City Park Geocaching in Quito, Ecuador

THIS BLOG ENTRY HAS SPOILERS. My second daughter and her husband have come to Ecuador for two weeks. The main reason is our third daughter's High School graduation from the Alliance Academy International in Quito. While Mom and daughter went grocery shopping I took off with Jeremy to find the only cache in Quito I haven't found. It has been waiting to be found for about six weeks. I usually get out and look for a new cache in Quito pretty soon after it shows up on the website. I didn't get to this one because of some eye surgery recovery and some travel. Then the owner called me to say that his wife checked on the cache and thought it had been muggled. Today he called and confirmed that it was there. Off we went. As we got closer to the cache the sky darkened. It was a forboding of the whipping that Argentina took from Ecuador in the soccer game today. We used to live in Argentina and still have family there so we were pulling for Argentina. We were disappointed later in the day by the 2-0 loss. Our graduate was at the Atahualpa stadium to see the game. She was born in Buenos Aires and lived in Argentina until she was six years old. She's been raised on the outskirts of Quito, Ecuador for the last 12 years. In the end she pulled for Argentina. As we got close to the GC the dark sky begin to dump rain and sleet on us. It went by quickly and by the time we had parked the car we had overcast skies but no rain. We tracked to within feet of the GC but found that we were on the wrong side of a fence. We had to go all the way around the block to enter the park and then climb up to the site of the cache. The park is full of volleyball and tennis courts. The cache is Western Highway Overlook (GC1QEZK). It overlooks the Occidental Highway, which circumnavigates the city from the west side of Quito. There are some great views of the city from along the three-lane highway. The cache was hidden in a traditional manner. I liked the rhymes that made up the clue. We found the cache, signed the log (yes, FTF again) and head back home before the rain began again. It was a great day. I got to wrap it up by going with Jeremy to see Terminator 4: Salvation.

UFOs and a German POW Cache

During my nine-day trip to the US I spent four days near Richmond, Virginia. On my way up from Greensboro, NC I traveled along state highway 360. There are two really interesting caches along the way. One is a virtual. This is a spoiler so stop reading if you don't want to know. Even before learning about geocaching I'd seen the strange unidentified flying object sitting in the field and wondered what was up. Apparently a cacher cashed in on this one before virtuals went away. Check out Mothers, we've come for your daughters (GCM529). Another cache that caught my attention is German World War II POW Camp (GCF874). I love history so I want to know more about a World War II camp for German Prisoners of War. I tracked back into the woods and found the cache with little trouble. As the owner indicated, there are no structures left at the site. It is all woods now. I tried to contact the owner but even on Geocaching.com they don't have his current email. I'd love to learn more about this one.

Guilford County, NC Family visit and geocaching fun

I love the spring in North Carolina! I had the opportunity to travel to NC and Virginia for nine days of work and family time. It was great getting out and doing some geocaching with my grandchildren and with my daughter, Beth. My favorite caching took place on Memorial Day when K.K (10 years old) and MasterYoda1 (8 years old) went with Grandpa to Hagen Stone Park. We had a day of sunshine and fun hiking the trails and visiting all the caches we could. Little legs get tired and have to stop and play on the playground between caches. Hey, within the photos are spoilers so I'll not mention which caches they are. I highly recommend Hagen Stone Park. You can park and hit the trails without all that in and out of the car stuff.

The White Mountain Range and a new cache

Traveling in the Peruvian Andes is often a challenge but the people, the culture and the landscape make you feel like a National Geographic writer. It is marvelous. We made a near loop from Huaraz, the Department capital, to the north to Yungai, over the White Mountains to Yanama (where we stayed three days), San Luis, Huari, San Marcos, Chavin (where we stayed two days) and on to Conococha and back down to Lima. These pictures are of the beautiful White Mountains as we traveled through Chavin. Chavin is worth a google. It is the ancient and archealogical site of a pre-Incan culture. We were there on a Monday and were not able to visit the ruins of that civilization. I visited there about eight years ago and do recommend it for travelers. I'd hoped to place a cache there but didn't have the time. I did get to place one overlooking the Conochoca Lake and another on the way down the mountains on the way to Lima. They are respectively, Asisian View (GC1QPKX) and Raising Cane (GC1QPM5).