A GEOCACHING 'FLASH MOB' ASSEMBLES ITSELF--

Approximately 40 members of the Vero Beach Geocaching Breakfast Club followed-up its monthly breakfast meet-and-greet recently with a CITO (Caches In Trash Out) event at the town's Indian River Aquatic Reserve.

Ten new geocaches had been hidden along the reserve's 2 mile walkway and the task of participants was to find them and collectively be first to sign their logs.

Participants also were provided with gloves, spring-loaded pick-up sticks and trash bags.  Trash along the trails in this newly established public park along the inter-coastal waterway was captured with enthusiasm equaling the search for the new caches themselves.

Crew leaded Happy Hunter briefed the launch with his "...you gotta' love it" Americanized, Czech accent then, his GPS in hand, led the assault; stopping when nearing each cache site and pointing the eager searchers to its general location.

Many searchers were equipped with their own GPS units or smartphones with a geocaching app.  As you might imagine it didn't take long, in an atmosphere of spirited competition, to pinpoint the cache locations; some done with extreme creativity for this special challenge.

One cacher had bisected part of an old tree branch, mechanized the fitting which concealed the cache log, then cleverly placed it in a tangle of Mangrove branches so it looked like it actually lived there.  

One veteran cacher had it in his hand then dismissed it as being the actual cache--much to the mirth of his highly-competitive colleagues.  He will remain nameless in this story to protect him from further embarrassment (the good natured variety, of course) but his caching name resembles the skeleton of a fish.

Speaking of veteran cachers; I added the recorded caches for the first 20 folks who logged this event and they average 3,792 caches each.  My total after about six months of experience is 570.

I am proud to confess making one of the day's 10 finds by pirating guidance from other cacher's instruments.  As newbies, Sue and I had left our GPS inert and were content to participate as observers for the day.  

The small photo left shows the density of the tropical vegetation cachers were dealing with.  It often included water from the ebb tide beneath their lofty perches.

The inter-coastal waterway (below) forms a picturesque background along the east perimeter of this event with our leader HH with the white hair in the left foreground. 

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Just a few days before this delightful event I was caching near downtown Vero Beach and, ironically, one of my caches that day was placed by Happy Hunter, who, at that point I had never met.  His cache was named HH Strike Two.  I logged it as being "diabolical".  

If you are a cacher in Vero Beach, don't read any further.  I will spoil your hunt.

HH's cache was about 50 yards into a subterranean storm sewer; pretty much directly underneath where his coordinates had directed me on the surface.  Great hide, HH.