What else were we to do?

This week has been hell. No other way to describe it, just hell. Between my regular quizzes and tests, I had my Commercial Certified Applicators test that is no walk in the park. Study, study, study is all I have been doing. But Wednesday night, while taking a break from the reading, I was chatting it up on Facebook with the area geocachers. While talking to Nicooole, she kept dropping hints about a certain cache. Alright, I'll bite. Hey, is that cache named after us? What? Apparently, Nicooole had read my previous blog about Topeka being the micro capital of the world, and those were fighting words. So, she in her caching ways set out to show me I was wrong. The cache I am talking about is 'JJ Come Find Me' GC1ZNVH. I couldn't believe it, the cache had my name on it, and it was calling to me. Of course, the better half of JJ was at work until 10, and I wasn't about to drive 50 miles by myself to find a cache in the dark. So I waited for someone to log an FTF on my cache. Ten o'clock rolled around, and nobody had found it! Of course the weather might have deterred a few. It had only been raining all day, and it was dark out by the time it was published. And it was a 3/3 to boot! I explained the situation to Jenny and surprisingly she said, "lets do it." Down the Interstate we go, windshield wipers slappin' out a tempo. Once we get there, we begin to scope out the area. Dawning our waterproof shoes and coats, we walked the parameter looking for some way into the thicket of trees and ground cover. And what happens next, why a black and white pulls up, and that spotlight goes directly into my face. Ya, our first encounter with a cop while geocaching. We played it cool, explaining what we were doing, why we were being stupid, and he was completely cool about it. We got our info written down, and handshake, and a clue to a possible trail. I don't know what this guys idea of a trail was, but what we found was a small clearing and a back ache. Bent like an L, we walked through the trees, coming to dead ends, thorns, and more trees. Finally, we find the creek mentioned in the cache. Now, I am sure that on a normal day this creek is nothing more than a trickle, but after a day of rain, it was practically a river. Walking the banks, we found our only means of crossing, a small waterfall of tree branches. With obstacle one conquered, we moved on through the trees, stopping only to find coordinates. Scratched and dirty, we finally found the cache at the end of the woods, next to the fence bordering interstate. WOOHOO, an FTF on our own cache. Now, how do we get out. Having scouted the area previously, we decided the fence was the easiest way to get out. Besides, we had forgot to mark our vehicle location, so we had no clue where it was. Over the fence Jenny goes with my help. Now comes my turn. Now folks, I am not athlete. I cannot jump or climb anything. So I grab a hold of a tree branch above me and thrown myself over. Yeah, didn't work. I ripped my jeans and lost a glove. Not so graceful, but it was easier than searching our way through the woods again. We made our way back to the car, happy with our find. As I grabbed a hold of the steering wheel to pull out, I noticed that something was missing. MY WEDDING RING! Oh man, did I feel sick. I searched my pockets, my gloves, the ground around the car, any everywhere in between. Luckily, Jenny wasn't too worried about it, so I didn't get into too big of a worry. So, somewhere out there is a ring, most likely at the fence, which we are going to check tomorrow. I guess I can say that I have left a pretty nice swag item for the next lucky cacher. And so our day/morning came to a close around 12:30 am on a rain soaked interstate heading west. Sleepy eyed, we were fortunate enough to miss a spin out not 30 feet ahead of us. How much more excitement can we take? Needless to say, I think we paid for that cache, but I would do it again in a heartbeat. Down a ring, up a FTF and geocoin; a pretty fair trade. A big thanks goes out to Nicooole for an exciting cache and a story that will be fun to tell many years later.