Benchmark #200 - TIDAL 112

It took us 4 years to find our second 100 benchmarks, but we did it in Tacoma, Washington. I knew part of the old city hall structure was a benchmark (it's the roof of the clock tower). What I did not know was there was a tidal disk on the building. We took some photos of actual building (which is a nice structure) and crossed the street to see if it was on the National Register. While there one of us noticed the disk which became benchmark #200. I know 100 in four years is only 25 a year, but that's almost a benchmark every other week. Hopefully, #300 will be quicker.

It Was Bound To Happen...

We lost a travel bug . We've moved over a thousand trackables, and we knew sooner or later something would happen. Still we felt terrible. We were caching in Medina and picked up our first Gecko from our second last find. It was with us at the parking lot. We grabbed one last find and were on our way home when I gathered the other bugs to place in my camera bag. Oops, where's the Gecko? We stopped and checked the geomobile, no luck. I checked again when we got home, no luck. The next day I went back to the two parks where we picked up the Gecko and our last find, no luck. The Gecko is gone. The owner was great about the loss, but we're still sad the Gecko never got to explore many caches.

Garmin Oregon Dies Again....

One week before GeoWoodstock, the Garmin Oregon has tanked again. The unit managed about 500 finds before it died this time. The first time it died during a firmware update. This time it won't start with the Garmin start screen blinking on and off. This $400+ piece of junk has broken twice in about 1,000 finds and is a sad showing for the company that was for so long the premier handheld gps for geocachers. Maybe if Garmin stopped spending resources on an outdated, retro geocaching platform to compete with Geocaching.com, they could spend resources fixing the nagging problems with their latest handheld platform. I will be purchasing a different brand this weekend. Garmin should hang its head for chasing a nine-year customer to a different brand.

Bang, Bang! Snip, Snip!

If you're attending GeoWoodstock, you'll notice a cache in the area called Bang, Bang! Snip, Snip! It seemed completely appropriate for a barber shop/outdoor store. The photo below from outside the business says it all. Please note, this place is the social hot spot of Youngsville on Saturday mornings.

We hope to see you at GeoWoodstock.

Find Me... the Movie

This movie with a geocaching twist came and went a while ago, but we were out caching recently and found a cache with a log book from the movie. Old timers (like me) will remember when matchbooks were shaped like this Hmmm... maybe they still are. I don't get out much anymore. It was an interesting log book.

New State

We added Oregon to our state totals two weeks ago. We were able to find a cache, find a benchmark, visit a waymark, and post a new waymark. It was a fun trip. We did the original stash, but really enjoyed our time along Salmon Creek in view of Mount Hood. Portland was a fun town to Waymark. Our lone benchmark was cheap. It was the dome of the Pioneer Courthouse and a lousy photo as well. I was too tired to plan for benchmark hunting or we would have visited some nice marks.

This brings us to 25 states with caches found; 13 states with benchmarks; posted waymarks in 24 states; and visited waymarks in 26 states. Its time to add a few license plates to our profile page.

Along Salmon Creek with good caches and a super view of Mount Hood

Pioneer Courthouse Dome... it really was a cheap benchmark find. The building is beautiful, but not very accessible to visitors. :-(

Portland art sculpture PoD visited as a Smithsonian Art Inventory category item

The bike tenders at Powell's Books in downtown Portland. The book spine bike tenders were creative and used. Any bookstore with over 1 1/2 million titles in stock is a mecca to book junkies like us.

Badge Magic

I really like Garmin E-Trex units. The size is perfect for holding in my hand, and they are easy to use. Eventually they all have one big problem, the band on the edge gets loose and will eventually come off the unit. Using a wide rubber band, I have taken preventive action with both my Vista HCx and my very old Legend C, my Waymarking gps.

A while back a fellow local cacher had mentioned Badge Magic as a means to re-attach bands. Some scouts use Badge Magic to attach badges to their uniforms. We were recently at a local store hunting for ammo cans when I noticed they had a scout section and asked if they had Badge Magic. I was a bit surprised to see it was a sheet of adhesive.

The Legend C was in poor shape with the band loose on both long sides. Without the rubber-band, it would have failed a long time ago. The good news is Badge Magic worked perfectly! The band is now snug and ready for some Waymarking.

#7500 in Two Mile Run Park

There hasn't been much strictly Geocaching to blog about. We finished qualifying for the Geocachers Don't Hibernate Challenge with our 30th caching day on St. Patrick's Day. We also started a little spring maintenance work on our caches. The only problem with that was the floods started after we did some of the maintenance.

Despite a persistent snow cover, we've actually gotten more caches this winter than we have in the past few winters. The last weekend of winter or the first weekend of spring was a great time to head out for a milestone cache. We pondered going to Oil Creek State Park and hunting the Gerard Hiking Trail cache or heading for a cache at Two Mile Run Park. Tough decision... in the end Two Mile Run won. There are three four terrain caches in the park. We made 2MR number 7499. It turned out to be a super cache and the best of the day. The cache is very near where two streams join before emptying into Justus Lake. There are a couple small falls in the area. #7500 turned out to be four terrain cache called Chippy. It was a nice cache, but not as nice as 2MR. We ended with a dnf of the last four terrain in the park, a six-stage multi.

We came back Sunday to Venango and had a super visit to the Gerard Hiking Trail cache. It was a fun hike and a cache that would have been an great choice for 7500 as well. It was a memorable weekend with a true promise of spring.

Covered Bridges

Covered Bridges and geocaching just seem to go together. Quite country roads and relaxing on a weekend seem to hit a new height with a covered bridge thrown in. In Ohio, there is even a challenge cache for covered bridges.

Windsor Bridge

Yesterday we spent a quiet afternoon in Ashtabula County hunting covered bridge caches. We found six and dnf'd two for a fun afternoon. Ali checked this morning and said we have 18 of the 25 required finds to qualify for the Ohio Covered Bridge Challenge.

Another visit to Ashtabula and a nice spring afternoon spent in Columbiana County should be enough to complete the challenge.

Graham Road Bridge has been bypassed,
but offers a unique picnic option.

Ashtabula County has made a tourism industry of covered bridges. Their roads are filled with visitors in the autumn. We have enjoyed caching in the afternoon at these bridges with the miata (but not this afternoon... brrrr)

miata at State Bridge ~ Ashtabula

365

It has been a while since this post. This past Sunday we headed off to cache in Summit County. We wanted to find one to fill in day 365 and hoped to find ten for the day. We got nine. We started our day with a find near a trail along the old Ohio & Erie Canal, moved on for a couple finds in a nice historical cemetery which included the grave of Dr. Bob, and finished off at a large city park in Norton, Ohio.



So now what do we do until February 29th comes around? Well, I have convinced Ali to work for ten finds per day. At the start of September we had 80 days with fewer than 10 finds. Now that is 63 days. Unfortunately, 10 of the 63 days are in February... brrrrrr. We won't have to wait for leap year in Ohio, since the Ohio challenge is a 365. We can find that one once we head to the western part of the state.

Geocachers Don't Hibernate

A northeast Ohio cacher placed a challenge cache called The Geocachers Don't Hibernate Challenge. To qualify for the challenge, cachers must find at least one cache on any 30 days between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. In a lot of areas that may not be a big challenge. In northeast Ohio, it takes a spirited effort.

For us, this is doable. We cache twelve months a year. This year, it has been a little tougher. There are usually multiple warm-ups in the area during each winter giving good caching days and removing the snow base. Besides, the normal average temperature is above freezing by now. This year has been different. We've only had one big warm-up, a few quick passes beyond freezing, and the ground has been covered in snow for most of two months.

Despite the colder weather and lots of snow, we have 17 days with caches found. During that time we've found 74 caches including a mix of multis and puzzles. We've attended two events and found an earthvirtual. We have only resorted to park-and-grabs twice. We've cached in temperatures between -6 and 30 degrees with a few really windy days. I've really enjoyed this challenge. It's been a great way to shorten the winter. With longer days and (hopefully) warmer temperatures, it should be fairly easy to add the last 13 days.

December 25 - Geauga County Ohio - 27 degrees



December 26 - Lake County Ohio - 22 degrees 30-40 mile per hour winds



December 27 - Valley View, Ohio - 22 degrees 25 mile per hour winds



December 28 - Geneva State Park - 22 degrees 20 mile per hour winds



December 29 - Conneaut, Ohio - 29 degrees



December 30 - Warren, Pennsylvania - 30 degrees



January 2 - Union City, Pennsylvania - 28 degrees 20 mile per hour winds



January 15 - Mayfield, Ohio - 29 degrees 15 mile per hour winds



January 16 - Rocky River, Ohio - 21 degrees 20 mile per hour winds



January 22 - Chapman State Park - 6 degrees below zero



January 29 - Lake County Ohio - 22 degrees



January 30 - Twinsburg, Ohio - 28 degrees 20 mile per hour winds



February 5 - Euclid, Ohio - 25 degrees 20 mile per hour winds

GeoWoodstock's Second Trackable

The Eagle Cachekinz is the second GeoWoodstock IX trackable. It will be available very soon on the official GeoWoodstock website, but attendees at today's Caching With Eagles II geomeet can buy the Eagle in advance. The Bear Cachekinz will also be available at today's event. Attendees at last year's event were treated to multiple eagle sightings from this super viewing platform and the surrounding area. The weather will be a quite normal (and warm for this winter) 33 degrees today in Warren.

Winterfest 2011

When we left our house the temperature was -3. Ten miles later when we arrived at Chapman State Park, the temperature was down to -6. A team of cachers from Buffalo were already there for the event.



When we spent New Years Day here placing the caches, the trails were so icy we had to shorten the event. We usually spread 8-10 event caches over about 3 1/2 miles of hiking. On New Years we gave up with eight caches spread over about 2 1/2 miles of trails. The weather today was so cold, I was glad the attendees were on the trail for a much shorter time.




Big congrats to GEOCATZ!. They celebrated find number 1,500 at today's event. Last January, they celebrated 1,000 at the Winterfest.




Ali with a bag of prizes on our way to the final meeting area. As usual when we host this event, we didn't get to enjoy much of the day so this walk was special.





Besides us, five NEOGEO's braved the cold and snow to make the trip east. loftongal is not in the picture. She was signing the cache log.


Ahhhhh... our reward at the end came from the newly opened Tims in Warren. Hot chocolate in a mug!


There were a lot fewer people this year than last. I was amazed 110 people showed up to cache in weather this cold. By the time we arrived at the park the Polar Bear Plunge had already been canceled since the cold water team couldn't guarantee getting participants from the open water to the warming hut without skin damage in the single degree temperatures. We had two brave cachers planning to take the plunge this year.

It literally takes days to prepare for this event each year and each year I say this was the last. Why break tradition? I can't imagine doing this one again. Maybe it's time for a big March event in NEOGEO land. We haven't had time to host both winter events since we became reviewers. Hmmmmm.

Geocaching Poll Results

The poll results are back. Sixty-one people participated (Thank You).

Most poll participants like:
1,000 Cache Pocket Queries.
Being Able to Run My Finds Every Three Days Instead of Seven.
Voting for Favorites.
Downloading Pocket Queries Instead of Receiving E-mail Attachments.
The New Stats Page.

Poll participants weren't so excited about:
The Beta Map.
The New Look of the Forums.
Souvenirs.

While 1,000 cache pocket queries carried the highest percentage of positive responses, the new favorites system gathered the most support (28%) as the new feature most liked. Interestingly, 5% of the responses also marked the favorites system as the new feature least liked.

There were no real negative results. The response to souvenirs seems to be indifferent at the moment. The forums have a base of geocachers who don't use them which was reflected by one quarter of all the responses. The Beta Map was rated positively by only 53% of the responses, but looks like it could be a big winner if a cacher's finds could be filtered.

This was fun. It certainly wasn't scientific. I enjoyed stopping back to see the voting progress. Again, thanks to all who participated.