Trekkin & Birdin, on the Wisconsin De Lorme Challenge:

Where to begin? I guess like any story begins, “Once upon a time…”

Once upon a time, we thought the idea of running all over Wisconsin just so we could say we’d done it was crazy. All obsessions begin somewhat like this, right? The crazies among us deny the truth, and pretend it’s crazy! Then we ran our finds through the spiffy little utility on this page and were surprised. Hey, we have some pages.

At first, we figured we could do this without running all over like crazy people. Trekkin’, you can get a bunch of pages when you come home from the Grand Portage Rendezvous. Birdin’, take a different route home from the Cities after your Fringe Festival performance and get those. We figure we managed to grab at least half to two thirds of the pages in this kinder, saner manner.

Then the madness began to set in, and we were planning trips around routes to get us DeLorme pages. We have enjoyed seeing so many things and places in our chase, it’s almost impossible to pick out a only a few. Trekkin’ enjoyed the two trips we took to visit family last fall, hunting for many of the Little Otter falls caches near his old stomping grounds, during peak fall colors. We’ll never forget making four river crossings–Birdin’ without shoes!–then thrashing around every dead pine tree to find the cache at Foster Falls.

We enjoyed visiting places we’d been before during different seasons, too. We made a trip to Door County right after Christmas, having the unfortunate–ha ha–experience of having to stay an extra day at our B & B because of a blizzard. Did that weather stop us from caching? Not at all. We loved revisiting Cana Island Lighthouse, with no one else around. Heading out from Europe Bay in the gathering storm, and meeting a pair of Timber Wolves is something we’d never have experienced if not for this insanity. We made the less than optimal trip to get the northeast corner of the state when they still had 3-4 feet of snow on the ground…but we cleared ’em. We even did an amazing snowshoe trek through tamarack swamp to the source of the Eagle River on that run!

Our trip today was no less eventful than many of our hunts that earned us the right to search for this one, either. We were advised to bring waders, which we did. The trails had an Indiana Jones feel to them, and we were able to stay dry…up to a point. Then on went those hot waders in the 80+ temps, and we forged on. We did find the cache, though it is worse for wear from the flooding and appeared to have been carried off some distance from its intended location. We dumped out about a quart of water, and did our best to sign the (sadly) soggy logbook.

To those out there who wonder…should I do this? We’d say why not? We were taken to all corners of the state, and as much as possible, tried to spend a good chunk of time experiencing a variety of caches throughout our journeys. Hard terrain, multis, puzzles, we enjoyed them all. Now when we hear someone on the news refer to these little towns, we can look at each other and say…”Yup, we found a cache there!”

Thanks Dave for the work in putting this challenge together, and making it so easy for all players to track their progress. Oh yeah….one more thing. This was find number 2000 for us!

“And they cached happily ever after….”