CACHING IN A BANYAN--
Some challenges of Florida's flora and fauna   

Ohio square dancing friend and fellow geocacher Mike Friedman puzzles his way around a near infinite quantity of hidey-holes in this huge Banyan tree along the intercoastal waterway near Vero Beach.

Three of us including Mike's lady Linda Adkins and myself were unsuccessful in finding the geocache advertised as lurking in there--somewhere.

We may simply have missed it, or, it could have disappeared in the clutches of some passing "muggle" who managed to stumble upon it along this very busy thoroughfare, US Highway A1A which runs on the barrier islands between the Atlantic Ocean and the intercoastal waterway in much of Florida.

In the 'what it is worth department'; my total quantity of finds is now 1,815, well on my way to logging 2,000 before my 2nd anniversary in this marvelous activity (which will arrive in mid July).  Those finds are spread over 13 states, 60+ of Ohio's counties and 13 counties here in FL.

A few days earlier we were caching along a canal south of Vero Beach on our way to a perfect day of 12 finds in 12 attempts when our passage spooked an alligator who evidently had been sunning on the steep bank about 10 vertical feet below us.

Wednesday, February 26th a photo appeared in the local paper of a bobcat on the prowl in scrub-land near Sebastian, FL--a town where we recently geocached quite successfully in similar habitat.

Those are a couple of experiences not likely to be encountered in Ohio.