Papa Smurf (Manawatu) Bulls, North Island, New Zealand
By marisa&kaleb on 07-Nov-16. Waypoint GC6WPQE

done its dash

I am hoping to head out this way tomorrow to have another look but I’m pretty sure it’s gone wandering.

This geocacher reported that the cache might be missing.

Also a DNF for us...found likely spots, but no cache.

We all had quite a bit of a search around the surrounding hint objects. We couldn’t find anything though.

We all had an amazing time doing this series. Will keep an eye out on the couple that we couldn’t find and will come back another day.

Had the day off work and so pleased to be back geocaching after Covid level 3 and 4. Headed out towards Bulls. Managed to find all but 3 of the Smurfs. Lots of temporary electric fencing alongside the road side did limit some access. Will keep an eye out for the ones that got away today. Thanks.

Day two of my road trip from Auckland to Nelson in my newly acquired convertible cachemobile. Finding a few caches along the way. After checking into a motel in Bulls where I decided to stay for the night, I took advantage of the long summer daylight hours to go out a find a 'few' more caches. I headed for this area as it seemed to have a few trails of interest. After completing the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Trail and the Herbs and Spices trail I was back onto the Smurf trail at last. Apologies for the cut and paste logs. If anything stood out for me, I'll mention it. TFTC, Biggles.

working my way along this set of caches.

Found after a bit of a search of surrounding areas. Vinaka

This one took quite a bit of effort to track down. I am not sure it should have though.

For quite some time now I had been wanting to have a crack at doing all those tempting caches around the Ohakea Airforce Base, and if possible to take a drive down towards Tangimoana to check out the plethora of green dots around there too, and thanks to the great weather and a free afternoon, today became that day.

This turned out to be my third 'series' of caches I attempted today. The Smurfs were something I remember growing up with as a kid, although it was more my brothers thing than mine. I always felt sorry for Smurfette, as the pressure of being the only female must have been intense lol!

I apologise for the generic posting but generally I found all the posted co-ordinates and associated Hints to be good (unless otherwise stated), the containers themselves to be ok and the logsheets to be either fine or at the very least (if a bit damp) still signable.

This one was a very quick park n grab, as the cache was found in the first place I looked.

Thanks for setting this series up.

TFTC! Found this one second go. Easier now that I know what I'm looking for. Great walk with JackSpaz and the babies.

Last one. Thanks for the trail. Will have to finish the ones at the end of the road on another day!

Closer inspection paid dividends.

Got it! Well hidden away and very sneaky. Almost gave up on this one but glad I persisted. TFTC

I couldn't find this one

Second visit here, when I called a couple of years ago the cache was missing. Found within seconds this time. Signed log, TFTC!

Day 3/9 of our New Years trip up to the North Island. This was find #43/100 for the day and #112/526 of our trip.
Today was a numbers run of mostly PnG caches. We started in Palmy and set off to see if we could Spell, then headed up to Bulls and after that rounded up a few Smurfs, Herbs, Airplanes, Railway stations and anything else along the way until we came in to finish the KAS trail we started in Oct 2016. A nice quick find here and some shade at last so we used it to have an afternoon snack. We left our new signature item, a Rainbow Beadtail. Thanks for the effort involved in placing and creating this cache for all of us to enjoy.

Last one for the day for me.
Had to circle a couple of times before locating the container
Soon signed and returned

Heading to Wellington Mega a day earlier with Squirrel Nutcase and NZ Flossy a day earlier.
Out to collect caches that we have previously passed.
So sorry cache owners, we had a fairly large find today so it's a copy and paste day.
Thanks everyone for their cache placements that we found. SLTFTC

WENZ Mega Weekend is almost here... Motoring south today with Gap (of Fap and Gap), and NZFlossy. Our intention is to cache our way to our accommodation in Lower Hutt... The big news of the day is that Highway 1 is closed at Pukerua Bay. A truck crash and chemical spill have shut down all lanes coming to and from Wellington. We have plenty of caches to find to keep us occupied, but this could be a long wait...

Friday: We have had our eye on these multiple hides to the south of Bulls. It's nice to be able to visit in great weather and with pleasant rural views. We especially enjoyed this section of the trail. We were able to get out of the vehicle and walk between several of the hides, and take in the idyllic scenery. TFTC.

On my way to the mega with Squirrel Nutcase and Fap and Gap. Having lots of fun and enjoying the ride and the scenery. It’s what I love about caching - great company and visiting great places. Thanks to all the COs for all their caches Hopefully we see some of them at the mega this weekend TFTC

A fairly quick find of our first Smurf. TFTC

12.10pm. A couple of quick circuits before I spotted it.
Thank you. David.

At the end of the line, last one for this series and FP for that. Nothing in the nearby possum trap - yay. Replaced log-strip with RITR strip.

I have been up at a work conference for the last couple of days up in Auckland area and decided to head back down to Blenheim via another stop-off and meetings at Bulls and hence I found myself landing at dark o'clock and in the pouring rain at Palmy North. I cleared nearlly all of the available caches from this area just under 4 years ago as I left to go to (sometimes) sunny Marlborough but there have been a few new ones appear since I left, and this was one.
With the welcome hire car collected I located my hand torch, filled my accompanying empty milk container (for a later cache) and made my way for a modest 4 finds for the evening prior to checking into my luxury accommodation.
The next day was head to Welly day in the hire car and after a morning of wquick-fire, but real useful meetings I needed to head South to catch a flight home. Time for a quick half-hour caching and managed to grab a few more Mar1sa caches, to add to the total. All were good, replaced wet logs with RITR paper for a couple and cleared another sequence of dwarves and smurfs (or is that smurves?) All good and T F T C m
An the rain mostly held off, though the ground was soooooooo wet.

My bag, jacket, and food have been stolen the day before from the car, but thanks to Popmac I had batteries and some cache to keep myself busy until the flight in the evening. So that's what I did! I decided to find as many as possible with the petrol I had and driving without the driver side window. It did rain and hail some in the morning, but then it cleared up and it was all good except the wind! Thanks for all the caches along the way that helped me keep my sanity TFTC!!

Quick to find, carefully negotiating the possum trap. TFTC

Easy park and grab TFTC
[?] Found with ***taybee*** and ***Flowerydaze*** Sign log book as TB/NZ/FD

**taybee** is caching again with **taybee nz** and team up with ***Flowerydaze***
The plan for the day was to get 50 or more finds for the Hidden Creatures Challenge,
410 km's road trip , 11 hours in total on the road , 50 found's , 6 DNF for the day
(56 caches done in 8 hours. avg time for each caches was 8.57 mins)
we had a great day caching thanks to all COs for the Caches

All in good order, sign log book as **TB/NZ/FB** to sale space and time TFTC Log by Gsak
Cache was find at **2018-06-30 10:59:00**

Out and about with Taybee, Taybee NZ and Team Geocacher Mr. T finding caches. The plan today was to get 50 or so finds towards the Hidden Creatures Souvenir Challenge. For most of the day we had fine weather, but for some of the time it was rather wet. This did not dampen our spirits. To save space (and time) the logs were signed TB/NZ/FD. Thank you to all the COs for placing the caches. My apologies for the generic log.

Tftc nice easy find logged as sad for short

A quick find here with no muggle or traffic worries. TFTC

I had some spare time while in town visiting some of the rellies, so I thought Id do a few of the easy drivebys in the area. I had a great day and grabbed a heap of caches. Lots of damp and wet caches, but not surprising given the weather. I did find some that had been replaced, but found the original nearby. Signed one or the other depending on which I found first. Thanks to all the CO's for a great day and apologies for the generic log.

Another day geocaching while at Scotts Ferry camp site many thanks

A day's caching around the Manawatu. Very pleasant day out, nice weather and plenty of caches to find.

TFTC mar1sa

Found... TFTC

A morning geocaching with JonoS, Haydnseek and myself. A cold wind blowing but the ground was dry and it did not rain. A few DNF but the rest with straight forward finds exactly where we expected to find them. Thank you for bringing us to this area.
TFTC

A morning out, geocaching with MJMNZ & Haydn seek. Only a few cars, but none to worry about. Weather colder than I thought, but no rain! Found most of those we zero’ d in on – BUT some DNF. Bother.
TFTC

End of this line! I set out early to meet up with Jono and MJMNZ at Bulls but on the way decided to check on some of my own caches and do any required maintenance. Happily all was well with these caches and even the one i had taken a new container with me i decided was best left as it was as it blended beautifully with the surrounds as it was. The day was quite cool when we started but as the day went on it got quite warm although if you were in the wind there was still a bite in the wind.
We had a fairly successful day with just 4 DNF except they were all at the far end of the journey and the roads we were to travel on. MJMNZ had packed us a morning tea with lovely shortbread and then a lovely croissant and ham lunch etc etc all very welcomed after an early morning start. All the roads were tar sealed which was pleasing.
Thank you for this series of cache M. and another little string of happy faces. Thank you.

Easy park and grab

Papa Smurf keeping an eye on all his smurfs in the series.

Log signed as 'IE'. TFTC.

Out and about with EthNZ. TFTC!

Last cache of the day then time to head back to base. More activity round than one might have expected at the end of a quiet country road - - - and warnings about security cameras. I never did find out what that was all about but I found the cache and that was all I really cared about. Thanks for your significant contribution to an awesome day out caching. A plus one from me !

A great morning with lil_taurus following the trails... Thanks for the tour around the area M&K.. Thanks for the cache..

Time for another geocaching trip with my matey 2 Bulbars, having just lost our good geocaching buddy Priceless Time (Michael Price) we decided that the best thing we could do was a weekend out caching in his memory. RIP Priceless, our thoughts are with you on your caching journey. So, after a quick drive down from New Plymouth we got into the caches: on Day 1, first to the west of Bulls then to the East and South finally into Fielding for the night and a few urban caches. Day 2 work our way back north and east to the CITO at the Rangiwahia bush track. Then back out to civilisation and home. So for this one it’s mission accomplished, this one is a wrap.TFTC! Blenheim Bear
This log posted with CacheSense for Android!

Submitted via Garmin Oregon 7xx

#9089. Another park and grab on Sandridge Road in Bulls to continue on this series. GZ was all quiet when we visited. Quick find. The cache was in excellent condition, all thanks to the replacement by GSEL. Took nothing, left nothing, signed log.

Time to turn around.

Thanks for bringing us to the site, and …

.T h a n k s. .f o r. .t h e. .c a c h e.
.M a u r u u r u. .k o e. .n u i. .a t u. .h o k i. .t e. .k e t e r o k i.

#3843. I had the day off work so decided I needed another road trip to wrap up a very busy month (of geocaching). I am working on the DGSC challenge and foolishly decided to go for the bulk find elective which needs 1500+ cache finds in the year. But one month needed 300+ finds and I was close enough to that target in March so went for it today to get the remaining 61 caches I needed. And so onto the next Sanson power trail: The Smurfs. Have to say while I know what a smurf is, I have never watched their show on telly. Old Papa Smurf must have decided to go walkabout. I spent a good 15 minutes scouring around the two trees in the vicinity, checking every nook, cranny, under bark, under logs and probing through the long grass in case it had fallen. I think its been stolen by magpies if agcnz and ADV also failed to find it. So have left a replacement cache behind, a pill bottle and waterproof log sheet. At GL at base of large tree.

Same as ADV, no cache here for me today despite having a good look. This should have been easy!

No luck for me, surprised and annoyed not to find it.

This was always going to be a bit of a caching trip in the company once again of HKCB. Having though about it and done a fair bit of planning over the past couple of weeks this was a chance for a reasonable clean out of an area that we don't normally get to. So with families in mind, rather than setting out on the Friday evening we left home at 2am on the Saturday morning to make our way south before either the heat of the day or there was too much traffic on the road.

Some stats for the weekend
- Distance Traveled = 1457 kms
- Petrol = 3 x Fills
- Time Away from Home = 42 hours
- Straight Driving Time = 6 hours
- Sleep = 4 hours
- Caches Found = 250
- DNF's = 3

So after a straight forward drive down here this was the first that we located of what was going to be a very long day, and followed by another very long day.

While I apologize that these are 'copy & paste" logs, I would just like to say thank you to all the CO's that have have put out and maintained these caches for us out of 'non-locals' to find. It was a great weekend and we traveled though some amazing countryside.
A key learning from the weekend was that a Mazda CX5 is not designed to ford rivers.
So thank you for the placement, thank you for the cache.

On a weekend mission with Cats&Dragons, for a bit of a numbers run along the new trails around the Northern Manawatu area, and anything else along the way. As usual these types of trips mean maximizing caching time and minimizing sleep time. So with a 2am start time Saturday morning we left home and headed South, and not getting back home til 8.30pm Sunday night. Some numbers for the trip as I know we all like caching stats are:
* 1450km traveled.
* 286 caches found (192 on Saturday, 94 on Sunday) with only 3 DNF's
* 4 hours sleep
* With a 3 hour each way drive to the Caching area, so about 32 hours of caching in the 42 hours we were away at an average of nearly 9 caches per hour, this isn't including stopping for fuel and coffee!!!

So a huge thanks to all the CO's for the placements, and for the reason to see some more of our wonderful country, we saw some pretty amazing places. Sorry for the copy and paste logs. We signed the log books HKCD, or HKCBC&D.

Visiting from Marlborough, thanks for this series.

Another quick find here with STo8. An lucky last for the day. Thanks for the trail of quick park an grabs.

Thanks

how geoching can be so much fun, and so cheap, apart from petrol and no coffee shops etc, only joking, I really enjoy it. TFTC

A blustery day but it's long since time we got back into caching after shifting into our new home. We love our home SOOOOOOO much it is hard to drag ourselves away from it - even to go caching! However, we recently purchased a new (second hand) geocaching wagon - 4wd Toyota Rush - in yellow to suit our geocaching name lol - that we simply had to get back I the game to justify the expensive purchase lol. If you see us out please give us a toot. We are not hard to miss now. So off we set, with mum - CNAH - to collect enough to get past that 2,000 magic number. We had a great afternoon with success at all but two. Disappointed to see that many had missing plastic bags to keep the logs dry - which we know Marisa would have put them in when laid. Sadly we had not brought any with us or we would have replaced them. A good run with not much traffic and grateful for the fact they had good areas to safely pull off. Many thanks Marisa & Kaleb for taking the time to place these which has helped us quickly boost our numbers.

This cache was attempted as part of the Palmerston North Power Leg of our "Road to 6,000" Extravaganza for 2016.

Our final find for the day!

Thank you to all the CO's who contributed to our power day of caching. We broke our record for most caches in a day (152 was the final number) and also, in doing so, qualified for the "142 caches in 24 hours" cache (we managed to knock that number off in just over 7 and 1/2 hours!).

An awesome day of caching!

#5861

Apologies for the generic log — Team B&D are up from Wellington to do the 142 caches in 24 hours challenge. TFTC and a great set of power trails up here!

A nice early start this morning for tmann421 and I. A full day of geocaching ahead and making our way to the annual Rattl Christmas BBQ at lunchtime. Enjoyed this quick fun series and the back country roads not often travelled. TFTC and the series marisa&kaleb

Found with barefootguru as part of the 142 in 24 hour cache challenge (GC5EAAX). Sorry for the generic log. TFTC

*Thanks marisa&kaleb for the trail of good fun quick caches!*
Fun driving around the area today with Just-Lookin.
Soon spotted.
SL TFTC

Well what a lovely day for another long drive out here to get my daily cache thank you Marisa and Kaleb for having a trail not too far away from home to keep my day to day rating happening. Look forward to next trail as I have a few more months of day to day caching still to go. appreciate your help. LOL
Papa Smurf is the main protagonist from the comic strip the Smurfs.[1] Most Smurfs are said to be about 100 years old, but at the advanced age of 542[2] (553 in the 1980s series episode The Littlest Giant), Papa is the third oldest Smurf and the leader of all Smurfs. Despite his age, he is still quite energetic. Easily distinguishable from all the other Smurfs, Papa Smurf has a bushy white beard and is typically dressed in red pants and a matching red Phrygian cap.Don Messick provided Papa Smurf's voice for the 1980s animated series as well as the special Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. Jonathan Winters, who voiced Grandpa Smurf on the animated series, was Papa Smurf's voice for the 2011 film and its 2013 sequel, with the latter being Winters' last film before his death. On The Smurfs: A Christmas Carol and The Smurfs: The Legend of Smurfy Hollow, Papa Smurf is voiced by Jack Angel. Mandy Patinkin has been cast to voice Papa Smurf in the animated film Smurfs: The Lost Village.
In the original French version, Papa Smurf’s name is "Le Grand Schtroumpf” which means "the Great Smurf" or "the Big Smurf." “Le Grand Schtroumpf” can also be interpreted as "Le Grand Père", French for grandfather, which could be the reason for his elderly appearance and paternal nature.History[edit]
Papa Smurf debuted in 1958 and is a gentle, wise, and knowledgeable village elder. As the Smurfs' leader, Papa is a central fatherlike figure that the Smurfs typically go to when seeking counsel. Due to his fatherly nature, Papa Smurf is always concerned about the Smurfs’ welfare and harmony. He is very altruistic and is always available to help anybody—Smurf or human! His great diplomatic skills come in handy when encountering humans or other creatures in the forest. In the original comic books by Peyo, Papa Smurf has a much more forceful personality. He is often portrayed as a cantankerous and irritable leader. In these comics, Papa has little patience and becomes easily angry with the Smurfs for being disobedient or making mistakes
Papa Smurf's duty is to ensure that all the Smurfs of the village get along and respect each other. When real chaos arises, Papa Smurf usually resorts to drastic measures, often through the use of magic. For example, Papa switched bodies with Gargamel in order to pretend to attack the village ("Smurf Versus Smurf" comic adventure) ("Romeo & Smurfette" TVWhile Papa Smurf sometimes prefers to not have to constantly fix problems, he realizes that it is his calling. He once said that since he may not be able to be the village leader forever, every Smurf should have a brief experience of commanding the village. To do so, Papa handed over his signature red hat, allowing each Smurf the chance to direct others on a construction project. The Smurfs were then referred to as "Papa Greedy", "Papa Clumsy" or "Mama Smurfette," depending on whose turn it was to be the village leader. While Papa did see the importance of each Smurf gaining leadership skills, his true purpose was to guide the Smurfs and help fix their problems and mistakes episode). In another instance, he creates an entire village full of evil doubles of the original Smurfs ("The Smurf Menace" issue)


When he is not actively acting as the leader or helping other Smurfs, Papa Smurf indulges in his favorite hobby: magical chemistry, or alchemy.

Papa smurf is a favorite of mive so I better give you a favorite point. TFTC

Had some business out of town so that done looked to see if I could find Snow White and her Seven Dwarfs, do a Smurf Head Count and check out some erbs. Ended up being quite a successful few hours and managed to find most, along with a couple that are not part of these series. Ended up with one DNF, which has previously been reported as missing.

Thanks for taking the time and effort in putting these series together marisa&kaleb - much appreciated. Also apologies for the cut and pasted logs...

We had 21 of marisa&kaleb's caches on their new trails to the west of Bulls still to do, so we set off today to gather some herbs and then visit some friendly smurfs. It was drizzling steadily as we headed out, but held off fairly much all the time while we were caching. We used to orienteer often in the pine forests out this way, so coming here is a bit nostalgic too.
Smurfs around here obviously like to dwell in *gerrf*. This one was at home and easy to locate. TFTC

A quick find here at the end of this run, TFTC!

Spent a pleasant couple of hours here this morning. Got pretty much all of the ones I planned to get. TFTC

This one was in a handy cache site. Encountered one of the few vehicles on the road - a rural petrol tanker but it soon disappeared down the driveway. tftc

The last of the smurfs only missed one on the journey started to feel like an old man at the end of this trail still having fun with more to go down from New Plymouth TFTC

Today, along with D6NZ, we were attempting to get ruby in the "Daily cacher" feat by logging 120 caches in a single day.
There were a number of trails in the area that we had already eaten into, so while we could hit pockets we lost precious time travelling as we ventured to each new hot spot. Today we planned on west of Bulls, north of Ohakea, skirting Halcombe and Fielding, then topping it off south of Himitangi.

Papa smurf completes the smurf run for us so its off to church then into a few herbs. Thanks Marisa and Kaleb for the series.

Planned a days caching around a goal of logging 120 caches today to obtain a ruby feat. Unfortunately some of the runs available I had already eaten into during normal
caching days which meant I had to target a few trails with 50 or more minutes travelling time between them, chewing up precious daylight hours.
Left home at 6:30 got back well after 9pm. it was a long day.
I targeted three areas, Bulls, Feilding, and Himitangi.

A quick find while completing the Snow White, Smurf and Herb series. Thanks for the series. TFTC

#2729 More to follow.

FP for series

In the area hunting down 200 plus finds today as a group, so finding trails was a great help for the goal.... we managed a cool 206 today final count, so target achieved.....

Signed in as SEAC to save logbook space.

Spent the time between caches on the trail working out which of us was each smurf.... very interesting conversation this was...

TFTC.

In the Manawatu for the weekend with some caching buddies- Uncle Sam, NZTravellers, Stik-a-crane, HeMaLuDy. The goal was to find as many of the caches in the area as we could in the space of a day, and we all had a blast jumping in and out of the cars, racing each other to the caches, and laughing and joking along the way, and in we general had an awesome weekend down here.
After a while we started playing "musical cars"- and would race each other back to the cars in order to vie for prime position.... or just to pip someone else at the post..... it was rather hilarious, mainly because of the creative ways of piling into cars or sneaking in just before someone else when you knew they were aiming for that seat. One or two people may have accidently (or not so accidentally) have got sat on!!!!!

For this particular series, we had fun assigning smurfs to some of the members of our group, according to who we thought was most like that particular smurf character.... Mr Stik-a-Crane was awarded the title of Papa Smurf! Cache located, and on we went!

Log signed as Team SEAC (South East Auckland Crew) in order to save log space.
TFTC!

A group of us were down from Auckland for the weekend in order to complete some of the power trails in the area. Logs were signed with team SEAC to save space on the logs. Caching today with darthcacher1, purply, stik-a-crane, UncleSamNZ, NZTravellers, NewlynFam. We travelled to the furthest cache (basil) first and worked our way back to Bulls. A nice quick find here, helping us towards 140 caches in 13 hours (including 5 local FTF's). Thanks for taking the effort to place these power trails.

Our team from Auckland wanted to do a major day of caching, so headed down to Foxton area for a massive day. We got about 205.

Very sorry for the generic logs, but when doing so many in one day very hard to make notes on each.

But a big thank you to all the cache owners for putting out all of the great caches we visited.

Logs signed as either “Team SEAC” or “SEAC” – South East Auckland Crew.

A group of cachers from Auckland spent the weekend in the Manawatu. We went by the name of SEAC (South East Auckland Crew) had heaps of fun running around the district squashed into two cars. Thank you for the wonderful caches. Sorry for the generic log, we had a huge day and collected 206 caches in 14 hours! TFTC!

After spending the morning prepping my bathroom and laundry for painting, I decided to reward myself with an hour or two of caching. Decided to head to this new trail that went live yesterday. Sorry for the cut and paste logs, all caches were easy finds and coordinates were pretty much on the money. Thanks for the new trail.

We found the cache nicely tucked away in a secure place. Now it's time to back track & check out the next little trail not too far away.
Thanks for setting up these neat little trails & thanks for the joint {FTF} with Popmac

Morning tea time - the phone birdie whistled ... Wow, 31 new caches in Bulls area. Quickly downloaded onto GPS and off. Morning tea not important at a time like this. Quickly found a blank log for another Joint [FTF] with rattll. Thanks marisa&kaleb for the cache & new Smurfs Trail. A FP for the Smurrfs Trail.

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