Too stubborn to admit defeat.

If you are a geocacher I'm sure you've encountered a cache or two that just does not want to be found. You know, the kind that no matter how long you spend looking for it it just refuses to show up. So you declare that it has clearly been muggled. I mean, c'mon, finding these things is a talent we have down fo sho! (Sorry for the type of writing style, I'm having a fever and choose to blame it for any insanity I spew out today). But when you log onto the page to give out your expertise on how this obviously needs replacement, you discover someone has found it AFTER you were there yourself.  The tip of it all is a "Easy find, my 3 year-old found it from a kilometer away".
... Alright, so not exactly like that, but you know what I mean. It is sure to put your ego down a notch.

I´ve had many caches like this, but this one takes the price. At least i was lucky that more people than me left the location with a DNF, but it was worse for me. Yep, I said it. (Again, soooo sorry. I turn into a whiny five year old when I'm sick).
You see, this cache has for almost a year been the one closest to my home still to be found. I mean, sure if it was a mystery or something super advanced, but no. It's a frikkin Traditional and driving me bonkers. the first 6 months it was disabled, when the snow came it got impossible to get to it, but all the time in between..... Gah! It even had a spoiler-pic. SPOILER PIC! It makes it sound easy, doesn´t it?

Four Times did I go to try and find it.
Four times that I spent about an hour crawling in the mud, turning over stones and even checking if it had fallen into the nearby river.  Nothing! At one point I even lost my dog (who is lousy at geocaching, btw, so no help there). Lucky for me he's a total coward and started howling like mad when he ran into a tree. (Yeah, he really isn't very smart, that one).
I'm not the kind of person who admits defeat, in fact, I never really do. I can take a "long" break, sometimes for years, but I do not give up. (For example, my seventh grade substitute teacher is still waiting for my report on the solar system. No seriously, she found me on facebook and told me. O.o) 
I decided to do the best thing under the cicumstances, asked for CO to confirm it had not dissapeared (as I said, I wasn't the only one leaving with a DNF) and put it on my watchlist.
Imagine my surprise when after a month of silence, including from the CO, someone out of nowhere logs it as found!
That was it for me, I will NOT let this cache get the better of me, probably cause I realized I passed that point the moment I got pissed off at a complete stranger for finding something I couldn't. (Competitive, anyone?).

I packed my bag, leashed the dog and promised myself that I would Not leave the cache-area until the cache was found. Of course saying this was basically challenging any higher power, kind of like saying "It can't get any worse", and they delivered.
The rain started pouring down like mad, the forest path to the area was one giant slippery slope of mud and the river next to the GC-area was flooded.


On the good side, I didn't have to worry about muggles.

I did indeed find the cache that time, but I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry when I did. Not only did it only take ten minutes to find it (so a total search time over all being 4 hours and 5 minutes. Ugh...) but it turned out to be hidden at a place I had, in fact, checked All Four Times  without spotting it. It's not like one of those specially made containers, just a frikkin box covered in black duct tape.
That's right, I was outsmarted by Tape! (Made me feel about as intelligent as my dog).

Wet dog and a wet cat with the geocache

Speaking of nothing, those five minutes was all it took for me to be covered in mud up to my knees and elbows. I'm pretty sure the busdriver that took me home tried to telepathically send me evil threats about what he would do if I tried sitting down and make the seat all muddy.

The area was a beautiful forest path, though, even in the rain, so I gave it a favourite point and definitely recommend it to other cachers, just...
Try to take it on a dryer day, alright?
Svartdalen - eo #27

Cache like no one is watching.
ThatDamnCat