Waking Up Geocaches

We live and cache mostly in areas that see snow every winter, lots of snow. Like a number of hearty cachers, we cache year-round, but find fewer caches in the winter months where daylight is much shorter (and the sun often a happy memory), but there are a number of cachers who hang up their gps for four to six months each year. For the first few months after the weather breaks, we often find caches that have been unfound for months. It keeps providing us a readily available supply of caches to use in lonely cache challenges. Unlike's last year's warm winter, this recently past one was much like normal years leaving a readily available supply of lonely caches to qualify for new lonely cache challenges.

April, Lake County Ohio

May, Erie County Pennsylvania

May Albion, Pennsylvania

May Allegany State Park, New York

May Cambria, New York

Geodogs Reach 1,000 Caches!

Gwen and Eva recently reached 1,000 caches. They travel with us often, but usually hunt caches with us only when we are in the woods. They spend a lot of their time in the Allegheny National Forest, PA State Game Lands, state parks, and on the furniture.

We started off with three Geodogs in 2005 and the nickname Three-Headed Geodog. When Becky passed the name stuck. Eva and Gwen are getting on in years. Gwen had an ACL tear on the ANF's Tanbark Trail one year ago, and Eva's cancer returns with increasing frequency and severity. We knew it was time to get them to 1,000. They always enjoy a visit to Woodcock Lake and there's a few local cachers who are always placing new caches along the trails. The weather was cold and there was snow, but the streams had opened up and started flowing with a promise of spring.

Hopefully, there's more milestones ahead for our happy trail companions. They are fearless trail dogs and make geocaching better for us.

The Geodogs with Ali at Woodcock

Celebrating 1,000

The Geodogs have finds in three states (Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York) and are always willing to head for high terrain hides. They've been with us for all of our milestone finds.

Eva looking for the next adventure.

Waymarking With an Iphone

I'm going to step away from geocaching for one post to talk about Waymarking. I think at one time Groundspeak saw Waymarking as a means to replace both virtual and locationless caches. It took me a while to warm to the idea, but I eventually grew to find Waymarking to be a lot of fun. I like to take photos. I like to discover the history behind interesting items, and I really enjoy a good scavenger hunt.

It all sounds great, but then not much ever got done with the site to improve it. As a geocacher, I have an immense love for paperless caching. I would have been thrilled to be able to download a pocket query of Waymarks for an area we were visiting. I learned early on that I could download a very basic piece of Waymark information (the title and coordinates) to load into GSAK twenty Waymarks at a time, but it's a slow clumsy process and gives almost no information for when you are at the waymark.

In reality there are some categories in Waymarking that thrill me, but are basically useless for visiting without a better tool at the location. I really find the Photos Then and Now category to be one of the most interesting. As a geek, the idea of being at a location and looking at an image of that location from at least fifty years ago is pretty awesome..... but with no means to see that picture at the location, the category became a loser for me. The same frustration is there for the Picture Perfect Postcard category. Imagine visiting a location where a long gone postcard was created. It's a great idea, but loses it's value when the image isn't there for the visit. The same holds true for Philatelic Photos. Imagine visiting USA, Europe, or other foreign lands and finding yourself at the exact location for these historic stamp images...

When I was given an Iphone for my work, there were four things that excited me, getting a real phone (I have never liked Motorola phones including my Droid), getting Skype so I could better communicate with my staff, getting my work email when I was out of the office without needing my computer, and finally being able to buy Groundspeak's historic location app for Waymarking. I was really unhappy to find US customers need not apply for the Historic locations app. :-(

My thirst for a better way to visit Waymarks has been quenched. Geocacher and Waymarker Chilehead has used the Groundspeak open API code to develop a Waymarking site which allows quick smart phone access to the Waymarking site. The site is a super step forward. My interest in Waymarking had declined because I have been so busy, and the game takes time without newer tools. Chilehead's site rocks! A whole wealth of information is now available for waymarkers. Imagine being able to walk around an old historic town with pages of information and waymarks to visit at the quick reach of your smartphone. It changes Waymarkng instantly.

Funny thing is Waymarking keeps growing. There are almost a half-million Waymarks around the world. It took geocaching, almost thirteen years to hit two million caches. Image how the Waymarks could explode if they were brought to current technology. I'm excited. It's a new world for an untapped game.

You need to log into your account to use the app and allow location tracking, to find the nearest listings, but the site is quick and easy to use.

Once you set your filters, you will get a list of the nearest waymarks with thumbnail images.

Select a waymark and you will see the main image for the waymark, the title, the category, who posted the page, and the coordinates.

You are provided a good-sized image of the main photo used for the waymark page.

The full waymark information is displayed and available

Logging a visit is easy.

Desert Geo-Art

A few months ago, I was asked if I would be okay with having a cache named after my reviewer account as part of a Mojave Desert Geo-Art Series in California. The series is published along with a cache named for me. It's a nice thought by the cache owner. I don't usually do power trails and we've only found a baseball series for Geo_art, but if I were in the area, I might head off for this one. Besides, I would enjoy an long, hot day in the desert. It's the second cache named for my reviewer persona. The other one is in Ohio and was placed by a friend.

Our Cache Was Stolen....

In the fall I noticed a small garbage can in the desk accessories at a Target. I immediately thought cache container. After some persuasion, Ali agreed it would be a good cache container. Our Cache Is Trash was born. We placed the cache in a nearby Cleveland Metropark along a section of trail where we could cover it well.

The cache made it almost five months before it was discovered and taken. :-( Luckily for us, the thief did not take the container home. It was merely moved to a social trail over a quarter-mile away. Our luck was even better since a local cacher who also runs and had found the cache happened to catch a glimpse of the container when out on a run.

With the information sent in an email, I headed off to the park with our intrepid geodog Gwen. We were able to spot the .2 mile side trail quickly, but had to walk back and forth on the trail four or five times before I finally spotted the tiny trash can in a tree down a ravine. The new hiding spot had raised the terrain rating significantly. The person who spotted the cache indicated it was eye level from the trail. That was correct if you were standing on the trail, but the cache was up in a tree part way down the ravine. The person who moved the container must have scooted along a downed tree and reached across to the upper branch to locate the container. I was really glad I had Gwen along for this retrieval as she is a very patient dog on the trail and gave me time to recover the cache.

I was lucky to spot the small container in the tree branches. The trunk below is the one needed to reach the container.

It was interesting to see how much the basic cache had changed in the few months since it had been placed. We never expected the trash can to be the container and had placed a pill bottle with the log book inside the trash can. Someone had taken the pill bottle (I guess the big orange label with the words "Cache Log" on the outside of the pill bottle wasn't clear.) The log book was located in the trash can which had gathered a few pieces of swag.

The container will live on in a different Cleveland Metropark with its new title, Our Cache Was Trashed. Hopefully, it will have at least another five month run before it is exposed.

Zero Feet

We've been caching for a long time. Reading zero feet at the cache site doesn't happen very often, at least not until lately. Recently, I have been at at least four different caches where the distance read zero feet while I was at the cache. Has anyone else noticed zero feet as the distance to cache when standing at the cache site?

Logging Events

I am wearing my Mr. Ollivander wizard hat for this post.

We really enjoy attending and hosting events. We have a special Signal notebook that we use for attendees who wish to sign the logs at our events. For us, it's a scrapbook of times spent with cachers. I've noticed a number of events with notes "requiring" the log book be signed. The Cache Listing Guidelines specifically prohibit this practice with the logging guideline stating, "An event cache can be logged online if the cacher has attended the event. Event cache owners can request that cachers sign a logbook, but this is optional and cannot be a requirement for logging an event cache."

So relax, enjoy your event, and ask attendees to leave a memory for you.

Kinzua Valley Trail Coin

Our Kinzua Valley Trail coin has arrived. It's unique for us since this is the first trackable, wooden coin we've owned. It's a nice coin with some really well done packaging. We had a great time on the four-cache geotrail. If you want a nice, hike and you will in Northwest Pennsylvania, this is a good trail for you. You can check out our adventures on the trail at this post.

Marion County Geo Trail

We hadn't planned to spend a month outside of Pennsylvania, but a lack of heat in the house was enough to keep us away. We've been working toward the Great 880 Challenge which requires ten caches in each Ohio county. Our efforts last year to push Marion County over ten seemed to always meet with a mix of dnf's, muggled caches, and missing caches. We were both feeling snakebit in Marion County so a few weekend days with no snow flying and the lure of a coin at the end of a geotrail were enough to get us back to Marion to push this county past ten.

We made three journeys to Marion before returning victoriously with our coin. We found some really nice caches, and spotted a few areas that may offer additional chances to view prairie wildflowers next summer. The geotrail caches were really easy hides but they were all interesting because they gave a view of some piece of Marion County history. I really enjoyed chasing through the county and learning while geocaching. In the end we pushed Marion way beyond the required ten finds of the Great 880 Challenge and now stand at 43. We were also able to visit a couple dozen waymarks on our journey. It was a super way to help push the calendar towards spring.

Thirteen Counties Challenge

We posted our latest challenge today. We have a planned list of different challenges, including a few twists on Busy Day Challenges, a county challenge, and a state park challenge. We really enjoy our journeys when we chase some of the tougher challenges so hopefully our new challenge will inspire others to seek finds in the thirteen colonies.

We are still working on two tough challenges. The Great 880 is still on our plans some day. We are down to 319 caches remaining, and we've reduced the number of counties where we still need finds from 48 to 43. We are also still hunting The Ohio State Parks Geocache Challenge. We added four more state parks to the found list last year bringing our total to 36 and leaving 19 more to go for the 55 required parks.

Last year's Great 880 hunt took us to find an unexpected wildflower prairie in Seneca County.

The Year in Review... and Looking Forward

It's the start of a new year. As numbers geeks we make geo-goals every year and then check back at the end of the year before making new goals for the upcoming year.

If we were keeping score, we missed a lot more goals than we made. Since all that really matters is having fun, this past year was a super year for us geocaching.

The winter was unusually warm, but we got to enjoy a bright, snowy day geocaching in January.

We had enough snow so the attendees at our Winterfest event had a great time.

In April, we spent a Saturday on Cattaraugus County New York completing the Amish GeoTrail.

The early May weather didn't give us sunshine and blue skies, but we got to enjoy a mini-vacation while returning east for Ali's nephew's graduation from college. The return trip gave an opportunity to find a few caches along beautiful Pine Creek and to inch a small step closer to completing the Legacy of Conservation Geo Trail.

May was also the month we enjoyed our favorite mega event, ASP Geobash.

We made three trips during the summer to Clarion and Venango Counties as we worked to complete the Clarion NCT Geo Trail. Our journeys included hiking and biking with a few tunnels included.

We also continued our newer-ending quest to complete the 100-cache North Country Trail Geo Trail. A few caches each time and a few visits were the best we could complete this year, but one of those journeys included a wonderful holiday hike on the NCT near Kinzua Reservoir.

For the late summer, we enjoyed the amazing Seaway Trail GeoTrail.

Adding Arizona as a new state with caches found was an unexpected and happy surprise.

How do we top this past year? We'll reach our 10,000 find milestone early in the year. We've been trying to decide which Pennsylvania cache will be number 10,000. There's still twenty states where we haven't found geocaches. We've talked about Montana, Colorado, Minnesota, Utah, Nevada, and maybe Florida. One or two is probably all we will visit, but it is fun to think of the adventures that may await.

We will try to finish the Clarion NCTGT this year and hopefully the NCT GeoTrail. We'll also spend some of our caching time finishing the Legacy of Conservation Geo Trail. It is scheduled to be closed by summer so we will be making a spring trip in Pennsylvania. Hopefully we will be able to add on a day or two at Pine Creek Gorge. Whereever we go, it will be a new adventure.

Of course, this post would be no fun without new goals for 2013 so here they are...

I hope your finds are plentiful and your dnf's few.

Kinzua Valley Trail

Last fall we had the chance to complete the Kinzua Valley Trail. It may be the shortest geotrail in existence. Just four caches need to be found to earn a trackable geocoin. Most of the trail is flat, but the caches were spaced far apart. The whole journey is about seven miles round trip. We've enjoyed prior visits to the Kinzua Valley Trail, and this was no different. The trail has been extended since our last. We got a late start and returned after dark, but it was a super adventure. I was late in sending in paperwork for our coin, but will post an image once it arrives. It will be the first wooden coin in our collection. I think the coin was made by our friend at Elkwood Arts. Coin or not, the caches make this trail worth a visit.