Wordless Wednesday

Picture was taken near the following geocache:

Eagles Valley View - by GaryIII

Wordless Wednesday

Mt. Rushmore?

Picture was taken near the following geocache:

30 YEARS OF PACMAN : V 15 - by michealamoody

Sobering thoughts

Whenever I go geocaching, I'm always on the lookout for memorials.  There is something about memorials that deeply touch me, especially soldier memorials.  Perhaps it's because I was lucky and was never forced to serve.  Each of us must choose our own paths and mine didn't follow a military path, although it's not because my parents didn't try to influence me in that direction.  I just knew in my heart that the military life wasn't for me.

But for many men and women, it is their choosing and I salute them for it.  It must be extremely difficult to be away from your family during the holiday season.  I can't imagine being thousands of miles from home, away from my family, let alone having these conditions imposed upon me and also being shot at in the process.

I've made it my custom, when I come upon a soldier memorial to take as many pictures as possible.  The memorial is a poignant reminder of those who never come back from those far distant lands.  It reminds me of the family left at home grieving for their lost husband, son or Daddy.  It reminds me that I have been truly blessed to live in a country where we value freedom so highly.

A friend of mine is serving in Afghanistan right now, away from his wife and children.  A former student of mine was killed earlier this year over there one week before his 20th birthday.  My niece's husband served in Afghanistan several years ago and is now safely home.  My nephew serves on a carrier in the Pacific.  His carrier group was scrambled last month when North Korea decided to bomb a small South Korean island.  At the moment, he's on leave and is safely home in California celebrating the season with us, his family.  My thoughts and prayers go out to all of these people and many others who I don't know.

I leave you with a You Tube video that a friend of mine posted earlier today on Facebook.



I know we will always have soldiers overseas, but hopefully next year, we will have fewer of them in harm's way.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:

Cricket's Reflection - by GeoCrickets
"United We Stand" - by Lizard Man

None but the Brave

Last Saturday, after visiting my mom in the hospital, we headed east out to Riverside National Cemetery.  A little over a year ago, I'd been out in the same general area, getting a virtual near March ARB.  The National Cemetery, was just to the west of the Air Base, on the other side of the 215 freeway in Riverside.  I had to cut my caching trip short that day, because of extenuating circumstances, so I wasn't able to go after another virtual cache at the Cemetery.  Fortunately, the Tadpole and I were able to get that particular cache on Saturday.

When we went out there, I was basically unaware of what we were going to be looking for, so I just followed the GPSr to ground zero.  It became rather apparent the closer we got.  There were signs pointing the way to the Medal of Honor Memorial.  This particular memorial, is one of the four official Medal of Honor Memorials located in the United States, which honor all 3000+ Medal of Honor award winners since the inception of the award in 1862.

For the uninitiated, the Medal of Honor is the highest award that can be achieved by any person employed in the armed services for the United States.  It is sometimes called the Congressional Medal of Honor, but that is a misnomer.  The correct term is just Medal of Honor.  There are three different medals, depending upon which branch of service the soldier/sailor is a part.  I'm not sure, but I think one of the attributes of the "official" designation of these memorials is that every person awarded the medal has their named engraved in the memorial.

The other three memorials are located in Pueblo, Colorado, Indianapolis, Indiana and Charleston, South Carolina aboard the U.S.S. Yorktown, which is moored in Charleston Harbor.  The layout of the memorial in Riverside is in the form of a cross, when viewed from satellite images.  Walking up to the memorial takes you past the seals of the different branches of the armed services.  The entrance is guarded by two large reddish brown granite monoliths, which introduce the visitor to the Medal of Honor Memorial, with the western monolith giving the basic criteria for earning a Medal of Honor, that of "conspicuous gallantry and interpidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty."

The center of the memorial is a pool with cascading water.  The water is pumped into a steel rail that is over the top of the pool and water drops from that rail into the pool.  I was so engrossed in other aspects of the memorial, that I failed to even look at how the rail was supported over the pool.  From the entrance, we could look through the water dripping down and see large replicas of the Medal of Honor for each branch of service, from left to right in the picture: Army, Navy, Air Force.

Once inside, the litany of names were engraved on granite walls all around the fountain, starting with winners from the Civil War, all the way around to the two latest from the conflict in Afghanistan.  Due to the nature and criteria of the award, 60% of the award receivers are awarded their medal posthumously.

While getting the information needed for the virtual cache, we ended up going all around the memorial.  We'd have done this anyway and I think we spent a good half hour just in awe of all these brave men, many of whom gave their life for their country.  There were more Civil War veterans listed than any other war, mostly due to looser conditions for the awarding of the medal in the first place.  I'll not quibble with anyone who is on that wall.

As we walked around, I looked for certain people that I was pretty sure were on the wall.   I missed Audie Murphy's name, he being the most decorated soldier in American History, but I was able to find Joshua Chamberlain's name.  Chamberlain commanded the 20th Main Infantry which prevented the Confederate troops from flanking the Union line at Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2nd, 1863.  Chamberlain later went on to serve 4 one-year terms as Governor of Maine and would later serve as President of Bowdoin College, his alma mater.  He is featured prominently in the movie, Gettysburg, played by Jeff Daniels.

We also found several servicemen with our surname, plus one of my admired Presidents, Theodore Roosevelt.  On another panel, in another war, was Roosevelt's son, Theodore Jr.    The stories on those walls were endless.  I left thinking that I was glad that I hadn't been able to get this virtual a year ago because the Tadpole would have missed the experience.  Although, I'm pretty sure that I would have taken him back here because he needed to see this.  I'm hoping he'll understand what this was all about in the future.

The encouraging thing about these four memorials is they are spread across the country in a way that almost all Americans living in the contiguous United States are only about a day's drive away from one of the memorials.  Unlike many of the memorials in a city like Washington D.C., where there is only one, people don't have to travel long distances to appreciate the sacrifices made by these men.  In my opinion, that's a good thing.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
Bravest of the Brave - by SlowMover

Dreadnaught Memorial

About a month ago, I was at a Dreadnaught Memorial, a "memorial dedicated to the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor, who served in Viet Nam from 1966 to 1970." The cache page notes that the memorial (seen below) lists the men who served during this period. Some who served didn't come home.

Obviously, there is a cache hidden near the memorial. I'd been out there last year and couldn't find the cache and wasn't able to find it the second time I looked this September. Both times I'd been by myself. The next time I went out on October 11th, the day Chaosmanor, the Tadpole and I went on our 5 and a half mile hike near San Juan Capistrano, we made it a point to stop by there again and find the cache.

This memorial is placed in a very weird spot. It's located in an industrial are of warehouses and workshops. You can see it from the frontage road alongside Interstate 5, but if you're traveling north, you've already missed it. If you're traveling south, you need to drive almost a mile to finally get access to the memorial over some railroad tracks. Then it's up to your geosenses to lead you back to the memorial. Were there not a cache there, it would be very difficult to navigate the streets and back alleys that we had to negotiate in order to get to the memorial and the cache. To give you an indication as to how difficult it is to find a correct route back in there, the cache owner puts four different waypoints on the cache page to help get back to it. Since this was the third time I'd been back there, I really wasn't worried about getting back there this time.

Once we got back to the memorial, I knew we'd eventually find the cache with three pairs of eyes and we did, but it took us way longer than any of us figured. How can a coffee can elude three experienced caches the way this one did? I really don't know, considering that three of us, at various times in the search, all put our head into the bushes and literally had the cache right beside our left temple. I still can't believe that I missed it the other two times. Chaosmanor spotted it about three seconds before I noticed it from the opposite side from where it was hidden. We both just looked at each other with these incredulous looks that said, "How in the hell could we have missed that one?" Well, we did.

I made it a point to take some pictures at this one. I didn't take my camera with me on a trip down to Orange County a couple of months ago and missed getting some really nice and moving pictures of a Vietnam Memorial Virtual there. I vowed that I wouldn't make that mistake again when I'm near a memorial.

Pictures were taken at or near the following cache:
Dreadnaught Memorial - by Dave_W6DPS

Virtually yours

I have found 67 virtual caches since I started caching back in 2001. Not a lot, but it represents 3.8% of all of my cache finds. Count the couple of Mystery caches which were really virtuals, the one webcam cache that I’ve logged, the earth caches that I’ve found and those pesky locationless caches and some folks would say that about 5% of my cache finds aren’t “real.” And those people would be right, when you consider that you’re supposed to find a cache container when you go out geocaching.

Does that make virtuals non-caches? It seems that Geocaching.com appears to believe it since they don’t allow virtuals to be listed any more. They have allowed ones that were already created to be grandfathered in to the system. The same holds true for webcam caches. I know, because I own the Blue Jay Webcam cache. I don’t own any virtual caches, mainly because I couldn’t find, what I thought was a suitable location for a virtual. And I think there is where the problem lies with virtual caches. I’m not trying to pat myself on the back for this one, but I think if people had been a little bit more discriminating when they set out to create virtual caches, we might still be allowed to post virtual caches today.

The principles of a virtual are pretty simple. Instead of a cache to find, you have to find information. You then email the owner of the virtual with that information before you can log the cache. Sometimes, you have to post a current picture of you at the site which will satisfy the logging requirement. Sometimes you have to do both. Most are educational in some way and many are fun and whimsical.

As I went through the 67 different virtuals that I have logged, I can remember most of them right away. I can remember some of them being very interesting, helping me learn about the history of a given area, or perhaps taking me to a place where a real cache couldn’t be placed because it was either in a National Park, or on private property. Yet those caches still allowed me to play with my GPSr, got me to exercise my brain, and usually helped me learn something. What I also found interesting was the amount of pictures in my gallery that were devoted to virtual caches. Usually virtuals have that “Wow” factor built in that makes you want to grab your camera and take some pictures of that unique and/or beautiful area.

Since I've started caching, I’ve learned about the first Mayor’s house of Atwater, California, walked around Downtown Disney to find 20 – yes you read that right – 20 different waypoints, and seen the gravesite of one of Wyatt Earp’s relatives. I’ve been moved by a memorial to the Space Shuttle Challenger and almost brought to tears by a memorial to the California victims of 9/11. I’ve also hiked a trail in Joshua Tree National Park that I’ve avoided many times in the past because it didn’t look that interesting compared to some of the other spots in the park, and yet when I took that trail last November, my son and I found four virtuals along the trail and learned some interesting history about one of Joshua Tree’s local characters. Each of these I found to be good examples of what virtuals should be.

On the other hand, I can also remember several virtual geocaches where, after I’d gone through the motions of doing the required elements to log the cache, I thought, “Eh, that was ok, but couldn’t he have just placed a micro over here, or perhaps she could have set up an offset using some of the information on the plaque?”

Some of these virtuals I’ve found, were just plain lacking. The information could have been easily transmitted on the cache page and a real cache could have been hidden at the site. One virtual I found was about an oak tree that wasn’t there anymore. All the history of the tree was on the cache page, so why didn’t the hider just hide a cache there and leave the history on the cache page? Another was a shrine to frogs. Now I love frogs probably just as much as the next cacher, maybe even more, but couldn't the person have found a good sized plastic frog and created a cache with it and then placed it at the frog shrine? That might have been quite a tough cache to find. Still another virtual, required you to post a picture in front of a house that had, what can be described as pretty tacky landscaping. This particular house was featured in Steve Martin’s movie “The Jerk.” Yet another virtual looked down upon a movie studio in Hollywood. There were plenty of spots to hide at least a micro in the same general area and still have brought cachers to see the movie studio.

Some of the more questionable virtuals that I’ve listed above, and I’m sure you could probably look over your own list and find some that also fit that bill, are what probably prompted Geocaching.com to place a moratorium on the posting of new virtuals. It’s their website and they have the right to do that. I agree with what they’re trying to do, but I don’t necessarily agree with their methods. I think it would have been better to try and weed out the ones that were more questionable and allow those new ones with the “Wow” factor.

The one spot where I really think they should still allow virtuals is in our National Parks. In general, National Parks are the epitomy of the “Wow” factor. Since the National Park Service won’t allow traditional caches in the parks, virtual caches fit the bill perfectly. But, with the moratorium, they can’t be placed and I believe that’s a shame. As noted above, I would have missed out on some really interesting local history were it not for some geocaching virtuals. I’m sure it’s the same way for others. How easy would it be for Geocaching.com to make that exception regarding virtuals and allow them to be placed in National Parks again? Unless we, as a community speak up, it won’t happen. I’ve written letters and I hope others will as well. I think the early geocaching community didn’t police itself well enough and now we’re paying the price of no new virtuals. That is a shame, because a good virtual is worth its weight in gold in my opinion.

The pictures for this article are from the following virtual caches:
And the Oscar® Goes To...
Simon Rodia's Dream
Wupatki
Challenger Shuttle Memorial
Luv'n Lucy
Bye Bye Blackbird