F3 Futility – Pie in the Sky

TeamWolfie was hungry – and there’s no better place to feed two hungry geocaching wolves than a famous eatery on the old Pacific Highway that serves a delicious range of pies, and they are atop a mountain with a great view, and to top off a perfect lunch – a micro cache awaits us in their car park.

F3 Futility – Pie in the Sky (GC19236) is the first of stubby holder‘s caches we have encountered – and if this is the indication of the quality and thought stubby holder puts into all his/her caches, then we are really looking forward to finding a few more of them.

Being Sunday lunchtime this place was packed. Always very popular with bikers and tourists alike, but we managed to find a parking spot on the grass fairly close to ground zero.

But first things first – let’s eat. Surprisingly, getting a seat was a relatively easy process, and we woofed down 2 pies each and washed them down with a couple of bottles of the popular Bundaberg Ginger Beer before heading back to the car to plan our hunt. Thankfully even though this is a very popular place, the cache location is away from most of the activities, although we still had to be discrete and mindful not to be spotted by muggles in our search.

GZ lead us to the fence in a fairly sparse area with limited options for a cache hide, and if it weren’t for the fact I had seen this type of cache design on an American geocaching video podcast recently, there is every possibility I would never have discovered this cache.

This was a very clever and well designed custom-made cache.  We made sure muggles could not see us take the cache, and took it over to the car where we signed the log and examined its design in amazement.

The tricky part was taking it back – with groups of people coming and going, we had to choose our timing just right. Thankfully it was small enough to conceal while carrying, so it was just a case of waiting for the right time to return it to its home, which we did soon enough.

Smile for the muggles, Wolfie!

Not so lucky were we when we were taking a our trademark Wolfie picture of our dog (above). While I was taking this shot I didn’t realise a car load of muggles turned up and one of the older men in the car was pointing and laughing at me, obviously bemused by the fact that a grown man was taking a photograph of a stuffed dog.

Well, I guess the dog distracts attention away from the cache itself – and that’s the important thing in these cases. He’s our dog – and we love him.

Thanks again stubby holder for a fantastic cache.

One Man’s Trash

After a morning of sifting through Ancient Artifacts and Catching Cuckoos, TeamWolfie decided to take a drive down the old Pacific Highway and maybe do a spot of geocaching along the way.

First cache along our route was One Man’s Trash (GCH2XE) – another of GeoMonkeys‘ hides. 

It was a little hike from the road – a little further than anticipated but by no means too far, and before long we zeroed in on our target location. This bush location was a little surreal – on one instance mostly unspoiled native bush, but for the fact it is disturbed by the constant flow of traffic noise from the freeway nearby.

Barking up the wrong tree, Wolfie.

After a 10 minute search we found the surprisingly ingenious medium-sized cache container nestled amongst the rocky landscape. Very clever container, although starting to get a little on the full side… so I hope we didn’t damage anything inside when we screwed the “lid” back on!

Thanks GeoMonkeys for another great hide.

Wondabyne Sculptures

Next stop on our caching adventure this morning was the Wondabyne Sculptures – which interestingly enough, are nowhere near Wondabyne. They are in fact, near Kariong and part of the Mt Penang parklands.

The roads leading into this place are a bit of a maze – so be sure you keep an eye on your GPS maps as you’re driving there (and an eye on the road of course). There are also two juvenile detention centres in the immediate proximity of the the sculptures – so be sure to watch for signs in case you end up somewhere you don’t want to go.

Parking may also be an issue, as the road is very narrow. We found a short stub with a “Road Closed” sign that we figured would be the safest place to park while we perused the stone art.

Wolfie playing with the horse

One of the hints for finding this cache was something about leading a horse to water… but I can assure you it’s not the horse pictured above in a precarious position, with Wolfie sitting on his muzzle!

Is that a cache, or are you just happy to see it, Wolfie?

It’s a great little cache in a rather unexpected type of container, once you find the place… which we’re not going to tell you about. You’ll just need to find it yourself.