Adventures in Botany & Caching

The storm that blew through last night was amazing. I'm sad to say I was too sleepy to try to photograph it. My pups pushed open the door to my room and climbed in bed with me around 5:30a. It's no surprise I got a late start to the plotted geocaching adventure in Spring Grove Cemetery today.

Scurvygirl (Lauren), Goodstarbuck (George), and I met up around 3 and wandered a bit. While George sussed out his GPS issues, we took a stroll toward the rose garden, though a field of mating dragonflies (wowsers), and came upon a Hummingbird Moth feeding.



We mistook him for a baby hummingbird at first, because they look quite similar until you're really close. I'd never seen on before! Lauren sniffed out some sassafras, but further adventures in botany were curtailed by the activation of the GPS.

Our target is a multi-cache with 12 clues that lead to various points in the cemetery (and they are not shy about sending you across the thing!). There's math involved, but only simple subtraction and addition. We flopped our Lat. and Lon. a few times, but that happens. There's something to see in every section of the cemetery, so if you make a wrong turn, it becomes obvious pretty fast, with a couple of exceptions along the way. There's cool stuff to see until you figure it out.

We drove past a fawn and a doe, and nearly walked up on some bucks while searching for a "shipwreck" tombstone. Luckily, they took off instead of bambi-ramboing us. Some of the clues required reading of stones to find a clue buried in a bunch of text. Occasionally, they were not obvious. "Gone Fishing" does not refer to the most excellent lakeside monument (Charles Phelps Taft II). That is a hint from me to you. So just follow the coordinates and don't be confused when there's no lake!

We only made it to clue #8 on our chain adventure, but we're confident we can knock out the rest pretty fast, now what technical difficulties have been addressed. (Why is it so hard to find a good app that allows manual entry of specific GPS coords? Gosh!)

Be sure you bring water, because it's hot hiking around up there in the summer. The roads are more bumpy than I remember. Monuments range from plain to beautiful (very few creepy between). This particular multi-cache is a combo cache/adventure & letterbox. Stamps, ahoy!

Group geocaching is much more fun then solo caching. Plus, you have an excuse to go get pizza or Indian food after.

Film to the Rescue!

Geocaching in a walking park is amusing. Little kids are the most inquisitive, but rather than ask what we were up to, one kid rode by on his bike 3 times in four minutes. He missed us digging up a misplaced log (no container) that was likely tossed by some teens. (The park's a well known spot for shenanigans. Mmhm.)

We wrapped the tattered old log in a little baggie, then included a fresh log for future signers to use. The old one was falling apart under light handling. Sad! It had a lot of sigs in it.

Since film is not dead!! (That's right!) I had some film containers hanging around in my studio. We read on the geocaching.com page that the thing needed a new container, so we gave it one. There's a pin-back button tucked into the new cache should anyone in (or passing through!) the Cincy area wish to go hunting for it.

Geocaching & Fondant Sculpting

(Also known as milling about looking suspicious & making a mess in the kitchen, respectively.)



We set off on a quest for a UPS drop spot, determined to return some defective merch (geek sadness), but were waylaid by delicious dumplings at P.F. Changs. After appetizer-y goodness, and a massive detour (thankyew Cincinnati construction), we found the UPS place. And it was closed.

Did we despair? No.

We drove through Westchester to find Target and search out some shorts, as the summer has insisted on being deliciously sweat-inducing in recent days. I took off to The Evil Craft Store That Shall Not Be Named, in search of specific fondant tools, & found most of said tools. Of all the ECSTSNBN, the one in Westchester is certainly the most well supplied I've ever seen. Sundry shopping adventures followed, along with a gigantic and disturbing swarm of gnats, dead gnats, and more gnats (I suspect zombies and foul magics). Seriously. What is with the gnats, people? I walked 200 feet of sidewalk covered in gnats and gnat corpses, with little dive-bomber gnats pelting me the whole way. I did not photograph this for you.

You are welcome.

I was beginning to expect 9 other plagues on the horizon, and texted the bestie. He picked me up, lest I brave the hordes again, and we decided what better day to geocache than a day suspiciously rife with tiny locust-gnat activity.

We'd hit home depot and picked up $1.18 carabiners for our keys, and were feeling saucy!



Score. We located this little cache with a minimum of effort, thanks to it being eye level to one of us. The log was a big damp, but signing it wasn't a problem. Our marks made, we looked for awesome treasures to stow inside the tube, but had none, alas. Dead and partially smooshed gnat corpses notwithstanding. (Some of them tagged along for the ride home. Ew.)

Bolstered by our successes and triumphs, modest as they were, we motored home with high hopes. Upon homecoming, I gathered my tools. The bestie gathered his tools. He delved deeply into the guts of his android phone, and I met marshmallow fondant, (homemade), on the field of battle.



9 flowers and 2 episodes of Star Trek later, this design won out. Do you know how much red food gel it takes to make this color? You don't want to know. Let's just say a lot a move on. These flowers take a lot longer to make than you'd think. I imagine folks get faster with experience (I hope).

Many thanks to the bestie for making a last minute run to the Krog for some cupcake gem "edible pearl" thingies. They finish the little flowers nicely.



I'm not sure how long it's going to take these babies to harden up. It was so hot here, they started to melt. I shoved them in the fridge for later use. A certain niece's birthday is coming up on Monday, so she'll have to eat them and like it. Rar.

If you're jealous, and wish to find this Cincinnati geocache, clickie this linkie: gimme the clues!