgot to mention that I carried my whoop a$$ can of Bear Spray with us for both caches. Black bears are sighted regularly in my area - I've already found bear poo on our property twice this summer. I actually saw a bear in my neighbor's yard last year. I even hear bobcats are making a comeback. Well, whatever may have been around to attack us, I had my spray. Luckily we did not encounter any large and dangerous animals. Our big problem was walking into spider webs. Yick! (I could have tried the bear spray on the spiderwebs, but I think that would've been a little overkill.) DH had a brilliant idea and picked up a fallen branch with a clump of dead leaves on the end and he used that as his "spiderweb sweeper" to clear the way in front of us. It served us well. And, luckily when we got to ground zero, the cache was an easy find.

I rarely take anything from caches for myself anymore, but at this cache was a stuffed "Blue" from Blues Clues. She was so cute and somehow I felt bad shutting her back up in the dark lonely cache and having her wait in the lonely woods until someone else decided to find that cache. So I took her. She only smells a LITTLE musty. The cache container was an ammo can, so at least she'd stayed pretty dry and decent. So DH put in one of our trade items for her, and I hiked out of the woods clutching my bear spray and Blue in one hand, flashlight in the other.

Some couples go out to a fancy dinner and a movie when they get a night to themselves.

We go out to find hidden stuff in the dark!

The end.