Geocaching Dynasty

[MJ4H]

I have been toying with the thought of doing this for a long time, and since the snow hit harder than I thought it would, today is the day.

A couple of years ago, I went on a business trip with a very good friend of mine (I did my student-teaching under him; have always considered him my role-model). When we had a couple of hours of free time, he persuaded me to go do something called geocaching with him. He showed me few pages he printed out from his web browser that were descriptions of locations, complete with GPS coordinates, and some other details. We hopped in a car and plugged those coordinates into his GPS receiver and started following the little arrow. A little while later (gross simplification!) we were walking in the woods with the numbers dwindling down to 50 yards, and finally less than 5 yards. From there, the actual search started.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/Image002.jpg

This particular geocache was a regular-sized one (this one was a tupper-ware container) so it wasn't very difficult to find. It was under a hollow half-piece of wood.

We opened it up and inside were all sorts of things. First and foremost, there was a notebook we were to sign, saying we had found the cache.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/Image005.jpg

Then there were all sorts of little items. From memory, I think there was a yo-yo, a rubber snake, some golf tees, a happy meal toy type thing, and who knows what else on that level. My friend took the yo-yo and put back a coin he had brought along from Norway. He keeps a little pouch full of things this size to trade in these caches.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/Image004.jpg

This was my first ever geocache find. It was in extremely (understatement) rural Oklahoma. It was back in 2008 (I think). We found one other one that day, and I thought little of geocaching since then. I didn't own a GPS receiver at the time, though I kind of wanted one.

Fast forward to this most recent Christmas, 2009. Wal-Mart ran a Black-Friday special on a particular model of TomTom, and my wife snagged me one and wrapped it up. She bought it solely because it was a great deal and I had mentioned it a few times as something I might like to have. Little did she know she would love it as much as I do. Because of geocaching.

Christmas day, I unwrapped my GPS, and was smitten. Later that day, I registered at geocaching.com and saw, to my surprise, that there was a cache nearly within walking distance of the house. Only problem is there were about 3 inches of snow on the ground. We went anyway.

Not knowing what we were doing at all, we didn't know much about what we were looking for. I mistakenly thought that all geocaches were the size of an ammo-can. Well, no. In fact, the one that we selected just to try out was what is called a "nano." About the size of a watch battery! We got to ground zero (the place the GPS tells you to go) with little trouble and started looking. It was quickly apparent we weren't going to find it. We also had no idea that what we were looking for was tiny. We left disappointed.

Our second attempt at finding a geocache came a couple of days later. We printed out 4 or 5 webpages and headed out. I had found out some tricks with the TomTom that would make it more accurate in getting us to ground zero and thought that might help. The first place we headed took us to the dead center of an empty parking lot behind a video store. We were bewildered. There was nowhere here to hide a geocache. We looked around for about 10 minutes, but again had to give up. Later on, we felt really stupid when we discovered that this was one of the easiest types of geocaches there are, the LPC (lamp-post cache*). We left disappointed again, but would try one more that day.

We headed to site #3. This one took us to a lake northeast of town. A lake that I used to live nearby and had much familiarity with. We got out at the park right next to it and started walking along with the GPS.

Actual action photo!
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/1226091339.jpg

The path took us just into the woods ahead and we were at ground zero. After about 5 minutes of searching, again for something much bigger than we were supposed to be looking for, a little metal tube hanging from a tree caught my eye. I pulled it off and noticed that it unscrewed into 2 parts, and a little rolled up piece of paper was inside. We had found it! I was blown away it was so small. This one was called a "micro." The container is called a bison tube and is fairly common in geocaching. We signed the log and put it back in the tree as we found it. We had found our first geocache!

We actually found a few more that day, including a regular size one like the one I found a couple of years back.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/122609164.jpg

Fast forward to today. Friday we hid our first two caches for others to find. Two people found them on the first day after they were published, both in the rain/snow, apparently. I just logged my 125th geocache find, and I am thrilled to death with the hobby. It gets me out of the house, which my wife loves. And she actually likes it as much as I do. It has a little element of geek-toy tinkering and technology, which I really like. It appeals to the hide and seek itch that I think many people have, and it is really cool knowing about a secret game going on all around everyone that not many people know about.

In this thread I will make occasional posts about the more interesting times I have geocaching, and keep track of stats related to it. Also, watch out for fun photos. Another appeal is that takes you to places you wouldn't ordinarily go and exposes you to views and sights you wouldn't normally see.

*A lamp-post cache (LPC) is extremely common in geocaching. It is a common trick in urban locations (most Wal-Mart parking lots have a LPC in them). On most street light type things in parking lots, there is a concrete base and a metal pole sticking up through it that goes up to the top where the light is. On top of the concrete base is a little skirt that covers up some ugly hardware and smooths the visual transition from the straight pole to the larger concrete base. You can lift up this little skirt. Underneath that skirt is a very common hiding place for a micro cache. Here is a joke picture someone made putting a large geocache container "under" a lamp-post skirt. Obviously, a real LPC is a micro, and fits easily under the skirt. This photo is just a joke, but shows what a lamp-post skirt looks like.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/lamppostmicro.jpg

Here are a few photos from my journey so far. (next post)

[MJ4H]

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0215101215.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0215101154.jpg

Streetview of location above with the boot. VERY public location. A little awkward to slink around and find a cache, especially this one, which was a bit of a challenge to actually find. This is one of the busiest intersections in the area.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/streetview.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0208101309a.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0206101024-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0101101244.jpg

[MJ4H]

I like these little maps. Here are the places I've Geocached. The darker the color, the more I have in that county.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/arkansas-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/oklahoma.jpg

Approximate cache-to-cache distance (http://www.itsnotaboutthenumbers.com/graphics/ctc_distance.jpg): 1321.96 miles

[Swaggs]

Very cool idea for a dynasty.

[MacroGuru]

It was your FB posts that got me started on this with the family.

[MJ4H]

Thanks! Hopefully at least a few people will read along. We have 2 hides. These are caches we made at home and took out into the wild somewhere near our house (somewhat) and made available for people to find and log on the website. They have both been found and logged twice already. Here is where one of them is:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/hide1.jpg

We hid it in that fencepost in the center of the screen. It has a hollow spot in the top. We put camo-tape all around a keyholder containing a log and a few items and dropped it in the top of that. We then put a couple of little twigs lightly over the top of it So someone casually glancing down into it for whatever reason wouldn't see it.

Both of the people that found it wrote in their log that it was difficult to get out of the spot. I was going to go back and try to fix it today (and check that it survived the snow--the camo-tape is supposed to help with weather-proofing) but the roads were a little rough. School was just cancelled for tomorrow so if it clears up enough I will go by and check on it. In my mind, I imagine I will put something underneath the container in the hole so that is closer to the top, and therefore easier to get out.

[MJ4H]

It was your FB posts that got me started on this with the family.

This is fantastic. I really hope you like it as much as I do. Send me a friend request on geocaching.com. My name there is pwatts14.

[MJ4H]

Here is our other hide. This one can be tough if you are short or have short arms. The cache is a pill bottle covered in camo-tape. It is hidden in that stump in the back left. You have to stand on the root in the corner of the fenced in area to see into the top which is largely hollow. There is a little pouch area in there that holds the cache nicely. Two finds on this one, neither had a problem. I don't see any need to make any changes on this one anytime soon.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/hide2.jpg

This one is in the middle of a busy part of Rogers, Arkansas. It's a forgotten cemetery across from a Middle School. A school I actually attended. And I never knew this cemetery was right across the street. It is very old and basically just overgrown. This is a good example of what geocaching is supposed to do. Show you things you may never notice otherwise.

[MJ4H]

There are lots of trackable items that get passed around in geocaches. Some of them are called geocoins, travelbugs, and pathtags. I finally found my first one of these Friday. It is called a pathtag. The general concept is that a person customizes a little coin and buys them in bulk (like 50 or 100 of them). They come with an engraved identification number that you can enter into the website pathtags.com. It then shows all the people and places where these tags have been found.

The tags that people order are designed by the person making the order. The graphics on the coin are personalized and mean something to the person that made the tag. The person then places the tags into caches for others to find and either keep or pass on by putting in other caches if they don't collect them.

I am thinking of collecting pathtags (some of the other trackables aren't meant to be kept--you are supposed to move them on--but pathtags can be kept and collected). Here is my first one:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/blueprint.jpg

[EagleFan]

Nice dynasty. This may get me back into it.

[MJ4H]

By the way, those three pictures in the first post are from my first caching experience in February of 2008. I still have the pictures I took on my old phone and sent to my computer. I had just gotten a phone that could take pictures for the first time like a day or two before so I was trying it out on our geocaching trip.

The fourth picture in the first post is actually of my wife holding the GPS and following its directions just before our first official find. The only picture I've posted that isn't of us geocaching (besides the street view pictures) is the one of the joke lamp-post cache.

No stock footage in this dynasty!

[MJ4H]

Went out today to check on the cache I hid in the post. Two people had found it on the 20th and both commented that it was difficult to get out of its spot. I wanted to fix it so that it is easier to get out and check on it to make sure it withstood the snowstorm.

Well, I arrived and parked on the far side, went through the gate and trudged across the cemetery in the snow. About 15 feet away, I could see the cache sticking out of the top of the post. The last person to put it back did not put it all the way back in (possibly to make it easier for the next person to get out?) and did not cover it with anything.

I got out the container and opened it up to examine the 2 logs and make sure everything was safe and dry:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0547.jpg

Looks fine. A good sign that this container will hold up, though the tape looked a little scarred in a few places already. Probably no big deal, though. My plan was to put it back in the top of the post, but on top of some twigs or rocks so that it was closer to the top, and therefore easier to get out. However, one of the finders apparently had the same thought, as there were rocks and twigs underneath it now. I didn't need to do anything in that area. However, it had to be covered up. It was just far too obvious that close to the top.

So I looked around for some twigs or bark to cover it with. Unfortunately, there was still a lot of snow on the ground, so it wasn't easy to find something suitable. I did find 3 little twigs and I laid them on top of the cache inside the hole. Looks a little odd, but blends in much better.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0546.jpg

We'll see how this holds up and if I get any other complaints about it being difficult to get out.

[MJ4H]

Both of my hides have been found once today. The one in the post above apparently after I was there, since the log was only signed twice at the time.

[Swaggs]

Do the caches ever come up missing?

Like people randomly stumble upon them and completely take them?

Also, with the pathtags, do the people hiding the cache just put a bunch of them in their cache?

This is an interesting activity that I knew relatively little about (I kept seeing a friend on facebook post that she was going geocaching, so I finally looked it up on wikipedia a few months ago :) ).

[MJ4H]

Yes, they can come up missing. This is called getting "muggled." Apparently the term "muggle" refers to a non-geocacher (and comes from Harry Potter where muggles are non-witches or whatever). The cache owner is expected to check on it and do maintenance on it periodically to make sure it is there and ready to be found. This is especially important if someone logs a DNF (did not find), or, even more importantly, when multiple DNFs show up.

I don't know much about pathtags yet. I just came across one for the first time this past week. I had to look up what they were. It looks like you can do whatever you want with them, but my guess is the normal behavior is to put them in caches as your personal "I was here" tag. Then others can take them out and collect them or move them into a new cache to try to spread them out. Not really sure, yet.

[sabotai]

Checked out the website and found that these things pretty much litter the entire area, including 1 in my town, 1 next to the WaWa that I get my coffee from and 3 at this small park that I go to a lot. I'll keep an eye out for them the next time I go.

And it looks like someone put one on this tiny island in the Delaware River between my town and Philly. That's pretty funny.

[MJ4H]

The wife and I like to play over/under and other prop-bet sorts of games (without the wagering, just as topics of conversation). For instance, I will see someone at a restaurant eating and pick a number of times that person will get up for a refill on their coke. Then my wife has to take the over or the under. Sometimes we don't even follow-up on it, but it just makes for something to do.

One of our items of discussion is which of our two cache hides will get more finds. Neither is particularly tricky to find, so I don't anticipate many, if any, DNFs. However, one is in a particularly busy part of town, the other is off the interstate about a mile where not many people ever go. Cache #1 (the one in the pictures above) is the one that is in the less-trafficked area. I asked her what ratio of finds for Cache #2 to Cache #1 she expects in the long run. She picked 1.5 to 1 and I picked 3 to 1. I guess whichever is closer in the end wins.

Current count: Cache #2 = 4 finds, Cache #1 = 3 finds.

[MJ4H]

Saturday. The one day of the week when we are most likely to be able to get some geocaching in. I was very worried because there was rain in the forecast for today, but we went ahead and made plans as if there would not be rain and hoped for the best.

My in-laws had called and offered to watch our son (which is the biggest obstacle to geocaching--he is wheelchair bound and very difficult to take with us most places) so we took them up on it. The plan was to take him over there early, get some geocaching in, hit the Arkansas vs. Alabama baseball game, and then maybe do some clean-up caching on the way home (which is what I call it when we try to get the ones very near our home that we haven't gotten to cross off the list yet).

The day got off to a rough start. My son was up all night sick, and we decided we needed to run him by the doctor while we had a chance (his clinic is open Saturdays until about noon, so that was our only window of the weekend). After his appointment, though, he was asleep in his wheelchair in the back of the van, so we grabbed a couple of caches that were near the clinic. Both were very near an area to park, so we didn't have to leave him out of view while we looked for those couple. We went 2 for 2 in that area and went ahead and took my son to his babysitter's.

The second order of business on the day was to head out to our first cemetery cache that we hid to check on it and scout another nearby location for another hiding place for our third cache. That was a bust as the area we had in mind appeared to be on private property or unreachable without going through private property.

As we approached our cache, we noticed a young couple in their 20s were in the cemetery. At first glance, I was a little annoyed, because it meant we were going to have to either be very stealthy or come back later. A second glance showed that the girl was holding a GPS and the guy was looking around the south fenceline. They were looking for our cache! Very cool feeling. We parked on the far side of the cemetery to see if we could watch them search without them knowing we were there. The girl turned and saw us and we didn't want to bother them, so we left. We drove out past the cemetery to an area I hadn't ever been to, and turned around to come back after awhile. The couple was gone and the cemetery was deserted, so we headed in to check on the cache. It was, again, uncovered and exposed, but at least down inside the post this time. I checked the log and the young couple that looked earlier did not find it, apparently, because the log had not been signed by them or anyone else on today's date. Three signatures were there, and they were the three I knew about. I actually thought that was kind of sad since there was nothing even covering it up inside the top of the post. I covered it back up with some loose wood chips even better than it was before today.

The next phase of the day was to work our way from this cache site towards Fayetteville for the baseball game, picking up any interesting geocaches that were on our path.

[MJ4H]

Our first cache was one hidden by a user named "Red Ink." Red Ink apparently has a good reputation for tricky but fun hides. This one was behind an abandoned white house next to a cemetery. After searching around for a bit near an old, thankfully no longer used outhouse behind it, we spotted an office type telephone mounted to the back of a tree and painted with a camouflage pattern. We picked up the handset and unscrewed the earpiece to find the cache. This was really awesome. Snapped a photo of my wife pretending to talk on the phone, which she requested I didn't post. OK fine.

The next one was another Red Ink cache, but this one was rated a 4-star difficulty (out of 5). That means that it is extremely difficult to find. We parked near ground zero, and as we approached, we couldn't believe where the GPS was taking us. Here is google streetview's perspective on ground zero:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/gc1.jpg

As you can see, there aren't a whole lot of options here. Our best guess is it in the little gutter drain. We spent about 15 minutes taking turns looking/feeling around in the area while the other person watched for traffic. This was extremely frustrating. Every time you'd start looking, you'd have to quickly jump up and get out of the way since a car was coming. This also meant that every single car that came along would see you on your hands and knees feeling around in the gutter and quickly jumping up and acting non-chalant as they approached. Not terribly fun.

We gave up before too long, but promised to return and try again after having a while to think about it.

The third Red Ink cache along this road was on a bridge. This one was much easier to find, again, and only took a few minutes. Here is a streetview of the bridge in question:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/gc2.jpg

The cache coordinates are marked, too. The little metal connector from the concrete wall to the metal guardrail was the key here. Mr. Red Ink had apparently gone through the trouble of making a fake connector mount that looked like all the other ones spaced along the bridge. He then just set it down on top of the concrete wall and pushed up flush with the guardrail. It looked just like all the others, but when you grab it, it moves. It isn't attached at all. I picked it up, and the cache was magnetized inside of a hole in the bottom of it. Pretty nifty.

In all, we managed to log 7 finds, 2 DNFs (the one in the gutter, and another one we had to abandon when the wife came face to face with a snake) and we managed to hide one more cache. This one was a small container that we hid in the woods right by the interstate near our house. It hasn't been approved by the geocaching reviewer in our area, yet, but it probably will be tomorrow. I expect this one to get a lot of traffic.

[MJ4H]

Just got a note that the cache we hid yesterday violates some obscure rule about being within whatever whatever of an interstate highway. Surprised, but whatever. I'm going to go retrieve it in a few minutes and we will have to find a better spot for it some other time.

[Dodgerchick]

How awesome! I saw your geocache updates on Facebook but now that I read your dynasty it sounds pretty damn awesome! A fun activity to do with the whole family.

I'm pretty clueless when it comes to GPS systems, is there any one brand that's best? Also, do we have to pay for service like we do for cell phones, or is it something that the GPS system does automatically?

I signed up to geocaching.com... I'm really excited to start this!

[MJ4H]

I think Garmin is the brand that most people point to as the best GPS receiver. No, you do not need a subscription to use GPS, you just need a receiver. I have a TomTom, which is also a very good brand. You have to be mindful of the difference between a GPS that is geared towards car-navigation and one that is geared towards off-road and hand-held. Usually, the hand-helds are better for geoacaching. What I would do is do an initial check at Best-Buy or Wal-mart for ones in your price range and make a note of ones that look interesting. Then come back to geocaching.com and read some user reviews (they have a section there just for that) and see how it fares for geocaching.

[Dodgerchick]

Ahh, okay. I thought they were all the same thing, but I can see how a hand held one would be a better option.

I plugged in our address and found 2 geocaches right outside our apt. complex. I'm gonna go and see if I get lucky, all I have to go on is a picture on Google Maps. Lots and lots of trees, plants and bushes, should be fun.

[MJ4H]

Ahh, okay. I thought they were all the same thing, but I can see how a hand held one would be a better option.

I plugged in our address and found 2 geocaches right outside our apt. complex. I'm gonna go and see if I get lucky, all I have to go on is a picture on Google Maps. Lots and lots of trees, plants and bushes, should be fun.

Look at the webpage of each individual geocache and read everything about it, including the logs of people that found it or searched for it before you. It helps to know what size container you are looking for (large, normal, small, or micro) as well as any hints or help in the description, title. If you do find it, all you *have* to do is sign the log that is inside of the cache container (if you want to count it as a find) and then log it on the cache webpage under your account name.

[MJ4H]

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/uscounties.jpg

<table style="text-align: left;" width="750"><tbody><tr><td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);">Overall Total Finds: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">133 finds in 25 caching days over 93 total days (26.8 %) </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Overall Averages: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">5.32 finds per caching day, 1.43/day, 10.01/week, 43.53/month </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Last 365 Days: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">133 finds in 25 caching days over 365 total days (6.84 %) </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Last 365 Days Averages: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">5.32 finds per caching day, 0.36/day, 2.55/week, 11.09/month </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Most consecutive days with finds: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">3, from 02/13/2010 to 02/15/2010 </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Most consecutive days without a find: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">18, from 01/19/2010 to 02/05/2010 </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Most finds in a day: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">22 on 03/15/2010; 14 on 02/15/2010; 12 on 03/17/2010 </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Best weekend caching: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">8 finds, on Saturday 03/27/2010 & Sunday 03/28/2010 </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Best week caching: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">48 finds, from Monday 03/15/2010 to Sunday 03/21/2010 </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Most finds in a calendar month: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">75, in Mar 2010 </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Most Cache Types in a day: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">2 ( http://www.geocaching.com/images/wpttypes/sm/2.gif http://www.geocaching.com/images/wpttypes/sm/8.gif ) on 02/27/2010 </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Fastest 100 finds: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">35 days from 02/13/2010 to 03/19/2010 </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Last 100 finds: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">42 days</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Total cache-to-cache distance: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">2155 km, Note: includes locationless caches.
0.05x Earth Circumnavigation,
0.006x Distance to the Moon </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Maximum distance in a day: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">335 km, on 01/01/2010 Note: includes locationless caches. </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Nearest cache found: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">Speed Racer GC1GFTZ (http://coord.info/GC1GFTZ) http://gsak.net/stats/flags/US.gif</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Furthest cache found: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">310.79 km, Downtown Waterfall GCVHGW (http://coord.info/GCVHGW) http://gsak.net/stats/flags/US.gif</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Most Northerly cache found: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">N 36° 25.694, Spanker Creek Farm GC1VHY9 (http://coord.info/GC1VHY9) http://gsak.net/stats/flags/US.gif</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Most Southerly cache found: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">N 34° 47.973, Burns Park Cache Bash Cache GC12FZP (http://coord.info/GC12FZP) http://gsak.net/stats/flags/US.gif</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Most Easterly cache found: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">W 90° 42.302, Downtown Waterfall GCVHGW (http://coord.info/GCVHGW) http://gsak.net/stats/flags/US.gif</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Most Westerly cache found: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">W 95° 07.763, Stop-n-Reflect GC1TW0Y (http://coord.info/GC1TW0Y) http://gsak.net/stats/flags/US.gif</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Cache centroid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centroid): </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">N 36° 07.533 W 94° 02.053 Map (http://maps.google.com/[email protected],-94.0342143551336&z=8) </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Youngest cache found: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">02/20/2010, Hair It Is GC2466X (http://coord.info/GC2466X) http://gsak.net/stats/flags/US.gif</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Oldest cache found: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">08/20/2003, West Bestern IH-40 WESTBOUND Travel Bug Re... GCGPPJ (http://coord.info/GCGPPJ) http://gsak.net/stats/flags/US.gif</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Caches found which are now archived: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">1 (0.75 %) </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Most consecutive months with a FTF: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">1 </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(204, 204, 212);"> Log Length, words: </td> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(186, 186, 221);">Total Words: 4338, Average: 32, (Total Characters: 21464)
Longest: GCRN5F (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LID=98330156) 139, Shortest: GC13P2D (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LID=94900876) 3</td></tr></tbody></table>Cumulative Finds by Month
http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=lxy&chs=740x300&chf=bg,s,dedeee&chxt=r,x,y&chxr=0,0,133%7C2,0,130&chxs=0,0000FF%7C2,FF0000&chd=e:__,BcJJb5..,AAVVqq..,AAH4bE..&chxl=1:%7C2009%7C2010%7C%7C&chco=0000ff,ff0000,ff0000&chm=B,76A4FBB0,0,0,0%7Cv,6060FF,0,0,1.0&chg=0,19.23&chls=2,1,0%7C2,2,4%7C2,2,4

[MacroGuru]

Ahh, okay. I thought they were all the same thing, but I can see how a hand held one would be a better option.

I plugged in our address and found 2 geocaches right outside our apt. complex. I'm gonna go and see if I get lucky, all I have to go on is a picture on Google Maps. Lots and lots of trees, plants and bushes, should be fun.

Woot had a Garmin hand-held yesterday for $70, just checked my emails and a buddy had sent me that link yesterday, I know it doesn't help much, but I am keeping my eyes open for great deals.

[MJ4H]

There are Garmins out there that are pretty useless for geocaching. Make sure to check out some user reviews of it on geocaching.com before buying one.

[MJ4H]

I expect to see some finds logged soon, Dodgerchick!

[Dodgerchick]

I expect to see some finds logged soon, Dodgerchick!

Hopefully tomorrow if we get lucky. This time I know not to wear flip flops.

Amazon seems to have GPS devices fairly often as their "Deal of the Day", so I'm a keep my eyes open. I have my eye on a 76 dollar one that seems to have decent reviews on both Amazon and geocaching.com; but I'll wait a bit and see if anything better pops up.

[MJ4H]

Went back and browsed the "Light at the End of the Tunnel" cache (the one that is pictured above with a manhole and water drain) today. I periodically review some of the ones that I didn't find to see if others found them or if it is more and more likely that that cache is missing for one reason or another.

Well, this one is a challenging one, and the owner of the cache emailed me with a response to a question I asked of him (I asked him if the cache was supposed to be on the end of a string that was embedded in the concrete--we found a string with nothing attached and thought it might have been it, but no). The owner said the cache was recently repaired and that it wasn't where I suggested, so I'm sure it is there and we just haven't figured it out yet.

Well, I was looking at the cache page and reading the logs of those that have tried and failed and a few that have tried and succeeded. One of the ones that succeeded said that the information you need to find it is contained in the cache description page and not even hidden. So I read and read the description page to no avail.

Then something struck me, and I now have a theory. I looked at the cache attributes. These are little icons you can select for your cache such as safe for pets, available 24/7, parking nearby, wheelchair accessible, etc. Two of the attributes that were selected for this caught my eye, and I'm pretty sure they are a major hint. The owner selected the NOT available 24/7 icon (hmm) but he also selected the "flashlight required" icon. Now, it not being available 24/7 is probably not just related to it being dark since you will have a flashlight. It is just possible that the cache is only VISIBLE at night with a flashlight shining on it. Maybe it glows in the dark, and the flashlight requirement is only there because you have to be looking at night.

Anyway, I think the next time we look for this cache, we will be doing it at night and with a flashlight (obviously, since it says flashlight required). I think we are on the right track to finding it, though. These tough ones are really fun, but it can be frustrating if you don't have time to figure them out and examine every little thing on the cache description page.

We won't have time to go looking for this one until the weekend, likely, but I thought I'd give an update, anyway.

[Dodgerchick]

Found my first geocache! I had two things to go on: the clues on geocaching website, and this map:

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc59/Dodgerchick74/Out_of_my_way.jpg

I looked near some rocks, near a drain and nothing. Then I looked at the map again, looked at the little guy and where he was pointing. Didn't take long before I found the micro cache.

After the first one, I went looking for the second one less than a mile away. This one was a little tougher. There were trees, high grass, and a few drains. I was busy looking near some twigs and saw one move... fuck a snake!!! I jumped up, walked around to compose myself and went back. Looked for about 15 minutes and didn't find it. I had dropped Larissa (our 9 year old) at a friend's house so I picked her up, drove her to the first cache to see if she could find it, and she did! She was wearing a cute outfit and props to her for getting down and dirty to find it. We went to the second location but she was getting warm and we left. We came home, I read the clues (something about needing a flashlight even if it's bright outside) to Antmeister and he said, "If there's a mirror, you might be able to shine a flashlight on it and find it." WTF, how did he know there was a mirror? So there's my first gigantic clue. I already had a flashlight but using it against a mirror didn't even cross my mind. We'll be going back soon, I'm sure.

One of our neighbors came over yesterday to see if we could look for the 2 geocaches around out apt. It was dark but we'll probably go looking for it this weekend, if he's around.

[Dodgerchick]

dola,

looks like I need a walking stick. It'll make it easier to go down steep hills and poking around near bushes and whatnot. Actually, make that 2 cuz Larissa's liking this geocaching thing too. She found a medium sized stick and used it to poke around near bushes and high grass.

[Izulde]

Two snake sightings in this geocaching thing already make me paranoid to try it.

[MJ4H]

Two snake sightings in this geocaching thing already make me paranoid to try it.

Well it is easy to geocache and avoid the possibility of snakes by just selecting ones that aren't in areas that snakes live, but the only snake I've seen after about 140 finds is the one my wife came across and I had to go way out of my way to try to find it just so I could see it. I'm sure I'll come across another snake or two in my time, but I'm not too worried about it. And I hate snakes.

[MJ4H]

Well, Saturday is our traditional geocaching day. We didn't have as much time today because our son was sick and we didn't want to leave him with someone else for very long. So we decided to go around Lake Atalanta and get the 4 that were around the lake before heading to a quick dinner. Then, it was off to "A Light at the End of the Tunnel" for an after-dark attempt.

There were two caches on the way to the lake that we wanted to try to grab. One was at a park and the other was right outside of a Jiffy Kwik gas station. We arrived at the park and it was full of people. That makes it challenging for a couple of reasons. One, you always feel conspicuous when you are on your hands and knees feeling around picnic tables or stumps or looking in trees when everyone else in the park is doing normal things. Two, when you find the cache, you want to be careful that people don't see that you pulled something out of a hiding place and then put it back in or they may go get after you leave and either just take it and do whatever with it, or not understand how to hide it or whatever. It is just safer if they don't see it (unless you explain the whole thing to them).

We headed over to a picnic table which appeared to be GZ based on the GPS and sat down. We casually felt around underneath the table and only occasionally did we have to duck down or crawl around to really search. We found it without much trouble. It was a nano magnetized to a metal bracket underneath the table.

We moved onto the gas station. There was a red storage building at ground zero behind/beside the gas station. The cache description said the owner knew about the cache so we didn't think we needed to worry, but we were there awhile without finding it. The longer we were there, the more I started being concerned about people looking out the window and seeing us snooping around the storage building. It could be someone that just works there and doesn't know about the cache and they could get concerned and who knows. Eventually we had to give up on it. However, we did a little checking on this one last night when we got home by reading the logs of people that had found it, and we went back right after church today and found it in 5 minutes. It was still a tough one to find even with that information, honestly.

Finally, on to the lake. It was a beautiful evening, and there were people everywhere. The park (the same park that is in the first post: the location of our first geocache find) was packed with kids hunting easter eggs. The trail around the lake was crammed with people fishing. It was as crowded as I've ever seen it, and I lived just up the hill from here when I was a kid.

There are 5 caches around the lake, and we had found one of them in the past (our first ever find). Our job tonight was to try to get all 4 of the others and then head to dinner. We pulled up to the first one, and it was across the trail from an obviously popular fishing spot. We found this one without too much trouble. I snapped two pictures from this spot, one of which I think is really cool.

Standing right beside the first lake cache:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0553.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0554.jpg

Next we moved on to a little road off of the main trail around the lake. It turned into a residential area and we found ourselves on private property searching for a cache. The description said we had permission to look, but I still hate searching on private property. To make matters worse, the GPS signal was bouncing all over the place. We had no idea even with the GPS when were within 50-100 yards of the cache the way the signal was bouncing us around. We eventually had to give up.

The third cache was back down where the turnoff from the main trail forked. The GPS sent me off the trail towards the lake. The terrain was very rugged here. A steep dropoff from the trail down towards the water. I had to be very careful. It did lead to a nice view, though.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0555.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0556.jpg

We only found this one after giving up and heading back to where we parked. Unfortunately, the coordinates given on this one were off by a good 30+ yards. We did find it, but only after wasting a lot of time looking in the wrong place.

The final cache of the day took us to the dam at the far end of the lake. The cache overlooked a little rapids area of the river/stream. We found this cache quickly, hidden in one of the joint holes in the fence.

Looking down the hill by the cache towards the water:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0557.jpg

After signing the log and turning to head back to the van, my GPS slipped out of my hand. I picked it up and the screen was cracked. I turned it on and it worked fine, but the touch screen wouldn't accept input. We are going to try to get it replaced under warranty, but if not, we will have to buy a new one.

[MJ4H]

Found my first geocache!

AWESOME

[MJ4H]

Here is a little map of the 5 caches around the lake.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/lake-atalanta.jpg

The bottom left smiley is our first ever cache find, detailed in the first post of this thread. Tonight, we entered the park there, then went counter-clockwise around the lake.

[Izulde]

Pretty pictures, which I think is one of my favorite parts of this dynasty.

[MJ4H]

Forgot to update on "Light at the End of the Tunnel." We went last night about 9:00. We each had a flashlight. There was nothing in the sewer that glowed, nothing that we found that stood out at night in any way. We looked for about 20 minutes and got sick of having to abort every 15 seconds because a car was coming and gave up. We have probably given up on this one unless we get a hint or something. I get the feeling we are overlooking something obvious, though.

[Dodgerchick]

I found my second cache!! Well, it was my daughter's friend that found it actually. I kept moving branches and rocks and nothing. The boy actually found some stairs behind all the branches, went down and said, "I see it I see it!!" I was close but didn't bother to check near the rails. The cache was inside a basket which was hanging from a rope... very clever!

"Not Just Jellystone" has been found!

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/hs469.ash1/25724_382554918359_831928359_3671931_2239224_n.jpg

Still having a tough time finding "Grande Cache" which is behind my apt. complex. One of the clues is "cliffhanger", so I'm guessing it's hanging off of something? Dunno, I emailed the person who hid it and asked if the high grass, bushes, shrub would prevent me from finding it, so we'll see.

[MJ4H]

It's so cool to read about others that are geocaching now and having fun. I hope you keep it up. Don't get too frustrated by one you can't find. There are plenty of them out there.

In fact, about a month ago, it passed the 1,000,000 active geocaches in the world mark.

[MJ4H]

Bought an upgraded TomTom tonight. Heading to Fort Smith for a monster caching run tomorrow. Excited to try out the new GPS and try out having the cache notes on my ipod instead of on the GPS.

[MJ4H]

Today we had planned a trip to the south for our geocaching. Ft. Smith, Arkansas is around an hour away and full of caches we know nothing about. Our in-laws were ready to take our son for most of the day, so we decided to go out of area and leave some of the nearby caches for when we don't have as much time.

We turned the baseball game on the radio and listened on the way down to Ft. Smith and in between the first few caches that we picked up on Rogers Ave (just picked a few at random that were near restaurant options, because we were starving) to get things started. Our real goal was to head to Ben Geren Park, which is a huge city park with playgrounds, mini-golf, tennis, disc golf, you name it. There was also a nice cluster of geocaches in and around the park. By the time we had arrived at Ben Geren Park, we had already found 7 geocaches. Aside from 2 in a dog park (of all things!), they were all basically park and grabs (very near to a place to park--you just get out and find it quickly, sign it, and go on). The two in the dog park were pretty long walks.

Ben Geren was a different story. We parked near the entrance and planned to walk to all of the caches that we could. Here is a map of the park and its geocaches:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/bengeren.jpg
Of course, the container icons are geocaches, and the smiley faces are geocaches that we have found (today's finds included).

Our first stop the northernmost one on the map. Here we traded some little toy for a coin from some unknown country. I kind of decided on a whim at this cache that I was going to start collecting coins and similar items from caches. I had already grabbed a pathtag from a cache earlier in my caching career, so I sort of had a start at it anyway. Of course, the thing to remember is to always replace what you take from a cache with something of equal or greater value. From the location of this cache I snapped this picture looking west:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0558.jpg

We then headed SSW and around to the back side of a Go-Kart track. This cache was pretty funny. It is common to hide little tiny bison tubes in trees, but this was the first time I'd seen a full sized ammo can hidden in a tree. It was on the backside so it wasn't easily seen, but it was sure obvious when you get to the backside. Not a hard one to find, but plenty of goodies. I think I came out of this one with a $1 poker chip from a Vegas casino.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0559.jpg

SW from here to a geocache that we did not find. It appeared that this one probably was a casualty to some severe tree/bush-trimming in the area. We spent a few minutes here and moved on when it seemed obvious we weren't going to find it.

SE this time to a cache that was described as near an old BMX track that had since been bull-dozed. As we neared this one, we could see an old wheel back in the trees a little bit. Sure enough, the micro was hidden in that wheel. Not hard to find at all. Looking back to the west, again, the sun was setting and the telephone poles were all in a neat line, so I snapped a picture that I think is kind of cool.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0560.jpg

NE we went from there. There is a little stream that runs along the eastern edge of the park. This cache and the next one took us to the edge of the creek at points where you could walk out next to it. Of course, I snapped a picture at each of them.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0561.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0562.jpg

From here we walked back to the van and drove south to get one more down at the south end of the park. We thought we had time to get just one more if it was a park and grab. We had to drive past the first one because it wasn't near parking. We just went on to the next one which was less than 100 yards from parking. No picture at this one because we were tired and ready to head home.

All in all, we scored 13 finds today. This brings the total number of finds since we started to 151.

[Dodgerchick]

How long did it take to find 13 caches?

[MJ4H]

We got to Ft. Smith at about 4pm and we started back at about 8pm. However, we had dinner at IHOP while we were down there, so take about 45 minutes out of that time. A little over 3 hours. That included a lot of walking, too. If we were doing park and grabs only and didn't have many DNFs we could've broken 20 probably. Our record for a day is 22, but that took most of the day when my son was in school and I wasn't (but also wasn't just park and grabs, we walked a lot that day, too).

It usually doesn't take more than 5 minutes to find a cache once we are at GZ.

[MJ4H]

I mentioned this briefly above, but I have decided to start collecting coin-like objects I find in geocaches. I've always had an interest in coin-collecting because my dad has one of the most insane collections I've ever even heard of. I know a little about it, but certainly nothing about most foreign coins. Below is a photo of the coins I found in geocaches, just this Saturday alone:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0566.jpg

From left to right:

A $1 poker chip from Horseshoe Club, Las Vegas
A L.500 from Italy (Lira?)
A 50 centavos piece from Argentina
A 20 something from somewhere (honestly, no idea)
A 1945 Canadian penny

[Travis]

Looked into this a bit more yesterday due to this thread as something low key/relaxing to do this summer with my girlfriend (and hopefully as kind of a fun side track way of sight seeing on a trip we're taking in July). Downloaded the freebie app they have for the iPhone and it looks very promising. Going to give it a whirl in the next couple weeks and likely upgrade to the full app they have on there. Looks like quite a few cache's around where I live so hopefully I'll have some finds to report going forward.

[DanGarion]

Really cool to see people getting interested in Geocaching on here. I've done some caches the past couple years. I got a renewed interest when I discovered there was a cache right across the street from our house. Looking forward to following your dynasty.

[Dodgerchick]

I went to the YMCA yesterday and found out there was a cache in the parking lot next door. I went to look for it and was surprised there was a very small cemetery there! Really shocked, I had absolutely no idea it was there and we've passed by many many times. I took a picture of it with my cell phone but I have no idea how to get it on here. Anyway, I couldn't get a street view so I went off satellite pictures on gmaps. I counted how many trees and parking lot spaces to the cache, etc. Went there and couldn't find it :( Still, the fact that there's a cemetery there blew my mind and it's actually a Texas landmark!

I'm still not giving up, I think this is incredibly fun. So far I've found 2 caches but the best part for me is finding these interesting locations that I wouldn't know were there. So far I've discovered a cemetery and a great walking trail and I've gone looking for only 5 caches.

I'm trying to talk Antmeister into getting me a GPS Device but he's not budging. There are rumors that Apple might come out with an iPhone for Verizon so if they're true, we're gonna hold out til then. In the meantime, it's gmaps for now.

[MJ4H]

Hid our third geocache today. We put this one behind a grocery store, and directly behind the center field fence of a little baseball field at the city park in our little town.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/hide3.jpg

The cache itself is hidden on the ground underneath a little log on the ground. I love this location because you can get to it from three different directions, and all three offer different expriences. You can park at the city park and walk around the baseball field to get to it, you can drive behind the grocery store and it becomes a park and grab, or you can park across from the field in the upper-right portion of the picture above, where it becomes a pretty good little walk across a big field.

When you submit a cache, it isn't published until the local reviewer checks it out to make sure it follows all guidelines. I expect this one to pass and be published sometime tomorrow. I'm excited about this one!

[Izulde]

I mentioned this briefly above, but I have decided to start collecting coin-like objects I find in geocaches. I've always had an interest in coin-collecting because my dad has one of the most insane collections I've ever even heard of. I know a little about it, but certainly nothing about most foreign coins. Below is a photo of the coins I found in geocaches, just this Saturday alone:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0566.jpg

From left to right:

A $1 poker chip from Horseshoe Club, Las Vegas
A L.500 from Italy (Lira?)
A 50 centavos piece from Argentina
A 20 something from somewhere (honestly, no idea)
A 1945 Canadian penny

The one you're not sure about has Greek alphabet, so my guess is that it's a Greek coin.

[MJ4H]

The one you're not sure about has Greek alphabet, so my guess is that it's a Greek coin.

That would've been my guess as well, but it was just a guess. Thanks for the input. I like that I now have something to look for when we find a cache. I immediately start digging to see if there are any interesting coins in there. Adds a nice little bit of excitement to the hunt.

[MJ4H]

Must have caught the reviewer while he was online because my third hide just got published! I can just see the local geocachers hitting the door right now to race to be the first to find (that is something that a lot of geocachers do--they get instant notification when a cache is published in their area so they can try to get an FTF--a first to find).

[Izulde]

I took a picture of it with my cell phone but I have no idea how to get it on here. .

E-mail it to yourself from your cellphone, then upload it to photobucket and copy/paste the resulting IMG line here.

[Izulde]

Between this and the movie Splinterheads, which I'm watching right now, I'm tempted to start geocaching.

[MJ4H]

This Saturday was scheduled to be a lazy day. We didn't have anything planned other than to try to watch the baseball game (online--we went to the opening game against Georgia on Friday). Well, that changed once we decided to go and meet up with other geocachers in our area at a scheduled meet-up at CiCi's Pizza from 6 to 8 last night.

We had never been to one of these, being relatively new to the hobby. In fact, we had only really met one other geocaching couple aside from my friend that got us into it. Back in probably January we walked up to a cache site to start looking and there was another couple with a GPS snooping around a tree. We introduced ourselves and found that they were having trouble finding this one. I turned on my GPS and quickly told them we were looking in the wrong place. I think some people cache with their iPhone (not sure this couple was, but I'm guessing they were for a number of reasons) and the iPhone GPS, in my experience, is not nearly as accurate as most stand-alone GPSs. Anyway, my GPS took us right to it and we found it in less than 10 seconds.

That was the only time we had really met any cachers in our area, but going into CiCi's last night, the wife and I were discussing preconceived notions and stereotypes. We were guessing what people would look like.

#1-I described the stereotypical geocacher in my mind: safari-style hat, fishing vest, hiking boots, big wooden walking stick, beard.

#2-I mentioned that we would likely be the youngest people in the group by a large margin.

I could not believe how right on I was on both of them (minus one other guy who was roughly our age--we gravitated to him immediately). There was actually a guy dressed exactly as described in #1 AND carrying a huge stick. My wife and I had trouble not laughing. However, it turned out that guy was one of the most respected cachers in the area (his online name is Red Ink--he was responsible for The Light at the End of the Tunnel, which I described above).

We ate pizza with The5ts, who is the one that was closest to our age, and a couple of others that we cross paths with on caches pages a lot (by the names of cmccrory and mmanarch--we see their names on logs of our caches that we hid and others in the area a lot). They got into a discussion about a cache called "Eat Mor Chikin!" which is obviously near a Chik-Fil-A. It happened to be less than a mile from where we were, so after we left, we decided to try it out. Only one person in our group had found it, while the others had tried and failed. The discussion centered around how the owner and all the employees at that Chik-Fil-A knew about the cache and how they loved to watch people trying to find it (it's hard). The one that found it said he went just as Chik-Fil-A was closing up for the evening and every employee left was standing in the window watching them look.

Well, we decided to head over to Chik-Fil-A and give it a shot. It was starting to get dark (about 8:00 or so) but there were a few customers about. We didn't attract any attention at all, and we actually found the cache in about 10 minutes. The cache was hidden in the base of a fake plant in a flower bed. This one was a 3-star difficulty cache. It always feels good to mark those off.

Note that I didn't have my good camera with me, so these pictures are taken with my cell phone (which does pretty good in the light, not so good at night). I also always resize the pictures to 640x480 for this page since large pictures are annoying.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0417102014.jpg

Anyway, this triggered a mini-geocaching run, and we found 5 more caches last night after that one. All of them in the dark with a flashlight. Wife wanted to keep going, but I was actually pretty uncomfortable doing all the snooping in town at night with a flashlight. Every time we started looking, I was immediately conscious of looking suspicious and attracting attention. I didn't like that feeling and was therefore not really enjoying it.

One memorable cache we found last night was called "The Pesky Pole" and was placed by a Red Sox fan that we had just met at CiCi's (online name was TnT). We arrived at a park and found that the cache, indeed, was located very near to a baseball field. My suspicion was that it would be somehow near the foul pole.

My suspicion was right. The foul pole here was just a tall, white, PVC pipe that was tied to the fence. We looked for a bit and found nothing when I hit on the fact that the pole is actually able to move vertically. I lifted up on it while the wife looked under it. Bingo, there was the cache. Even more fascinating than this was the fact that some Indian/Pakistani (not sure which, honestly, some people from that area) kids were playing cricket on the field! It had rained a little bit that day, and every time they tried to field a ball they would wipeout in the wet grass hard. It was entertaining to watch for that reason and that I had never watched people play cricket live before.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0417102105.jpg
nice finger jerkface

[MJ4H]

Hid our 4th cache today. Back end of a cemetery a little ways from our house. We've had our eye on this spot for a while, but have yet to pull the trigger because there is a cache in a spot fairly near to this cemetery. The rules say a new cache has to be a tenth of a mile or more from the nearest existing cache. Well, we loaded up the coordinates for the nearest and kept the GPS looking at that spot while we hid it. We managed to get it 207 yards from the other one, so that should do the trick.

Here is the spot.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/hide4.jpg

[MJ4H]

Between this and the movie Splinterheads, which I'm watching right now, I'm tempted to start geocaching.

If you want, maybe we can arrange to go with us on an outing to see if you like it?

[MJ4H]

This is the kind of thing that worries me about geocaching. Remember the lamp-post cache (LPC)?

Suspicious container forces evacuations at Anaheim Plaza | anaheim, martinez, container - News - The Orange County Register (http://www.ocregister.com/news/anaheim-244792-martinez-container.html)

ANAHEIM – A report of a suspicious container left in a light pole led to the evacuation of three businesses, but a bomb squad determined the package was part of a game, police said.<!--googleoff: all--><!--googleon: all-->The small, pill-bottle type of container held a note that said "something to the effect of 'congratulations, you found it,'" and appeared to be part of a game of geocaching, a type of "high-tech treasure hunt" in which people hide prizes for others to track down using GPS devices, said Sgt. Rick Martinez of the Anaheim police.

http://images.onset.freedom.com/ocregister/gallery/l15ejw-l15eif01.suspiscious.042010.bbc.jpg

http://images.onset.freedom.com/ocregister/gallery/l15g22-l15g9908.suspiscious.042010.bbc.jpg

http://images.onset.freedom.com/ocregister/gallery/l15g20-l15g7y06.suspiscious.042010.bbc.jpg

[Dodgerchick]

Awww man. When I first started geocaching, one of my first thoughts was that if someone wanted to hurt people, this would be the perfect way to do it. Imagine how difficult it would be to find out who did it... with so many fingerprints on the cache and whatnot.

[MJ4H]

Yesterday I had business in Stillwater, OK on the campus of Oklahoma State University. I wedged a few minutes for some geocaching on the way in and on the campus.

I stopped at rest area just before the turn off to Stillwater and found a simple geocache in a tree. Continued on and stopped at a park in town where there were two caches. Only found one of those two, though. Once I arrived on campus, I found a cache hidden in the patron parking sign for the famous Eskimo Joe's restaurant.

After I completed my business on campus, I had a few minutes and walked over to find two more caches. In the last one I had time for, which was hidden under a staircase, I found my first real geocoin. So along with my 5 new finds, which brings me to a total of 167 finds, I finally found a geocoin. I have to say, it is way cooler than I thought it would be. I only get to take a picture of it, though. It is wrong to keep them. Their goal is to travel. I will be placing it in a cache in northwest Arkansas this Saturday. Apparently this coin started out its life in Denver and has moved through Colorado Springs, near Wichita, Kansas, and now down to Stillwater, Oklahoma. I'm happy to have moved it 150 miles or so further on its journey.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0569.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0571.jpg

Quick pictures that didn't turn out very good. I will probably try again later.

[MJ4H]

Ah, Saturday.

The day started off with loose plans to join some friends at Lamberts Cafe in Springfield, MO. We decided against doing that because they wanted to have lunch there with a family member (it was their birthday) and we wanted to sleep in a little more before getting our day started. We decided to just go to Lamberts on our own whenever we got up and around. So I ran a geocache query along a scenic route to Springfield and then one on the quicker route. The plan was to geocache as much as we felt like on the way up and back, taking two different routes. We would hopefully get caches in several new counties today, and should definitely get to add Missouri to our states list.

We left about noon for Springfield. We chose the scenic route to head up there, which went out almost to Harrison, Arkansas, and then north through Branson. Very pretty drive and lots of geocaches. This route took us right past a cache that is somewhat near our house that we had to DNF on an earlier trip but thought we had enough experience now to find easily.

We were right. I literally walked right to it this time. I'm amazed at how much experience helps with finding certain caches. You will learn what types of things are possible and what types are even common. This one was a flat gray box magnetized on the back of an electrical box (the area was filled with those electrical box things). I saw it immediately when we arrived. We had found several others in the past that were somewhat similar, and we were pretty sure this one was one of those. Our first time here, we weren't looking for a container that looked like part of the electrical boxes, we were looking for a more traditional container. We have learned, I guess.

Moving on, we chose to stop and find the cache near this bridge.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0424101327.jpg

An easy one to find, magnetized to a sign that was beside the bridge.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0424101327a.jpg

We came across a cache a little later that was in front of a Pottery place. It was really out in the middle of nowhere, but it was kind of a cool building. The owner (I guess) came out and greeted us as we were looking. He knew exactly what we were doing (he said he recognizes the type immediately as he mimicked us wandering around while looking down at a GPS type device). He gave us a little nudge in the right direction, but it was an easy find anyway. We found a little 1984 Olympics pin that we kept (and traded in some other trinket for it in the cache).
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0424101407.jpg

Into Missouri we went, ready to add a new state to our whopping list of 2 (Arkansas and Oklahoma). We took a little detour over to Table Rock Lake where there were lots and lots of potential finds. We settled on one that was on a trail, with the possibility of getting one more further down the trail. The problem is we were nowhere near the beginning of the trail. No problem, we just parked on the side of the road and bushwhacked our way through the woods until we got to the trail. Once we found it, we followed it until we were almost onto the cache. Suddenly, we entered a clearing that went all the way down to the lake. It was one of those power line alleyways, but it afforded quite a breath-taking view of the lake and the woods around it. Really wish this cell-phone camera picture did it justice, but it doesn't. It really was a breath-taking scene.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0424101456.jpg

We did head on down the trail to pick up one more cache further down. This one turned out to be further away than we thought, and went significantly off the trail, but we got there eventually. A couple of downed trees were the site for this cache, which we found after a brief scouring.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0424101517.jpg

We decided we needed to get down the road a bit, at this point. We wanted to get to the Lamberts between the lunch and dinner rush. At this point, we were going to have to book it to get there by 4:00. It took a bit longer to walk back to the van from our spot on the trail, but we did and headed for Lamberts. We arrived about 4:15 and put our names on the list. The expected wait time was an hour and a half, so we picked up a couple more caches in the near vicinity of the restaurant and came back to wait something closer to 20 minutes.

The food and experience at Lamberts was great. If you've never been and can get over there, I recommend it. They come by with vegetable side orders all the time and offer to put some on your plate. The best thing, though, is those rolls. They have these really big, delicious rolls. They come out with a cart of them and shout "hot rolls!" Then you just raise your hand up if you want one. The waiter will pick one up and launch it across the restaurant at you. It's a lot of fun. I made sure I got him to toss me a long ball at least once. It was right on target. Came in over my wife's head. She knew it was coming and closed her eyes and cringed, but it sailed beautifully past her ear and into my hands.

Touchdown.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0424101744.jpg

On the way back home, we grabbed a few more caches, dropped off the geocoin somewhere in Springfield, MO, and found a travelbug! My first one of those, so I will get a picture up soon. This one came from the Philippines I think!

[Dodgerchick]

What a fun day!

[MJ4H]

What a fun day!

It certainly was very fun. I left out a few stories, too. On the way home we saw a cache at a rest area and thought we would grab it real quick just to boost our numbers a bit. Looked like a quick one, but it was raining a little and getting dark. We parked and my wife went to the restroom while I walked quickly (in the rain) up to the main building at the rest area to stay dry and see where we needed to go, exactly.

I was expecting, just eyeballing from the van, the cache to be near the building, so I wasn't too worried about the rain. I misjudged it quite a bit because I didn't have it zoomed in all the way. It turns out the cache was in the woods behind the rest area. Well, great. I headed back to get my umbrella before my wife came out of the restroom.

Well, this just became an ordeal, but I wasn't going to give up after stopping and getting out. Now it is a mission. We walked over to the edge of the woods and looked in. Now, here is the trouble. I have to keep my GPS dry, since it is not a rugged hand-held model. That's why I had to have the umbrella. Sadly, due to the rain, clouds, and now the umbrella, it is very difficult to get a good signal from the GPS satellites. When we headed into the woods, we were offered a choice of trails right away. I was unable to get a clear enough reading to fully decide, and I happened to pick the wrong way. So we went way out of the way and then had to bushwhack our way back across once the reading started settling back down. Going through the woods with a giant golf umbrella in one hand, a GPS that isn't getting a good reading in the other hand, and trying to keep two people dry is certainly not easy. We eventually found the sucker, but it took about 30 minutes longer than I expected. Oh, well. My wind suit pants were completely soaked when I got back to the van, too.

Cool story, huh?

[MJ4H]

Not much going on this weekend. Our Saturday was taken up by work, so not much time to do any caching. We got a quick run in tonight, but only picked up 3 on the way to dinner. We hit a trail by the new high school that had 4 caches. The first one was missing (verified), the third one was probably there but we didn't really feel like digging around where it appeared it was (looked a little muddy and we weren't in proper footwear). We found the 2nd and 4th ones on the trail, though. Here are some pics we took at the two spots:

This is the new campus for the school I went to, Rogers High School. The football stadium is pretty nice for around here. This is a view of it from the trail we were on tonight.


http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0578.jpg

The last cache was on a bridge over a little stream.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0579.jpg

Finally, here is something we bought on ebay.com. This is a cache container. The top is the head of a screw with a washer underneath. The bottom is a water-tight plastic container just big enough to a hold a small rolled-up log to sign. Should be able to slip this into a hole and have it blend in almost perfectly with whatever it is hidden on. We plan to hide it something this week. I will take a picture of wherever we decide to hide it. Haven't found the perfect spot, but this one will be somewhere between a 3 and 4 star difficulty cache, I think. Can't wait. Hopefully it will be a stumper for a lot of people.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0577.jpg

[MJ4H]

So, we hid our new cache yesterday in a beautiful baseball park in Rogers. There was a high school baseball game going on while we were there, but were able to scout out a location without too much trouble. We found a little pavilion with picnic tables in and around it that has a beautiful view of a pond with a little fishing wharf across the way.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0580.jpg

In the base of one of the picnic tables is an empty hole where our little cache would fit quite nicely.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0581.jpg

After we placed the cache in the best it would go (it didn't quite go all the way in, but it went in well enough), this is what it looked like:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0583.jpg

We decided to rate this one a 3-star difficulty cache. It has yet to be found even with many people in our area that leave out as soon as a new cache is published with hopes to be the "First to Find." I also got a desperate sounding email from one of them that said he even turned the picnic table on its end looking for it!

hehe. This should be fun.

[MJ4H]

A guy I met at the meet-up a few weeks ago found it, finally. The other guy logged a DNF this morning shortly after.

[MJ4H]

Well, tonight was our night to put in a quick run while my mom watched our son. We decided to hit as many as we could going a back way to dinner that had a few caches along the way. We managed to log 7, including one that had been our nemesis near our house. Here are some photos from the journey.

The second one we found was kind of funny. Here it is in its hiding place. It was a matchstick holder with camo-tape around it sitting in a hole in this tree. The funny thing is there was no camo-tape on the top of it, which is bright orange. Oops. Kind of stands out in there. Also, I have no idea why there are electrical wires sticking out of the tree a little higher up, which I tried to catch in this picture. Weird.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0584.jpg

Our next one we found was on an electrical box beside a Wal-mart Neighborhood Market. Here is what the box looks like. See that Danger sticker? It's fake. I mean it's a real sticker, but it has been added by a geocacher to hold the geocache behind it.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0586.jpg

Here it is, laid to bare:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0585.jpg

Next we stopped along a little trail that is fairly new to the area. It is just off a busy part of town. We took longer to find these two caches than we would've liked, but we managed to spot them both. Here are some pictures:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0587.jpg

This one stands out much more in the picture than it does when you are standing there. Plus, you have to be at exactly this angle to see it at all. The camera's flash helps make it this visible. It blends in much better in normal lightning.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0588.jpg

Next, we moved on to a Pet Cemetery in Bentonville that we had checked out before, but at that time it was temporarily disabled for repair. It is back in action now, and we found it hanging in a tree. A little bit of a reach to get it, but we managed.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0589.jpg

The last one we found tonight was on the back of a stop sign behind the restaurant we were headed to. You can see where it is hidden by looking at the very top of the post. That little wire thing is a hook. The cache is hanging from that hook on the inside of the post. You just pull it right out from the top.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0590.jpg

Tonight's run of 7 brings my total to 193 caches found. My next reasonable caching run should net me my 200th cache. Hooray!

We have 5 caches hidden at this point. Here are some numbers for those:

Cache #1: 11 finds
Cache #2: 17 finds
Cache #3: 8 finds
Cache #4: 6 finds
Cache #5: 1 find, 1 DNF

[MJ4H]

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/uscounties-1.jpg

[MJ4H]

Had to disable the screw-head cache. Wife checked on it today and the screw-head was torn off of it. Probably too many feet bumped against it and broke it eventually. We will probably replace it and hide it elsewhere in the same park.

[MJ4H]

Found my 200th cache today in Johnson, Arkansas. Will probably do a little write-up about it soon. Just wanted to drop a note about it tonight since I just logged it online. Feels good!

[MJ4H]

Summer is here! Should have a lot more time to geocache, now. Went out today on my first day I didn't have to be in my classroom. Picked up 13 caches and about 4 DNFs. We had originally planned to work our way towards Lincoln Lake where there are 13 geocaches. We started just hitting caches we hadn't found yet on the way and eventually we just decided to keep doing it and not go to the lake. I took my camera but the batteries were dead. No pictures, this time. I have a few pictures on my phone from some shorter excursions the past few weeks (not much time because of end of the year hassle) that I need to get uploaded. It is a pain to get pictures off of my phone (I have to bluetooth them to my old phone and then bluetooth to my computer--Verizon has apparently disabled the ability to bluetooth directly to a computer). My total found is now 218.

Stats and pics coming soon, I promise. Just wanted to drop a quick note to let everyone know I haven't forgotten about this dynasty! Just been really busy.

[MJ4H]

One of the reasons I haven't updated in a while is the batteries were dead in my camera, and I kept forgetting to fix it before we left for a caching run. I finally remedied it and have some pictures to share. It is much easier to recall what happened when I have pictures.

Well, there are many adventures I can't tell because I can't remember enough detail from the day to make it interesting, so it would just be scattered anecdotes. Such as the time I almost stepped right on a huge black snake. Instead, I will tell about the last couple of days geocaching. I have gotten to 241 caches found now (I think--geocaching.com is down for maintenance, but I'm pretty sure that's right). We hid one more cache today, and made preparations for hiding another one. This one will be a murderous one to find. I fully intend to rate this one a 4-star difficulty. I will show you why.

We started out yesterday morning in Bella Vista, Arkansas. We went down a back road and found a cache in the back of a cemetery behind an old small church building.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0595.jpg

After passing on one that looked really ridiculous (any time you walk up to ground zero and find a huge pile of rocks, you might as well just move on--those suck), we found another one in the area and then moved on to a 1.8 mile walking trail that supposedly had 4 caches hidden along it.

Adding the extra distance to walk out to the caches that were off the trail, we probably walked at least 2.5 to 3 miles on this trail. Unfortunately, we went 1 for 4. 2 of the caches we didn't find, we could basically see where they were. One required special equipment (repelling/climbing gear), and one I couldn't see how to get to without stepping over the railing on a bridge and venturing out over the ledge. No way. The third we didn't find, we just plain old couldn't find. Here are some pictures of that adventure:

Snapped this picture just as we started our 2 mile walk on the trail. It was pretty, but not really near a cache. Somewhere between the bridge one and the one we actually found:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0596.jpg

This cool cave and waterfall area was the site of the one that required the climbing/repelling equipment. My wife found a little inset that was about halfway up the face of the rock (behind where I'm standing in this picture) that is almost 100% certain to be where the cache was. Couldn't see it or get to it, but that's almost certainly where it was.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0597.jpg

Another view. This was from the direction we came from.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0599.jpg

The cave is one of the cooler places (literally, too) that we have been to geocaching. Wish we could've marked this as a find, but probably never will. Not even remotely interested in rock climbing or repelling.

Walking to the next cache, we looked to our right from the trail and saw another cave. Here is the view from the trail.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0601.jpg

It was a tough little hike up to this one, and I almost bit it pretty hard when I stepped on an angled rock that was slick. I got up to the cave and took this picture:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0603.jpg
No cache in this area, just a cool place on our way from one to the next.

We finally got close to the next cache and headed off the trail to get it. Whoops. Still 120 yds straight ahead!
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0604.jpg

Well, all we could do was continue walking all the way around the lake. We did and got to the spot you see in the picture. We looked for 20 minutes, surrounded by very territorial geese that were quite uneasy at our presence. We finally gave up and headed back to the van.

Ugh.

Before we got to the cache site, on the far end of the lake as we got turn around and head back in the right direction, there was a cool Veterans' Memorial Wall. Thought I had to take a picture of this since it was only one day after Memorial Day.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0605.jpg

We called a friend that lives nearby and asked them to meet us for lunch in the area. On our way out, we passed a cache icon on the GPS screen that was clearly at a rest area. Those are usually pretty high percentage finds, so we darted in and started to search. Mostly to lift our spirits after going 1 for 4 on the 2.5 mile walk. This one was indeed pretty easy. under a little pavilion with a picnic table, this little guy was hiding near the ceiling.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0606.jpg

This and one we found with our friend near her house brought our total for the day to a really disappointing 6. Still had fun and got lots of pictures.

[MJ4H]

Here is some of the stuff I've found recently or am going to hide soon.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0607.jpg

Those 3 little coins in baggies on the left are new pathtags I've found. I need to log them online and see where they came from, but I am behind on stuff like that right now. Below that is a some weird wooden personalized coin I found in some cache somewhere.

Top right is a fake sprinkler geocache container. It is actually a key holder disguised as a fake sprinkler head that we found at The Home Depot. We bought two of them. One of them we just got back from hiding in a place called Tower Park. This one we don't have a hiding place for yet, but will soon.

In the bottom center is my evil hide, take two. Earlier in this dynasty I showed you a fake screw head cache that I hid in a picnic table. Well, I calculated poorly on that one. The wife checked on it two days after we placed it and the top had been torn off of it. The cache was still in the hole, but without the screw-head. We disabled the cache listing and brought it home to find a new hiding place. I guess what happened was that too many feet rubbed over the top of it and it just couldn't hold up.

Well, we went back to the same park today to scout out new places and ideas for it. I hit on the perfect spot. We found a bridge on the far side of it. Underneath this bridge, one of the wooden logs has a perfectly sized hole in it. This cache fits right into it. What I did then is searched around to find a flake of wood on the ground that matches the texture of the log. I found one, brought it home, and glued it to the top of that cache. Right now, the glue is setting. Tomorrow, I will go place the cache in the hole. Hopefully I will take a picture of it if I remember my camera. I think this will be a 4-star difficulty. I can't imagine this one being very easy to find.

[MJ4H]

Here is where we hid the fake sprinkler head. It is in the corner of this flower bed at the entrance to Tower Park (hopefully, you can see where it gets its name).

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/hide5.jpg

[MJ4H]

Tomorrow we will hide the evil cache under this bridge at the back of Veterans Park. Veterans Park has, I don't know, 5 or 6 big baseball fields now. They are really nice fields. The one that you can see the outfield of in this picture doesn't look very nice, but it is now. This picture was apparently taken while the park was under construction. It is actually quite surprising how nice this little park is. The baseball fields all have nice stadium seating with lots of chair backs, etc.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/hide6.jpg

Also, just for a fun little bit of knowledge, there is a pair of shoes hanging from the electrical line that is sagging in the top left of this shot. It is not there in these pictures, but I was just there a few minutes ago scouting, and the shoes are there. They have also been there for several weeks because they were there last time we came to the park to scout out the original hide.

I think it is funny, anyway. Maybe I will take a picture of the shoes tomorrow!

[MJ4H]

Sigh:


Log Date: 6/2/2010
Greeting from Geocaching.com!

I am sorry, but I cannot publish your cache in its current location near (about 160 feet from) a
municipal water tower, as it is considered a “potential or possible target for terrorist attacks”.
Please relocate your cache at least 300 feet from the tower.

From the guidelines: “Off Limits Areas” – “Caches near or under public structures deemed potential or
possible targets for terrorist attacks. These include but are not limited to highway bridges, dams,
government buildings, elementary and secondary schools, and airports.” Although not specifically
listed, water towers are considered to fall in this category.

The terrorists have won.

edit: kidding aside, it is really frustrating because we walked all over that park today and found the perfect spot. BUTNAH

[MJ4H]

Here are a couple of random pictures taken while geocaching. These are from my phone, so not as a good of quality, but I think my phone does pretty well, actually.

You can't see it well in this one, but the water is covering the road ahead. We searched for a cache near here but didn't have much luck. It was extremely muddy.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0515101840.jpg

There was a cache hidden under this airplane display near the Rogers Airport. We had looked for this one before, but it was raining that day so we didn't look long. Today, I walked right to it. It was hidden up high in one of the corners of that blue base.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0522101451.jpg

[MJ4H]

Placed the wood chip cache this morning. It was raining so I didn't take my camera. It is really pretty sick how this little chip of wood blends in with the log it is placed on.

We also re-hid the Tower Park cache. We moved it to the other end of the park where there is a very similar flower bed and sign. We measured the distance to the water tower with the GPS and it was over 100 yards. We should be in good shape on this one.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/hide5-1.jpg

[MJ4H]

The wood chip cache was found on the day after it was hidden. It was DNF'd once first though. One of the guys we met at the meet-up tried to find it and failed. Knew it would be hard, so not surprised. Actually more surprised it was found so quickly by someone else.

The Water Tower Park cache got approved this morning finally. It was logged as found a few hours later, already. The log said they stared at it for a minutes before they realized that was the cache. Sprinkler camouflage working, I guess.

We have been going to all of the baseball games in the College Baseball Regional, this weekend. Yesterday, the early game was Kansas State vs. Grambling. It ended about 4:30 and the night game wasn't until 7:05. We grabbed some food and stopped to find a couple of caches on the way back to the stadium. Our first one was at the end of a walking trail that was built in anticipation of a housing sub-division that was going to be built. I think the change in the housing market nixed that, because there aren't any signs of development here, now.

We walked to the end of it and started our search. Peering into a bunch of trees, here is what we saw:

Can you spot the hidden geocache in this picture?
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0661.jpg

It shows up a little bit better with the flash, but this an idea of how hard these things can be to see, even if they are right in front of you:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0662.jpg


We had time for one more before we headed to the stadium. This one was a hide-a-key container stuck to the inside of a fold in a guard-rail (fairly common type of hide). The thing about this one is there was a little guy guarding the cache.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0663.jpg

See him? My wife sure did. She refused to reach in and get the cache. I had to use one of her shoes to make him move away before I would reach in there. I used to be extremely arachnaphobic. I still have it a little bit, but at one point in my life I finally came to the decision I wasn't going to let seeing a spider alter the course of my day. At one time in my life, I wouldn't have considered getting this cache. Frankly, I would've acted like a big baby. I just got the spider to crawl out of the bottom of the hidey-hole, and I reached in and got the cache. We signed it, and I made sure he was still out on the bottom. When I saw that he was, I went ahead and put the cache back.

Not going to pretend I liked it, though!

[MJ4H]

Yesterday was our last day of easy geocaching. Son's last day at his school, so with him home all summer, it will be harder, but we will still get some in.

We had a few we wanted to hit going through downtown Bentonville and out towards Bella Vista today. Had hopes of breaking 10, but, after a good start, we quickly ran into some trouble and only finished with 8.

Our first cache of the day was in a little park area with a gazebo and some benches in Bentonville. The cache was hidden with a magnet under the outer benches in the big white gazebo.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0671.jpg

We also found one in a soccer/baseball park that I didn't take any pictures.

Just off the square in downtown Bentonville (where the original Sam's Store that eventually turned into Wal-Mart is) we found a cache along a walking trail. Yet another gazebo in the background of this one:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0672.jpg

but this one wasn't at the gazebo, it was in a tree:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0673.jpg

We signed this one and headed back to the van. A movement caught my eye to the right down in a little creek bed. Thought it might some unusual animal at first, but it was just a cat. Snapped a picture of it for kicks.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0674.jpg

Our next search resulted in a DNF, but it was pretty bizarre. Our GPS brought us to the backside of a park called "Compton Garden." We didn't realize it was the backside of the park, though. We parked along the side of the road and tried to figure out how to get in the fence. We found a gate and went in and, at first, thought this park was abandoned and unused.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0675.jpg

Over by the little roof, though, we discovered the paved path. The roof covered a little park bench that was very clean and obviously cared for. This was actually just the very back of a nicely kept park. We followed the paved path to the exact spot of ground zero and searched with no success for the cache.

We moved away from downtown Bentonville, towards Bella Vista, next. We found another walking trail that held a cache, parked, and started walking. We found this one by description of the cache rather than the coordinates, since people that had found it before us repeatedly mentioned that the coordinates were poor. Here is the stream that the cache was next to.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0676.jpg

Next we climbed a pretty steep hill and looked for a 4-star difficulty cache on the face of a rock-wall. We looked for 20-30 minutes and failed miserably. Did find this little guy, though.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0678.jpg

At this point, it was getting later in the afternoon than we would've liked, so we decided to go back to the square in Bentonville and do a multi-cache.

Multi-caches are caches where the coordinates given are only the coordinates to the first stage in a series. Usually, you have to go to the site and somehow discover the coordinates for the next stage and continue the process until you get to the final stage. This is where you sign the log and get to say you found the cache.

We got to the square and looked up the details for the cache. On this one, we would have to find some information located at the coordinates on the square and use that information to come up with a number. The next step is to go to another set of coordinates listed in the cache description and find information to get another number. All the numbers, 6 in total, would combine to give the coordinates for the final stage. It was something like this:

AB CA.DFF
DE BB.CAC

And if you find what A is (at the first stage), what B is (at the second stage), etc. you get the final coordinates.

At the first stage, the instructions were to take the year that Bentonville was established, and subtract the first digit of the year from the third digit of the year. For the second stage, you just use the last digit in the number of the train car that is at the second stage coordinates.

So, you have to go to all of the stages to get the individual numbers and then substitute them into that jumble of letters to get the coordinates for the final stage.

We ran through all the stages and got the coordinates. Another walking trail, but the coordinates were consistently leading us to a spot in the middle of some dense trees in the middle of the walking trail. It looked quite nasty to wade through.

It was.

We couldn't find how to enter it, so, worried that we had messed up on the coordinates and were going to be wasting our time and effort, we just picked a little gap in the bushes and forced our way in. Once we got in it wasn't too bad, but the initial entrance was pretty hairy.

After about 25 yards we did come across an obvious trail with markers, so our confidence increased. The GPS arrow led us down the trail and we came to a bridge. The hint for the final stage mentioned a bridge, so our confidence was full, now. The foliage was very dense, though, and the GPS was very slow to update, and very low-precision. The next 30 minutes plus had us bushwhacking all over the woods in a big circle around where we eventually found the cache. It is hard to chase the goal on the GPS when it doesn't update your position more than once a minute, and, when it does, it updates it inaccurately. That was basically what caused our misadventures.

However, we did eventually find it. We decided to follow the trail to the entrance/exit instead of bailing from the trail where we found it to our van. Was about 50 yards from the van where we could've gone, but it would've been a hard 50 yards (and uphill).

Glad we stuck to the trail. There was a very pretty waterfall near the entrance/exit that we wouldn't have seen otherwise. Here are a few pictures I snapped on the walk back.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0679.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0680.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0681.jpg

At this point, we had to head back to the house. We came across an icon for a geocache we hadn't found on the shortest route back to the interstate. By the looks of where the icon was, it looked to be a pretty easy "park and grab." We decided to chance it. We found it in the first place we looked without reading the cache description or even using the GPS to direct us to the exact location. It was hidden in much the same manner as the stop-sign cache in post #68 but on a different type of sign (no bicycles or something like that). A good gamble to stop and try to get this one. Got us up to 8 finds, one of which was a 7-stage multi. It only counts as one in the statistics, but it is the adventure that counts!

Finds: 255
Hides: 7

[bob]

Taking a shot in the dark here that someone can give me some handheld GPS advice. We are looking at picking up a basic GPS unit for geocaching and map / orientering races. Would this be a decent unit for those purposes:

Garmin eTrex Venture HC GPS Receiver at REI.com (http://www.rei.com/product/761620)

[MJ4H]

I would say that is a very good unit for geocaching. Here are the geocaching.com user reviews for it:

http://www.geocaching.com/reviews/gps_garmin_etrex-venture-hc_p3

Price is very good, handhelds are great for geocaching but not good for road routing (most don't do it at all). From the sound of the reviews, you won't have trouble loading geocaching information onto the unit. I think you've found a good one. I might pick one of these up, in fact, at some point.

[bob]

I would say that is a very good unit for geocaching. Here are the geocaching.com user reviews for it:

http://www.geocaching.com/reviews/gps_garmin_etrex-venture-hc_p3

Price is very good, handhelds are great for geocaching but not good for road routing (most don't do it at all). From the sound of the reviews, you won't have trouble loading geocaching information onto the unit. I think you've found a good one. I might pick one of these up, in fact, at some point.

Thanks for the help - we are also going to be using this for orienteering races.

[MJ4H]

Yeah I don't know what that is so I couldn't help on that.

[MJ4H]

Today I went to Veteran's Park for a picnic and a walk around the trail, which is around 2 miles long I think. Veteran's Park is where we hid our particularly evil woodchip cache. It has only been found twice in all this time. I stopped to check on it and took some pictures with my phone.

Can you spot it in this picture? If you saw the cache itself earlier in this thread, you might be able to.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0615101319.jpg


http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0615101319a.jpg


On the way back out, I took a picture of this sign, because I thought it was pretty awesome. Dude looks like Shaggy or something.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0615101343.jpg

[MJ4H]

Another hide today. This is hide #7 that is active. Today we took my son to physical therapy. He is there for an hour so we find ourselves in Fayetteville for an hour with nothing to do. Sometimes we eat out, but we are trying to be careful with what we eat right now. So, we ate before we left and decided to do a bit of geocaching.

We are very much in urban-caching-only mode right now. Both of us are very itchy from bug bites and I'm afraid another bout of poison ivy for me. We want to get over that before we traipse into the woods again.

There are only a few urban-style caches in the area near his therapy, so we decided to take another one or two off the board today. We headed to it and found it very quickly. However, we discovered it was very near an area my wife had talked about hiding a cache some in the past.

We decided instead of finding any more today that we would go scout out the area for a hiding place.

We scoured for about 20 minutes and finally found a decent little spot. We hid the fake sprinkler-head container at the base of a tree behind a cemetery. The cemetery borders on some tennis courts at a rec-center of some sort. We could hear a dad teaching his kids to play tennis through the trees as we were scouring.

Here is our 7th hide:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/hide7.jpg

It is already published and active. I expect someone to find it within a few hours, honestly.

[MJ4H]

Famous geocachers:

Wink Martindale (has 6,000+ finds)
Mia Farrow (volunteer geocache reviewer for Eastern New York)
Adam Savage (Mythbusters)
Chuck Norris (unconfirmed)

[path12]

This is really cool, I had never clicked on this link before. Went to the main site and found out there is a bunch around my area.

Looks like a GPS just went on my wishlist.

[MJ4H]

Awesome. If there are any really close and you have some time, give it a try without a GPS. You can just inspect the spot via Google Maps and see if you can pinpoint the area where it is that way. It should get you within, say, 10-30 ft of the cache. I think DodgerChick found a couple that way, and I know of some people that do it exclusively that way.

Just to see if it is something you might want to do.

[MJ4H]

I will write-up our entire trip later, probably tomorrow, but we had such an epic cache today that I have to post this now.

This cache replaced the one described earlier in this thread that was an office phone nailed to a tree. The owner of that one, RedInk, removed that cache so that he could place this one. This one is awesome.

I read the find logs before we got there, and they all mentioned being scared or shocked and laughing about it. I expected a good shock, but even expecting it, this one still made me jump a mile.

Just outside the trees this one was hidden in, there is a little gap. You clearly have to duck a little to get in and then will be able to stand up on the other side.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0019.jpg

The following is a video that shows what that trip into the woods was like. Now, you can't imagine the shock of actually seeing this live, but trust me, this was a shocker. Watch the video, then the photo afterwards in spoilers to see more detail of the scene.

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/D7-h1IcroEA&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/D7-h1IcroEA&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0020.jpg

[MJ4H]

You have to understand that geocaching is supposed to be done somewhat stealthily. To duck into those trees so you can get to the geocache and then have someone apparently standing there looking at you when you stand back up is shocking. To make matters worse, all sorts of horrible things run through your head immediately when you see they are in camouflage gear. Was really a horrific half second there when I stood up. I must have jumped a mile.

We decided to drive to Greenland (just south of Fayetteville) to grab a few caches next. I was smiling and laughing about that cache the whole drive.

We grabbed an LPC at a truck stop when we arrived in Greenland. This was one of those that I drive by every day going to work but never have time to stop and get. When I see it on the GPS each day driving to work, the only fun I can have with it is to eyeball the icon and try to guess where it is hidden as I fly by at the legal speed limit.

My guess on that one was right on. I knew exactly where it was, we drove up, pulled it out and signed the log. No pictures of LPCs. They are boring.

Next we headed towards a baseball park in Greenland. Behind right field was a telephone pole.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0024.jpg

Caches like this can be deceiving. Objects like this just look like they should be there. You can actually just pull the whole container right out of the ground though.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0025.jpg

Next was another playground type park. Here's what we saw when we arrived at GZ this time:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0027.jpg

Where is this one hidden? You really do develop "geo-senses" that help you figure out where these things are hidden.


http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0026.jpg


Next we found a cache in the woods off of a dirt road near a little river. Here are a couple of shots of the river, which was more interesting than the cache location itself.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0028.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0029.jpg

Another cemetery cache next. This one was a bit unusual. We found this cache in a little fenced in old/flower-trash dump next to the actual cemetery. The cap on the chain link fence can be removed to find the cache.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0030.jpg

There were a couple of others we found yesterday, but I didn't take pictures of them all. The last one we found on the way to dinner was at the Air Museum next to Drake Field, which is the old Fayetteville Airport (that almost no one uses now that XNA is up and running). The beacon tower out for the airport is right in front and the cache was brazenly just sitting under the tower. There is a little stack of concrete blocks built up around the container, but you can see right into it where the cache is there and even labeled.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0031.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0033.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0032.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0034.jpg

Up to a total of 267 caches now. We did have one DNF yesterday, which was a pretty miserable drive down a tiny, horrible road which led to a swimming/fishing hole, that was apparently way more popular than you'd guess. It was a nightmare driving the van down that road and back. No pictures because it wasn't a very fun experience, honestly.

[jeff061]

Enjoying this thread. I've been aware of geocaching for a long time now, the hidden game in plain site aspect interests me. So was good to read this.

Quick search shows one hidden about a hundred yards from my apartment. Probably a good dozen within a couple miles.

[MJ4H]

Hey everyone! This thread isn't dead. Marching (high school football) season just dealt it a stunning blow. My band also took a trip to the Liberty Bowl (which had other events associated that drastically affected things, too, which I will address in a bit), so geocaching has been very hard to squeeze in.

I have, however, snuck some in. I will recall as much as I can, add some pictures, and fill you in on the most significant thing, now.

Back in post #57 of this thread (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showpost.php?p=2266691&postcount=57) I mentioned how we hid one of the geocaches that we own. It was in the back of a cemetery. This cemetery was one that we passed every day taking my son to school and back. He actually was with us the day we hid the geocache.

I'm sure most of you know by now that he passed away on Dec. 28th, 2010. We decided that this cemetery would be ideal for him. Our son is now buried in this cemetery.

It is in an ideal little spot between home and his grandmother's house (very close to her, she can pretty much walk there to visit him if she wants). It is also very special because our son didn't go geocaching with us most of the time. This was one of the few times he went. He "helped us" hide this geocache.

Anyway, please don't turn this thread into a rehash of the flood of sympathy in my son's thread. I want this thread to just be about geocaching, but this is a very special geocache for us, now. It warrants the bump on its own, but I also want everyone to know that this thread isn't dead either.

More to come!

[MJ4H]

Our first geocaching trip since the one to Springfield yesterday. We went to Eureka Springs, Arkansas (a somewhat popular tourist town in the Ozark mountains) to grab some caches and just spend a pleasant day. Worked out really well, and we had a lot of fun.

We grabbed 3 or so on the way there, most noteworthy was the one at "Inspiration Point." The cache was in the first place I looked, but I missed it. Wife found it about 5 minutes later after checking in that same place. This particular event where I miss it quickly and she finds it later has happened more than once.

Regrettably, I forgot my good camera for this trip, so we had to make do with cell phone cameras, today. Not nearly as good quality, but fairly acceptable for something like this.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0129111238.jpg

Arriving in Eureka, we found a geocache at the base of this viewing tower. Then we paid a dollar each to climb the tower and get a spectacular view of the area.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0129111407.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0129111415.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0129111415a.jpg

In the last picture above, you can see a tiny white t-shape if you look closely. This is the statue "Christ of the Ozarks," which we visited before leaving town later.

One of the most bizarre things I had ever seen was this "shrine" someone had built at a gravesite in what turned out to be a rather large local cemetery. Had to snap a picture of it.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0129111553.jpg

On top of that contraption is an animal's skull (like an elk or something) with some John Lennon sunglasses on it. Really freaky.

It was late in the day when we made it across to Christ of the Ozarks. The sun was starting to get low in the sky, which made for some neat lightning as we approached it from behind.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0129111633.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0129111635.jpg

And this is the view from in front of him looking towards where we were on the tower earlier in the day. The cell phone camera was not nearly good enough to see the castle-like building at the top of the hill across there, nor the many buildings lining that hillshide.

Oh well.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0129111640.jpg

Also near CoO is a display featuring an actual segment of the Berlin Wall.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0129111648.jpg


We added 15 new geocaches to our list of finds yesterday, bringing the total to 362.

[MJ4H]

Last weekend as the big 2 feet of snow was melting in NWA we headed south to where most of the snow was already gone. We decided to make a trip to Little Rock to eat a hamburger joint one of my friends saw on the food network or whatever. It's called Cotham's Mercantile in Scott, Arkansas. Famous for their "Hubcap Burgers." Code for really big, I guess.

We were a little worried about getting out of NWA with the roads still being a little iffy, so we drove down to Waldron on Friday night and got a hotel there. The snow was nearly gone down there, so it was easy from there. I took lots of pictures from an actual camera.

We start off with an easy geocache next to this sign:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0144.jpg

A bit down the road, we had a geocache that was right next to a pretty steep cliff with a nice view. Took a few pictures of the view:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0145.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0146.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0147.jpg

Moving on, we parked next to this little building and walked across the road.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0148.jpg

Here, we spotted the geocache near this sign. Do you see it in the picture?
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0149.jpg

Yet another cache at the top of a hill. Here is a car peaking the hill and heading down the other side.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0150.jpg

Can you spot the geocache in this picture?
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0151.jpg

How about now?
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0152.jpg

There it is!
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0153.jpg
No?

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0154.jpg
Oh, ok.

[MJ4H]

The little town of Mt. Ida, Arkansas held a few caches for us to look for. We parked downtown next to the courthouse and walked to several spots to find a few.

We couldn't find one next to the courthouse where this little stage was. Apparently this place, called the "Front Porch" is home to some small town concerts.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0155.jpg

Can you see the geocache in front of this gas station? Look for something that doesn't quite look like it belongs.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0156.jpg

Near either the actual football stadium or just a small practice field, I'm afraid to guess which one this was, there was a cache hiding in the corner fence post.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0157.jpg

How about this cache? YA RLY
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0158.jpg

Go on, then. In you go.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0159.jpg

No, it couldn't be, could it. Well, nothing to do but...
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0160.jpg

LOL, oh look an ammo can.


Took this picture of some unmelted snow across a stream. This was near a cache that was hiding at the base of a sign marking the entrance to a new county of Arkansas
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0161.jpg

A cache containing a travel bug (see the little bug icon?) sitting on the ground in front of its hiding place in the base of a tree.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0162.jpg

Once again, find the object that doesn't belong in this scene to find the cache.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0164.jpg


Did you guess the fake electrical plate on the pole?
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0163.jpg


The white PVC pipe sticking out of the ground holds a cache:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0165.jpg

At some point that evening we made it to our destination and joined our friends for a HUBCAP BURGER!

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/IMG_0167-1.jpg

[MJ4H]

Almost forgot! Spotting the cache in this picture might be a little more of a challenge. Had to take a picture of this one, but when I got out of the van I accidentally left the camera. Had to take these two pictures with the phone.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0212111726.jpg


http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y257/Gorgonian14/0212111725.jpg


Pretty cool, huh?