The 900 recap

Well, it has been a little bit. I normally get really antsy if I haven't cached in awhile, but it has been an exhausting past few days leading up to and just after the 900th milestone. The day before we went to anderson for our double milestone cache we met up with jcklm to tackle Cincinnati's well known 1/4 cache, RR2K#L - GC677B. It was one of the old railroad tunnels, long abandoned, dark and WET. Well, the entrance was wet, the actual inside was pretty dry. It was a creepy hike, not knowing anything at all to expect with the cache. We passed up it's location on our way in, but backtracked and I made the find. We got some celebratory pictures on the infamous "throne" and made our way out. What a fun cache...but, it was only a taste of what tomorrow will bring.

Sunday Ian and I went to Anderson, Indiana where the 5/5 "Hydrology" - GCXP99 lies. We didn't really know what to expect going into it. The aerial maps show up an icon on the side of a river. We couldn't tell if it was actually in the water, or on the land. That information alone can give it a 5 difficulty. Also, it was a little chilly of a day. Maybe in the 70s, but for the beginning of May, that is still really cold to be getting into a river. We still knew we'd do it anyways.

We didn't get but a few caches on our way up, as we wanted to save for this milestone. We got to the cache at near 1:30-2 o clock in the afternoon, dressed in our water clothes, and analyzed the situation. It appears that we would have to get in. We got in the water, which since it had rained a lot two days prior, came up to atleast my chest. The water wasn't too strong, but it did catch us a few times. We felt more than confident that we'd find the cache, and not too long of looking secured that though. We found the cache, and got more than excited that we just 1) hit another milestone, and 2) found a 5/5 cache! It was a rush. We swam/waded back, dried off, and spent the rest of the day/night caching in the area. Overall I'd say we had almost 35 caches (I think 34).

Another cache we had found afterwards, as directed by the local cacher "doobies" to do was Big Ball of Paint - GC12FPA. The cache was at the Guinness Book of World Record's record holding largest ball of paint. The man there gave us the history of how it got started, how much it weighs and all that, then let us paint a coat on. We painted coat number 21,061. It was very cool, and made it to my list of favorite caches. This was the second cache I've been to at world record holding places (The other being the world's largest basket - GC8F96).

Another funny moment of our day showing up for one of the caches, Another Shadyside Cache - GC105YW that happened to be a 4/1 in a baseball park's parking lot. Anyways, it was one of those micro caches on the end of a piece of rebar in the concrete beams at the end of parking spaces. However, this particular piece of rebar had been welded to it's container, and the welding had broken off; leaving the cache stuck in the ground. However, ingenuity beat out strength and we chewed some gum and got it out. I replied in the log about how "big league chew" comes in handy here. I thought it clever.