smiley 1( south Taranaki ) Normanby, North Island, New Zealand
By 2 Bulbars on 24-May-17. Waypoint GC764FW

TFTC, note to future self remember to double check your gps but found it

I need 3 more points to get to 100 for the Cosmic Quest so tray.g led me here to sign this one off. TFTC All good here.

This is our first smiley a favorite from us tftc

Bit of a story to this find, the full version will remain untold. The short version as a result of my DNF, I went on a maintenance run with 2 Bullbars, with me insisting it was gone. "Should have gone to Spec Savers" Enough said.

I'm a bit frustrated with these cache. Certainly haven't got a smiley face. with no checksum or geochecker one can't always be sure you are at the correct location even. This one the hint matched the location so am logging as a DNF. Parking doesn't exist at three different locations today, unless you have a bike. Very frustrating day all round after spending time solving these mystery cache, finding them should be the easy part.

Rattll and I set out this morning with a bunch of Smiley caches solved to find. Most of them were quick finds, some took a bit longer. One or two had very wet logs, these will be mentioned individually. Parking on the narrow roads was tricky, even for a small car. Once I had to park further up the road so that we could walk back. No DNF's, though, so that's always a win!Quick find here, no issues to report. Tftc!

I like your description of the FTFer on the cache page here. Sometimes I see someone place a couple of caches on different night along a trail, so we check further along the trail hoping to find one about to be published. Not found one yet, but going to keep trying!

It's a four-day King's Birthday weekend! Lord knows why the boss gave the whole company a paid day off, but nice! Thank you very much! So I headed to Whanganui, and maybe Hawera, to get rid of some pesky green spots.

While in the Taranaki area this week, we are trying to find the last few caches we need to qualify for the 174 East challenge. Mrs nzk’s father was born in Stratford and grew up at nearby Huiroa so we always like visiting this part of the country.
Mrs nzk solved a few of this series several years ago, so we came to find them today.
Found in the obvious place, but we were conscious we could be observed from a nearby property so tried to be as quick and stealthy as possible.
Thanks for the puzzle and cache, 2 Bulbars.

tripping around Taranaki with Squirrel Nutcase.
we had solved all the Smiley series from home and plan made to hopefully clear these on our map.
some caches were a little damp ,some harder than others to find.
but we had a fellow cacher less than a day in front of us who in places had left tell tale signs to follow.
thanks Lester for cache placements around this area.
TFTC

With Gap (of Fap and Gap)…

Auckland Anniversary: We needed fair weather to smash out our big caching plans. We were hopeful that Taranaki would turn on some sunshine today and it did. In spite of one heavy downpour in the afternoon and the threat of thunder, we managed to stay dry and in the game.

We enjoyed working our way through the Smile GeoArt. Each of the puzzles was a test of logic and reasoning. We were able to solve many with surprising rapidity, while a handful needed some heavy duty problem solving. In the end, we had the trail sorted for this weekend's visit... Our turn around point. A quick find - Thanks 2 Bulbars. TFTP and TFTC.

**17,319**
And we are back on the smilie trail again, will finish off the last few that we didn’t get to last night. Overshot this one as we were talking and not watching the GPS (the lady has decided, as is her want, to stop talking to us) LOL TFTPC

After A dinner decoding the Morse code and not being sure if we got it right, we drove this afternoon and found it on our first try. Yeah

Soooo happy we found this on the first try after being told several times by the checker that we had the wrong coordinares! Has to be a new favourite solve!

Tftc

Found with StreetWalkerNZ while we travel from Foxton Beach to New Plymouth. The day started with heavy rain, then drizzle, then fine by the time we reached Bulls for morning coffee.
I had solved most of the smiley series some time ago, and finally we are in the area to look for them.
This was the first find in the series and we overshot GZ (there was a waterlogged patch of ground to avoid) so had to walk back. Luckily it was an easy find to get us on the board. TFTC.

#20953. We attempted a bit under half of this series today, and left the rest for the trip South. Parking was better in some places than others. Here it wasn't too bad (though we had to overshoot a bit to avoid some soft patches beside the road (the result of overnight rain). Good to get on the board with this series. TFTC.

Had Already Found Some Of The Other Smileys First ,Sat Down And Finaly Figured This One Out
Jumped In The Truck And Off I Went To Collect It.Cache All Ok ,No Rain This Afternoon.

Nice easy solve and a quick find at gz. My first to solve and find in Smiley series. Have thoroughly enjoyed solving these puzzles, really tested my brain power. Still 4 unsolved, and the premiums but I'm tempted to sign up just for these. Thank you so much for your time and effort.

Up in Wanganui for the weekend and knowing that I'd have time for some caching I had a look on the map before leaving Wellington and stumbled across this fun looing series. Spent Friday night solving as many of the puzzles as I could (I got 22 out of 31, definitely helps working though them in order) before heading out here Saturday afternoon for a fun evening driving around. All caches found without too much trouble. TFTC.

TeamBOP are together again for the long weekend. Philip.Perry, McJandals,NZFlossy and myself are heading to New Plymouth and surrounding areas caching.

A plan was hatched recently to hit the Naki area this long weekend. Nice to get away and grab a lot of our solved puzzles and ALs plus others along the way. Signed logs Team BoP to save room on log sheets.

I am logging using the Cachly app template so please excuse generic logging along the way. It’s just my way of keeping track, but I do genuinely thank each and every one of you cache owners for taking the time and energy to place these caches. Many Thanks for bringing me here. Cheers.

Team BOP is back on the road this time heading to Taranaki with our sights set on some Labs, some geo-art & everything else in between

Our current incarnation includes Davidson Clan, NZFlossy, McJandals and myself and we’ve signed the cache logs as ‘Team BOP’ to save time and log space. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed the journey as most caches have been found quickly & without fuss thanks to accurate coords and a straight forward placements.

I appreciate there’s a stigma attached to cut’n’paste logs like these so I’ll try to provide cache specific notes retrospectively when I get home. We do genuinely respect the work put into these caches, particularly some of the puzzles, but with a numbers mission like this - the hides start to blur together unfortunately. So Cheers COs, TFTC and most importantly - thanks for bringing us here

On a weekend trip to Taranaki with some of Team BOP. Always lots of fun on these trips targeting cache trails, solved puzzles and high favourites. Thanks to all the cache owners TFTC

We thought that it was a lovely day to go for a wander around and find some caches that we'd worked out. So to find them we had to tackle weeds, blackberries, thistle weeds and long grasses. After that we thought we'd better go for a swim at East End to clean all the blood and prickles off us. TFTC

Had the day off work so headed up from Whanganui. Have been slowly solving these at home. The aim was to find as many of ours solved ones as we could. Solved 25. Found 23 today and 2DNF. After the first few finds there was a definite pattern to the hides which helped. Some of the logs were wet but with care managed to sign all our finds. Thanks for an entertaining series that we still have so work to finish off

We are on a ten day road trip to Taranaki, The Forgotten Highway, Taumaranui, Ohakune and back home to Palmy. Along the way will be sightseeing, short mountain walks, museum visits, a rail cart journey and, of course, geocaching. Day 2 was making our way to Stratford.

At this point on our journey we hoped to locate several of the Smiley caches Mrs G had solved ready, but we failed to find several of them and were very uncomfortable trying to stop in places on the narrow road with nowhere to pull off safely. So after finding this one and one other, and in order to save our marriage, we gave up on these for today! We need to give them a major re- think.
Smiley 1 was a quick and straightforward find. All was quiet here. TFTC

The first of a series I must finish solving. I am on a North Island Figure of Eight tour. For the first 4 days I spend time in the Bay of Plenty with my husband JDScout in Rotorua. Now I am on part two of the eight loop near the end of our loop, driving from New Plymouth to Whanganui. This part is being done with my good friends Ethness and Jude_E.
Thanks 2 Bulbars for creating this hide. It was find 9121 for me.

======== NZ Mega 2021 ========
Planning for the NZ Mega 2021 event is well underway. It will be held in Auckland over Labour Weekend, October 2021

Ethness, Nosynel and I are on a caching adventure. Second last day and we are heading south. Several smilies solved that are on our route so we stopped to locate them. Thanks for the puzzle and cache.
#6250

Off to find a lab cache.

Jude_E, NosyNel and I are continuing on our figure of 8 tour of the North Island collecting the ‘Tour’ caches, plus others, plus seeing the scenery, plus having a good old time. TFTC.

1 of many geocaches I have on my “solved” list, Finally Found last weekend while I had a spare couple of hours. TFTC

Teamed up with Cats&Dragons, for an overnight mission down the West Coast focusing in and around Hawera. It's been awhile since we've done a trip like this and it was great to be out finding caches again. We left Hamilton at 7pm Friday night and returned midnight Saturday, with only a few hours of sleep needed we managed 116 finds for the trip. A big thanks to all the cache owners for their placements.

I had been looking at this series of puzzles as they have been published. Solved a couple back then but wasn't to committed, however with this up and coming trip I started working through the puzzles. Got a good amount solved but needed a little help from the CO to get the final few solves. A few DNF's today while running through the series, and we replaced any logs that needed some TLC. A big thanks for all the puzzles and the series.

If I remember correctly, this puzzle was more difficult to solve than I first thought it would be. Finding the cache was simple with some livestock keeping a watchful eye on me.

Don't know if you heard me this morning around 10am as I tooted going past your place, well I finally worked out one of your smiley puzzles, so on my way home from my weekend stay in Hawera, (wanted to charge up the power in my camper) I thought I would do this cache before the rain settled in, got back to NP just in time, found very quickly and I replaced the log for you, it is a rite in the rain log, tftc 2 Bulbars

Thanks for the puzzle and the easy park and grab. The log is in need of replacement as it is quite soggy and lots of the logs are indistinguishable

We managed to solve most of these puzzles. Some were straightforward but others took quite a while. This cache was a quick easy find. TFTC

Decided needed a mini holiday and made plans from coming back from UK mid year. I had picked an area of the country I have not visited before - New Plymouth. Once the Geotour had been published I had to change plans a bit to make sure I grab these along with caches I had marked as must get on the trip.


As a number of the geotour caches were down in Whanganui took a drive down grabbing caches on the way.


This was the only one of the smiley I had time to solve before arriving in town.


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Planning for the [NZ Mega 2020](http://nzmega.com) event is well underway. It will be held in Auckland over Labour Weekend, 23 to 26 October 2020. It's going to be a massive celebration of geocaching:







* 20 years of geocaching worldwide.



* 20 years since New Zealand had the very first geocache hidden outside of USA.



* And it's 2020 - all the 20s!







Talk to your geo-friends and start planning to be part of [this event](http://nzmega.com) - you won't want to miss it!

Smiley trail time, one of the main targets of the weekend's trip. Great parking, great puzzles and a really good series thanks.

Up here for an awesome weekend jaunt with Team Gators, TheWanglers and Karma Reprint to do a loop of the mountain in 48 hours grabbing as many caches as we could while having a good laugh. Logs signed as some derivative of (KT)^2

Cheers 2 Bulbars for the cache

Time for the Smiley trail. We managed to solve them all before leaving home, but some were quite tricky to get an answer for. Parking was pretty good for most hides as well, a bonus. Cheers

Day one, New Plymouth airport to Hawera.

A long weekend cache raid to Taranaki. The weather didn't stop us doing anything, and we had fun times. Logs were signed with a combination of KT and 2 depending one which of did the signing. Thanks Kiwi Moose, Team Gaters and TheWanglers for a choice time.

Thanks to all CO's for placing and maintaining their caches. Cheers

A planned geocaching trip to the USA was shelved (but is all go for this time next year!) so we came up with a weekends Plan B. Taranaki with TheWanglers, KarmaReprint and KiwiMoose - logs signed (TK)^2 or a variation of. A really fun trip with the forecast rain and thunder seemingly always in the distance but never hindering us. A really fun weekend.
Arrived in New Plymouth; grabbed the rental and hit the road running - aiming for Hawera....
Woohoo - time to hit the Smile series. A fun set of puzzles ; from hard to easy. Brilliant parking for most too - appreciate the effort involved in creating and placing.
Getting dark now and still time so headed down the home straight to try and net all the Smiles before heading for tonights home in Hawera. Loving the series. Cheers.

A plan was hatched for a few of us to head to America for a Mad Mission. With life getting a bit crazy a downsized trip was organised as I had sorted childcare for the cachelets. The big America trip is now set for next year. We asked a member of our crew if we could go to Nelson, Dunedin, Auckland, Wellington, Hastings the answer all came back "I don't have many to find there". We left it to that member to suggest an area. He came up with New Plymouth and a loop around the mountain. That's a go from the rest of us. We sorted puzzles, gpxs, motels and a car and hit the ground running. The forecast was doom, gloom, rain, hail and lightning. Oh well, sounds exciting. We had very little of any of the weather that affected our caching and found we had all overpacked (thank God!).
Day 1: We grabbed the car and started caching at 2pm and made it to Hawera after 8pm settled into our accommodation and had a bit to eat and hit the town before calling it quits for the day.
Nice work on series. Just a cut 'n' paste for the series. Great parking, great puzzles, thanks for the effort. I know it's hard work.

Thanks for the cache 2 Bulbars.
#6097
Find 43 of 80 for today.
Find 43 of 224 for the trip.

Another lunch time drive for a smiley. Thanks.
[#860]

Enjoyed this one, thanks 2 Bullbars

Rick-a-mortis was here OZR3RZ
With PORKCRACKLE . Geodog and GIGI
we should have started looking for some of these before it started getting dark LOL
Good to get some of these under the belt
TFTC

This weekend I was finally going to get to climb Mt Egmont, something I have wanted to do for a while now, even before I discovered Geocaching!

I was part of a great team of 3, the others being Stardust718 and Gr33nslime, so for most of our logging this weekend we simply signed ourselves as either "G.S.T" or "Team G.S.T" depending on size of log sheet.

A few days prior to our journey, the 3 of us started work on solving all the puzzles of the Smiley series. A few of them were solved quickly and easily, whilst others took a lot more effort, and a few needed us to use the PAF option! But now armed with green ticks we were hoping for a 100% success rate in being able to find them.

This cache was a relatively easy park n grab thanks to the Hint. Quite a lot of the caches (probably more than half) we found of this series seemed to have been affected by water, and so we replaced some logsbooks and plastic baggies as we saw fit at the time. A quick sign of the log and then we were back on our way again.

Thanks for the puzzle, and the cache.

# 1292 Yay, this weekend it was time for a roadie from the Hutt Valley up to Taranaki, with the prime mission being a summit of Mt Taranaki, and the secondary mission being 2bullbars smiley trail. There were a few other caches added for good measure too. Team GST as we named ourselves consisted of Gr33nslime, stardust718 and twigNZ. All up we found 51 caches and only two DNF so that is a pretty good hit rate. Sorry for the bulk log here. Thank you very much to all of the cache owners for placing and maintaining the caches that we had the pleasure of finding on this trip.

Ahh the smiley challenge, first thing I knew about us doing this was all the chatter on messenger with the other two frantically solving the puzzles. I came in at the last minute to solve number 10, but I helped more with getting out of the car to sign the log sheets, honest . Some how the team ended up with a complete set of coordinates by the start of the trip and we managed to collect the entire set with no DNF. Cheers 2 bullbars for this, my first, powertrail.

This weekend adventure had been 2 months in the making. An off the cuff comment made at a geocahing event late last year led to the planning and execution of a weekend in the Taranaki including summiting Mount Taranaki. I had a great time roadtripping and climbing with Gr33nslime and TwigNZ. We only collected 50 caches in total but had an amazing experience and saw some very unique hides. We logged our finds as team GST.

5 of 50 for this trip
It was only a few days ago that I really started looking at the map of caches and preparing for our trip. I love the idea of solving puzzles and this series seemed a great fit for our team. A few messages went back and forward and a few struggles had but eventually we got all the final co-ordinates. This was the first in the series that we solved and found. Nice and straight forward too. On to the next.....

Nearly forgot to log this one which we visited on the way back from the FTF at normanby. I have now managed to solve about half of these smiley faces.. thanks to Co for the guidance. on these. now to solve the rest.
Thanks for this new trial

A twisted little puzzle that we enjoyed solving before hopping across the ditch for a quick holiday in this part of NZ. Found this morning on our way to Taranaki. Thanks 2 Bulbars.

Puzzled and found with Baktrak on our island sojourn.
Bit wet and grey at the cache but signed anyway!
Thanks 2 Bulbars

There were a number of young cows watching me while i found and signed the cache, they were very talkative, probably asking each other "whats that silly human doing?" TFTC

#8352

Had a lot of fun solving this series as it came out, some of them took quite a bit of hunting around but had them all solved before our road trip from WLG to AKL. We enjoyed meeting the CO the day before and look forward to more of this series someday.

Solved this one first and had a straightforward pickup. TFTC.

A quick park and grab on my to New Plymouth for a ten pin bowling Tournament. Thanks 2 Bulbars for this puzzle cache.

After a very chilly night in our campervan in Pembroke we headed for the Smiley trail, picking up a bunch of trads along the way.
Smiley 1 was a straightforward solve, and an easy find. Thanks!

logging some caches on the way back from wanganui, solved some time ago now time to find, nice easy find, and a fun puzzle TFTC

Me and scoria were out caching today working on collecting points towards the planetary explorer mission souvenirs.

I am heading to New Plymouth to today to spend Tuesday hunting for caches in the Bell Block area.

Quick find at final location

On my way between Hawea and New Plymouth with a mystery solution and a dot day to fill.
Also didn't hurt that mysteries are worth good points in the current planetary exploration adventure

Straight forward find.
Cheers.

I’ve been to this GZ twice now but trayc.g is keen on showing me how to work different puzzles out so she sat down with me and showed me how. It was fun! Now I’ve SL and will hopefully receive my first Planet souvenir when I post this log. TFTC

Up in the Taranaki area for work. Much like home really, but the weather rather on the hot side today. TFTC

In New Plymouth for the first work trip of the year and I'm out and about early to grab a few caches before I clock on and head back to Palmerston North.

Heading into Hawera now and a detour off the main road to collect some of the mysteries along here. This was a quick find and I’m on to the next one. TFTC

Solved this a while back but first opportunity to come past & sign log was today! A quick find and a cool puzzle, I appreciate you placing this series of mysteries as mystery caches are my favourite! So for that I’m giving you a FP.

thanks for the cache.

Last of the smileys to collect today as we head down south. Solved this back up in Auckland as saw it was reasonably close to our air bnb - wish we could have solved more but ran out of time with a busy work schedule in the end. Some I tried but couldn't nut out.

At GZ today quickly worked out where it would be - unfortunately the geocaching container had been cracked quite badly and the lid was missing. Poor cache. Given how dry it has been, the bag and log were in pristine shape so I went back to the car and grabbed a spare small screw top container - slightly smaller than the original - and replaced it. CO - you may want to do a check here if you are not happy with the container.

So for now - all good here, and thanks for the cache.

I have solved most of the Smiley series so far, so we thought it would be a nice deviation from the main road to take on our way home from the Christmas barbecue at Rattll's.

The coordinates are spot on, but, like the previous finders have noted, the lid is missing. although the log is dry.

Thanks for the series.

#9595. Had solved this interesting set of Normanby Smiley puzzles before the journey. Final GZ was all quiet when we visited. Quick find. The cache lid was missing, but the contents were still dry inside. Took nothing, left nothing, signed log.

Thanks for the puzzle and 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.

*****
Did you know that planning has started for a Mega Event in Wellington in 2018? Check out the details on the [GC78NMQ WENZ Event 2018 (Wellington)](https://coord.info/GC78NMQ) cache listing, [WENZ2018 website](https://sites.google.com/site/wenzgeo2018/home) or visit the event's page on [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/groups/590545297801072/). If you plan to come, please remember to log a “Will Attend” on the [Event Log]( https://www.geocaching.com/play/geocache/gc78nmq/log).
*****

when there is caching to be had there are always smiles.. most of the time
arrived some changes have happened here and the cache must have got caught up in it, he now has no lid but log is dry - had a look around but couldnt spot it placed it back in its home. thanks for the placement.

I am always after a smiley and if it is one after solving a puzzle even better. A mirror doesn't work on the Morse Code[B)][:o)] or anywhere else.[:(!].

Cheers for the puzzle and the cache.

Very subtle hint to create an interesting puzzle. tftc.

On a day trip out with Shelbells so time to pick up a few 2BB caches on the way to Hawera, solved a while ago but now get to find GZ log signed SB and BB. Mission accomplished, this one is a wrap. Thanks for the cache from Blenheim Bear!
This cache posted with CacheSense for Android.

I don't remember how I solved this but all I know is I had a green tick on it. Stopped of here with Blenheim bear in an effort to clear out some Hawera caches, and bonus they are puzzles log signed as SBBB

Woo hoo or hoo woo got it great wee drive to puzzle away the day fun time had by all thanks 2 Bulbars Brain cells working hard TFTC

One down, 2 to go - thanks, 2 Bulbars, for adding more caches too this area.

I managed a quick solve here in anticipation of a trip to Hawera for Mr Rattll to do a run.
No problems making the find. The road was nice and quiet, even in the middle of the day.
We left an alphabet stone - the letter "P".
Thanks for adding another cache to this area.

Another good puzzle cache find with jackeesback on a road trip today.
*Nice quick stop*
SL TFTC

Thanks for the cache

after a nice weekend away with family we had to get some caches after all they had been worked out so why not stop by and sign the log and place the cache back exactly where we found it, now off to collect some honey from a lovely friendly cacher. thank you for placing a puzzle cache here we will be back to get your other puzzle we ran out of time. But you can be sure we will be back. TFTPC.

XKCIT NEERG IFEHT DAHIR ETALS ETUNI MEVIF LLUFA DNANO ITACI FITON EHTDE VIECE RITAH TEMOH DEVIR RAIDA HRENO OSONX EHCAC YRETS YMTSR IFSIH NAHTE VLOSO TTLUC IFFID EROMT IDNIF DIEPO HSIHD NAEHC ACYRE TSYMW ENSIH FOSUD EMROF NIOCE HTERE HWTNE VETEE RGDNA TEEMY LHTNO MRUOM ORFEM OHDEV IRRAI
I finished work early, so took advantage of the extra time to drive way out of my way to grab the {FTF}. TFTC 2 Bulbars. Enjoyed everything about it. Have a FP

That didnt take too long... now to go find it. Sorry Lester, I got the notification as I walked in the door from Blenheim Bear's event. Good one, nice twist.

dib dib dob dob, once again awesome puzzle but to far away, so will have to do with second to solve, Thanks for the cache

Published