Keepin' It Green is Traveling the World

Last year, Troop 505 planted a travel bug that we named "Keepin' It Green Frog" in a our troop's local cache a.k.a. Keepin' It Green. The TB promptly headed out of Evansville and traveled east. She quickly crossed the ocean and stayed in the Czech area for many months. Now she is traveling in Germany. She is a pretty lucky frog to be traveling the world!

We haven't been caching much lately, but we did have to replace the cache noted above after someone stole the original, container and all. We're waiting for the reviewer to re-activate it now. While we were in Wesselman's Park, we decided to find two caches that we didn't have yet. Now I'm ready to cache some more! There's a new letterbox hybrid near our home that I hope to get later today.

Later today: We did find the letterbox hybrid (GC29PJX) and it's pretty cool. What's funny is that we passed by this location the other day on our way into town and there was a truck parked nearby. I even commented out loud that it was weird that some one was parked up there and wondered if something fishy was going on. Well, today, we were the fishy ones parking there. :) We also found a really interesting cache (GC25Y17) today, a type of hide that we hadn't seen before. I should have been the one to find it as I had the right idea, but I didn't discover it on initial instinct. Jim saw what I did and tried again and he was the finder. :) Very fun!

Isaac won this leg of the TB Challenge!

April 2010: Isaac's TB, Guitar Hero, made it to the Denver area first. We hope he stays there awhile so we can catch up with him when we go. Grace's TB is still on the west coast and Karen's TB is in the midwest trying to make it's way to CO. Unfortunately, Jim's TB is out of play. We hope he will resurface, but we haven't had any luck tracking him down.

CONGRATS GUITAR HERO!!

Caching down Green River Road

Jim and I had a few hours to ourselves while the kids were with Mimi and Dale in Owensboro. We weren't particularly motivated to do a whole lot because it was freezing cold outside and we have the post-holiday blues. We decided to head for B&N to buy a guidebook for our trip out west. Jim suggested that we cache along the way so we plugged 8 or 10 geocaches in and headed south. Our luck was "hit and miss", but we added a few smileys to our map.

LBK caches

We decided it would be fun to see how a Floridian park compares to the parks of home. We rented some bikes from a local shop owner and hit the trails at Joan Durante Park in LongBoat Key. It was a beautiful day with the sun shining and the cool ocean breezes blowing steady. The park had lots of trails and we thought we were riding on trails until we stopped to find our first cache and discovered the white rock was actually tiny little sea shells of all varieties. Many of them were whole so we spent a few minutes looking through them and listening for the ocean in their tiny openings; Grace said she could hear it without a doubt. The park was very nice in that there were palms and other tropical trees and plants lining both sides of the trailway. We rode over a winding wooden bridge with marshy water on both sides and at the height of the bridge on a curve, we stopped to take in the beautiful view of the bay. Are we dreaming or is this for real?

TB update

Our family TBs continue to make their way around the U.S., and we hope to catch up with them in Colorado come June, but today I wanted to write about the TB our girl scout troop planted in the Keepin' It Green cache at Wesselman's Park. I got a note today that a cacher picked it up on a business trip to Virginia and (s)he plans to take it home to....the Czech Republic!!! How cool is that? That is so exciting for our troop since we hoped this TB would travel the world and inspire our scouts and other scouts/people around the globe!

The only caching I've done lately was of the urban variety involving Hacienda, pedicures, and surprise birthday parties. Hey, my girls just don't get it, but that's okay...the turtle 362 team was at the party so they shared my enthusiasm for the sport!

Looking forward to caching on vacation both in December (Florida) and in June (out west)!

Tipsaw Lake in the Hoosier National Forest

9-12-09 We camped at Tipsaw Lake in the Jackwood area of the campground. On Saturday night we headed to downtown Tell City to eat at Caper's. While we waited for our carryout, Jim and the kids found two caches. Jack and I were hanging out in the truck. It was a beautiful evening!

GSA fun on 09-09-09

09-09-09 After school today, the third grade girl scouts met at Wesselman's Woods to do a little dayhiking and geocaching. We had fun trying to find one of the Goldilocks' caches and then we went to Odanata Pond to find another temporary cache loaded with swag for the girls. We practiced CITO while we were having fun in the park.
One group of girls happened upon a letterbox which was an added bonus. The other group of girls found a turtle hanging out near a cache. How cool is that?!
We ran out of time to do it together, but The Martin Family made sure to get the troop 505 cache planted before we left the park. We're calling in Keepin' It Green since we're hoping that cachers will bring their recyclables to the park and then look up this cache. We also hope to inspire others to CITO. The scouts are looking forward to seeing where our Keepin' It Green Frog TB gets to travel via the cacher train.