‘Binge’ caching?

Blog writing was always a bit of an erratic beast, however I have even surprised myself about how long it is since there were regular reports on here. Mind you, a lot has happened nationally, locally & personally to focus our minds elsewhere over the last two years.  It seems that my last frequent blogging was early last year, 2011.

February 22 last year, this generation of New Zealanders experienced the trauma of a major natural disaster.   An earthquake struck the heart of the city at 12:51pm. 185 people died, many many homes & businesses were ruined, and the on-going effects will be part of New Zealand’s future for all of us now. The trauma changed the people & face of our second most populated city forever.

As part of one of the many volunteer organisations that responded to the needs of the city & its people in the hours, days & weeks following the earthquake Annie spent almost a month in the city, and PB also had two periods of time there.

Two of our geocaching pals were significantly involved in the response efforts for their organisations, and as it happened we all finished up or had a gap in our duties on the same weekend. So,  someone declared – ‘let’s go caching.’ These pictures are from that trip around the middle of March 2011.

We packed four cachers & all their requirements into our van & off we went. I don’t even remember now if there was a specific plan. I’m guessing not – other than ‘find next’! But I’m sure the boys will enlighten me if I’ve forgotten.

Sunset somewhere along the way on the Friday night.  Somewhere between Christchurch & Tekapo maybe.

Everyone took  turn at driving – or sleeping! Some did more sleeping than others.

It appears from this photo that I did find at least one cache. But I’m afraid I wasn’t any where near fast enough to get most of them.   I guess that’s the ‘problem’ with going caching with experienced ‘binge’ & record setting cachers. Ah well,  it sure is one way to up the numbers if your stats need a bit of a boost.  We’ve got  59 finds from that weekend. And 2 DNFs. I expect there were probably a few more of each, but those are the ones that made it to my records.  Quite a lot for one weekend for us. And nothing much at all for our caching pals. (You know who you are. 🙂  )

One of my favourites and most memorable was a rough road through the stunning Mackenzie Country scenery to  a DNF.  The very spot we needed to search was occupied by mustering muggle horses and no doubt their humans were somewhere nearby. Oh well, it was a nice drive.

More fantastic Mackenzie views  – this is from Mt John near Lake Tekapo. Those who chose can walk up this little hill. Others drive. Guess which we did? We’d been here before but some of the party hadn’t and its always worth a visit for the stunning views anyways. There is an earthcache this area as well as a traditional.

We can’t even remember some of this trip now, we were that tired, but it was actually a great idea to do something crazy like this after finishing up & before going home to ‘normality.’ It allowed us to wind down &  get out of ‘emergency response’ mode. I think we would have felt very dislocated or dis-associated if we had just gone straight back to our regular routine. That in its self was a good thing to learn.

A Mega Mega.

Well, that’s done & dusted. New Zealand’s first ever geocaching Mega event.

Around 500 nutty geocachers from NZ, the North Island, Aussie, and a scattering of other places all around the world turned up in Dunedin for a weekend of socialising & cache hunting.

I can’t really show you any photos – apart from these couple, because apparently I was too much otherwise occupied to take any!

Signal & Geofeet were great fun.

Sunday Night Prizegiving

We did manage to find 9 caches over the weekend though. YAY!

People are buzzing about the Mega in their logs. Some remember meeting Signal & Geofeet. Some remember the bright yellow tee-shirts. Some will have an abiding recollection of the ‘hill’. Everyone will remember meeting friends old & new, adding to their finds, and experiencing ‘four seasons in one day.’

The organisers did promise a real New Zealand experience after all. 😉

Personal favourites:

• Catching up with familiar caching friends and getting to know a few new folks.
• Signal & Geofeet and the enthusiasm they put into meeting & greeting and being characters about the place – a BIG thanks to all involved there with making that happen.
• Seeing how cool , cute & how much fun pathtags are after having previously dissed them when finding them in caches. I want some now!!!
• The cool Postcard Travel Bug found at the geocoin table. People have been adding postcards to it as it travels around the world since 2002. Awesome! Of course we will add to it and send it one with its journey.
• People full of excitement & tales of adventure rushing in on Sunday afternoon to get their competition entries in on time.
• Watching Bitsprayer get an ever increasing collection of containers of all shapes & sizes handed to him as the clean-up progressed.  I am certain they all went to a good home & will materialised in new homes one day soon. 😉
• The unsung heroes who cleaned, cleaned up, directed traffic  and diligently did little jobs under the radar.
• Seeing hubby line up in a queue to sign a cache. A novel experience, but one we will try not to repeat.
• Watching hubby experience the ‘four seasons in one hour’ directing traffic on Friday afternoon. Someone give that man a (ginger) beer!!

So, now that I am back, I hope to update on some trips we’ve done over the last 18 months or so. There hasn’t been too much caching going on since last February, but I plan for that to be changing soon. 🙂 

No Go for No Name

Caching has been a rare event this year for one reason or another. Last weekend we got a chance to get a few local caches with some caching pals who are moving to the great Western Island soon. I only got a couple of pictures for our five caches, but this weekend we took the dog on an adventure to get a few more  caches – and pictures!

So – from last weekend:

The view from around about  GC2M165 BGSc: Block Course Which we did not attempt. I value my arms, legs, head, spine and every other bit of me too much.   Properly equipped I’ll be more than happy to take it on.

And somewhere in there is a cache of course. Cam Bash GC3084C. We found the cache eventually with a couple of ‘suggestions’ from our friend who had already done this one.  PB was the one whose eagle eye finally spied it. It wasn’t so much that it was a bush bash to get in, as there is quite a nice little geopath now once you hop over that fallen log & head a little left, but due to being totally under cover the GPS was pretty slow to respond. So we still had to look around over a fairly wide area. And we may have found a cache, but somewhere in there I lost my sweatshirt that was tied around my waist ….. or not.

Today we went to the notorious NoName Road. There are a few caches out that way that are all ‘drive-bys’ – in the Moneydork definition of a driveby.
GC2J1Q6 Kumara Crossroads    was easy enough to get to  – the ‘cobbled ‘ road made for a bumpy ride, but other than that it’s fairly accessible, and appears to have a resident weka acting as guardian.  PB made a quick find here. And then we watched the weka for a bit.

Could be a cache in there ..... or maybe a weka .....

... definitely a weka ....

After that we were going to head a bit closer to  GCR2HC No Name, but we couldn’t make it very far at all and didn’t fancy a long walk, so we might tackle that another day from another direction.

We opted to turn left instead and try for Gc2JCB1 ‘There is no shame in having NO NAME’. This was definitely a 4WD cache tackled from this direction, but would be fairly easy to get to from the Marsden  end.

Heading in to the forest

Not many places to see the views for the trees

Had to do a bit of landscaping along the way

Some pretty bits of track

Hey Dad!!!! Don't leave us behind!!

"Yep that's the cache Mum!"

Annie made the find here with Ruger to witness the log signing and PB as photographic director.

Memorial

 

GCAO94 

This was the first geocache that we ever found after we got our GPS. It’s a virtual and it wasn’t the first cache that we’d found. We actually already knew where it was too, but it was a way to test our newbie GPS user knowledge.  The reason we already knew that it was there is that it’s just directly across, on the banks of the River Avon, from the church that we sometimes attend when we are in the city. It’s what you saw when you stood of the steps of the church building between its tall & strong pillars.  An appropriate place for such a memorial I always thought.

But this is only a sort-of geocaching related post.

Yes, this warped metal is a 9/11 memorial, and today is the tenth anniversary of the destruction of the Twin Towers.  And yes, strangely, when I touched it on that day (with difficulty, because it’s designed in such a way that you are not supposed to touch it) the pain it contains is evident.  Somehow it seeps into your skin, and from a world away you are able to stand in sorrow beside those who lost so much that day.

Nowdays,  in my mind – as I don’t know when I’ll get to touch it again – it contains another layer of sorrow. The dust that it has most recently been covered with is that of the fallen buildings of the city of Christchurch.

This dust was not caused by the never-ending battle between the forces of good & evil, but by the power of Planet Earth shrugging its shoulders.

Who represents ‘Good’ and who represents ‘Evil’ when the original dust coated these bits of metal is beyond me to say.  But many people of all creeds, countries, faiths & colours lost their lives on that day and many days afterwards. As happened when the Earth shrugged.  And God grieves along with us at the lost of all the lives.

So now for me that memorial contains two layers of sorrow with its two layers of dust.  And I will never again stand on those same steps between those tall pillars, because they are gone. Along with the whole building and the years of history & love, faith & joy that were embedded in the pores of the building.

However, amongst the layers of sorrow are layers of hope, because a building will one day replace the one that was lost, and the love, faith & joy are never truly lost because they are still contained in the hearts & souls of those who worshipped there. As are the lives of those who died that day in New York 10 years ago never truly lost. So long as those lives live on in the memories – heart, mind & soul, of those who love them, those who remember them and those who morn them this day.

Photo Credits: memorial  from the cache page gallery & the church from an online source.

Punakaiki Caching

Hi there to all my old & new friends!

Well, a lot of stuff has happened the seven months or so. At some point, I may post about some of it – or not. For the moment I want to get back to putting some geocaching stuff on this blog. So here is a little walk we went on today.

Here in little ole’ New Zealand, we had a day’s holiday for “Queen’s Birthday. “ It’s not actually the Queen’s birthday today.  Her big day was back in April. But for some reason we always have an honorary day off the first Monday in June.  But I’m ok with that. J

We were planning on travelling away for the weekend, but every place that we would have gone had heavy rain warnings – mind you ,so did home. We decided that if we were going to have rain anywhere, we might as well stay home in front of our nice warm fire & sleep in our own comfy bed.

However, we got a few hours of sunshine today. Yes the sky really does look this blue here – when it’s not raining.

 We went to Punakaiki for lunch and to look for a few caches.  In the end we only got one, but a walk up the Pororari River is always a worthwhile stroll anyway.

Here is a fellow we encountered along the way, who may or may not have anything to do with the cache we found. But I will say he is a familiar friend and this is the third time that we have met him lurking around on the Coast somewhere!

 

Here are some of the picture postcard views that are to be seen in along the track.  The two with blue sky we took on the way in, and the third pic as we were nearing the end of the track on the way out. You can see the sky is turning grey

 

 

 

We encountered a good number of wekas today – a family of three here (I only managed to get two in the photo) and many fantails keeping us company. They never did sit still long enough for me to get a photo though. We heard a good chorus of birds especially at the start of the track – perhaps we were making too much noise after that.

 

We also had a quick walk around the Pancake Rocks & blowholes, but despite rough looking seas and booming surge pools, the actual blowholes were totally inactive.  We didn’t even bother to take any photos as there was nothing to take pics of. We made a quick dash back to the van as the rain just started to settle in.

Hopefully we will get a bit more caching done the next few months. J

Public Service Announcement: Number … something!!

Now — I know you’re out there. So please feel welcome to comment, even if you’ve never commented on my blog before. Heck, even if I don’t know you!!! Even if it’s the first time you’ve read this blog.  Those ‘other people’ who DO comment never knew me before I started this blog either. Does that make sense?

And Robert – yes, you may comment, even thought you knew me before I started the blog…… LOL!

Other places I may be found these days include:

Geocaching.com  – 0ur profile

GoodReads   – my profile

Twitter – my profile

Dailymile – my profile

Postcrossing – my ‘official’ profile

NZ GPS Society – the geocaching forum

My blog is the main place you can get to know me and be known so if you haven’t commented here a bit, I’m not likely to recognise you or ‘friend’ you elsewhere.

So if I have turned down anyone’s requests, my apologies – you are most welcome to come & chat here & make yourself known!!

Postcard people – would you be interested in getting a bunch of New Zealand postcards – written or unwritten as you prefer?? Let me know. I’m thinking of putting together a set & having a lucky draw soon.

Love, Annie

Playtime

Ruger & Neve are, to be honest, don’t play well with others. Neve would – given half a chance, as she’s a busy little girl who likes to make friends with anyone human or canine. Ruger, on the other hand is territorial.  He doesn’t like anyone to play with his sister. Not that he necessarily wants to play with her, but no one else can either.

 

However they do love when my friend K. comes around with her two dogs. Sometimes we go to K’s house too. The number of dogs that ends up THERE can be quite variable!! On Friday we had six, and on Saturday when we all went around there for a meal, there were seven.

So it can be quite a riot.  Ruger usually entertains himself playing with his Jollyball (Thanks Penny & Velcro!!) But the rest of the tribe prefers to have a human throwing their tennis balls or toys for them.  And with less humans than canine, the dynamics of that doesn’t always work out well!!!

So here we all are:

 

 

Sammy - the old guy

 

 

Ruger - " I'm just having a little rest. "

 

Buddy - Energizer Dog!

 



Katie - An old girl still going strong

 



Tylar & her favourite toy!

 



Neve - "Playing is hot work!"

West Coast Sunset

What to do on a Friday night when you don’t actually have anything that you HAVE to do? Why, caching of course! We don’t often have a Friday night to ourselves it seemed, but we did this week – and the weather was beautiful too.

We had a little circuit out into the countryside planned. Our intention was to pick up four caches – including two puzzles that we’d had solved for awhile. However we got sidetracked by the amazing sunset …. and by the neighbour of one of the caches. He’d been getting curious about what people were doing across from his house, so he came out to have a look. So now he has a bit more of an idea about geocaching, and thinks that a scavenger hunt around the whole world sounds like a bit of fun!!

So now we’ve still go two caches for another weekend, and saw a really vivid sunset. This would have been amazing  to watch down at the beach.  Our photos don’t really do it justice. These are from three slightly different locations.

Molesworth Station

 Last weekend PB & I went for a little drive. We headed north & inland to the thermal village of Hanmer Springs from where we planned to drive through the Molesworth Station. This is New Zealand’s largest ‘farm’ – it’s really more like what my American friends would know as a ranch. Here in NZ we call these large farms that are in the back ground ‘high country stations.’ Generally these stations run Merino sheep, valued for their exceptional wool, and some cattle, but Molesworth is entirely dedicated to beef cattle.  The Molesworth homestead is the highest permanently occupied in the whole of NZ. It is at an altitude of 900 metres (about 2 950 feet.)  

Most of New Zealand is coastal and consequently has rather mild weather pretty much all year. A few places do experience ‘ continental’ weather conditions as they are far enough inland. This area is one of those – it is bitterly cold here in winter & a good part of the station may be covered in snow for up to two months. In summer it can be viciously hot & dry! (But probably not as hot as an Arizona desert.)

It is only possible for the general public to travel through the Molesworth between the end of December & the beginning of April each year.  It’s 26 kilometres (16 miles) from Hanmer village to Acheron – which is the start of the trip from this end, then the part of the trip between the Acheron & Molesworth gates is around 60 kilometres (a bit under 40 miles) and finally the trip out the Awatere Valley at the Blenheim end of the Station is a further 100 kilometres  ( around 60 miles.)This is almost all on unsealed gravel roads. It’s not exactly a 4WD trip, but it is pretty slow & rough – and dusty, dusty, dusty!!

 We had planned to do the trip last summer, but cancelled due to family illnesses, so this year when we unexpectedly had a three day weekend free, we  went for it! The weather was perfect. Hot clear & sunny. Not perfect photography conditions though, but we still got some scenic and interesting shots. So – go look at the slide show & comments to see how our journey went.

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East Otago Caching

Over Christmas & New Year PB & I had a twelve day holiday. For once, we actually got to take the holiday that we planned. The last two years have been challenging ones with a lot of family illnesses & surgeries, and we have often had to change or put on hold our plans. So we were glad that we had the chance to do our own thing on this trip.  We’ve discovered that we’ve got to take our chances while we can.

We did spend the first few days over the Christmas weekend visiting family – as you do – then we flew the coop. Of course we got a few caches while we were doing family stuff as well – as you do – and even took some my family members to one cache. My Dad & little.sis quite enjoy finding the occasional cache ( little.sis plans to get her own GPS) but I think the other relatives find it a bit of a crazy hobby. 

 

Clarke's Mill

< This photo is from  Clarke’s Mill GC1TW3Q which is near the town where a lot of my family live.  We’d like to go back here when it’s open & see inside.  I didn’t realise that it ever DID open, so we’ll have to plan our timing better on some other trip.

  After the family visiting we started to head down the east coast, which is very different than our green & forested West Coast. There is much more rural land instead of wilderness, and rolling hills instead of wild mountainous ones. 

 

We had a night of not-quite-free camping at a Department of Conservation camping ground at Trotter’s Gorge . This was an amazing drive in, not so much for the scenery (because it was dark), but for the rabbits & hares running across the road. We lost count in the end – over a dozen!!  Rabbits are a pest problem here in NZ, but even so, we don’t usually see THAT many all on one short piece of road.

 

 

Campsite river

 By the time we arrived it was quite dark, so we didn’t really see the landscape around us, but in the morning we saw that we literally were camped in a narrow gully and that the river was quite pretty. 

 

 

 

"I got it!"

 

 There were – of course – caches. Where in NZ aren’t there caches!!! So we went to hunt a couple. They were both a good challenge despite quite descriptive hints, as the GPS reception under tree cover, in a gully was not too good.  Here is me at GC1BDHX  The Draw Bridge  

 

 

The next step on out trip was to head back out to the coast again. We picked up a few more caches 7 a few more photos – these ones are near GCYFQD   Katiki Beach .

Early Morning Beach

 

Wildflower

I favourite this cache just because I really enjoyed our morning stroll along the sand. You see, we don’t really have much sand on our West Coast beaches – especially right near our little town – and what there is, is greyish, not golden and, well….  sandy coloured!  

 These two photos are from near a place called Shag Point  (yes, really!) There are a few caches there, some we got on a previous trip, but we found three more this trip – and had a DNF. The seagull got photographed during our DNF, as there were too many people about for us to have a really good search.  There is an ‘official’ seal viewing lookout in this are too, but we saw more seals & closer at the cache called  Seal Watch  GC274P5 .  Probably a case of the locals knowing where the best viewing really is.  

People Watching

Seal Watching

 

We also did a few caches around the little town of Palmerston.   Some of the caches here, I have to say, were not that great. But it was still worth the stop as there are a few good ones too. Our most interesting one was Sir John Makenzie GC25YDV   .  This was a real stealth challenge, and I’m sure in the end we quite obvious, but sometimes it’s the only way.  Again a few photos – including the rose & statue got taken while searching for this one!! I really do wonder about people sometimes, as I’m sure one of the dozen or more that passed by MUST have wondered what we were doing.

 

Decoy Photo

Zealandia