700 in the dark

It's been a long time since I blogged about our geocaching adventures. Somehow it did not seem to work while we were on the road. But now we're home again, and while I am still retired (and plan to remain so) I have no excuse anymore to neglect this activity. And to be frank (to quote a popular sentence opening by politicians), I find it not a hardship... And to be honest (....) I kind of like it.
We did a fair bit of caching during our travels. When we left home our count was at less than 400...when we got home it was at 702. So that is not to be sneezed at.
The city that we probably remember most kindly for its caching opportunities is Holland, MI. The place is just plastered and looking for them has brought us into interesting places and made us feel at times as if we were in the Netherlands with all the genuine Dutch names everywhere. I do not know how many caches we logged while we were there, but I do know that if we stayed there for another week, we would still not be done by a long shot.
By the time we hit Ellensburg, WA we were close to our 700th cache so we decided to try and get that number in that place. We discovered that there was a night cache near our campground, and seeing that we had never done one of those, we decided to make that one our 700th.
A night cache is one where you go into the area with a flashlight. As you shine the light around, it will pick up little reflectors attached to a tree or other objects. These reflectors guide you farther into the darkness and if you have never been in that area (and we hadn't) it is kind of spooky...Perhaps that's the whole idea. I have to say that Mom dealt with it as a real trooper.
So we arrive at the spot we need to be. Now find the cache. It took us a few minutes...the clue was: find the chain, then the ring that is attached to it, then pull up. Well, Mom found the chain, and the ring, and gave a mighty heave...open pops a box, and at her stares a skull...
I have to give it to her: she did not scream; she just froze for a few seconds...or maybe more than a few...but honestly, no scream...
The pictures tell the story.
In the meantime we have not been idle. I spent a few days by myself in Langley and we went there a couple of days together. We have had some nice weather.
Today we reached our 800th...!
That is probably worthy of its own blog page, but I don't want to bore you...
We hope to make the 1000 before the year is out.