Foiled!

On the way to taking the kids sledding at their aunt and uncle's house, Mr. GAIN dropped me off near a couple geocache sites. I took my new Skippy Peanut Butter backpack. The idea was that I could possibly bag a couple finds, not have to bushwhack, and see a place that I hadn't before, then walk to their house and go sledding. The weather was awesome -- new snow, sunny, no wind, and warm enough to have my jacket open the entire time. My gps-r had great reception. I love hunting during winter time. I creeped up on four ducks in the creek. That was awesome. But I didn't find any cache. :-(

In past winters, I have found regular-sized caches such as this one. After hunting for micro-sized containers on Thursday, I decided that I need to stick to containers larger than micros. The only micro that I have found during winter was rather urban, and it was frozen in place. I was able to get it and sign the log after a little struggle (I scraped my hand). So I am seeking small geocaches and larger for the season. Unless we get some melting because under the fluffy new snow was a lot of stuff encased in ice.

The other bummer was that the new backpack had a water bottle elastic on the outside of the pack, and I lost my very nice Holiday Weighs water bottle from the Y while searching a cool, new place. I think the elastic was designed for people who stay upright all the time. That is generally not me. I usually hike upright, then go off trail to crawl and climb trees and such. I like the idea of keeping water in a separate place from the rest of the pack in case of leaking. I'll need to use a bottle with a larger circumference to make the elastic snug, or store water in the main zipper compartment. Or I may try to install an elastic inside the main zipper compartment.