No! Bad Newbie!

A few days ago, a new cache placed by a relatively new cacher dropped in Austin. This cacher hasn’t been caching long (they started this year) but has managed to pick up over a hundred finds in counties all the way out to Presidio and make a few hides as well. Good for them. As I was saying, a new cache dropped. I had been thinking that I hadn’t yet found my daily cache, and though I didn’t need an FTF for the month, this was as good a cache to find as any. I hopped in the car and drove to a neighborhood I had been in recently with the girls. It was one of those socioeconomically advantaged neighborhoods where caches don’t appear as often. I assume the new cacher lives in the area because all their hides are there. I pulled up, expecting to do a quick search for a D1.5/T1.5 micro (specifically an Altoids tin). As the hint said, the red tin should make it easier to spot. I parked, got out of the car, and looked upon …

… a neighborhood wildflower garden. I stood for a moment to spy the purples, yellows, and reds among the lush and waving green. More neighborhoods should have similar beautifications, both for the sake of beauty and to have places for bees and other pollinators to be pollinators. And then my caching brain went back into gear. This was a terrible location for a cache of the type described! First, the description mentioned that it was inside the garden. But it’s a wildflower garden. People shouldn’t be stepping on the wildflowers! While there was a single path that meandered from one side to the other, the cache was at one of the inside bushes, all of which were off the path. Luckily, there was enough non-wildly grown terrain to get to them and investigate. Second, being in a wildflower garden that nobody’s really supposed to be in draws attention from passersby. Twice while I was inside, neighborhood exercisers (one walking and one mounted on a bike) stopped to chat about the flowers. I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they were only talking about flowers, not sizing up the guy in the garden who does not look like he’s from their neighborhood. I chatted back in a friendly manner and used my phone to look like I was taking photographs, which seemed to be enough for them. Third, using color as a hint to find a cache seems difficult, bordering on pointless, when the entire area is awash in color! How was I going to find a red tin when pops of purple, yellow, and red were all over the place? I can spot things, but come on! Last, despite all the other reasons, I’m not going to say it couldn’t be a reasonably valid place to hide a cache, but a D1.5/T1.5? For a terrain rating maybe, but for a difficulty? Heck no! With all that busyness and distraction and the muggles, I would have given it a D2.5, perhaps even a D3. For a fairly simple cache, it wasn’t that simple at all.

In the end, I let it go. As much of a search as I gave it, I didn’t want to give it more time. I’ll let someone else find it first. And if I turn out to be the next one to go after it, I’ll whip out the magnet on a stick. That should help!