Last month my wife and I went down to Georgia to help our son and his family after his wife broke her ankle. While we were down there, the Shuttle Atlantis was scheduled to launch. Our daughter-in-law had to have her cast replaced the same day, so I went by myself down to Florida. I stopped at several caches on the way down.
There was a new cache in the Florida Welcome center on I-95 that noone had logged a find for. I pull into the parking area near the cache and there was a woman and young boy just coming out of the woods. Just as I was kicking myself for stopping at several caches in Georgia, they consulted their GPSr and went back into the woods. I was conflicted – I had never arrived at a cache when someone else was there. Was I supposed to wait? The lure of a FTF drew me into the woods. I introduced myself, and all three of us started searching. They told me they had been searching for a while without luck. They had exited the woods to try to get a better GPS fix. The clue for the cache was ‘near the base of a large tree’ – the coordinates put us in the middle of a forest where all the trees were relatively the same size. My GPSr had ground zero about 30′ from where her GPSr had it. They searched near thier ground zero while I searched near mine. I found the cache about 30′ from my ground zero and 60′ from hers. I opened the cache and, wonders of wonders, a pristine log book. WOOOHOOOO! my FTF. we all sign the book, trade items and close it up. We all exchange pleasantries and head our separate ways.
I continue on may way down to Titusville, finding some more caches along the way and in Titusville itself.
Then I got to watch my first shuttle launch! What a wonderful thing to watch! Too short, though.
I do a couple of night caches on my way back to my son’s place! What a great day!
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