Nomesquad's Personal Geocoin

We have some great geocaching news to share!  We've officially been bitten by the geocoin bug and are hoping to start our collection.  We've received a couple of them in the past, and thought they were very beautiful...

In order to jump start our collection, we're having our very own Personal Geocoin minted.  That's right, we'll have 100 coins to trade, sell or give away at our discretion.

The design is simple, but looks very nice as art, so hopefully it'll turn out great as a geocoin.  We're planning on 4 color variations and are right now waiting for the mint to send us the blueprint for approval.  Here's the initial artwork I sent to the mint:

Hope you enjoy it, and if anyone out there is actually a geocoin collector, comment here - we'll work out a trade! :)

Breaking Our Record

We set out from home last Friday on a mission to break our daily geocaching record.  It stood as 14 caches found in one day.  Shouldn't be too hard, I see tons listed between home and Caprock Canyons and we'd decided to go camping.

Off we go, taking a totally different route from our last trip to Caprock Canyons.  The weather was beautiful.  Just outside of town, here's the first one.  Nice.  Mr. Nomesquad zips across traffic and we soon realize that maybe we should have grabbed that one on the way home instead... oh well.

Moving on, we found several more, most of which were just off of the highway.  No problem!  We're out as a family, having a good time and seeing some of these little towns and communities around that we've never even heard of before.

Funny Story at the Crosby County Wind Farm - we're learning about alternative energy thanks to a series of geocaches placed outside of Ralls and Lorenzo.. in fact we totally bypassed Ralls by taking back roads chasing this series.  Anyway.. Mr. Nomesquad finds the cache and runs it back to the car.  We're at least 3 or more miles out in the middle of nowhere as you can see.  The log is being signed and returned to the cache and a tractor is shuffling down the side of the road.  Geez... ok gotta hurry and replace the cache so we can get out of the farmer's way.  Nope.  The farmer pulls into the field and starts plowing DIRECTLY behind that sign.  Mr. Nomesquad stashed the cache and ran, but we think the farmer was watching us like we were absolutely nuts.

This is how teenagers go geocaching with the family...                                   ------>

She missed some gorgeous scenery - see the next photo.

This was at Blanco Canyon - near Floydada.

Behind them was a very large hole in the ground with green grass at the bottom.  What irritated me about this geocache was that it was TINY hidden under some huge rocks.  The cache owner could very easily have placed something quite a bit larger here.

Just hanging around, at a park cache in Floydada.

Why did the bison cross the road?

To go get another geocache of course!!!

Ok maybe not, but they were crossing the road in front of the visitor center at Caprock Canyons State Park, right after we picked up the multicache there.

A new cache was placed by Lake Theo.

Sure wish the lake had more water in it.  Its even lower than when we were here last November.

All in all we found 16 geocaches this day.  WOOHOO!  Now we have a larger record to break, it should be fun trying.  It took us about 3 1/2 hours for a 90 minute trip because we cached all the way to the park.. LOL

Colorado Bound!

We recently made a trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado and had the opportunity to find a few caches on the way.

Our first find was in Clayton, New Mexico.  This is our first and still only New Mexico geocache.

From  here we went on and our next cache was just inside the Colorado border - gotta love the views from here.  Raton Pass - Scenic Overlook

Ultimately we found a few more around the hotel in Colorado Springs, and two more on the way out from Kitty's house.  It was a great trip and now we've added 2 more states besides Texas to our list of finds.  Yay!  :)

Critters of Caprock Canyons

About 2 hours northeast of us here in Lubbock is a Texas State Park that's very beautiful.  As you drive in everything is flat and brown as far as the eye can see, then all of a sudden its rolling hills and this sprawling canyon.

We went geocaching and camping last weekend - but that's a story for another post.  First and foremost I want to share the critters we encountered while out in the canyons.

First, we met Lizzy the Lizard at our campsite, he was sat beside the picnic table.

Monty the Monarch was perched on a sunflower near Lake Theo.  There were quite a few butterflies flapping about out here, was nice to watch as the breeze blew.

Our daughter had a strange fascination with this beetle.  She tried to feed it, and that's what likely led to the next visitor after the beetle.  Buddy Beetle was in the campsite for a good long while.

Smelling scraps of food, Rocky Raccoon came to visit more than once during the night.  He got away with about 1/4 of a bag of potato chips.  Did you know raccoons growl?  I didn't.

On the way out of the camp the next morning we saw several antelope.  These ladies posed right beside the car window for a closeup before bounding off across the prairie.

*BEEP BEEP*  -- ZIP-- DANG!  Yep, its the roadrunner.  Trust me, we heard the coyotes during the night plenty well.

And last, but hardly least - the pride of Caprock Canyons, the Official Texas State Bison Herd.  Yep!  That's right.  Buffalos right at home on the range.  They roam the prairie above the canyon freely, I mean one just cruised across the road in front of the visitor center right after we got our state park pass paid for.  Its crazy!  On our way out, the herd was very close to the road.. in fact, right across the road so we pulled in for a few great pictures.    I was using a zoom lens, but they were literally 20 feet from the car.

Caprock Charlie and all his cousins:

On the road, walking towards us:

Is this my good side?

Lubbock Geocaching Picnic

We were pleased to attend our very first Event Cache last Saturday.  Rreed4800 hosted it at an apartment complex clubhouse and it was very cool. There were hotdogs and hamburgers with all the trimmings, cookies and cakes galore.

In attendance were more than 25 other geocaching teams from the area, and even some who had traveled from places like Clovis, NM and Amarillo.

We had a great time getting to meet other people who are addicted to stalking tupperware as much as, or even more so than ourselves and it was wonderful to "talk shop" with people who actually understand.

You wouldn't believe the number of trackables that were brought to the get together.  There were several vehicles that had tracking bugs on them, a walking stick, my t-shirt, and Mr. Rreed4800 even had a trackable tattoo.  Craziness!  There were also a couple of coin collections that were totally awesome.  It was fun to see some of the trackables that we'd found in the area resurface again, and even Mr. Nomesquad's Funky Monkey turned up to go bananas.

Hearing about some of the others' trips was great inspiration on how to get more out of our upcoming geocache adventures.

There were some prizes given away, many of which were very nice.  Groundspeak was nice enough to donate a pair of 2011 Lackey coins.  One was given away in a drawing, and the other is going out and about to surf the world, commemorating our get together.  Everyone signed a log as well that'll be headed to Groundspeak HQ in Seattle to hang on their wall.  There were other cool prizes too, the kids managed to win a stainless steel water bottle and a notepad. (thanks Delta Airlines!)

We're definitely looking forward to the upcoming events and can't wait to get out there and do it again!

Did I hear Dueling Banjos in the Distance?

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.  :)

Some Critters We've Encountered

When out in nature, sometimes nature attacks.  Sometimes its just breathtakingly beautiful.  Its 50/50 on which version you'll get when out and about around Lubbock County.

So far things have been pretty mild and we can safely add to the cool critters list that we've encountered while out geocaching.

These were both at the same cache.  Unfortunately we had to log a Needs Maintenance on the cache because the container had been utterly obliterated.  The owner has since put out a great new container but we've yet to make it back to that end of town to sign the log.

Around 82nd and Memphis is a nice little lake.  We found wonderful critters in their natural environment such as these... and aaaah it was so relaxing to watch.  There were many more ducks at the little playa lake, but these 3 kept near the shore.. Quackquackquackquack.... :D

(On a side note - I'm particularly fond of the bright blue dragonfly picture... I'll be a photographer someday!)

What I've failed to mention is that as we got out of the car, the GPS first pointed us toward a tree.  In this tree we saw:

Yes, its a knife.  A decent looking knife.  I have a set of pairing knives much like this one but shorter.  Odd place to park your knife, I thought to myself... and this is even the nicer end of town!  I didn't see any blood on it, so I didn't think that it was necessary to call the police.  I did debate taking the knife, but again, for fear of maybe having had some blood washed off of it, I let it be.

Aaah.. the serenity of nature...