A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

Geocaching

A tough hunt

Went geocaching with Darren today. Spent about a good 3 1/2 hours or so going at it. Tough work at some of the spots, I’ll tell you that!

Darren and I hit six today, bringing my total to 11. Watching the weather for Saturday as we were hoping to make a full day of hiking and finding caches. This hobby has quickly become addictive and exciting. Almost obsessive.

For those who haven’t a clue what we’re doing frolicking around looking for boxes of treasure, here’s one we found today:

geocaching_loot.jpg

I know what you have to be thinking: What in the world would you be out running around for to gather junk like that.

Well, I don’t really take anything.

My goal is to find the cache and sign the logbook. It’s all about the hunt. However, some of these caches have travel bugs and geocoins — items you log on to and track where they’ve been and where they’ve gone. These are wild as you can be part of sending something on its way, which is really cool. Currently, I’m in possession of three of these items (I’m hoping if we get good weather this weekend that we’ll hit some good places and I can spring these suckers out there. I don’t want them to get stuck somewhere!)

The one I picked up today is the “Bexbach, Germany” Unite for Diabetes Travel Bug. Being that I have a borderline case of diabetes (and likely will fight it for the rest of my life), this one (and the geocoin I currently have) are near to me.

The other bug I currently have is the Big Apple Panda – which is trying to get to China and Ireland before going home to Seattle. We’ll see how it goes. I’m trying to find the best place I can drop it to help it along its path. I also want to take a photo of this one to put on that page.

The geocoin I have is a WDD 2007 Commemorative Geocoin — handed out on World Diabetes Day in November. This one I want to put somewhere I know it will move, considering it stayed in the previous place for several months before I grabbed it.

Oh, for you baseball fans — Darren has this one and is trying to get it to Cooperstown (not a lot of big caches there). Check it out as it’s one of the coolest travel bugs I’ve seen.

Click on any of those links and it will take you to the page of the bug or coin and will tell you where it’s going and where it’s been.

As for today…

Six hit. We hit two in Fortin Park in Oneonta. Both decently easy finda — more frustrating than hard. They were both in good locations and we had to dig around some.

Quickly stopped for something to drink, then headed over to Riddell State Park to try that one. However, we couldn’t get the right coordinates in Darren’s GPS, so we basically wasted about 15 minutes (maybe more). Not to be deterred, we moved on.

We then ended up at the Audubon sanctuary outside of Oneonta and got a good, uphill hike in. However, as we uncovered this one, we saw “muggles.” Now, before geocaching, I had NO clue what a muggle was. Apparently, it’s something out of Harry Potter. It also refers to someone not in the game. Anyway, they kind of peeked at us and I’m hoping like hell nothing happens to the cache.

After that, we decided to conquer this one. From where we parked, it was 700 yards (give or take) from us. So we started to trek. But, we have to go around the pond. One way isn’t going to work too well, so we go the other (trekking through the snow again) and keep going and going and going.

And going.

Still with me?

Anyway, we come to a creek. Darren goes across. I have a bad feeling. He talks me into it – “we’re only like 120 yards away.” So, I cross, getting my feet a little wet as well. Thankfully, I wore my duck boots (I do need a new pair of these, however). Now, I want to take the trail. Darren wants to take a “shortcut.”

Mistake No. 1.

And, he has control of the GPS.

Mistake No. 2.

See, the reason Darren and I work well together when we geocache is this — I go slower and watch the GPS, he goes off ahead and kind of goes by the direction, searching to figure out the clues and where it might be. Then I catch up, telling him left or right, how far etc.

Another 20 minutes goes and I’m getting frustrated. We’re not near it. Keep getting further away and it’s getting dark. If we don’t find it soon, we ain’t going to find it.

I get in an opening with the GPS and finally get a good signal. We finally find it (wish I had taken a photo), sign the log and grab the diabetes TB. Now, we need to get back to the car. We pass this gal walking her dog (somehow she beats us back to the parking area. I think we should have gone THAT way). Tough walk back, but when done a pretty solid victory, I think. It was a gym-worthy cardio workout and well worth the trek. I’m glad we found it.

We hit two after dark — one at a rest area and one in downtown Oneonta, a nano. That thing was TINY! I like nanos, I think, though. I look forward to attempting to find more.

Now, we’ll hope for good weather this weekend to hit a bunch more. I’m sure there will be more tales here. Today was good for me though. Helped me free my mind a bit.

More later.

Random thoughts

OK, I’ll get the geocaching thoughts out of the way. Those of you reading the blog for other reasons are probably thinking I’ve gone mad with this geocaching thing. Yes, probably so. What’s even worse is eventually I’m going to want to purchase a handheld GPS (maybe once I get my taxes back as I see I can get a lower-level garmin for like 85 bucks). This way, I won’t have to rely on others.

That being said, my daily geocaching find: I now have figured a way to put these places on my PDA (which means I’ll actually use this thing now, yay!) I set up these queries and now have them set up for make this file from my bookmarks. Therefore, if we’re caching in Cooperstown, I have all the area caches in one spot. Same with Delhi. Or Oneonta. Or other area spots. I’m going to keep them rolling, too. Problem is, you can only run five queries a day, so you have to be careful to get the ones you really need for that day. I am going to do a bunch over the next few days and I’ll have them set up. Then, if I need to update the day we go, that’s fine. If not, at least I have to basic ones.

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This weather is maddening. I just saw a bus dropping kids off. At 12:50. So that means schools are letting out early. Goodie.

I’m set to cover a girls game tonight (which is apparently still on) and of course where they are having it is straight up a hill. I hope, for all that is good in this world, that the college makes sure to sand the hell out of those roads so people can make it up and not wreck. This college isn’t the best with things like that (ironic that it costs like 35K a year to go there), so I can cross my fingers. I’m only doing the first game.

—

The Phytins’ haven’t looked too bad this spring from what I’ve seen. A couple of rough outings and Cole has mouthed off about “only” getting $500K. Of course other Phils phans are up in arms about this.

Look, part of being drafted and signing is knowing you’re controlled for a while. That’s business. Deal with it. Once you get to arbitration, you’ll get paid. And as much as I love Cole Hamels, he has to actually, oh, I don’t know, stay healthy for a full year before I’d like to see them throwing long-term deals at him.

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I’ve also added a new link to the top of the page called MyStats. This is a place where those banner-type things are put. From sites like Flickr and Geocaching.com. They hold stats etc. So far there are two in there. If I am on sites that have more, I’ll add them to that page. I wanted to put them on the main page but can’t, for the life of me, seem to figure it out.

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OK, gonna go get changed and head to the gym before I have to go to work. Should be a fun night. Hopefully the state DOT is out so my trip to and from work today isn’t too bad.

More later!

The weather

When I went to work today, it was 58 in my car and sunny.

I wanted to go geocaching so bad! Alas, it was off to work. 🙁

Some freezing rain is on the way and some regular rain, which, in theory, should wipe out some snow.

Sunny and in the 40s Thursday. Saturday is going to be around 33 with some snow showers. Those are my days off, so I’m hoping to do some caching those days. Darren and I are talking about starting early Saturday and trying to find a bunch around here.

At the same time, the camera needs to come with me. I need photos for my photo blog!

I’ve also added some new geocaching blogs/sites to my blogroll. If interested, check ’em out! Also, for any geocachers visiting — how the heck do you guys get that thing that shows how many caches you’ve found/hidden??

Not much to say right now. More later.

A day later — My geocaching thoughts

OK, I’ve had a day to let the geocaching afternoon go through my mind. Reliving the hunt, the find, the afternoon.

And man, I’m addicted.

Maybe it’s good that Darren and I found a bunch of good caches. Though we didn’t find two in the same sort of area (trucking through a park/woods in 6-7 inches of snow makes that difficult), we still found five.

Some thoughts:

I’ve decided that though the swapping of “swag” is entertaining and fun, the hunt is better. Signing the log book is the real treasure, in my mind. Though I grabbed a pin at one place (I collect some pins) and a small bank at another, I left more than I took at places and thought that was more fun. It’s not like there are million dollar prizes in these things! The hunt is where it’s at though. There’s a true sense of accomplishment when you find a well-hidden cache — especially in the snow.

I didn’t bring my camera out of car this time. As some of you who read my blog know — I’m a very serious amateur (sometimes pro as I have been paid for it, but I consider myself an amateur for these purposes!) photographer and I have some pretty good equipment. That being said, I didn’t want to risk carrying all of that out there and having something happening to it (especially being I recently paid 300+ to have my main camera fixed!) Next time, though, I’ll be carrying as I think there would have been some AWESOME shots for my photo blog yesterday.

Planning. Though I thought Darren and I planned decently enough, the truth is we didn’t do it well enough. I think when going geocaching, you should have a route or area you want to cover and try and download everything from each cache there. That way, you’re prepared. Maybe not plan every one you are going to hit, but at least give yourself options to have it all.

I also need to learn more about paperless. I made PDF files of the pages from the main geocaching site, but it didn’t read well on my Dell Axim X50. So, I need to know how to convert those GPX files to something I can read on the PDA. I like to be able to see people’s comments and hints when we’re searching.

Finally, I need to keep researching to learn more about geocoins, tracking bugs and what to do when you see a log is missing — do you replace? Just tell the owner? If you can replace, I might buy a couple of small notebooks to keep with us when geocaching. Darren and I have plotted a bunch of caches we’re going to hit. Our county and surrounding counties seem to be loaded with them. Not sure how popular it is around here, but it seems to be a blast. We’ll likely do a few more with the snow, but I’m really looking forward to spring weather!

More later!

The geocaching hunt

Darren and I went on a Geocaching expedition today. If you remember, I wrote about geocaching the other day.

This was my first roll with this game and we learned a few things:

  • Darren goes too fast…
  • Snow stinks to go in, but makes the hunt more interesting…
  • You need to go slow with the GPS to be able to see where you are going etc.
  • We need to plan better next time as we might have been able to hit more.

All that being said, it was a blast. We ended up finding five — all in super spots. We didn’t find two others — too much snow. And there were ones we could have probably found if we planned better. That will come in time, though.

The next goal is to plan how to do these on a route. That way, we can kind of plan the way a bit.

Got a tracking coin and bug and plan on setting them free soon — when there’s less snow. For those who haven’t done this — if you have a GPS, you might want to consider doing it. It’s a blast and a ton of good exercise!