While speaking with Robert aka Espy Seay at the Lubbock Geocaching Picnic - I had the opportunity to ask him what cache he'd highly recommend to us. He sent us to find GC2Z5DM Found on the Appalachian Trail.
Here's how our cache discovery story went (Warning! - contains spoilers):
First, we parked on the wrong side of the water. This cache was part of the Brazos River series that we've enjoyed, but we'd not been to this little pondy part before. Our cachemobile is not 4x4, so driving closer wasn't really an option. We ended up walking about a mile or so total, but hey, exercise is good for us! Being on the side of town it was, Mrs. Nomesquad kept peering out from the search to make sure all four wheels were still on the car.
We get to ground zero and start searching. Found several things that looked iffy, circled around, kept looking. There was trash and LOTS of mud and leaves. Beer bottles, gallon jugs, assorted garbage. Ran back out and rechecked the GPS. Yep, we're in the right spot. Back in the brush and looking, not seeing much of anything other than several inches of leaves, dirt, debris and trash.
Four of us spent probably half an hour searching, when Mrs. Nomesquad grabbed a long stick and started poking the trash, just in case. All of a sudden the youngest of Nomesquad says, "I found it!" No you didn't, we already looked there. "No I found it look I found a treasure!" Before anyone could yell, "Don't touch that!" he had it in his hands, giving it to daddy. Sure enough, he did find it. Shown up by a 4 year old tonight. Turns out it was partially buried in the leaves, he showed us where he grabbed it from. What he found was a black-taped pill bottle which did indeed contain the log, but after seeing the beer bottles and trash, the skeptic inside is always afraid to open a pill bottle found on the ground. Signed the log, but knew that this didn't belong on the ground, especially from having read previous logs on the find.
While the log signing was happening, the stick poking from Mrs. Nomesquad resulted in this reaction: "Eew!" she says, completely oblivious that what she just dug up with the stick from under the leaves was actually the cache. Placed it back on the ground, discussed the nastiness and we went home. It was on the way home that it clicked - yeah... that's probably what the log was supposed to be contained in. Still, relieved it was only touched by a stick and not by fingers, you know, just in case that wasn't really the cache - coz recently and not too far away we've seen the same sort of item just laying about. It turns out that what was dug up by the stick was a pair of underwear - tightie whities. Well, they weren't white at all. They looked used. Very used. They were barely sticking out from under the leaves, maybe an inch of the waistband was visible, that's all.
After returning home, we emailed Espy Seay and asked if that was indeed the cache and container, and got confirmation that yes, we'd found it. I can guarantee that if we'd found the log in the container where it belonged there would have been much squealing and repulsion to be heard for quite a ways, so much for stealth. In the email we explained what happened, where we put the log container and offered to go back out and put it together how it was supposed to be. It must have just washed apart from the recent rains and from a couple of months of not being searched for.
To add to the excitement somewhere several blocks from the cache, Mr. Nomesquad jumps and looks a bit disturbed. He quickly pulls the car over and removes a friend from his shoe/sock. He had a hitchhiker - a fuzzy green and orange caterpillar. Apparently it wasn't a poisonous type, his foot hadn't fallen off or turned colors as of this morning. :P
We really love Espy Seay caches and can't wait to find more of them. Thanks for doing everything you do, Robert. :)
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