TWiG – This Week in Geocaching – The Sinkhole

This is the eighth article in a ongoing series titled, “TWiG – This Week in Geocaching”. With each article I hope to highlight my personal geocaching treks and comment on anything that I find of interest that’s going on in the world of geocaching (i.e. geocaching related websites, forum posts, blogs, podcasts, etc.).

The Sinkhole

The weather was so nice today that I decided to go look for a quick geocache during my lunch break. No quick park and grab here. Check out my log entry for GC108G0 Sinkhole:

When approaching the sinkhole I saw what looked like a black panther. Luckily it just turned out to be a very big cat. It had to be at least half the size of my dog (a yellow lab). It was gone as soon as it heard me. While looking for the cache I heard someone yell, “Hello!”. At first I thought it was coming from within the sinkhole. I eased close the edge and looked carefully over trying to catch a glimpse of anyone down below. Again I heard, “Hello!”, along with some other un-deciepherable chatter. Now I could tell it was actually coming from up the hill, near the gravel parking area. At first I thought it was some fellow geocachers. Great, I thought, now maybe I could stop walking around in circles and get some help finding this thing. But then I heard the car horn and more shouts of “Hello!”, along with something new this time, “What are you doing down there?”. Again the car horn started to sound, over and over, along with more yelling. The more the horn the sounded, the more I began to think that it sounded just like my car horn. Did I leave my car unlocked? Were they in my car? No. I remember specifically hitting the lock button on my little clicker thingy. But then I thought… “I can’t remember closing my door.” I still hadn’t found the cache by this time, but then I realized I had left my Pocket PC in the passenger side seat. Before I made a mad dash up the hill, I did a quick glance over my shoulder and spotted the cache! Sure luck! I quickly signed the log and ran up hill. When I got to the top there were two people standing near my car. They were dressed similar and one shirt had the logo from the Key West Inn, who turned out to be the owner of the hotel. The first thing out of their mouths was a very confrontational, “What were you doing down there?”. I was out of breath from running up the hill, but they didn’t care, “What were you doing down there? Why are you parked here?”. I said hi and the usual pleasantries while still trying to catch my breath. “What were you doing down there? Tell me now!” they demanded. After I caught my breath. I told them about the cache hidden near the sinkhole. Sinkhole? They had no idea a sinkhole was over there. They had no idea about geocaching either, but had noticed quite a few cars that would park for a few minutes and then leave. So I told them all about geocaching, showed them some pictures from my camera of some other caches in the area, and showed them the map on my GPSr of some nearby caches. They seemed fairly interested and were content with my explanation. Oh, the car horn, it was mine after all. I had left my windows rolled down a few inches and they were able to reach in and tap the horn.

It was a beautiful day to be outside, and I really enjoyed the scenery near and around the sinkhole. TFTC.

I don’t know if you can tell from the picture, but that sinkhole had to be at least 30 feet deep. I tried but I couldn’t see the bottom from where the cache was located. There’s a few more pictures on the cache page.

Geocaching Software

The “Geocaching software” page over at Wikipedia has a huge list of software for most platforms including PC, Mac, and now Linux. Don’t see your favorite geocaching app listed? Then add it yourself and help others find the great software that you’ve been using to find that cache.

TFTC

One of my goals with this series of articles is to help keep me in the caching spirit and to remind me how much fun is involved with geocaching. I always appreciate comments and suggestions, so feel free to leave them here or send me an email. Have a great week and happy caching!