Geocaching, Baytown, Texas Style - A Story GC2KQAA

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January 2 by Nebulus703 (728 found)

Co-FTF with Latitude_Attitude and a member of Baytown PD @2:31 AM!

This one was fun! I was at a party with a bunch of friends and their parties can go on all night. While I was there I decided to check my email just in case there was something interesting going on. Sure enough, a brand new cache! I called up LA (Latitude Attitude) and woke him up and told him the news. He agreed to come out with me and help find it.

I parked on the side of SH-146 and I had my hazards flashing just in case someone didn't see my black car. I took off for under the bridge and started looking for the cache. After about a minute of searching LA showed up and began to assist me.

We looked all over for this one. I was even climbing up the metal girders to see if it was hidden in some weird angle. Then I went down close to the water to get a better view and I encountered yet another nutria rat. This little guy didn't take off like the last time I encountered one. Instead he was frozen with fear. I told LA to come down and check him out so he could see it. The poor little guy looked so scared! We left him alone and went back to searching.

After a few minutes of searching I decided that I would go up higher to see if I could see it from a different angle. As I was walking back I noticed a car pulling up behind LA's van but there was something different about this car... oh... those are police lights. Uh-oh... I called LA back to where I was so we could get back to the cars before they got ticketed or towed.

We talked to the officer and told him what we were doing. He seemed really skeptical at first but we went more into detail and he started to seem intrigued. We even told him your name and lucky for us, he's heard of you! He just told us that LA's hazard lights weren't on and that they should be. We were free to go and the officer drove off to let us continue our search.

We searched high and low again and still came up with nothing - when out of nowhere a third flashlight appeared! Who the heck was that? Oh, it was the officer that we ran into earlier! He decided to give us a hand! After another minute of searching LA looked up in the same spot we've looked at about a hundred times and the cache magically appeared! How did you do that, Bert? A vanishing cache...

We signed the log and I made sure to write Baytown PD on the log as well because he was with us. How's a FTF for a first find? Pretty cool! #727 Nebulus703

January 2 by Latitude_Attitude (571 found)
Nebulus pretty much told the tale for this one but I'll add my two cents. When I got the call I was sound asleep but I had a stomach ache earlier so I was on the couch or I probably would not have heard the phone. I was about 50/50 on whether I would go for it, but being as it was the weekend I decided to give it a shot. He told me that he would meet me at the GZ (ground zero) and would already be searching for it. I was pretty sure that he would find it before I arrived but when I got close he was still searching - so I joined in.

I was having trouble with my GPSr because some errr...Uhm...structure was blocking the signal so we had a general search area like about 30-50 feet! I kind of had one particular spot narrowed down by taking readings on the GPSr away from the structure but Nebulus and I had already covered it before a few times. We decided that maybe it was something above so Nebulus walked up and spotted the Officer, and we so walked to meet him.

Of course we told him about geocaching. Honesty is the best policy and when we told him that the cache was hidden by Baytown Bert he knew just who we were talking about. He seemed very interested and we told him that there were at least two hundred caches hidden in Baytown and about the containers etc... I also mentioned that there was another officer geocaching (USMCGecko) He said that he was going to check it out and told us that we could continue the search.

Nebulus went ahead and started checking from the higher location. But we quickly realized that it was too dangerous up there especially if the road got busy (not too bad at 2:15am though). So I started to look again and I saw someone calling us from the other side with a flashlight. He asked if we had found it. At first I thought it was another cacher but it was the officer that we had run into a few minutes ago. He wanted to know what we would find and how it was hidden. I was sure hoping that we would find it now. Nebulus walked up and I started thinking about where Bert would hide it so as not to be easily found and I had a idea of a hiding technique that might have been employed. Sure enough It was actually in the spot that I looked! FTF at 2:31 am.

The officer actually was able to knock that cache loose and for Nebulus to grab. When Nebulus opened the cache the officer asked to see the log to read the information printed on the log. He then handed the log back to Nebulus. Nebulus signed the log for both of us and the officer said "go ahead and sign the log that Baytown PD was Here". So the officer was able to get the FTF on this one as well! I told them that I was going back to bed and headed back home.

January 2 by Jolly0311 (1 found)
Ok, I didn’t find it but I signed it anyway. I observed two suspicious cars that were unoccupied, parked along the 146 feeder. Like a good patrol officer that I am, lol, I had to find out what these cars were doing out in the early morning hours. After a couple of minutes I was unable to locate the owners of the vehicles so I was going to tow the car because they were traffic hazards. A short while later I was approached by two white males who advised they were looking for a hidden object that was placed by Baytown Bert. I was not buying at first and asked more questions.

After talking with both I started to believe what they were saying, so I asked for the web site they were talking about. I told both they were free to go and asked if they had found the hidden object yet. Both said no and they were going back to look for it and I left. After leaving I became curious and parked my car under the bridge and located the two males I was just speaking with, I told both I wanted to see what they were looking for and asked if I could help find it. A few minutes later one of them said they found it. I was surprised and started to laugh. After they signed it I asked one to say Baytown Police was here too, lol. Anyway that was my story and I wanted to say thank you for the break. Jolly0311