Where the Wild Things Are(n't)

Kerry and I did some caching today, and we didn't exactly set the geocaching world on fire. I must be on a REAL losing streak lately! Kerry was in town with some of our other OU friends, and we took off this afternoon for some caching. The first one was a two-parter called Wild Thing, and we found the first cache easily enough - it was a camouflaged Altoids tin hidden in a tree. It contained little slips of laminated paper giving us the coordinates for the second part of the cache. We followed Gordie's directions and ended up in a cul-de-sac. Realizing it probably wasn't really the way we were supposed to go, we got out of the car and basically walked through someone's back yard to get down in to the woods. It was a ravine with a creek at the bottom - a pretty wide, deep creek. And Gordie was telling us the only way to go the 400 feet to the cache was to cross the stream. Our only two options were to either leave the area, get back in the car, and find another way around, or simply take off our hiking boots and socks, roll up our pants, and cross. We chose to cross. We considered just taking off our pants too, knowing it was deep enough that we would get them wet even if we rolled them up to our knees, but we were within sight of someone's deck so we wisely chose not to do that - good thing, because when I tell you about the next cache I'm going to tell you about a little 'brush with the law', and we really didn't need cops called on us at that point for - I don't know - being in our underwear in a backyard? Anyway, we took off our shoes and socks, and trudged through the muck in the stream to the other side. Then further down we had to walk across a fallen tree to get BACK to the other side. Oops. Anyway, the cache was supposed to be hidden on the side of this very steep hill that leads down to the creek, but we never found it. We spent about an hour or so searching, then called it quits. I HATE that. We emerged from the ravine in to the same backyard we came from, with wet clothes covered in mud. Luckily, we didn't see anyone.
The second cache of the day was relatively easy to find - it was in Blendon Woods park in Westerville. The cache was located just off a trail, but right next to the road, so we pulled off to the side, parked the car, and got out. Apparently the park police frown on parking this way, and as we're standing in a ditch off to the side of the road a police truck pulled up with lights flashing. Kerry was sitting on the ground trying to decipher one of the encrypted clues to help us find the cache - my gps was off because of heavy tree cover. I was standing in front of her holding the gps, and when the officer walked up to us I'm staring up at him with that deer in the headlights look, and he says "What's going on this afternoon?" To which I reply: "Nothing." Uh, yeah. So realizing that wasn't going to quite explain anything, I said "Geocaching". Luckily I didn't have to define that - he knew exactly what it was, and said it was fine, we just couldn't park on the side of the road. He even must have known exactly where the cache was, because he gave us a tip - we were very close, and park policy says it had to be no more than 3 feet from the trail. Information that would have been useful to start with. What a day. We got in the car and parked legally, then followed the trail back around and found the cache right away.