Vermont Cachings

Yes, we geocached this weekend.

On Saturday, when we learned the forecast would be 70s and sunny with no humidity, Doug started to plan our trip. He asked me where I wanted to go, and I answered:

"Vermont."

"Why?" he asked.

"We've never gone there to geocache, and I'm sick of New Hampshire. I'd like to go somewhere different. Let's go to Vermont."

And because my husband is wonderful and sweet, he gave me what I wanted. We headed out to the far west, cached in NH, MA and VT, did six total, and all told, it was the BEST day of geocaching we as a family have ever had.

There was danger. Oh yes there was. We were in NH at Pulpit Falls, and the rocks were slippy and we had to cross the falls, and it was precarious and Kinger was scared shitless. Then, we got across and realized we didn't NEED to cross, so we had to go back. Jack ran all over the woods and in and out of the water like crazy. At one point I couldn't see him but could hear him whimpering... he had managed to get his self stuck in the bottom whirlpool of the falls, and couldn't swim out.

Stupid. Freaking. Dog.

I was about to go down and rescue his furry ass when he freed himself and ran up the cliffs like a greased nitro powered billy goat. I'm tellin' ya. That dog is The Crazy.

But, it was the most beautiful spot we've cached in a long time, and the terror factor was well worth it to me.

We did some historically significant caches, all surrounding King Philip and his efforts to rid the Pioneer Valley of settlers before he finally gave up and moved to Rhode Island to focus his efforts there.

We then crossed up into Vermont, did our very first VT cache, and spent a ton of time trying to approach a second cache on some unpaved roads... We had to give up after like an hour of driving around and either dead ending or heading to Private Roads... we came back into MA and approached from the south, up more dirt roads but to the correct end result. Doug said to me "my weekend is not complete until I find a dirt road to drive on..." So Slate Rock Road in Guilford or Vernon, wherever you are... thank you for being that dirt road this weekend.

We got to walk around a gorgeous pond (Sweets Pond) and find a really well stocked cache container, with a KANSAS belt buckle. Oh I swear I should have taken it. The kitch factor ALONE is priceless. But I left it.

We did our last cache in VT, and came back into MA and had a great pizza dinner that couldn't be beat.

Then, the drive home.

We were west of I-91, which means we were in Far Western Bongolia and it would take days to drive back here... well, hours.

It was worth the trip. I wish we'd left earlier in the day to do our excursions. We had three more caches planned but ran out of daylight.

And, we saw SO MANY MUSHROOMS!

If you recall our trip to Dogtown last weekend wherein I was enemy to the fungi and hated them, my husband, and geocaching with unrivaled passion, you'll find it amusing to know I looked forward to whatever bizarre mold Doug was finding on this trip. They made me smile, and I saw many shrooms of wonderful colors. Some big enough to put books and bookends upon to shelf up my living room.

And Jessica didn't complain once, except that she had to pee. And we took care of that. So for Jessica to be relatively complaint free, damn. That's a good trip!

So it was the best outing in recent history, recollection, memory. Yay for Team Screamapillar. Top that off with part of an interview with me and many other geocachers in the area running in the local paper this weekend, and it's kind of cool. Now that it's being taught at a local college and feature articles are being written about geocaching, it's all VH1 and it's over, like Krumping, or Vanilla Ice.

Kidding.

The article has only one error that I can see, she states I attribute my 50lb weightloss to geocaching. Not so. 35lbs on Atkins combined with exercise in the form of geocaching is more like it. But. That's okay.

Anyway. I'm going to go play with Geoff and his binoculars. More later.