The Adventures of Shatoosh and Pashmina: What Are Geo Caches? And A Dock Full of Fun

Sunday, August 23, 2009

What Are Geo Caches? And A Dock Full of Fun

My new Bayliner friends who sport a 22 footer tell me about Geo Caches. I was clueless and asked what are geo caches? Go to http://www.geocache.com/ to really explore. But basically people all over the world are hiding geo caches(there are over 800,000). You place somethings into a container and hide it, take your GPS and fix the coordinates of where you are hiding it and place the coordinates on the website. Then any one can pick up your cache coordinates and upload then into their GPS or you can put them in. Go for a hike and find the cache. If you take something out of the container you must replace it with something else. Then you go on line and state that you have found the cache. What a fantastic idea. People are getting out walking and hiking trying to find these caches. I plugged in my postal zone to see if there are any near my condo and there were over 200. This couple had gone on several geo cache hikes in the desert this winter. I love the idea and might look into this. Sounds like fun to me. Modern day treasure hunting with GPS in hand.

Niko, a 41+ Maxum owned by Rick and Roxanna has a very unique feature: an over sized, submersible swim platform which carries their dinghy. When it is off loaded then they have a huge aft cockpit to sit, sun or read a book or perhaps imbibe in a cool one. This really grabs my attention. Late in the day everyone is swimming and floating down the river and all delight when they come sliding in and onto the submersed platform acting as though they all are Shamu. What will man think of next?

I decide to plug away on my curtain project. I set up my table in the cockpit and it makes for a nice sewin

g platform. Elizabeth, onboard Stella, is sewing on a cowhide covering for their steering w

heel. Everyone else takes off in the dinghies to see an old military vessel up river behind Lord Island. After they all return they want to take a float out to mark a submerged deadhead. I'm easily talked into going along for the ride. We locate it and Paul of Kiddo attaches the float to the big deadhead with a screw. With mission accomplished, both dinghies are tied together and we drift back to the dock with the tide and wind. Everyone is hungry so Sheila of Kiddo and Roxanna whip up lovely pupus for all to eat.

While hanging out on the dock Elizabeth states her finger hurts from all that sewing work on the leather. So I give her a Reiki treatment, Roxanna's thumb hurts so she gets Reiki, as well. Rick's knee and foot hurt so I give him a Reiki treatment too. In the middle of all this magical healing time on the dock, Dan hooks into a 30 in. sturgeon, but throws it back as it is too small.

The dinghy I had tied comes untied so Rick and Kent jump up to rescue the run away dinghy. Later in the evening I am asked to join them for a scrumptious dinner onboard Niko. Everyone brought food but me. I just showed up with my begging bowl and believe me it was filled. There is nothing like traveling with the big boats. Stella, Niko and Kiddo are vessels of the Tremendous Trio.