Bank Geocache Container

I was caching and hiking in Dishman Hills in Spokane.

I stopped for a field puzzle cache and found this container.

It's a bank with a rolling ball in the five-sided maze.  Opening the bank requires moving the ball through the maze to a point where the latch release on the bank will open.  It took me about ten minutes to free the log book.

The bank cavity is quite spacious with room for the log and trade items.  The opening was big enough for me to trade the flat disk trackables which are given to reviewers and lackeys.  It was a fun cache at one of my favorite parks and earned a favorite from me when logging.  The containers are readily available on line.  I would protect the maze from the elements in an extra container like an ammo can, but so far this one was holding up well.

Virtual Extremes

We recently enjoyed a short vacation in Texas and Oklahoma. Our main goals were to visit and hike the LBJ Grasslands and Wichita Mountains. We enjoyed both. We were also able to add another virtual extreme to our cache finds when we visited the world's littlest skyscraper in Wichita Falls.

Whoa, that's four floors shooting upward toward the clouds!

The Newman-McMahon Building was built in 1919 after cash was raised from investors to build a 146m tall building or so the investors believed. What they really invested in was the 14.6m tall building shown above. Yes, it was a scam created by a local oilman. At 146m, the building would have been 40% of the height of the Empire State Building. In the low skyline of Wichita Falls this four story building would still give a great view of the town, but it appears to be used for retail.

This wasn't our first virtual at a little place with big plans. We also enjoyed visiting the world's smallest park in Portland.

Mills End Park was another fun stop on our too brief visit to Portland in 2011.

I am happy to see virtuals have returned for at least one encore. Like all of caching, they were a mixed bag of good and uninspired, but many like the two above give us a reason to visit fun, quirky places we haven't seen and wouldn't see except by sheer luck. We have been lucky to be awarded one of the new ones to locate. Our biggest issue so far has been deciding which of the out of the way places we want to share with only one winner possible.

Visiting Cowenesque Lake

We recently made our second visit to Cowenesque Lake in northern Pennsylvania near the New York border. Cowenesque is a 500 acre lake/reservoir formed in 1980 by the Army Corps. The Army Corps has been wonderful in permitting caches at the reservoir. If you like old time caching with lots of regular-sized containers and twenty-two caches including a letterbox, three multis, and ten puzzles (two night caches) this is a great destination place.

The hides are well maintained and there are multiple parking lots available if you like shorter walks or miles-long trails if you want to leave the geomobile and roam.

Summer 2013 Visit

Fall 2015 Visit

Wildlife and wildflowers are plentiful.

Bring your UV light if you visit. You will need it.

We still have a few unfound caches remaining for a return visit, including a cache at Nelson Falls.

Two Years Lonely!

SGL #208: Cache at Night! was published in September 2012. It was found thirteen times up to August 23rd of 2013. Then it went cold. Today we hiked Darling Run and Turkey Path in Pine Creek Gorge. We were hoping for a few cache finds after leaving the gorge so we headed for nearby State Game Lands #208. We found our first cache after a quick trail walk. We made the wrong approach to the second cache and saved it for later. Next came the lonely night cache.

We couldn't spot the first tack at the start but working off the cache page information we walked off 200 feet increments hoping to spot a fire tack. We soon located one. It was the reddish brown type with very little reflection.

We walked for a long distance (well past the actual hide) and missed seeing anymore of the elusive tacks. I walked back to the waypoint for the first tack and switched flashlights. The first tack was a little brighter. I started walking and suddenly there they were. We soon walked the distance to the endpoint and began working through the directions and markings to find the final. It was many minutes later when Ali said she had found it. Success! Happiness! Celebration! This lonely cache was found. We signed the log, added an unactivated Volunteer tag for the next finder and were ready to head back to Wellsboro and dinner.

Two years is much too long for an ammo can cache to be alone and unfound in the woods.

The image doesn't do justice to the red glow at sunset ending the day. This nice hide will get a favorite from us when we log it.

Steampunk

We recently found these two well done caches. Both are a tribute to Steampunk.

Favorites... They've Been Here Awhile

It's the holidays and I have a small bit of time to be a numbers geek. We have gathered a lot of favorite points from our finds and long ago figured out that a bookmark list naming 1 out of every 20-25 finds was a good ratio for us. We have given a lot of favorite votes and have a lot never awarded. Favorites have now been out for a while so I thought I would play a bit. I started by looking at the numbers for our caches. Our top five caches with the most favorite votes are:

AGT-Warren-Irvine at Night 33 Favorites

Bang, Bang! Snip, Snip! 10 Favorites

AGT-Warren-Blueberry Fields Forever 7 Favorites

Don't Be Takin' Me Lucky Stones 6 Favorites

AGT-Warren-Warren & Tidioute Railway Company 6 Favorites

Okay, so our caches aren't going to win to many favorite contests. Still, 33 favorite votes for the night cache visited by a lot of GeoWoodstock attendees is pretty nice. For the percentages of favorites, our top five looked like this:

Arboretum Stroll 30% Favorites

Waymarking Bingo Challenge 30% Favorites

Don't Be Takin' Me Lucky Stones 25% Favorites

Here, There, and Beyond 24% Favorites

Set Plan, Rogue! 17% Favorites

What does any of this mean? It really seems to say our caches don't get visited too often, but cachers that do visit them seem to like them.

As a comparison, I looked at caches we've found to see which have the greatest votes and which have the higest percentages. The top five favorite vote getters are:

Original Stash Tribute Plaque 983 Favorites

Groundspeak Headquarters 827 Favorites

Mission 9: Tunnel of Light 760 Favorites

Un-Original Stash 291 Favorites

The Iron Horse Express 227 Favorites

The highest favorite percents of caches we found are a little different.

The Spot 35% Favorite (195 Favorite Votes)

Mission 9: Tunnel of Light 34% Favorites (760 Favorite Votes)

Auto Art 32% Favorites (115 Favorite Votes)

Groundspeak Headquarters 27% Favorites (827 Favorite Votes)

Octopus Garden 20% Favorites (110 Favorite Votes)

Stone Wall Stash 20% Favorites (74 Favorite Votes)

Excalibur 19% Favorites (83 Favorite Votes)

ancient lake 19% Favorites (72 Favorite Votes)

State Game Lands #109 17% Favorites (105 Favorite Votes)

So based on this sample, how can your cache become a big winner in the favorite votes?

Be located in Washington or Oregon near the Triad.
Be near a GeoWoodstock.
Be near a mega, even better if it is a recurring mega.
Be an old cache.
Be a traditional hide - one mystery and one virtual made this really short list.
(Groundspeak Headquarters doesn't count - its not really a puzzle.)
Don't require special equipment like a boat.

The one odd cache on the list above is Excalibur. It wasn't a really old cache (2006). It wasn't really close to any mega events, but it was really popular. The Spot is almost an exception too, but it was a destination for many GeoWoodstock IX visitors. Our list is missing one other cache doesn't really fit the above suggestions. The Thousand Steps Cache is one we haven't visited. It has 140 votes and a 29% favorite rating which puts it in the same ball park as The Spot being a tough terrain cache that hasn't had a huge bump from nearby megas. It is a fairly old cache having been published in 2002.

I must admit surprise at some of the things which didn't guarantee big favorite numbers. I expected virtuals and earthcaches would have big followings. They seem to pull a consistent level of favorite votes, but not as much as I expected. The lone exception is Auto Art which gets the nod for being near a Geowoodstock.

One thing is certain. There aren't many popular caches with favorite percents in the teens and above. If you see a cache with more than 15% favorites, it has really won over other cachers. We really enjoy the favorites feature and will continue to use it.

More than anything, this post says sunset is near five every evening, and it's too cold to go caching. ;-) Happy New Year. May your caches get favorite votes and may you find caches you want to favorite.