Here’s a question for the married geocachers out there. What do you call it when your driving around with your beautiful wife on the way to a cache and she says something like “If you turn left here it’s a dead end, keep on going up the road” and you don’t respond because you didn’t quite hear her and then after you’ve turned into the dead end road and discover for yourself that it’s a dead end you say “Ooops, it’s a dead end… we should have kept on the road”? Well I know what I call it… I call it trouble. Whistlestick was not impressed with my response after she exclaimed, “I just said that, you’re not listening to me!”. I told her that since I love and adore her to such an extreme that whenever she says anything I parse each word carefully and lovingly so as to enjoy each of her utterances to the utmost, I just hadn’t finished processing her last sentence by the time I discovered the cul-de-sac…

...Nah, she didn’t buy it either.

I have to say thank you to Parsa for mentioning that you can approach the cache from the South in your vehicle and avoid some of the climb. Some of you may know that I have a bit of a mobility handicap lately so avoiding any type of climb for now is a necessity. What Parsa didn’t mention is the wood fence blocking off the road to the top of the hill. It has a big wooden swinging gate that apparently was unfastened so we didn’t feel any compunction against driving thru it on our way to the cache. What made the gate interesting was it was swinging open and close due to wind gusts. Whistlestick was driving at this point (don’t ask) and as she approached the opening/non-opening in the gate I could see she was timing it to shoot thru the gap when the gate was at it most open state. If you’ve ever seen her clunk her golf ball against the vane of the windmill at the local miniature golf, you can understand my sudden inner consternation! Luckily we passed the obstacle without any mishap and it was time to clamber out of the car and start our hunt proper.

Boy I’m glad that the clear cutters have manicured the top of the hill! I bet it was nigh impassable before they cut down all that brush. Be careful walking as some of the uncut shoots are like Vietnam jungle punji sticks.

If you come at the cache from the top of the hill look to the right of where the GPS arrow is pointing – doesn’t that brown object look like a five foot high gecko straining his head up so as to get a look at something? Wish I’d had my camera.

As we started down the hill toward the cache it quickly became apparent to me that I wasn’t going to be able to make it down to the cache and then back up the hill so I had to send Whistlestick and Gromit forward to actually find the cache while I waited for them. This always presents a problem for Gromit as he hates it when the gang splits up during a hike. It offends his sheepherder heritage something fierce. So as Whistlestick kept going down the hill he lagged further and further behind till he was pretty much in-between her and me. Then as she started to search for the cache and I was just sitting down he decided that she was the much more attractive option to be with. So Gromit loped off to check her out and because of a very slight ridgeline between our two locations he disappeared from my view, a few moments later so did Whistlestick so I was basically alone on the hillside waiting for something to happen. You know me… Idle time causes my imagination to wander so when Gromit reappeared on top of the ridgeline and then paused, I had this vision that he was the first Indian of many that would soon line the ridgeline before swarming down to scalp me amidst jubilant war cries. The mental image went poof as Whistlestick gained the hilltop and informed me that she had signed the logbook and done our trade. We took a little purple plastic rolling attack robot that would be suitable for a five year old. Whistlestick knew I’d love it. We left a penknife, a mini-carabiner, a georged dollar bill and five “Yrium’s pal” trading cards. Collect them all!

Thanks Knick and Bnic, we enjoyed your cache.

--- yrium ---