Unique Geocaches found this month

Hoot owl cache

Bird house cache near my doctor's office

Roadside and waiting for you

Three obelisks

I've been back in the USA for about six weeks now. I've enjoyed the opportunity to see a variety of geocaches. Here are a few caches that I particularly liked. I think I've done a good job of avoiding placing spoilers here. I enjoyed finding one that was an owl figures you put out in town to scare off the birds. It was hanging high in a tree and you let it down on a string. I won't mention the GC code. Then  while at my doctor's office I was able to find a bird house cache placed by a respiratory therapist in the same office. Along North Carolina's version of the E.T. Highway I found one sitting in a guide wire on a post. Nothing too original about it but I liked it. Finally, Tri-Obelisk (GC3N5BX) was a fun cache. Nothing spectacular about the cache but the interesting art work made it a fun find.

A Doctor's Prescription to Geocache!!!!

A beautiful pasture near a cache called "Yes. We've Got Cows"

Great Falls Mill

The sign says it all

My mother-in-law's side of the family held its annual family reunion in November and we were able to attend. This afforded the opportunity to hit some caches on the way down to the small town of McFarlan, NC. Since being put on blood thinners I've been told to go no longer than an hour at a time in the car before getting out to walk. I was very pleased to hear that. Imagine, a doctor's prescription to get out and walk around ..... read..... geocache. Thanks to my wife who loves me we were able to head out for McFarlan early on a Saturday morning. Heading out of our High Point, NC is someone's version of the E.T. Highway. Of course the original Extraterrestrial Highway is in south central Nevada. Thanks to geocachers in the area it is a 98 mile long power trail with caches galore. In our case all the caches are easy park and grabs and they all start with words beginning in E and T. We picked our E.T. Highway clean! Once this was done we drove uninterrupted for an hour to get to Rockingham, the first major city along our route. I was drawn to a cache there that focused on a piece of Rockingham history. We pulled up and easily found Great Falls Mill (GC1RJ8P). The find was easy. The view of the ruins of the old cotton mill were fantastic. According to locals the mill, originally called the Richmond Manufacturing Company, was burned as Union General W.T. Sherman in the last days of the Civil War. For a historian, this is one of those caches you appreciate geocaching for bringing you to the location. Apparently a new mill was built in 1869. The ruins I was looking at today were from the 1972 fire that destroyed the vacant buildings. Nonetheless, it is impressive. Impressive enough that the group Hootie and the Blowfish filmed their video, "The Old Man and Me" at this location. Check it out.

The reunion was fun. It was great seeing the folks there. When we finished we drove half a mile to the North Carolina/South Carolina to find another park and grab entitled, IS IT NC OR SC? (GC2RB4X). We enjoyed the weekend with family and friends. To top it all off, with the doctor's blessings I was able to justify getting out of the car numerous times to find those easy park and grabs and to make up for lost time when I couldn't geocache during my recuperation.

EXMAN gives back to the geocaching community by reactivating missing Travel Bugs!!!

I recently listened to Sonny, Sandy and Sean on the Podcacher podcast share about fellow geocacher EXMAN and his contribution back to the geocaching community. He's come up with an idea to help keep travel bugs active. As most of you well know travel bugs have less than a 50-50 chance of survival out in the wild. It may even be worse. It just seems that there are folks unwilling to play the game as it is intended. Too many travel bugs go missing to be simple mishap. I guess that is a pet peeve of mine so enough of my soap boxing.

Anyway, EXMAN has a plan that he's putting into action. Over the last few months he has released into the wild over 600 previously missing Travel Bugs. That's right, EXMAN, at the request of the TB owners, has created a tag with the original tracking number for the missing TB and then released it from wherever he was currently located. What a thoughtful way to help encourage geocachers around the world.

I have only one Travel Bug out. It was named in honor of my grandson when he was born almost 2.5 years ago. Soon after his birth I released it near Raleigh, N.C. with the goal of it traveling to Quito, Ecuador. The TB, Ryan's Arrival, made it to California and then, after being retrieved by a geocacher, went missing. I've written to the cacher who took last retrieved it but have not received any reply. Could it have gotten lost? Could they have dropped out of geocaching and simply forgotten it? Who knows but I suspect the latter as their statistics show that they cached with furvor right up until July 2011 and then seemed to have dropped out of the sport. This happen. Several weeks ago I wrote to EXMAN asking for his help and sending him the necessary information. I've not heard back but am confident that soon Ryan's Arrival will be re-activated. EXMAN will only release the tag. I've changed the goal of Ryan's Arrival so that it will come back to North Carolina where we have settled down. Maybe it will get close enough for me to grab it and add the photo of Ryan.

Here's a big thanks to EXMAN for what he's doing. You can learn more about EXMAN and this project by clicking here. Thanks to mrsdkrebs for the TB photo.

A forced slowdown in my geocaching

Nano size

Nice bison near the sidewalk

Film canister size easy-to-get

During our recent Fall Family Weekend at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. I got in some fun geocaching. On Saturday lots of family came to join our daughter Rubi and see her campus as well as go to the football game. During the game I started experiencing pain in my right rib cage area and shortness of breath due to the pain. After the game Rubi pushed for me to go to the emergency room. Off we went. The attention was swift and efficient. To cut a long story short my problem was multiple bilateral pulmonary emboli, blood clots in my lungs. They started me on blood thinner medication immediately and gave me pain medicine. I was transferred to Virginia Baptist Hospital in Lynchburg where I spent the next three days. With my current medications I have to avoid falling, bruising, essentially anything that could result in external or internal bleeding. Since getting home from South America three weeks ago I've enjoyed getting out on the trails with my mountain bike in order to find geocaches. I've had a blast. Those are my favorite kinds of caches. Now it looks like I'll have to slow down. For the first week I'm to rest and thereafter continue a "normal" life as long as I do nothing that could result in cuts or internal bleeding. For now at least there'll be no more woods geocaching alone. I always come back with brier cuts on my legs and scratches on my arms. That won't do. Biking is out of the question as the risk of falling is there. So, thank the Lord for the park n grabs, the LPCs (Light Pole Caches) that populate the urban world. I'll have to focus there for a while. Thanks to viZZZ.com, laura*b and WordShore for the pictures.