Moving rocks?!

Check this out. the gookins dot net on the other side of town posted this link. I would love to visit the area. Click here.

Marshall County -- cached!

Yes, I made it to 150 finds -- a couple weekends ago, after the geo-breakfast.

Here is a photo of a corn mountain taken by A of GAIN. We passed this while going to Marshalltown, where "A" had an interview for a youth mentorship with the Iowa Honey Producers. We decided to work toward our goal of caching the 99 counties since we were going to a "new" county. The corn mountain is why we like to keep the windows up and recirculate the ventilation. When we will ever wash the car with all the grain dust in the air?

The first Marshall Co. cache that we tackled was Take the "Diagonal," GCT1WT. We went through Jasper and Story Counties and entered Marshall county all in one minute!

We also found Don't Fence Me In, GCY14V. I like the story of Fence's hider. My friend PhotoV5 and I attended a geo-breakfast in Waukee earlier this year. While there, she found a friend from Guard that she hadn't seen in years -- Merlyn of Camelot. Isn't geocaching great?!

Caching the counties

I have made a point to attempt caches during our travels. I know other people have travel goals, too. For example, Scotty and Fiddy, the ones who inspired me to create a blog, visited 50 states in 50 days by hitchhiking back in 2006. 3/4 of GAIN and I met them with friends almost one year ago today. Just this week, I read about a friend's motorcycle club trying to hit all 99 Iowa counties and getting their photo taken at the respective county landmarks. Sort of like waymarking, if I understood her right.

Today we traveled as a family to northern Iowa and I finally got a find in Kossuth County. I say finally because I have prepared hunts for the last three trips there, but never got to search until today. We left well before sunset today, and the cache I chose to hunt was an urban one. I am happy to say that I can color another county on the line map I have of Iowa counties.

We traveled north for an anniversary celebration -- 50 years of marriage tomorrow! Congratulations to Luke and Carol! Quite an inspiration. While seated at tables with extended family, "G" of GAIN got out his army men and quietly made structures with party mints for his men. I asked him if all the men came from yesterday's flash mob, WWFM -- Bloodlust Style. At this, Mr. GAIN's cousin asks about a flash mob. Mr. GAIN says the word "geocache." His cousin and her family had heard of geocaching and then told us a story about a local cache. They said that an Englishwoman had a teddy bear travel bug visit their town. I thought it awesome for non-cachers to know about this. To think that geocaching is almost a regular word....

I also took my first waymark today for Knights for Life. I am totally new to the concept of waymarking. Hopefully my gps was warmed up enough to give two good readings. I know my first of three was not good. I think the second and third came up good. I'll need to confirm it somehow. Learning all the time here....

WWFM and E911

Today, the kids and I attended a World Wide Flash Mob. It was fun. We could have done without the wind (this evening is very mild -- same temperature, but no wind). Over sixty folks attended for 15 minutes.

Afterward, we switched out a log book for Ode to Everybody Loves Ray, GC138QR. While turning the car around to leave, we saw a marker with six digits, accompanied by text that read something like, "Call 911 in an emergency and say these six digits." I paid particular attention to this because the Urbandale Parks and Rec Director asked for help with her city's proposed E911 trail markers. Very weird, because the digits did not correspond to anything familiar to me. The kids and I could not figure out what the numbers were referring to. Not similar to any of the coordinates of my nearby cache. Even though it is her turn to talk to me, I think I'll get in touch with her this coming week.