October 26, 2008: Madison and Middleton, Wisconsin

A married couple I have known for several years got into geocaching late this last summer, and we have been making contact and promising to go caching together one of these days. My sister was down with a cold and there was no Green Bay Packers game this weekend, so today was the day to tag along with Lions Fan and 08RockLady.


We got talking about the puzzle-cache I failed to find 3 weekends ago, and they had solved the puzzle and were wanting to find it. I had already been to the general location, so I could lend my gained knowledge of the place in the find. We also lined up several other geocaches in the the immediate vicinity to hunt together.

First stop is the park/hunting grounds from the same location that I was at on Oct 4th. Their coordinates looked to be a couple of hundred feet away from where I was looking before, so I led them down the same trail and we all picked our ways down the same slope into the gorge I used that other day.

Came to find out when we got there that the maps on all of our GPS receivers where not fully accurate, and we had to clamber up the opposite wall of the gorge to get to the hiding spot. Basically, we took the wrong trail to the spot. Not the first time I've done that, should not be the last either.

The hiding spot




The "RockLady" signing the log.


And some sights as we all walked back out on the trail along the opposite side of the gorge.













The autumn colors were quite nice today, if slightly past peak. The wet leaves made the footing interesting also off trail.

Now after this we went on to 9 more geocache sites. They were all fairly quick walks and easy compared to this one.

The second stage of a 2-stage Multi at a small park...


Next was Pope Farm Park, where I was also at Oct 4th. There was a physical geocache at the same coordinates as the Earthcache I logged there, but I never realized it until I had gotten home that day. Took care of business there, and admired the fall colors here today.

The cache container, looking greener than the rest of the rocks.


The view.




Next a small, open-terrain neighborhood park for a smallish cache.


Then a 2-part geocache in another small neighborhood park.




Then a park in the middle of an industrial park.


A quiet neighborhood park on Madison's far west side, with an interesting vine covering a tree by the hiding spot.






I liked this log entry from 2 years ago with some artwork.


Rehid the box better and off to some more quick finds in Middleton.


This one was along a boat landing.


The recreational homes here kind of remind me of the eastern seaboard.



The container was hidden under the big rock.



A small park nearby, with a cache next to an unusual deadfall.



There was another find after this that I did not photograph too.

Walked just under 3 miles, the toughest by far at the very beginning. I would show the tracks like past weeks, but they were just short walks spread out all over the place. Doesn't show well on screen. It was a different pace than I'm used to, but fun in it's own way. There may be more collaborations in the future.