A quiet October

For various reasons October was a very quiet geocaching month, in fact an incredibly quiet geocaching month. In total I found three caches and was awarded two souvenirs and a badge for my profile.

International Earthcache Day 21016 souvenir

Haunted Hides souvenir

I haven’t found so few caches in a given month since January this year and that in itself is unusual. January has been the month with most finds for many years. My first day out in October was on International Earthcaching Day which was on the 9th. There are not so many earthcaches where I live and with the exception of one I had found the others on previous occasions. This one, Brudstenen, is in the middle of the forest in an area I don’t often visit and as such I hadn’t already found it. The stone was quickly located and the necessary information gathered. As we were ready to drive off another car turned up. I was expecting it to be another geocacher but it was a hunter checking the area as it was the Sunday before the annual moose hunt in the area.

At Brudstenen

There is another cache just a couple of kilometers from the earthcache that has been on my to-do list since 2004. In the early days of geocaching we were just a handful of cachers in the area and the goal was to find all the caches the others had placed. This cache, N ölbo, was placed by Piggen who was a prolific hider in the day and was the reason we learnt the phrase “under a rock in the forest” which is where most caches were placed in the early days. A rough forest road took me to within about 200 m of the cache and the remainder was done on foot. Previous logs have complained about the terrain but I found it to be quite manageable. There were no boggy or overgrown areas. It was mostly moss covered boulders of various sizes and a couple of small mounds to pass. This time the cache was found “on top of a rock in the forest”. Visit the cache and you will see what I mean.

The route to the N Ölbo cache

N Ölbo – on top of a rock in the forest

As you can see I managed to turn the knob on the top of my camera such that the colours were all messed up. The result wasn’t too bad – it gives the impression of a dreay autumn day, which is what it was.

My final find for October was on October 30 and this was a traditional cache just a couple of hundred meters from home where it had been sitting unfound by me for about six weeks. It was at a site that I had considered using to place a cache but I liked the implementation of this one. I can’t add more or I will spoil the fun for future hunters. The cache is Hands off.