Caching in Central Park

Kerry, Ruth, and I took a trip to New York City last weekend. If you haven't been there, it is true - you MUST go. I always got tired of people telling me that, but it turns out they're right. I still can't picture myself living there (I think the concrete jungle would eventually suffocate me - I'm just a simple girl from central Ohio), but I plan on visiting New York at least once a year if I can pull it off. It was expensive - but if I could control my problem with immediate gratification and keep from buying everything I see that catches my eye, it wouldn't be so bad. Not that we really shopped, except for going in to some of the stores in Soho. I just picked up things here and there - for some reason the stupid NBC store at Rockefeller Plaza is where I did the most damage.
You might think I'm posting something again that has nothing to do with actually geocaching, but not so. I took Gordie, and the first thing we did was drop our bags at the hotel, which was on W 77th Ave, and walked the 3 or 4 blocks to Central Park. I was able to locate several caches right on the side of the park we were on. Not only on that side, but the ones that were right where we walked in to the park off of 81st. Keep in mind that Ruth has never cached before, though she does know about it. So she tolerated Kerry and I following Gordie's directions around because after all - it was a good way to see the park. So while we're tramping around this bridge in the bushes, we look down the hill, and there's a woman milling about with a sheet of paper in one hand and something else in the other - she looked at us, we looked at her, and she said "Are you looking for a plastic container??" It was the first time any of us have run in to another cacher while caching. It was sort of funny, and she was the sweetest person. Her cache name is 'sun-n-ski' (I do know what her real name is, but I shall not forsake the geocaching handles). She is a flight attendant on a business jet (I assume it is someone's personal jet, but not sure) and she lives in Los Angeles. We had both brought travel bugs to drop off at the site, so we simply traded. That was the only cache Kerry and I were planning on doing, but sun-n-ski was so much fun we decided to go with her and help search for another one, called The Castle. It is a castle located in Central Park, orginially built as a lookout point. Very cool - it came complete with a guy dressed up as some sort of guard, though I failed to get up enough nerve to ask for a picture with him. We parted company with our fellow geocacher there, and went on to see Strawberry Fields, after which we had to leave the park to go back to the hotel to change for our evening at Times Square. When I go back I will definitely go continue my adventures in Central Park - I couldn't believe the sheer size of the park, the twisting paths, and the different landscapes. If you go to New York City, Central Park should on your list of things to see.

The mosiac in Strawberry Fields that serves as a tribute to John Lennon. This area of the park is right across from the hotel where he was killed. 

Bow Bridge. We suspect this is the bridge in Central Park that you see in a lot of movies.  

Ruth, Kerry, and sun-n-ski at The Castle - a building originally constructed as a lookout point in 1895. 

Sun-n-ski took this picture of us at the Arch cache site.  

Luck O' The Irish

My friend Chris and I did a little caching in Dublin on Saturday. There are a TON of caches in the Dublin area, and a lot of them are puzzle caches. I think a couple of them were done by the same person that did the Grandview cache, and I just wasn't in the mood for defeat. I picked some of the easier ones, maybe because I needed to be sure of some finds considering I did not find one last weekend. We found 3 that were all hidden within a couple of miles of MAG. There wasn't anything particularly interesting about any of them, they were more or less just 3 caches I can put under my belt and log as 'found'. The first one was called 'The Castle of Aaargh!", and was located in some park in Dublin - I don't even know what the name of the park is. But we parked on the street in some housing development (after I almost drove down a paved walking path), and it wasn't far from there. It is always hilarious when the two of us are walking in a park and then suddenly just veer off in to the trees - we make a lot of jokes about coming back out with our clothes turned inside out. A couple that was sitting in the grass watched us walk in to the clearing, then go down to the creek - they could still see us, and when I found the cache I kneeled down to use Chris's leg for a writing surface, and then started taking pictures. If those people WERE watching, I'm sure that looked ... interesting. That cache was hidden in some sort of mini-castle at the edge of the creek. I don't know why its there or what purpose it serves, but it was kind of cool. The second cache gave us the runaround as far as where the hell we were supposed to park, but we eventually found it behind the Dublin USPS. There's a bridge back there that is pretty far up over a ravine - you'd never suspect anything like that was back there. The third cache was right off of a walking path around a fancy Dublin complex. Since it was so easy to find, I have to write a haiku when I log it as 'found'. I haven't done that yet, but maybe I'll post it here after I'm done. I DO love a good haiku. After our caches we got strawberry milkshakes and stopped at The Guardtower.. and if you don't know what that is then I'm not going to tell you. That is another very geeky subject worthy of its own blog.

The bridge behind the Dublin USPS. 

Inside the Castle. You can't see it very well, but I was leaning out over the creek inches above the water in order to take a picture from this angle. It's dangerous work. 

The Castle 

10 Clues, 2 Pens, and a Bottle of Wine

That sums up Sunday afternoon. My friend Brian and I headed out to do the "Tour of Grandview" cache - you'll notice the list says 'clues', 'pens', and 'bottle of wine'. The word 'cache' is not listed because we didn't find it. There are 10 clues to gather which give you coordinates to the next point, and we never got beyond step 3. Or really - beyond step 2. What tripped us up? Counting lamposts. I know - that sounds VERY easy, but it wasn't. We have no idea why. We just couldn't get an answer that seemed to fit.
I should have known things weren't going to be easy when we arrived at our parking coordinates and I didn't have a pen. I left my super-secret spy pen at home (that's a pen that looks like a tube of lipstick). Brian tried to scratch our answers for the first clue on a sheet of paper using a ... tire gauge, but as you can imagine that didn't work. It was pretty funny to watch, though. I regret not getting a picture of that! We tried to 'borrow' a pen from Stauf's, but they claimed not to have one. Maybe we looked suspicious? So we walked down to the Circle K, where there were all sorts of funky pretty pens we could have spent money on, but the cashier was nice enough to just give us a pen she had at the counter.
After a couple of hours of relentless searching, we decided we were thirsty and stopped in to Spagio's for a bottle of wine. Georesting with Geowine. We had a bottle of Chenin Blanc - I've never heard of it but it was the perfect sunny Sunday afternoon wine. We left, walked back down the street to continue our search - and then realized we had left our precious free pen there. So we go back. The hostess didn't really want to look for it, so she gave us a pen she pulled out of a container. This was our pen upgrade - it was waaayyyy better than the first cheap Circle K pen. Unfortunately, we had no further use for a pen as we really didn't find anymore clues, we just tried to redo the lampost count to no avail. From there we searched for a decorative brick building (seriously - that was the clue), but as our coordinates were off because of the stupid posts we were not successful. So that's it - we basically wandered around up and down Grandview Avenue for four hours, took pens from people, and drank wine. That's a pretty good geocaching day, wouldn't you say? We finally called it quits, ordered a pizza, opened a bottle of Black Rabbit Red that Francesca left for me, and watched Sideways.
I refuse to call this a failure and log this cache as 'not found'. We just haven't found it YET. We vowed to return on another day and get it right. This cache will not beat me. And for what it's worth - this was Brian's first cache (figures) but even though we didn't find it I think he caught the fever. I'll have to find a cool cache that we can do some time soon.

At Spagio's. If you look closely you can see our free Circle K pen. 

We spent quite a bit of time in this shady churchyard manipulating our answers to find something that fit.