WHAT A DAY!

The gold ammo can I am holding is a gift from the North Central Ohio Geocachers to commemorate my 1,000th cache found--which happened earlier on the day this was presented, June 21st. 

That day, by the way, also included my girlfriend Sue and caching partner, Skagway071, finding her 700th cache...

...and, my 1,000th cache was the very first one ever put in place by Sue for other cachers to find. Confused?  I'm still trying to recover.

Here's how that memorable day unfolded:

Square dancing friends Mark and Nancy Meinzer, who introduced Sue and I (Skagway330) to geocaching almost exactly 11 months ago, wanted to be along when cache #1,000 arrived on my scorecard.  Turns out that outing could be arranged on the 21st, mentioned above, which also happened to be the scheduled day for a NCOG Meet & Greet in Galion.

I suspected something was up when I got an email from my Coast Guard friend Captphil inquiring whether I expected to achieve #1,000 before the Meet & Greet event.  I admitted that was my intent.

I'm also a believer in Murphy's Law which basically posits, "If something can go wrong it probably will."

The four of us then launched our search in the afternoon of the 21st and ricocheted around Mansfield for awhile using a smartphone app to guide us to promising hides.  Those phone apps are hard to see on a bright, sunny day and it turned out the first few were problems; some I had forgotten I had found earlier and some were out of service for one reason or another.

There was Mr. Murphy and his law looking over my shoulder.

But, we got our act together and #999 arrived on my scorecard.  Mark and Nancy did the photos in today's

story and that's Mark's photo of Sue and I walking back to the car with #999 in hand.  We found it to be a small metal tube hanging in a tree out west of Mansfield where W. 4th St., joins the new US 30 four lane.

Mark and Nancy had recorded this cache earlier so to keep things fair and square, Sue and I were launched from the car to make the find ourselves.  I have the cache in hand and it is easier to return the short distance to the car where the log can be signed in comfort.

In the lower photo I am recording my field notes on the find.  Also, you can see the little blue cache tube

lying in my lap between my hands.

Jubilation!  All that remained in this landmark quest was to drive back to the south side of Mansfield, "find" Sue's cache and sign the log, making it officially my #1,000 find.

Since I was driving on this expedition Nancy posted my four logs as they occurred so there would be official, witnessed evidence of our work.  Besides, it made me feel good.  Just for good measure we found several other caches as we made our way to the meeting and yet several others as we meandered back to Mansfield.

Note the word "Semper Paratus" on top of the gold can.  That is the US Coast Guard motto where I served four years of pleasurable active duty many years ago.  The award was presented to me by Captphil who happens to be a real, retired US Coast Guard captain with 26 years of active service--and himself an enthusiastic geocacher with more than 6,700 found caches to his credit.

I found it quite fitting when we stopped by the Clear Fork Reservoir as darkness was approaching where there is a cache I had logged earlier.  It is called "The Sentinel".  This cache was located in an aging, eight foot tall tree stump which stands like a sentinel guarding the south shore of the lake.  Mark and Nancy had not recorded this cache earlier, and, it was placed there by none other than Captphil.

Take that! Mr. Murphy.