Knowing Your Limits I

I really enjoy Thompson Ledges. It's a hidden gem in Northeast Ohio. Whenever a new cache is placed there, it's great to go back for a visit. There were two new caches in the park so we drove over to hunt them both. The first was at the top of a rock formation. We climbed different ends of the rock formation and met at near the cache. The second cache inspired this post and the title. I used to be fearless. For some reason, today seemed a turning point. The cache is at the top of a rock ledge about 40 feet up. I got about halfway up and realized the safety zone was less and less. For some reason I had visions of falling and getting smashed on the rocks. I tried approaching from three other points and couldn't get closer. In the end, that was it for this cache. The funny thing is when I was trying to reach the top I was more interested in getting there with my camera so I could take a few shots from the top. Maybe we'll go back in the spring. Maybe next time I'll wear my biking helmet.

Anyone else have a cache where you knew you reached your limit?

AGT-Venango-5th annual Oil Region Cachers Event

The Oil Region Cachers are a small group of cachers based primarily in Venango County. Their informal leader is bpratt. Bruce usually hosts his annual event on Sunday which is an almost impossible event day for us. This year was perfect. The event was on Saturday. It was at Oil Creek State Park, and it was an old-time pot luck event.



Bruce decided to place an event cache in the middle of Oil Creek. It was a sunny warm day so I had no problem getting wet to make this find.




One of the Oil Regions reps stopped by to discuss the status of the Allegheny GeoTrail and Mike Henderson was at the event to award coins to any cachers who had completed any new counties. The AGT is in a unique position. The world's most successful geotrail is slated to end June 30, 2011 and GeoWoodstock will be held on July 2. It presents a quandry to the organizers. Do they shut it down at the June 30th date? Do they keep it open for a few weeks and absorb the hit of about 5000 coins being awarded? Do they re-work the trail so it can live on well past the June 30th date and GeoWoodstock? It seemed pretty clear the last choice is the one the organizers want, but if you are coming to GeoWoodstock and want to do the AGT trail, I would plan to arrive a week early in the Warren area.



What would a geomeet be without prizes? There were some nice give aways, but the grand "prize" was a ready to hide cache container stuffed with none other than a replica Hawaiian shirt just like the one worn by Oil Region's very own bpratt when he is out caching. The proud owner joined Bruce for a moment of fashion solidarity. ;-)

Ohio State Parks Finale

For the last five years, the Northeast Ohio section of Ohio State Parks has been placing an annual, summer series of caches. In 2009, they added a second series with more parks and a trackable coin for completing the series! In the fall, there's always an event for everyone with coins for people who have completed the challenge. This year's event was held at the newest Ohio State Park, Wingfoot Lake State Park. The park used to be Goodyear's park for employees and families. OSP took ownership of the park and has converted it to a state park. The event was a fun way to say hi to friends and get to see a new park.


This fun series only happens because of the dedication of Amber, her great boss Todd at Ohio State Parks, and a group of dedicated volunteers.



No coins for the cormorants (no food either).



Geocaching and miniature golf are a great mix.



Chris K climbs through a big tire.



The Goodyear Blimp hanger



Me with half of the Muddy Dawgs.




Catie of Team RAGAR with a really cool geocaching shirt.



The coin is really nice. The design is the same as last year's but the metal color changed to silver.

#7000 - Oil Creek State Park

We always do a memorable cache for one of the thousands. We try to do the same for the 500's and the 100's. Sometimes it even works with my travel schedule. ;-) Today everything worked. The weather was perfect for a visit to the amazing Oil Creek State Park. We had always counted the old Benninghoff Cache as a favorite so it seemed logical to return to the area and hunt the newly placed Benninghoff Ridge View. The cache is located on part of the 36-mile Gerard Hiking Trail. Near the cache site, there is a nice view of the valley below. This stretch includes a walk through a portion of the old oil field area that has been restored with wooden derricks. As you walk the hill there is still some faint evidence of the hundreds of oil wells that used to cover the landscape here. As an added treat to a special day, we found one of the Oil Creek-Kennerdell coins in the cache. The Oil Region is placing 1,000 of these coins in random caches in the area. It is a nice coin, and it's trackable. :-) It is a super memento for us.

New Cameron County Geotrail

Cameron County just released their Cameron County Sesquicentennial Geotrail. The trail is supposed to have 33 caches with 15 finds required for a coin, but so far only 24 caches are out there. No word on whether the coins are trackable. I hope so. It is a nice looking coin.



One of our favorite caches, Dobby's Home, is located in Elk State Forest in Cameron County. The county is also home to a large elk herd. It's a fun place to cache. We look forward to hunting this geotrail (despite the trackable question about the coin).

On the way to Dobby's Home



Looking out from near Dobby's Home



An elk we spotted along the way



If you visit this geotrail and haven't gotten an AGT coin for this county, there's some nice caching and a coin available. It is also a great place to get started on the Pennsylvania DCNR Legacy of Conservation Geotrail. There are 30 caches in the series.

There's more images of Cameron County posted on my AGT blog and my regular blog.

Midwest GeoBash 2010

This year we made certain we arrived at the GeoBash with time to stop and say hi on Friday evening. We planned to stop back Saturday long enough for the Reviewer Panel. Ali participated in the panel for the first time this year. I would have volunteered as well, but there were a number of early recruits. The crowd was large, friendly, and interested. As always, Trippy was a perfect master of ceremonies.



For a perfect summer Saturday, the crowd was large.




Liz and Ali with Signal



What is Rex C's hand doing with Signal? Is he saying give me all your geocoins? :-) It was fun to see Rex and say hello.



MWGB is always a super social event. KOI had a great spot in the campgrounds for a little meet and greet area.



Horseshoe Man continues to practice at the fairgrounds horseshoe pits.



After the reviewers' panel and a few pictures with Signal, we delayed our trip to Michigan and some caching long enough to try out the Oregon for our first Whereigo. The action mostly seemed to be a lot of walking back and forth to find the right spot to open the next stage of the cartridge. I'm still not convinced this is a long-term cache type. My Droid will now do Whereigo, but I'm not sure I care.


We stopped in Wauseon for lunch at their town festival before heading north to Hillsdale. Allenite has a really nice series in Lewis Emery Park. The afternoon was unusual for us since we grabbed our second virtual in as many days.


It was a nice event. We were glad we had the chance to attend.

Really Unhappy with Garmin

Ali downloaded the firmware update for her Garmin 450 and tried to install it. The 450 locked up during the install and refused to re-start. Being the nice person she is, she sent an e-mail to their on-line tech support service asking for help. Tired of waiting for them to respond to their e-mail tech help line, she called and sat through the endless hold waiting for help. The phone tech tried three things over the phone; failed with all of them; them said the unit had to be returned. He graciously promised service within 7-10 days of receiving the unit. The day after the phone call, the nearly useless e-mail tech support response arrived. It suggested trying step 2 of what the phone tech tried. Beyond that, there were no suggestions of what to do if the unit wasn't fixed or a number to call since she had tried to do this through e-mail. There was basically nothing but useless, lousy customer service.


I've got to hand it to Garmin. Their customer service behavior was so poor that they finally irritated one of the most patient people I know. After a couple of days she sent an e-mail voicing her unhappiness. The jerks responded with a pat on the head, no offer of better service than the promised 7-10 days, and most likely two lost customers. After 7,000+ finds and six Garmins we are wondering if we should go to a different brand. It wouldn't be so bad if this weren't the second Garmin she has purchased to fail while nearly new. A few years ago, we were in Niagara Falls to spend a few fun days caching with a friend. At the start of that trip her few-month old 60CsX barfed and died. If my work schedule had gone okay, we would have been caching in Europe with friends this week while Garmin had her Oregon.


She bought the 450 to replace her old PDA. Palm units are dinosaurs and both our PDA's have constant issues. She really wanted the new Garmin 62s, and I was going to get that for her and use the Oregon as a replacement for my PDA. Now she has flat out said NO to buying the 62s. It's a little stupid on Garmin's part to abuse two long-time customers (we bought our first Garmin in 2002). Garmin has this problem. They know they have this problem. They just don't care.

New Jersey Delorme Challenge

This was the second Delorme Challenge for us in nine days and the one that would finish our vacation. We spent the majority of the day at Batsto Village once again enjoying a chance to play tourist. On our way to the challenge, the blimp was tracking along with us for a good portion of the way. I wasn't aware that the NJ Delorme cache owners provided this super guide service. ;-)



In the end, this Delorme final was just a pleasant walk in the woods. It was quiet. It was fun. After the Delorme find and a few photos, we headed off for a longer walk and a few more caches before calling an end to the day and making our way west.



Of course, Lucinda and Signal joined us for the celebration.



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So what's next? I gotta admit the caching in New Jersey is super, but three years in a row for vacation???? Ali just told me that there is now a Delaware Delorme Challenge so it looks like we will start next year in Delaware; find that challenge; and skip over to New Jersey on the really cool ferry that lands near Cape May for the back half of our vacation. Maybe I can finally visit Lucy the Elephant for some Waymarking. Although, if I visit her, then the anticipation will be over. (and I'll have to stop whining that we never get to visit Lucy)

As for other future Delorme and county challenges, we are getting really close with the Ohio Delorme Challenge (9 pages) and the Ohio County Challenge (10 counties) remaining. They will be next... maybe next year. Most of the areas we need are in southeastern Ohio. Lake Katherine in Jackson County is a pretty special place and would be great to visit in the spring. Hmmm... maybe a long weekend. Beyond that, who knows? Most are out of our reach. Maybe Washington State or somewhere in New England. If we ever decide to do the Seaway Trail, we'll get a lot closer with New York, but I think that state is just too big.

It's Here!

The official GeoWoodstock IX Blog has arrived. Take a look and check back often. We'll be adding labels for attractions and restaurants, stats for you number geeks (like me), local links, and LOTS of photos of Warren and the surrounding counties. If you want to see something that's not there just post a comment and we'll do our best to deliver.

If Only I had Looked Sooner....

We are both engineers so while the number of finds aren't very important to us, playing with all the other stats gives us hours of endless amusement. We also enjoy challenge caches a lot. Recently, 366 Challenges have gained popularity, and I was wondering how close we are since we are year-round cachers in a winter snowy/summer muggy area.

When It's Not About the Numbers died, we switched to My Geocaching Profile. Its graphics are nowhere near as good as the amazing INATN site, but it's still here. MGP also doesn't give the individual county finds, but we've gotten around that with a GSAK macro. That's also a different post.

Since the 366 data is available on MGP, I decided to see how close we are to meeting the requirements of the challenge. Say It Isn't So! We need only four days. Had I known (or checked earlier), I would have crawled to a cache on Leap Day. The stats are a little weird though. We may be the only residents of Northeast Ohio's snowbelt to have one find on May 21st and two finds on July 8th while finding 39 caches on December 27th and having eight days of 20 or more finds in January.

I am already challenging Ali to a goal of at least ten finds per day of the calendar. So far, she's rolling her eyes, but she'll go for this one. :-)

An update: We're getting a new refrigerator, and Ali has said "Print the image and post it on the new refrigerator so we know which days we need." Hehehe... my plan has worked. :-)

Ammo Can Art

We were playing tourists and visiting Ringwood Manor (oh yeah, there were a few caches there too ;-) ) when we found this decorated ammo can on the woods. The cache has been out for a while so the can is seeing the effects of being outdoors, but it was still a very nice effort and something other than a great camo paint job.

Pennsylvania DeLorme Challenge

The weather was so pleasant when we left the parking area.

The first of two 1,000 foot climbs.

Uh Oh... there's math involved? :-0

Signal and Lucinda the Ladybug celebrate after six miles on the trail.

That's me thinking six miles back and wishing it wasn't going to rain. My wish did not come true.

It took almost six years to the day from our first find to head out and find this monster of a cache. After over 2,000 finds in PA, we finally figured out we had to find at least one on each page of the map book. :-)

Seriously, finishing all the pages was an amazing journey. It was our second state DeLorme Challenge and since this is our home state half-time, it really felt wonderful. The cache is not for the weak. It's a 1,000 feet rise from the parking lot to the highest point on the trail and back down again to the same elevation to make the find. When you find the cache after six miles of hiking, there is another six miles for the return trip and another 1,000 foot climb. Our journey took seven hours. The last three miles were in a hard rain. It's scary to think six years have passed since we signed the first log book.

We started caching before I started blogging. Some of the pictures below are from the early memories and fun we had in Pennsylvania.

The Auto Art Virtual Cache near Erie


Ali Playing on the swings at Crescent Park after we found one of Liz and Wes's caches (kcepenn).


Our Friends Grandpa and Grandma placed a cache at Frog Rock near Tionesta.


Wearing costumes for Jim and Cheryl's (Pirate & Crafty) web cam.


Celebrating an early milestone on the Tanbark Trail.


Biking Oil Creek in the fall hunting Snoop's caches.


Our 1000th find along the North Country Trail in McKean County