On Saturday, we geocached. And we (unexpectedly) got to do one of our favorite things: walk down drainage tunnels!
The cache description was very coy about what to expect, merely saying that we were looking for three "urban waterfalls."
Those would be the ones.
Luckily, these were short – they just carried a little creek beneath a street. And it hadn't rained for a while, so they were pretty dry inside. The creek was somewhat deep at the end from which we approached, but we managed to sneak around the edge and get into the first tunnel without getting our feet wet. At the far end, there was no water at all, so getting from tunnel to tunnel was easy.
A clue! And a daddy longlegs spider. There were LOTS AND LOTS of those on the ceiling, but they were either dead or really bored, because they didn't skitter around or anything. The tunnel was right around six feet tall, so I could walk upright (although my hat did get a bit cobwebby). Ken had to duck to keep spiders out of his hair.
Ken in the tunnel.
Some other stuff from the day:
BIG cache. So big we overlooked it for a minute.
The theme was a puzzle exchange, so it was full of puzzles. And also a packet of pansy seeds.
I've gotten in the habit of trading for ridiculous plastic rings whenever I find them.
This was from another puzzle cache; you have to solve a puzzle to get the initial coordinates, and then at that location you find this puzzle box. Coordinates for the final location are hidden inside, so you have to get it open. We couldn't (the solution turns out to be something Ken tried, but probably not quite enough). This is one of the metal Hanayama puzzles – I can't solve mechanical puzzles at all, but I love the quality of these. They're so heavy and solid and beautiful. They feel good in your hand. I kind of want to buy this one, just to own it. I used to get puzzles like this for Ken, to live vicariously through him (he can solve things like this, usually), but he's accumulated quite a few now and these one-trick puzzles don't have a lot of replay value. But they're so gorgeous. Can't I have some just for decoration?