CITO and the blimp

We went to a CITO for the first time this past Sunday (Cache In Trash Out) where you pick up trash. I thought that would be it; eat hotdogs, pickup trash and find like 4 caches. Turned out they hid 38 CACHES FOR THAT EVENT ALONE! So I officially broke 1000 and didn't even know it (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) until I got home. I am pretty excited. It was a hot hot hot weekend and I was so tired from puting in our lawn (where the sewer went in) Saturday and then from being out all day Sunday too.

Now I'm home teaching and Nick and my mom and dad are all out of state. Must be nice!!

Oh yeah AND WE SAW THE BLIMP over lake erie!!!! I about died. I love the blimp. Serious love.

Random Photo Challenge

This was tough! I had to get out my old photos on CD's to find 2002. I had a "summer 2002" folder and this was in it even though it is a late september photo. This contest is hosted here and is a fun weekly thing I like doing. I still lived with my parents in 2002 and this is their house. I can't believe the basketball hoop was still there!! It blew over numerous times and finally broke.

I used summer 2002 and the 25th photo.

Spring in Ohio

What can I say, I love spring! Ok I guess it is actually my least favorite season because I REALLY love winter, REALLY REALLLY love summer (no school), and REALLY REALLY REALLY love fall, but hey daffodils are my absolute favorite and everything is getting really green so spring is delightful. Plus there are lots of rainbows in the spring. Who doesn't love a rainbow?

And because I love heaps of compost, I'll leave you with another pic from last weekend. Our compost is mainly manure, leaves, and starbucks coffee grounds all mixed together! I hate coffee but my car reeks of it because I bring home 10 gallons of used grounds per day (thanks starbucks).

Random Photo Challenge

It is supposed to be April 2008 and the 42nd or the 4th picture. BECAUSE I STILL DON'T HAVE A COMPUTER to put my old pics on, I am cheating and using April 2009. Close enough! This is the 4th picture as Brittany asked.

It is Nick putting on the goods!!! Compost and peat!! Building up the soil is the secret to any garden.

Spring Break

You know us, we don't do beaches for spring break!! No spring break isn't complete with out an adventure and this year the main memory was getting my car stuck in the mud, in the DARK, on a dirt road in rural PA. Luckily it stopped raining but it took about an hour for Nick to think his way out of that one (while I panicked).

We picked Ohiopyle because it was a sizable park in PA we had never been to with waterfalls and good views. The only downfall was it is 19,000 + acres and only had 2 geocaches within the park (what a waste of acreage LOL). But it was worth the trip. It is gorgeous there and I only wish we had our bikes with us because they've got one amazing bike trail !!

We got to hike on the Laurel Highlands Trail just outside the park limits (I guess it was in Backpacker Magazine even though I didn't remember that, Nick did) and it was neat. A "mini" Appalachian Trail I guess is how it is described. We found four caches each about a mile apart and as always we were in a race against daylight by that point and losing bad. It started raining and was getting pretty dark when we got back to the car. On they way back out of the one-lane dirt road, we slid off and into a reallllllly soft shoulder. I could barely open my door we were sunk in so bad (I would've gotten a pic but I was too panicky at that point haha). Here was the aftermath:

This was a SUPER COOL old mine we explored! We climbed up through an airshaft. It was one of the neatest things I had ever done.

Geocaching Survey!!

1. What is your name? Christy


2. What is your GC name? basebell6


3. What kind of GPSr do you use? Garmin E-Trex


4. What is your favorite feature on your GPSr? It says "Congrats" when you click that you found a cache. Our first 2 GPS's didn't know what caches were.


5. What is your best memory of geocaching? two words: RACCOON LOOP!!


6. What is the furthest from your house you've ever found a cache? Either in Washington State or Oregon.



7. What is the hardest cache you ever found? Suds It was the most difficult. Raccoon Loop was the hardest to do mentally / physically.



8. What is the most amount of caches you've completed in one day? 45.



9. How did you get started in geocaching? One bizzare hobby led to another. I saw a thread on bigpumpkins.com about it and learned that it was FREE (!). I had heard of it before but always thought it was a secret society you couldn't just randomly join. We'd had a GPS for years before we knew we could use it for geocaching!!



10. What is the silliest mistake you've made while geocaching? Just all the times we buckwack for miles then realize the cache was right on a trail. Oh yeah, and the time my batteries died when I was looking for a FTF. I ran to the store to buy some, got back to the cache site, and another guy was signing it. DOH.



11. What memorable animals have you encountered on the trail? This wasn't while geocaching but worth mentioning. We had grizzlies following us while we were in Alaska and still 3 miles from our vehicle. WOW AND SCARY.



12. What is your favorite earthcache? I've only done two and they must not have been memorable b/c I can't even think of what they were. LOL.

14. Who do you usually geocache with? My husband, sister, mom, and GeoPeg.

15. Have you ever logged a find on one of your own caches? No.

16. What is the most consecutive days you've gone caching and had a find? 6.

17. How do you feel about people who "collect" trackable items? I just hate when they keep them for TWO YEARS!! gah.

18. Is it all about the numbers for you? Yes and no at the same time. I mean I hiked 22.2 miles in ONE DAY for one smiley. :) We earn our smileys!!

19. What have you learned since you started geocaching? Being hot is always ALWAYS better than being itchy so WEAR PANTS! And don't drive a mustang if you are going to travel dirt roads.

20. What is the most interesting travel bug or geocoin you have discovered? Toothy Pegs. Yes they were someone's teeth. EWW.

special thanks to mugglesdontscareme for this survey (i stole it from her blog)

Geocaching

I haven't talked much on this blog about geocaching. I have too many exciting weird hobbies in my life, seriously. This is just another!! It is kind of like a high tech treasure hunt and I LOVE IT!! I've met so many cool people and have gone so many awesome places because of it. Currently there are 770,759 caches around the world. I watch the number grow on the geocaching.com homepage daily. Yesterday I went caching with someone I only would have been able to meet b/c of caching, and you can see her blog here. We had lots of fun and no one got injured or bit by a snake so it was a good day. LOL.

My next post will be a wrap up of our spring break trip to Ohiopyle State Park in PA !! We had quite the adventure including getting my mustang stuck in the mud. :)

And in other news.....we are getting 50 chickens!!!!! EEK!!!

Lineup

The hardest part of every season for us is picking our seed lineup. Lately there's just too many good choices!! This is what I think it will be:

998 Pukos
1028 Sherwood
1062 Stelts
1689 Jutras
1385 Jutras
985 Werner

These genetics are the best of the best and every single seed on the list has grown multiple pumpkins over 1200 lbs.

This season will be sort of nerve-racking because we are on the OVGPG patch tour!! What does that mean? Oh nothing, just hundreds of people coming to see our patch (and silently critiquing everything we do and don't do!). Should be fun!

OVGPG homepage