Mini Reserve

Okay, so it’s the 31st December, and TeamWolfie is sitting at 58 geocache finds. Wouldn’t it be nice to end the year on a nice round number – like 60?  Sadly, I have to work today (or tonight, to be more precise – starting at 7pm). I work as a train driver in Sydney, so it will be interesting to see the usual crowds (mostly drunken idiots) getting around. This late starting time gives me a bit of caching time in the morning.

There are a few local “residential” ones around the Narara area just near Gosford where I live so I decided to check one out. This one is plainly called Mini Reserve (GC1B604) by BountyHunter1980. Difficulty rating 1, Terrain rating 2, Cache size small.

As the name suggests, the geocache is located in an ordinary grassy reserve in a residential area. Thankfully at 10:30am on New Years Eve on this warm sunny day there were surprisingly few local residents out and about – so it was a very quick park-and-grab.

The cache was about 15m from GZ as per the GPS. I’d already pretty much established its location before getting out of the car just by reading the description and recent logs.

Here’s the google street view of the site:

An ordinary residential reserve.

I made my way across to where I thought it would be, and yes – it was just there. Too easy!

Stealth Wolf

As I bent over to pick up the cachemy leg brushed against something, then shortly, after I felt a sharp stinging sensation. I looked down and realised I’d just brushed up against a small wasp nest, and the wasp in attendance was not happy.

It stung a little – I’d never been stung by a wasp before, but it was nowhere near as bad as I imagined a wasp sting would be.

I carried the cache back to the car where I went about my caching duties. Signed the log book. Left Nothing, Took Nothing (was feeling lazy). The log was a little damp and pages separating – but that seems normal with these caches. Returned cache to its resting place – amazed at the array of bugs, spiders, and wasps that I’d failed to notice when I first retrieved the cache in the excitement of finding it.

Wolfie Watches Wasps

Okay – that’s about as exciting as I can make an ordinary “Mini Reserve” cache sound. Excitement, adventure, stinging insects, and stealthy undercover work… what more could you want?  Thanks BountyHunter1980 for providing us the means to attain our 59th find, and for the pleasure of experiencing a wasp sting for the first time.

Breathless

Breathless we were when we made it up to the location of this geocache, but definitely worth the climb.

Breathless (GCWN51) is a cache by GIN51E. As a Central Coast resident who commutes to Sydney for work, I’ve zoomed past this location hundreds of times and given it little or no thought. I hadn’t even realised there was a bush track leading up the hill until reading the cache description.

I might be debatable whether it’s legal to park here on the Freeway, and this is one of those little places where police cars like to sit back and have the radar gun operating, but we took the chance today and thankfully we had no dramas.

The steep hill was the perfect exercise needed to walk off our caching-lunch at Pie in the Sky from where we had just come, although about half way up the hill I was really wishing I’d just driven my AWD vehicle up there instead – as it just seemed to go on, and on, higher, and higher.

GZ was at the highest point, and our GPS receiver lead us toward a rocky outcrop with sweeping views overlooking the Hawkesbury River from a vantage point I’d never seen before. Yes, the view was absolutely breathless and I can understand why the cache hider GIN51E, says he spent an hour sitting here admiring the view.

The view was breathless, and so were we!

I put myself in his vantage point and turned back and asked myself where would be the logical place to put a small-sized cache?  Ahhh, right there!  And thankfully, right there it was.

I’ll never forget the experience of climbing up to the top of this hill and the fantastic views up here, and it will certainly give me something to think about every time I drive past here now on the F3 as I remember this special Sunday afternoon.Whenever I see a car parked in that little place alongside the freeway I’ll be asking myself, “might they also be looking for the Breathless geocache”?

Vine Street

After our encounter with a young brown snake at Picadilly and abandoning the hunt for that cache, we headed off to the nearby Vine Street (GCYBTJ), another of the Monopoly series (orange colour square) by cphoenix.

By this time we were extra wary of snakes! When we approached GZ we found the likely spot for the cache to again be in a spot that looked like a great habitat for snakes and other nasties, so we approached with caution and made a lot of noise along the way, hitting the ground with our sticks in an effort to scare off any little surprises that might be waiting for us!

Landed on Vine Street. Pay $18 Wolfie!

Within a few minutes we had located the Vine Street cache. No snakes this time… we swapped a couple of plastic “bugs” from our Christmas Bon Bons for a couple of Football card, and placed the cache back in its resting place.