Please clean up after yourself!

On show #10 of Centennial State Geocaching, we told you about our evening at Heritage Square and the short geocaching trip the next morning. We did not tell you about our unplanned adventure because of the remains of a multi-stage cache we found by accident.

I knew there was a cache in the parking lot of Heritage Square. I has found it a few years ago, but was looking for it with Karen. I remembered it was hidden under a lamp skirt, but could not remember exactly which one. Karen and I had split up in an attempt to find the cache. We were down to the last two lamp posts. I lifted the skirt (the only time I can lift a skirt without getting into trouble) and found a container. I called Karen over announcing the find. When she opened the container, there wasn't the usual log, but a laminated card that said "The final stage is at... " WITH COORDINATES. We had make a discovery of a multi-cache, with only one step to go!

We quickly abandoned the original cache hunt and entered the coordinates in our GPS receivers. As we headed further west, we realized that the final coordinates will take us to the Mother Cabrini Shrine.

We got to the parking lot, and looked up in amazement. We had a half mile climb up a large hill to get to the top of the shrine. I decided that I would climb to the summit with hopes of finding the elusive cache. The final coordinates placed me in front of the shrine. After forty minutes of searching, I surrendered to the failure of my search, and would look up the cache later on the geocaching.com website.

My search online proved inconclusive, concluding that the cache was archived.

This story is to remind all who hide caches the responsibility you undertake when you agree to follow the rules for hiding a cache. Please clean up after yourself when you archive a cache, you never know who may find it and run on a wild goose chase.