Congrats to RadioAngel for the FTF

By RadioAngel

The thrill of the hunt. The suspense when a new cache is published. The much eluded FTF........

The Scene
I was sitting at work one slow Sunday when I got a new cache notification. I quickly mapped it and saw it wasn't too far from my house!!! Yippee!!!

The phone conversation 2 minutes after the notification popped up went something like this:

Tiffany: "I love you honey".

Weston: "What did you do?"  (The usual response)

Tiffany: "Nothing"

Weston: "Than what do you want". (The next usual response)

Tiffany: "So there is a new cache that just got published right up the canyon from the house and I know your on call but I would really like to go and try to get a First To Find?"

Weston: "Try to get a what?"

Tiffany: "A First to Find. It's for the first person who finds a cache. Please! I really really want to go!"

Weston: "Oh, okay."

It took all the willpower in the world to keep me at work for the next 2 hours. While I just sat there images of someone else finding the cache while I just sat there ran through my mind. I just knew it would be too late by the time I got up there! But I had to try!

So at 4:30:59 I ran out of the office and headed home to pick up Weston and Jase and try to get my 1st FTF!!!

They were ready to go, we jumped into the truck and headed up the canyon! Every car we passed made me more and more nervous.. I kept telling Weston, "I bet they got it. SOB's!!! I bet they got it!!" 

As we neared where the turn off to the cache should be, Weston asked how much farther. I looked at my trusty GPS (NOT TRUSTY AT ALL) and it said 10 more miles.... WTF!! No way, so recalculated route...

"Oh Honey... We need to turn around."

So after turning around and finding the road we needed to take, we reached a fork in the road. And of course the roads did not show up on the "trusty" GPS..

So I picked the lower road, and off we went. We found a place to park, and I took off hiking up hill... (should have maybe been the first indicator that we should have taken the high road)....

Weston was yelling something, but I kept going! I had my sites on that FTF!

Turns out Weston was yelling at me for leaving him and Jase in the dust. Of course he too was hiking up hill, however he was carrying Jase. We had a nice little discussion about that about the time we reached a road (must be the high road, imagine that). So after hiking up hill for no reason, and not the first time this has happened. Weston nicely suggested we take a sledge hammer to my GPS. If we hadn't paid over $300 for it I just might have let him. Obviously, I need a "Using A GPS for Dummies" Class.

So we finally reached a spot where my GPS said I was only 3 feet away. So I stepped forward, than the GPS said 12 feet away. So I took a step back and it said 20 feet away... this continued for about 30 minutes as I looked in every Pinon Juniper tree in a 20 foot radius.

Much cursing followed as daylight began to fade, and I became frantic to find the cache. I swore I new where it had to be and kept focusing on one Juniper in particular. I got on my hands and knees, circled it about 30 times. Than I came up with the idea that THEIR GPS coordinates were off. Because it simply could not be that I was THAT much of an idiot or THAT blind.... well turns out I was both and idiot and blind.

If I had not been focused on that one Juniper and spent all my times looking at the same tree over and over, I would have seen that the cache was right beside it at eye level, in plain sight!

Hurray for my FTF, two big thumbs down for my GPS and/or GPS user capabilities...

Additionally, of course I left my house in such a rush I forgot my camera, and of course there were AMAZING views from the cache location...