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Old 04-16-2010, 04:17 PM   #51
Izulde
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Quote:
Originally Posted by MJ4H View Post
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:



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.
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Old 04-16-2010, 04:21 PM   #52
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Hog Country
Quote:
Originally Posted by Izulde View Post
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.
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Old 04-16-2010, 04:29 PM   #53
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
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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).
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Old 04-16-2010, 04:37 PM   #54
Izulde
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Originally Posted by Dodgerchick View Post
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.
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Old 04-18-2010, 01:52 AM   #55
Izulde
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Between this and the movie Splinterheads, which I'm watching right now, I'm tempted to start geocaching.
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Old 04-18-2010, 09:18 AM   #56
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Hog Country
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.



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.


nice finger jerkface

Last edited by MJ4H : 04-18-2010 at 09:40 AM.
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Old 04-18-2010, 12:57 PM   #57
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Hog Country
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.

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Old 04-18-2010, 07:19 PM   #58
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
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Originally Posted by Izulde View Post
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?
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Old 04-20-2010, 11:14 AM   #59
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Hog Country
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

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.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.






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Old 04-20-2010, 11:02 PM   #60
Dodgerchick
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Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Austin, TX
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.
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Old 04-22-2010, 07:06 PM   #61
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Hog Country
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.




Quick pictures that didn't turn out very good. I will probably try again later.
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Old 04-25-2010, 01:59 PM   #62
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Hog Country
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.


An easy one to find, magnetized to a sign that was beside the bridge.


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).


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.


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.


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.



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!

Last edited by MJ4H : 04-25-2010 at 02:00 PM.
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Old 04-25-2010, 11:44 PM   #63
Dodgerchick
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Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Austin, TX
What a fun day!
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Old 04-27-2010, 10:07 AM   #64
MJ4H
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Location: Hog Country
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Originally Posted by Dodgerchick View Post
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?
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Old 05-02-2010, 09:31 PM   #65
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Hog Country
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.




The last cache was on a bridge over a little stream.


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.


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Old 05-07-2010, 08:31 PM   #66
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Hog Country
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.



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



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:



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.
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Old 05-08-2010, 10:57 AM   #67
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Hog Country
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.
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Old 05-09-2010, 10:12 PM   #68
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Hog Country
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.



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.



Here it is, laid to bare:


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:



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.



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.



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.



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
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Old 05-10-2010, 06:24 PM   #69
MJ4H
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Old 05-12-2010, 09:18 PM   #70
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Hog Country
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.
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Old 05-16-2010, 12:15 AM   #71
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Hog Country
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!
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Old 05-25-2010, 04:28 PM   #72
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Hog Country
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.
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Old 06-02-2010, 03:27 PM   #73
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Hog Country
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.


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:


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.


Another view. This was from the direction we came from.


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.


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:

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!


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.


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.


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.
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Old 06-02-2010, 03:34 PM   #74
MJ4H
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Hog Country
Here is some of the stuff I've found recently or am going to hide soon.



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.
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Old 06-02-2010, 04:49 PM   #75
MJ4H
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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).

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Old 06-02-2010, 04:57 PM   #76
MJ4H
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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.



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!
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Old 06-02-2010, 06:43 PM   #77
MJ4H
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Sigh:

Quote:
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

Last edited by MJ4H : 06-02-2010 at 07:09 PM.
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Old 06-02-2010, 09:05 PM   #78
MJ4H
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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.


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.
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Old 06-03-2010, 04:53 PM   #79
MJ4H
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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.

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Old 06-06-2010, 03:07 PM   #80
MJ4H
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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?


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:
Spoiler


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.



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!
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Old 06-09-2010, 01:01 PM   #81
MJ4H
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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.



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:



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



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.



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.



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.



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.



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.







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

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Old 06-14-2010, 12:58 PM   #82
bob
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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
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Old 06-14-2010, 01:31 PM   #83
MJ4H
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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/gp...-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.
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Old 06-14-2010, 02:30 PM   #84
bob
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MJ4H View Post
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/gp...-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.
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Old 06-14-2010, 02:56 PM   #85
MJ4H
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Yeah I don't know what that is so I couldn't help on that.
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Old 06-15-2010, 02:57 PM   #86
MJ4H
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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.


Spoiler


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.
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Old 06-17-2010, 04:25 PM   #87
MJ4H
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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:


It is already published and active. I expect someone to find it within a few hours, honestly.
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Old 06-17-2010, 10:43 PM   #88
MJ4H
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Famous geocachers:

Wink Martindale (has 6,000+ finds)
Mia Farrow (volunteer geocache reviewer for Eastern New York)
Adam Savage (Mythbusters)
Chuck Norris (unconfirmed)
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Old 06-19-2010, 11:02 PM   #89
path12
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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.
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Old 06-19-2010, 11:34 PM   #90
MJ4H
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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.
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Old 07-04-2010, 09:46 PM   #91
MJ4H
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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.



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.



Spoiler
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Old 07-05-2010, 10:33 AM   #92
MJ4H
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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.



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.



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



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

Spoiler


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.




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.



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.






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.

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Old 07-10-2010, 10:23 PM   #93
jeff061
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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.
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Old 01-09-2011, 07:30 PM   #94
MJ4H
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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 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!
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Old 01-30-2011, 12:03 PM   #95
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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.



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.






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.



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.





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.



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




We added 15 new geocaches to our list of finds yesterday, bringing the total to 362.
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Old 02-21-2011, 08:15 PM   #96
MJ4H
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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:


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:




Moving on, we parked next to this little building and walked across the road.


Here, we spotted the geocache near this sign. Do you see it in the picture?


Yet another cache at the top of a hill. Here is a car peaking the hill and heading down the other side.


Can you spot the geocache in this picture?

Spoiler

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Old 02-21-2011, 08:24 PM   #97
MJ4H
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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.


Can you see the geocache in front of this gas station? Look for something that doesn't quite look like it belongs.


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.


How about this cache? YA RLY


Go on, then. In you go.


No, it couldn't be, could it. Well, nothing to do but...


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


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.


Once again, find the object that doesn't belong in this scene to find the cache.


Spoiler


The white PVC pipe sticking out of the ground holds a cache:


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

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Old 02-21-2011, 08:29 PM   #98
MJ4H
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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.



Spoiler


Pretty cool, huh?
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