Playing MacGyver out in the Woods

MacGyver was a television show back in the 1980’s and1990’s that featured a private eye who improvised all sorts of tools to get him and his friends out of bad situations.

Friday I started down this trail in south Tulsa. I was looking for a geocache with multiple steps that promised that one would have to use some MacGyver skills to find. I was sorely prepared. All I had with me was a pen. I even left my swiss army knife home. In other words you have to find intermediate steps before you get the cache. These are called multi-caches. I started on this one in August of 2020 but couldn’t find the first step. The cache owner (“CO”) gave me a clue. I held off until Friday. With the clue I found the first step. It had a device that if properly worked would give me the second stage.

Taking the results I walked another half mile and the coordinates I had would put the second stage in the middle of a gated apartment community. Oops!! So I walked the half mile back to the first step and checked my manipulations and yep, I messed up.

So off I went bushwhacking through the woods. November is a great time for bushwhacking. August, no so much. I ended up finding the second stage. I could see the container but I could not get to it so I had to improvise using what was available at hand. I’m not showing the details out of courtesy to the cache owner and other people who go look for it. Anyway, my improvisation worked and I had to go bushwhacking a long ways to go not very far.

This isn’t the cache but I thought it was. It is a very heavy battery abandoned out in the woods. It’s too heavy to carry out so I am trying to figure out how to get it out to a recycling center. It still has lead in it which is awful for the environment. So I am pondering what to do about this.

I did find the container but I needed a code to open it. The CO sent me the code because I was too much of a simpleton to figure it out on my own. Then even with the code I had too look up on youtube how to open the thing. I am not showing the container, again out of courtesy to the owners of the cache. The video shows everything in the area of the cache, except for the cache.

I opened it up and looked at the log and I was surprised to see that I was the first person since 2017 to find the thing. In fact there have been only three finders since 2014. I love caches like this.

Number 2008 for me, but who is counting?

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Curious about geocaching? Check out this short video.

14 thoughts on “Playing MacGyver out in the Woods

  1. Nancy Chan

    MacGyver was one of my favourite shows. Congratulations on your success in finding the cache and being the first one since 2017. Why would someone wants to abandon a heavy battery in the woods?

  2. Pat

    The first one to find this cache since 2017??? Wow! It must be in a very isolated location although I heard a lot of traffic sounds in your video. I’m sure after attending the “leave no trace behind” session a few weeks ago that car battery made you mad. What is up with people dumping that in the woods instead of recycling it? So frustrating!!

  3. Fun60

    You must have experienced a great sense of satisfaction when you finally found the cache. I hardly think the word simpleton applies if you’re the first person in four years to find it, even if you did need a little help.

  4. sallie rainville

    Congratulations! That is obviously a feat of intelligence and persistence. . I plan to watch that you tube because even after reading your posts I understand very little about your sport. (And that’s really a definition of simpleton.)
    (By the way, MacGyver is a verb in our family. )

  5. Amy Franks

    I remember that tv show well, it was very popular in the 80s, we use to watch it every week. We have some very posh gated communities here and most of them have amazing view out over the ocean. People certainly have money.

  6. Ellen M Polyard

    You are quite the dedicated geocacher…kudos to you for finding it. I’ve recently added a multi-purpose tool to my hiking backpack. There have been a few times that I could have used a tool most notably being the woman who fell off her bike into a cactus and needed the spines removed from her back.

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