Meets and Greets

Back in April, I wrote about a mini high school reunion that I attended.  At the time, I thought I might have recruited a couple of new geocachers.  I'm not sure whether that panned out or not, but it sort of whet my appetite to try and go to a couple of geocaching events, something that I have not done a lot of in the past.

I attended an event celebrating the 10th anniversary of geocaching back on May 1st.  That was a very enjoyable afternoon.  We ate, we talked geocaching, then many of us went on a hike through the Devils Punchbowl, picking up some caches we hadn't found on previous outings to the area.  All in all, it was a very good day.

This past Saturday, I attended another event hosted by BigDaddyGRC and ScrabbleDogs.  BigDaddyGRC is one of the hiders of the Groundspeak series that I've written about, plus the Smiley Series.  I'd met him at the 10th anniversary event and had enjoyed his company then, so when my friend Chaosmanor pointed this event out to me, I thought it might look interesting.

Unfortunately, the Tadpole also had a cross country meet that day, so I couldn't be in two places at the same time and family comes first.  However, he hadn't been feeling well with allergies all week, due mainly to the local county fair and didn't end up running on Saturday because of it.  That freed up my day once I got the lawn mowed.

I was able to get the lawn mowed early in the morning before it started to heat up and then took off.  I found a couple of caches on the way up the hill to the event, which was held at the Grassy Hollow area near Wrightwood, CA.  This area has a very nice visitors center and has a nice group campground designed for through hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail.  I had been up here one other time back in November 2002 looking for a cache hidden right along the PCT.

The event was a potluck hamburger/hotdog barbeque and the day couldn't have been more perfect.  The people who came up were similar to me in that we were all beating the heat. The temperature at my house on Saturday was 99˚, while up in the mountains, it was probably in the low 80s - quite pleasant for a picnic and subsequent hike along the PCT.  BigDaddyGRC was a fine host, cooking the burgers to perfection and we had plenty of food for everyone.  In fact, if people went away hungry after this event, it was their own fault.

At any of these events, most of the cachers tend to know one another, either because they've met in the past, or they're familiar with them due to seeing their names in logs somewhere while out caching.  This event was no exception, but it's still nice to finally put cache names to faces.  I met three of the 4DirtyDogs that afternoon, as well as RedBaroness, Shell1Fish, NascarFamily.

We ended up talking for several hours about different things, including geocoins, old time caching back in the early days when you'd go for a hike of 2 miles and find one cache.  That was the case when I'd gone after that cache up here.  It was the only one there.  Now there's about 10 caches available to find within a two mile radius of the picnic area.  We were also treated to a nice geocoin collection by Steben6.

After the raffle of some prizes, which I think ended with everyone in attendance getting something related to geocaching, geocoins, we all headed our separate ways.  I ended up hiking with Chaosmanor and the 4DirtyDogs over to a cache.  Our group eventually ended up being 10 cachers strong and it was fun talking about stuff while hiking along the trail.  We eventually ended up over at the Grassy Hollow Cache which I'd found 8 years ago.  It was fun watching others find this old cache.

I related about how few and far between caches were back then and talked about the differences in caching between then and now.  Logging in the logbook was an art and people tended to write stories.  While the others signed the new log book, I was busily looking through the old logbook of this cache.  As I was looking, it dawned on me and I also voiced it out loud, that I was going to be pretty embarrassed if we encountered my name in the log book and there wasn't a story attached.  I breathed a sigh of relief when I found my entry and noticed that I had indeed written a short story about the experience.

The last cache the group ended up finding was a picture puzzle cache, one where cachers had to walk along a trail checking out the viewpoints until the view matched up with a set of pictures attached to the cache page.  Once the pictures lined up, supposedly you would be at the cache site.  A lot of debating went along with this one as we walked along, especially after we saw the lake down below which showed up in one of the pictures.  Eventually, we were able to get the "right" view and found the cache, a fitting end of the day cache find.

I looked on my profile page while writing this one and this was only the 10th event I've chosen to attend.  I'm averaging about 1 per year, but I know there have been several years where I haven't attended any events, while other years have a couple.  I'm already planning on attending another local event on the 10th of October.  I can't resist the numerology of 10/10/10.  I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy that one as much as I enjoyed this last event last Saturday.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
A Day in the Angeles Forest - Grassy Hollow - by HDGC (BigD'GRC and Scrab'Dogs)
Grassy Hollow - by John, Donna and Slipper

Travel Bug Pictures

A year and a half ago, I made a confession that I haven't been very good about maintaining even to this day.  I feel I've done a much better job about taking pictures of the different travel bugs that I've had in my possession, but I'm still not at 100%.  At this point, I'm not sure that's possible.  In my opinion, some travelers don't lend themselves well to photographs.  I think this is especially true with geocoins.  Geocoins area small and difficult to get into focus with the other aspects of an area that the coin is going to be placed.

Many travel bugs are the same way, however, I've found some larger ones are much easier to photograph than others.  I found Arthur up in the high desert this summer and took him up to Santa Cruz with me last month.  I got a good picture of him holding another travel bug when I first found him in the desert and also got a nice photo of him standing in the leaves of the World's Largest Artichoke.

I'd seen this particular virtual on our drive up, so I made it a point to stop on the way down. I got there too early in the morning to partake in some of the nearby restaurant's finer artichoke cuisine, but I was able to stop at a local farmer's market and buy some artichokes to bring home.  10 for a dollar was a bargain price, even for some on the small side.  I think back now and I should have purchased 20 at that price.  Although I suspect the season will be over by the time I get up to Santa Cruz again, probably in late November, but if they have them available then, I'll buy some more.

Getting back to travel bugs.  During that desert run, I also took, what I thought, was a rather whimsical picture of the R2D2 travel bug that I found near Point Reyes National Seashore in July.  The spot where we found a nice travel bug hotel had some rock formations similar to what one might find on the fictional planet of Tatooine in the STAR WARS movies.  Those kinds of pictures are the kind that trigger musical responses in my head.  When I look at that picture, I can hear John Williams theme of the robots walking through the desert on their way to capture by the Jawas.

At the moment, I have three travel bugs sitting on my desk.  I have a geocoin in the shape of a head of lettuce.  "Lettuce go caching."  There's also a Triceratops and a bison tube that I thought was a traveling cache when I first picked it up, since it had a log sheet in it. It's particular goal is to travel to different countries and have the person who placed it in a cache write the name of the country on the log sheet inside.  I'm not sure where this one is going to end up, cache-wise, but at least it's closer to another country here than where it used to be farther north along the 101.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
The World's Largest Artichoke - by ynots4
Mojave Green Travel Bug Motel - by The Dananator

Roll Call

Hungry Hungry Hippo? Road Warrior? Pink Dog? Roger Raccoon? chaosmanor's Idaho 2008: Goose Creek Falls - bronze? Not another micro! Geocoin?

Here!

Six travelers are coming with us when we begin our caching/camping trip next Tuesday. Unless I get out in the next couple of days to a travel bug hotel, that looks to be about it. Not like that's a bad thing, it just represents a small amount of travelers that I'll be able to move along on this trip. I've moved upwards of 18 bugs and coins on other trips. That was fun, but I'm not sure I'd want to repeat it in the short time frame of 3 days that I had. With 14+ days in which to travel and cache, I have plenty of time to drop travels off at my leisure. I actually wish I had some more.

We encountered several caches while down in San Diego this week where there should have been travel bugs. I think of the 7 caches we found, 4 had listed travel bugs in them, yet all of the caches were empty. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common theme. Either people just don't understand the concept of logging the travel bug onto the geocaching site, or there are a lot more thieves out there then I'd like to believe. I'm hoping it's the former as opposed to the latter.

Most of the goals of the ones that I have are pretty modest. A couple just want to travel from cache to cache. I can do that. One wants to get to the east coast and another wants to get to Delaware. Well, I can get them a little closer, especially if I end up putting them in the eastbound rest area in Montana. That should get them closer. Chaosmanor's geocoin just wants to stay in states that surround Idaho. I'll find a cache in Idaho and leave it there. The Pygmy Hungry Hippo I really like. It wants to share your meals with you. I can think of some great photo ops for this one on our camping trip. That one should be fun to play around with before I drop it off somewhere.

If I get the chance, I'll try to get out to our local travel bug hotel to see if there's any bugs in it. I've found that I like to move travel bugs over geocoins mainly because the photo opportunities can be a little bit more varied with the travel bugs. With a geocoin, you have to zoom in tight so you can see the geocoin, to the detriment of the rest of the background. Travel bugs you can do all sorts of things with and have some pretty humorous images to post later on. If I do get out again, I'll probably just grab the travel bugs. Any that I find on the way, will probably come back home with me for deposit around here.

We're going to Disneyland!

In January, I found a travel bug (Pluto's Dog Tag) that started in Washington and wanted to visit the different Disney Theme parks. Since I live about forty minutes away from Disneyland in Southern California, I figured I'd be able to give it a shot to complete one of its goals. At about the same time a friend of mine found a geocoin (Vacation Coin 2008) in Washington that had a goal of getting to Anaheim, CA by March 2009. He contacted me and agreed to mail the geocoin down to me, so I could get it to its goal by this month.

Today, we were able to accomplish the goals for these two bugs. Tadpole held the coin and the bug up while I did the honors of taking the pictures of them in front of the park sign. There's a nice drop off spot where you can park for fifteen minutes to drop off people on the east side of the park which we took advantage of in order to take our two pictures.

After we took the pictures, I took us south to try and find a couple of geocaches that were large enough and close enough to the park. We got lucky there was a small Altoids tin type of container cache about a mile south of Disneyland where we were able to drop the geocoin. As we sat in the parking lot near that cache, I started looking through the PDA to try and find a regular sized cache that would fit the bill for the Pluto Dog Tag. Since it was a larger travel bug, I needed a coffee can sized container or larger for this one and we were rewarded with a cache only half a mile away to the east of where we were sitting in our car.

It was located near a medical center parking lot, which was virtually empty today since it was Saturday. We made the grab, trading a Boy Scout travel bug for Pluto. Hopefully, both of these travelers will enjoy the insides of many more geocaches.

Pictures were taken near the following geocaches:
Downtown Disney Virtual (NO Admission Required!) - by TeddyBearMama & Klemmer
WD's Original - by sbell111

Discoveries?

The first time I saw the mass hysteria over geocoin icons, was at an event several years ago. People had books of geocoins and there were other cachers just scrambling to write down the geocoin numbers on them. This is all done so that people can get another cool looking "Icon" on their geocacing profile page. And you don't have to look, because I'll freely admit that I have many icons on my page as well. This has all been precipitated by Geocaching.com's use of the "Discovery" feature, where cachers don't have to virtually grab a geocoin, then virtually drop it back into the same cache to get credit for the icon. All they have to do is discover the coin.

I'm pretty sure I know why they did it. It reduces the number by half of emails that get sent out to owners following a discovery. Previously, the owner of a geocoin would get an email from GC.com when a cacher grabbed a geocoin or travel bug, then would get another email when it was virtually placed back into the cache. With the discovery method, less computer resources are used.

However, as an owner of many geocoins and travel bugs, I find the discovery option to be very frustrating. I've been getting a lot of emails lately on several of my coins that are just discovery emails. I place geocoins and travel bugs in caches so they'll travel around. The problem is the discovery option allows cachers to leave the coins in the cache, get another icon and not have to bother with moving it along. Or, I'll see a comment where the cacher didn't have a trade item so just decided to discover the coin instead.

Geocoins and travel bugs are meant to travel and are not considered swag, or treasure in a cache. Therefore, you don't have to trade something for a travel bug or geocoin. It's very frustrating to see discovery after discovery on some of my geocoins, yet not see any movement. That's one of the reasons I've stopped using the discovery option unless I'm discovering a friend's coin from their personal collection. I'd much rather see my geocoin or travel bug on the move as opposed to sit in a cache for months while people look at it, discover it, and then basically ignore it. I wish GC.com never had thought up the discovery option. I think it would encourage more movement of travelers if they hadn't.

Photos were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Freeway Photo-op - by Zenophile
Mary E. J. Colter built it - by Yrium and Whistlestick

Mission Accomplished!

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to distribute 18 travel bugs and/or geocoins in geocaches in the next three days. This tape will self destruct in 5 seconds."

That's sort of what it felt like after getting a corn dog box filled with travel bugs and geocoins. I was up to the task and made sure I had plenty of large geocaches with which to choose to make sure I was going to be able to leave them all on the road and not bring any home. It should also be noted that several caches that were labeled "regular" wouldn't even hold a geocoin. There should be some kind of truth in advertising law on caches.

1. Oops. I cheated and left a geocoin before going on the trip at Behind the Bullseye.
2. Left a geocoin in Fly Me Away.
3. Left a Mardi Gras beads travel bug in Notta Ammo Dump.
4. Left a Key travel bug in No Pallets Here.
5, 6, & 7. Left a travel bug, a white Jeep, and a geocoin in Delhi Delight.
8 & 9. On our way into Yosemite National Park, we left two travel bugs in Yosemite Junction Geocoin and Travel Bug Hotel.
10. Left a geocoin in Monkey Hear.
11 & 12. Left two travel bugs in Reading Rocks!
13. Left another geocoin in Monkey Do. I didn't get a chance to find Monkey See.
14 & 15. Left a geocoin and a geocoin replica in Don't Peek On Me!
16. Left the largest key ring add on that I've personally seen in Erling in the Morning. I also left the Pushawalla Traveling Cache (Traveler Tag #TEDA8).
17 & 18. In an appropriately named cache, Zenobia's End, I left the last two travel bugs in the last cache that I found on this trip.

Mission Accomplished, cue the music.

A Great Excuse for Caching

As previously noted below, I'm heading out on the road this weekend. I plan on leaving Saturday morning which will get me up to Stockton in plenty of time to hear my daughter play in her college orchestra Saturday night at 7:30. I don't plan to set an alarm, but I'll probably get an early start. At one time, I thought about hitting the Flash Mob Event that's happening in Covina at 10:00 in the morning, but I'm pretty sure that I'm going to miss it this time. The Tadpole and I went to a Flash Mob Event last year out in the Coachella Valley and then went caching in and around Joshua Tree National Park. It was a fun day, but we didn't have any kind of agenda except to make sure we were at the Flash Mob Event at 9:00 in the morning. This year's Flash Mob in Covina isn't starting until 10:00 in the morning, so that could cramp my caching later on since we don't have a lot of daylight to work with this time of the year plus I need to be in Stockton around earlier than 7 so as to not miss the concert. Unless I get a really late start out on Saturday, I'll probably bypass the Flash Mob this year.

As you can see by the screenshot I took of my bookmarked PQ, I'm taking a roundabout way when leaving Stockton. Getting there will be pretty straightforward, heading out the 210 from my place, then connecting up with the 5 and then taking the 99 to Stockton. The 99 is a little bit longer, but it's a lot more scenic and has many more caching opportunities along it as well. Almost all the caches along this route are listed as small or larger. I'm going to go through the list and make sure I know exactly where the really large ones are so I don't miss those. I have a lot of travel bugs and geocoins to deposit and I want to make sure they all get distributed this weekend.

Sunday will be devoted to a day trip to Yosemite National Park. There are quite a few virtuals there and we'll get many of them on this trip. We're hoping the snow level is still high enough that the road to Glacier Point hasn't been closed yet. As of last Friday it was still open, but that could change on a daily basis. There's a hike there up to the top of Sentinel Dome that we'd like to take, not to mention the view from Glacier Point should be spectacular this time of year with all the snow in the high country. The Yosemite Sentinel Dome Virtual Cache plus this benchmark are obviously at the top of Sentinel Dome. There used to be a gnarled Jeffrey Pine tree growing at the top of Sentinel Dome, but it died during the drought years of the late 70s. A couple of years ago, the dead tree finally came tumbling down. On my wall in my bedroom, I have a black and white picture of this tree that I took in 1975 when it was still alive. I went back with my three children in 2000 to pay a visit to it and it was a very sad reunion, since only the trunk and a few branches were all that was left of the tree. Now those remnants aren't there anymore, so the view should be a little different this time if we get up there.

The benchmark is also interesting because the tree is one of the main reference points for the benchmark. The benchmark also refers to a road that leads you to the base of the dome. That road hasn't been there in decades. Every time I've been to the Sentinel Dome, I've had to hike about a mile and a half to get to the dome's summit. There are still areas on that hike where you can encounter the old road, but I have to assume the road was taken out for environmental reasons, probably to reduce the strain on the Jeffrey Pine living up there as well as the other plants living around the base of the dome. Either way, I'll be taking some good notes for this particular benchmark so I can post a log with the National Geodetic Society.

On Monday, I plan on making my way north to Sacramento, getting a dashpoint southeast of the city. Since I'm going to be up there, I figured that I might be able to get some caching done in some counties that I've never cached in before, like Yolo, Solano, Napa, Sonoma, Marin and Alamede Counties. The route I plan to take is the circular route around the top of San Pablo Bay northeast of San Francisco. Some of the caches there are ones that I'd planned to find this summer but wasn't able to so that will be kind of nice. Once I get back to the 5, I'll probably take it quickly home since I figure that detour around the bay might take up most of my morning.

Over the past couple of years, I've been taking more of these kinds of road trips, mainly because the kids are getting older and they've wanted to start looking at colleges, but also it's been a great excuse to visit my daughter now that she's away at school. Next year, my son starts his road to college, so I'll probably get to go on more of these kinds of trips. Visiting my children is always topmost on my mind on these trips, but they're also a great excuse to get some caching in as well.

Bevy of Baubles

Dictionary.com defines a bevy as a large group or collection and baubles as a small, showy ornament of little value or a trinket. Last Monday after a physical therapy appointment in the area, I stopped by Losel2's Trackables WayStation Cache in order to pick up a couple of travel bugs to take with me on my road trip up to Stockton next weekend. He'd read on this blog that I was making the trip and no one had been by the cache since October 6th, so he asked if I could help him out with some movement of a couple of bugs. I said no problem.

I got to the waystation and he was there waiting for me, with a big box of corn dogs. Well, it really wasn't corn dogs, but the outside of the box said it was corn dogs. Inside were travel bugs. Let me say, inside were a lot of travel bugs and geocoins, exactly 15 in all. Yep, I have quite a bevy of baubles to deposit in caches along the way next weekend. Since most of the caches that I have on my PQ at the moment are small to large sized caches, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. I know of at least four travel bug hotels that I can deposit bugs in, plus a couple of other caches that should be large enough to handle at least a geocoin. There is also a traveling cache, but it's not associated with geocaching, but I've logged it at travelertags.com.

As you can see by the photos, there are all sizes of travel bugs. Two are rather large beanie baby type of animals, one a bear and the other a penguin. Those will have to go in ammo cans, so they'll be the first to leave the box once I encounter an ammo can on the road. One other large travel bug is a key chain travel bug that has been collecting key chains along its travels. It has to weigh at least 2 pounds and has traveled over 15,000 miles since being released in August 2005. There's a white Jeep that I already had in my possesion, plus a small tech deck bicycle. The rest of the travel bugs are Hot Wheels types or smaller which should be easy to drop into caches that I find. If you look closely, there is a Smurf sitting on top of the ammo can. That one wants to visit the Pacific Crest Trail. I won't be able to get it to the PCT, but since we're headed to Yosemite National Park, we can get it close to the John Muir Trail, at least for picture possibilities. With this many different travel bugs, I should have some interesting possibilities for pictures on this trip. Hopefully, I'll be able to drop them all over the course of the three day weekend.

Bits & Pieces, Odds & Ends

I was looking over some of the travel bug pictures I've taken recently and I've noticed I've fallen into a similar trap about which I've previously written. It's either I don't have the energy, or don't have the imagination to come up with a good picture for every traveler that I grab. I have noticed that it's easier to take pictures of travel bugs as opposed to geocoins. So I'll do what I can, when I can.

Of the recent pictures, I particularly like the one I took of two similar travel bugs, Sgt. Ducky and Frankenduck. Both ducks/travel bugs were found this summer while caching and both went north on our aborted camping trip. I was able this past week to deposit Sgt. Ducky in my latest cache, 360. Frankenduck will end up in a cache, hopefully, this weekend. The ammo can they're sitting on is planned to be a hybrid letterbox cache in the near future.

The second picture in this article is of Nurtz. I picked up Nurtz down in San Diego County in late July and put slightly more than 700 miles on it, but really didn't get it much closer to its goal. That's sometimes the way it is with travel bugs. He also came with me north on the camping trip, but I wasn't able to drop him off in a cache up there, so back he came and I ended up placing him in a fairly large cache out in the Antelope Valley just north of me. It looks like the cacher who just picked him up will be taking him closer to his goal, so that's a good thing.

I need to order some more decon containers. I have plans to set up my second multi-cache near 360. Cachers will have to "explore their technology" a little bit, utilizing various features of their GPSr they might not have tried in the past. I think it will be a fun little cache to solve and find.

Last, but certainly not least, the plans are to go caching this weekend on two of the three days. Chaosmanor and I will be caching up in the local mountains, hopefully to escape some of the heat that we've been getting as summer does its typical heat up in late August and early September in Southern California. It shouldn't be as hot at altitude as it is down in the semi-desert which will be a good thing.

I'm hoping the Tadpole wants to go caching on Monday. There are some caches that I'd like to look for down near the beach in Orange County. Monday also happens to be his 13th birthday, so I'll play a wait and see game on that. If he wants to do other things, then that's what will happen that day. It's his day after all. I can remember when he was born thinking that when he became a teenager, I would be the father of three teenagers all at the same time and shuddered to think about what that might entail. It was easy to brush off at that time, since it was so far in the future. Well, the future is here. It's amazing how quickly the time passes.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
360 - by Webfoot
Christmas Cookies? - by Searching Gentiles
Spirit In The Sky (AKA Grievous Angel) - by FunHog

The Hilton of Hotels

In my 7+ years of geocaching, I’ve noticed that travel bug hotels come in all shapes and sizes. I had a travel bug hotel for a little bit and it was created out of a laundry detergent container. It was more like a travel bug motel, as opposed to a hotel, although the cache name was Hotel Devore. Last week, I encountered a rather large coffee can hidden at the base of a juniper tree up in the high desert. There have been others that come to mind, including a couple of the standard ammo cans.

Nothing, though, really compares to the travel bug hotel that I found about a week ago and then again this Saturday. I took the Tadpole out for a little caching to the east of us and showed him a couple of caches. One was a cache that I’d been back to twice, but hadn’t been able to sign the log, although I’d had the cache in hand one time and hadn’t realized it at the time. The second time, there was too much muggle activity around, so I passed on it. The third time was the charm, as we had the field where it was hidden all to ourselves with the exception of a rather irritated burrowing owl who didn’t like us being in its territory, but decided that since we were walking away from its burrow, it wouldn’t bother us too much.

After finding that cache, I took him up to the Hilton of travel bug hotels, the Trackables WayStation Cache by Losel2. This cache is a puzzle, but the puzzle is fairly easy once you get to ground zero. The Concierge (Losel2), met us outside at the cache site. That’s fairly easy for him to do, since the cache is situated in his driveway. He keeps a log book and records all the travel bugs that go in and out of this cache. We chatted awhile and then traded two travel bugs and two geocoins for four different ones. Now, I’d already seen this cache, so I wasn’t as blown away by the opulence of the facilities, but the Tadpole explored every inch of the place and took his time examining all of the bugs that were in the cache, before deciding on the one he would take. As you can see by the pictures, the cache is really large and very well crafted.

The cool thing about this particular hotel is Losel2’s attention to detail. With that many travel bugs all in the one place, it could be easy for some to be overlooked and just sit there for months at a time. With his logbook, he keeps a running inventory so he knows how long any particular travel bug has been there. If they haven’t moved in awhile, he’ll move them himself. That’s a good cache owner. Nothing’s more frustrating for a travel bug owner than to see his or her travel bug end up in a cache and then sit there for months. With his system, that shouldn’t happen.

That’s a lot of work on his part, but then again, travel bug hotels are a lot of work. In my opinion, anyone who sets a travel bug hotel up should expect that it’s a lot of work, probably more work that regular caches. If the person expects that there’s always going to be travel bugs in their hotel, then they either have to go out and find others from other caches and put them in, or create travel bugs themselves.

I’ll probably come out here and visit again from time to time, probably in late July for sure, since that will be right before our annual summer caching trip. It’s always good to stock up on travel bugs right before you travel. Any that I find in caches along the way will be brought back to this hotel. It’s a nice place to visit, especially if you have one of those silver tags attached to you.

On a side note, the last picture shows the two travel bugs that I placed in the cache, the Monster Car and Lisa the Dinosaur. In my Guilty post, I came to the realization that I needed to take more time with the travel bugs that I found and do something with them other than just moving them quickly to another cache. I felt that was part of the geocaching experience on which I was missing out. I posted the same note to both travel bug pages and attached that particular picture to the respective travel bug pages. Less than five hours later, I’d received emails from both owners expressing thanks for taking a picture of the bug. The owner of Lisa said that Lisa would be very excited to see the picture. It looks like my goal is already paying small dividends.

Pictures were taken at the following geocache:

Trackables WayStation Cache by Losel2

A Rant

Yesterday, I went caching after work. I've been avoiding the area around where I work recently, mainly because the area's become infected with what several other cachers have called "microspew." Unfortunately, I have to agree with them. But that's not what my rant is about today and I'm not really sure it's a rant, but more of a bemoaning of the fact that crap happens like this all the time.

One of the caches that I went to find yesterday was Old Oak? by the4dirtydogs. It was less than 2 miles away from work, and supposedly, it had a geocoin in it. And this particular geocoin, was not just any geocoin, but a 2006 California Geocoin owned by my caching buddy, 3blackcats. I'd been lucky, because I'd already seen this particular coin once way back in October of 2006, and then again in November 2006 when a bunch of us got together when I found my 1000th cache. She released the coin into the wild shortly after that. As I was driving over to the cache, I was really hoping that it was in there, because I would have liked to have taken it up north with me next weekend.

But, when I got to the cache, I didn't find it there. There were two other cachers, both of whom I've met before, who had been to the cache site earlier in the day, so I figured that one of them must have taken the coin with them. Well, shoot, that's just my luck. Unfortunately, after they logged the cache, they noted in their logs that the geocoin wasn't there either. The way many log books are constructed nowadays, it's very hard to leave much impression in it outside of a quick signature, or the placement of a stamp or sticker, so I couldn't see anyone who might have taken the coin. There's only been about three or four cachers who have found the cache since the coin was placed in the cache on Sunday.

It's very disheartening, when a player puts geocoins like this out in caches for others to find and move along, only to see them disappear, because either someone is too lazy to log it out of a cache, or they don't want to log it because they don't want people to know they have it. What's the point? You have a coin that no one except yourself can see, because if you let others see it, then they might "discover" the coin and realize that it's not really yours and that you should really let it go. It almost makes me wonder whether it's worth putting some of my own geocoins out there anymore. I very rarely place my own in this area, because it seems like this type of thing is happening more often. I've found better luck outside of the Southern California area, so I'll probably take some of my own to place in caches next weekend. It's just so frustrating.

And to my friend 3blackcats, I'm sorry, but your coin isn't in there anymore.

A personal bug

When I first started caching, travel bugs didn’t even exist, but they were in the making. I remember thinking that they were a good idea at the time and ordered four of them right away when they came out. At that point in time, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with them, but decided that one of them would be my personal bug that I would take with me to every cache. I would virtually log it into each cache so I could keep track of mileage for myself when I was caching. It was also nice because it has every log that I’ve written for each and every cache that I’ve found. I’d copy and paste the log I’d write for the cache and then paste it into my retrieval log for the travel bug. I decided to call the travel bug, A Walk With Webfoot, not particularly because I walked to every cache, most I did drive to, but I wanted it to convey the message that geocaching was a walking activity, that you should get out and enjoy the outdoors.

If you clicked on the link above, you probably noticed that the travel bug page takes an incredibly long time to load. I started noticing this several months ago. I even wrote emails to friends asking them to check it out and they all agreed that it was loading slowly. It seemed like all other pages at GC.com loaded quickly, with the exception of that particular page, so it seemed like I couldn’t even blame the hamsters that were running the servers at GC.com.

I have a system worked around, so I never have to worry about how long the page takes to load when I’m logging caches. When I log a cache, I click on the “Log your find” link, then use another tab to then click on the Walk With Webfoot page. While I’m writing my cache log, the Walk With Webfoot page loads. It’s loaded by the time I’ve finished writing the cache log and clicked the submit button, so then I just toggle to the travel bug page and then retrieve the travel bug from the cache page and repeat the process for the caches. It hasn’t been a problem thus far, but I wanted to know from the Powers that Be at GC.com what was up and why it was taking so long for that particular page to load, so I sent a trouble ticket to Groundspeak.

A couple of weeks passed and I’d long since forgotten about the trouble ticket when I got a response from Groundspeak.

“Trackable pages were never intended to be used as personal log pages. Because it is being used in a manner for which it was not designed, it will take longer and longer to load, the more content it takes on. There may be others with more entries, but yours is one of the largest for total data size.

Eric
Groundspeak, Inc.”

Is this his polite way of saying I’m verbose?

But then, I started thinking to myself, wait a minute. This is a travel bug. It's designed to travel from cache to cache, having cachers find it and write on the page about it. Groundspeak has on one of their pages the following information about travel bugs. “A Travel Bug is a trackable item that moves from place to place, picking up stories along the way. Here you can add your own story, or live vicariously through each bug's adventures.” So why is a personal log page different than a regular travel bug? If a travel bug ended up in a cache and then was taken by the next cacher who then wrote a story about it and then dropped it in another cache and it happened again and again, wouldn’t that cause that particular bug’s page to load more slowly? Of course it would. So I guess the next question is, did Groundspeak not anticipate travel bugs having lots of entries, or were they just expecting travel bugs to disappear quickly?

Now, I know most people will read this and say, “but your page has a lot more entries.” Yes it does, but if it’s a travel bug, shouldn’t Groundspeak have anticipated a travel bug possibly having a lot of entries? I mean, isn’t that what they were supposed to do, travel from place to place, picking up stories? It’s a puzzlement, that’s for sure and it’s just been on my mind recently.

I’m planning on retiring A Walk With Webfoot when I get to 2000 cache finds. I have a geocoin all picked out to continue my caching trek. Until then, I’ll continue to use my logging method described above.

All pictures have been main pictures from A Walk With Webfoot at different points in time.

There's a balance out there

I have some down time over the next couple of weeks, so I’m thinking about hiding a couple of caches. With surgery scheduled tomorrow morning (outpatient – nothing too major, just something that needs to get fixed), I won’t be doing much of anything for a couple of days, but I figure once I’m walking again, I can start working on some containers and camo. That would definitely necessitate a trip to the local big box hardware store to get some paint. I have a couple of cans of primer and texture, but I need a couple more colors to work on the camo.

I actually went to our local surplus store today to check on the prices of ammo cans. $5.97 to $7.97 isn’t bad. Now that I think about it, why didn’t I buy a couple while I was there? Oh yes, by not buying them, it means I have to go back there again and look around more. I guess there’s some method to my madness.

Once I get the camo done on the containers, it will be just a short trip out to one site anyway, a quick hike in, place and take the coordinates and then I’m out. But I will have to work on the page because this one’s going to be a mystery/puzzle cache. I have one other mystery hide, the Cobol Canyon Trail, which is a math substitution puzzle. This new one is going to be a little bit more of the “think outside of the box” type of puzzle. It’s not going to be anything elaborate, just something similar to what I’ve already seen on-line. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out once I’m done with it.

In the past, I’ve been accused of being wordy on my cache pages. Who me? Wordy? Yeah, well, I guess I am wordy, but in my opinion, cache pages that don’t tell a little story about the cache are pretty boring. Usually that means that it’s probably a lamp post or newspaper rack hide. Yep. Those are a dime a dozen, and so I’ve vowed not to hide any like that. I’m trying to take the tack, that if you can’t at least hide a geocoin in it, it’s not going to be hidden by me.

I also like to have my caches be a little bit of a walk from the parking area, so mine are not “park and grabs.” There are a lot of those out there, and I feel they don’t take a whole lot of thought or effort to place them. Slap a slip of paper in an Altoids tin and plop it under a lamp post. I heard one person in the forum call this “microspew” and I tend to agree with him. There’s very little cost involved, so there doesn’t seem to be as much ownership of the cache, because if it gets muggled, the person can always slap another one out there.

That’s one of the reasons why I don’t have as many hides as other people do. My basic strategy has been to hide one for every 100 that I find. That’s a 1% hide to find ratio, which is very low compared to others who have been caching as long as I have, and it’s also lower than many who have been caching less than I have, but that’s the ratio that I’ve decided to maintain. I can’t imagine having 100 hides. I think all I would be doing would be maintaining caches with no time to find any. Thanks but no thanks. With the ratio I’ve chosen, I get a nice balance. With 1861 hides, I have 19 finds, so I’m slightly above my average and if I hide this next one, I’ll really be above it.

With most of my cache hides, I usually post some pictures as well, so obviously, these pictures are all from my cache hides. I would say that all the pictures on the cache page help tell the story of the cache. I’ll post more about my next hide after I’ve recuperated a little and after I've hidden it.

Pictures and graphics are from the following caches:
Hotel Devore
The Cats Made Me Do It
Today, I Saw a Lizard
7 Miles Away and a Half Mile Hike

Serenity

You ever had one of those days where you should have just stayed at home surfing the Internet as opposed to going out and finding some hidden caches? That's what happened to me today. I wanted to get some caching in today. I have a couple of find streaks going, that I'd like to keep intact, before the middle of the month because I'm going to be out of commission after March 17th for a couple of weeks. Anyway, I have one streak that dates back several years that I've found at least 10 caches per month. Another streak dates back about a year and a half where I've found at least 20 caches per month.

So I went out today alone. Originally I thought I was going to be caching with one of my caching buddies, but that fell through due to miscommunication. Eh. Stuff happens sometimes. So I first went out to find this one cache that's been eluding me for awhile. Bam. Another DNF on this one. I'm getting beaten by a five year old girl on this one. I think that's five times and I knew where it was supposed to be because I'd talked with one of the owners at an event last month. Sigh. This is not a good sign on how the day is going.

Two other micros merited quick drivebys. The muggle quotient was way too high for either one of these today. Ditto for number 4 as well. Number 5 looked intriguing, but it was hidden in a pooch park and Jack wasn't with me. I really need to bring him back here so I can get that cache and he can have some fun.

After that one, I started thinking back to when I had a consecutive streak going. I'd started it as a lark really, just to see how many days in a row I could find a cache. Because of different commitments I had that weren't happening at that time, I figured I had 33 days in a row, where I could conceivably find a cache. So I decided to do it. The only day I was worried during this streak was Easter Sunday, but I got up early that day and was able to actually get a hike in and find a nice cache. The streak ended on day 56, mainly because I got tired of finding micros all over the place that had bad coordinates. It wasn't like any of these caches had bad coordinates, but thinking about the streak, I can remember that as I'd missed a cache and thought about going for another to extend the streak, I thought to myself, am I having fun here? The answer was NO, so I went home.

That's what I did today. Granted, it was only one DNF, and four DNA(attempt), but I think I should have just stayed home today. Nah. It was a beautiful day and the sun was shining. It was a good day, even if I didn't find a cache. It's days like today that make the other days when you're just on a roll finding caches all get put into perspective. As the saying on one of my geocoins says, "God grant me the serenity to accept the caches I cannot find, find the ones I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." There have been days in the past when I didn't necessarily know the difference. Today was different, even if I can't find a cache hidden by a five year old.

Road Trip Part II

Now that the route queries have been set, the puzzles have been solved and the reservations made for the first night’s stay in Stockton, the next step for this would be to make some travel bug and geocoin grabs. The nice thing about the area that I live in is there are two nice travel bug hotels close by. The Ontario Bug Hotel is to the east of me and close to where I work, which makes it easy to stop by and get some bugs. I just found the Kellogg Hill TB Hotel - Just up from "My Town" a week ago or so. It’s a rather audacious hide to say the least, whereas the Ontario Bug Hotel, is a more subtle hide, making it a much easier grab.

My last road trip, I took a travel bug and a geocoin from the Ontario Hotel to take north with me. I left both in the Fresno TB Convention Center, one that I’ve used several times as I travel north and south along Highway 99 through the Central Valley of California. I’ll probably use that as a last resort this time, not that it’s a bad hide or anything, but I hope to find some larger sized caches on this trip and hopefully will have dropped all of the travel bugs I have in my possession by the time I get there, although, Bright Idea might be tough to drop. I’m going to need a larger container for that one.

That’s what’s nice about geocoins. At least they’re small and compact. Most geocoins can fit into small Altoids containers, which makes them easier to drop in a cache than say something like Cindy, the Cinderblock mentioned in another post last month. After hitting a couple of caches in the last couple of days and attending an event on Sunday evening, I now have enough to keep me busy dropping off next weekend. The ones that are going traveling with me are listed below.

Bright Idea
England Needs Geocachers Geocoin – this one is a non-trackable geocoin, with a travel
bug tag attached to it.
Yellow Fish
Team Ace Personal Geocoin
"Yantongshan, China" Unite for Diabetes Travel Bug – Funny, but I had this one late last year and placed it in a cache on New Year’s Day, only to find it in another cache. I guess it’s meant to be for me to take this one north.
Robin's Wildlife Muggles Red Wacker Geocoin
frotu33's Humane Society Geocoin
RShetley's WMA Vest Geocoin - I met the owner of this coin at the event on Sunday and realized that I've known his dad for about 20 years or so, as he teaches in the school district just north of me. Small World.
Nickell Geocoin
Proximity Guideline Geocoin – I was given this geocoin by the owner to take north with me.
Photogal64's Jailbreak Geocoin

All will get some nice mileage bumps before their final placement. I also know of a couple of caches in the Coalinga area that I’ll be traveling by that have some geocoins dropped by a friend of mine. I plan on grabbing those and moving them further north to other caches.

The one drawback to taking geocoins and travel bugs on a trip like this is the possibility that they’ll get taken from a cache before I’ve had a chance to log them into the cache in the first place. Once on a camping/caching trip to Utah, I attached little notes to each travel bug that I dropped saying that if they were picked up, please wait until such and such a date so I could successfully log them once we got back from our camping trip. One person didn’t heed that advice, while two others did. The one person who didn’t follow the note, dropped the travel bug into the cache that I’d put it in anyway, so it still got the mileage credit which was my purpose for the notes in the first place.

This time, I’ll probably be taking a lap top with me, to make my logs at the end of each day and possibly post something here as well on a nightly basis. Hopefully, there will be some hot WiFi spots that I can take advantage of from my motel room, so I’ll be able to log the day’s finds. I know there’s a hot spot at my first night’s stay, but I’ll be staying in a new place on the second night and so won’t really know until I get there. I guess, I’ll just have to play that one by ear.