cjf

Sounds great!

Details......details......benchmark....intersection station....

This is one of my recent favorites. As I stepped off the cruise ship and saw the radio tower BM UV5702. I noticed a bald eagle slowly flying around and around and around the tower. So I frantically whip out my camera, zoom in the to extent possible, and take my picture. I was so excited to see a new thread of BM pictures where this one would fit right in!

I'll give it a whirl.

So you "left no stone un-turned?" Excellent story! Colleen

We recently got back from a vacation to very Northern California (with a side trip into Oregon). Here are some of my favorite bench-marky pictures. While in Oregon, we crossed this very interesting bridge. I thought it looked like a good place for a benchmark so I peered at the bridge as my husband sped through. Sure enough! Saw one, stopped, and went on to find three benchmarks on that bridge! (The side trip to Oregon was a fluke, so I hadn't downloaded any Oregon benchmarks - but I got some anyway!) OA0833 Here's my favorite from my unsuccessful search for High Bluff 1871 LV1079. I call it "View from the disk that isn't LV1079."

My finds for this weekend: I re-visited and posted a note (I already logged it in December 2004) for HS3120 R 176 RESET 1962 A new find: AA9739 M 1456 RESET 1995

Found this while visiting Joshua Tree National Park. First to find! This is looking towards Twenty Nine Palms, California. EV3484 The wild flowers were gorgeous through out the park. And there's more than Joshua Trees in the park. Who knew?

One more: HT0979, H 29, 1937 On the UC Berkeley campus.

Thanks! I'm less confused now. I have high hopes of getting another one today! Colleen

Maybe I missed a memo, or am Bingo-challenged, but I'm a little (ok, a lot) confused about the Bingo portion of this contest. I've downloaded BENCHMARK BINGO 1.xls. I've identified contest worthy benchmarks - even found one already! - but I'm not sure how to use the spreadsheet. Is the spreadsheet the bingo card and found benchmarks go in the appropriate cell? Maybe someone could post an example of how we can use the spreadsheet to tabulate our results? Second question, any preferences on when we log contest finds in the Benchmark Logging thread? One entry per week? Or whenever........ Colleen

I found HT1418, C 884 on my way to work this morning. cjf

I'll give it a go! Colleen

How about when you're reading a "You know you're a benchmarker when..." forum and read in someone's post : and think that sounds familiar..... Sure enough. I found it two years ago, the last one to find it before CallawayMT found it recently. And I do the "There's a benchmark there" routine with my teenage daughters. They just roll their eyes. I try to tell them to be grateful they have a mom with an interesting hobby.

Palm based paperless caching. Cachemate on either my Treo 700P or my old Tungsten C. No plans to buy new equipment for Wherigo. It sure would be nice if Wherigo worked what whatigot.

Here's another "under the wire" that even has wire in the photo! (Stupid fence.........) HT0496 and HT0497 were fun to find because they are literally right next to each other. HT0497 was a reset to HT0496 because a rod couldn't be placed over the first benchmark because of bridge railings. So I got a two-fer. This is from a scenic area in the San Francisco Bay Area, Crystal Springs Reservoir. Hard to imagine this is only about 20 minutes south of San Francisco!

Gallet, Thanks for the "elaborate explanation for a simple function." The backlight function has been driving me nuts. I didn't realize pressing the power button twice would bring up my backlight settings. That's far simpler than what I had been doing. cjf

Kewaneh: Where is this right of way marker? I'll be in the Central Valley in June and would like to see if for myself! cjf

The same area I described above but using US Topo - West: 3.86 MB.

I'm also in the San Francisco Bay Area (South Bay). Just on a whim, I checked to see how much memory street maps of Antioch, Concord, Fremont, Hayward, Mill Valley, Napa, Oakland, San Jose, Santa Rosa, South San Francisco, and Sunnyvale, CA would take if loaded all at once. (Essentially a rectangle with San Francisco in center, north to Santa Rosa, South to almost Santa Cruz, East to the I-580/205 interchange, West to Pacific Ocean.) All those maps are 20.8 MB in MapSource City Select North America v 7. If you're planning on carrying all those maps with you at all times, you might want a lot of memory. Me? I just load maps for the area I'll be caching in on a particular day, not the entire San Francisco Bay Area.

And if you decide to search without a metal detector and start poking around and pulling up grass-like vegetation in search of the benchmark, note that vegetation is also protected by the National Park Service. They will pull up in their patrol car and ask you what you are are doing. About that time you'll remember Point Reyes is a National Park and messing with anything is a no no. Fortunately, it was only one clump of vegetation by the side of a road and fence. I had all my benchmarking data in my PDA, the two officers looked at it, looked at me (a forty-something woman - little or no threat ) and let me off with a warning. I still can't believe I was pulling up vegetation in a national park! What was I thinking? Ah yes.....my brain cells were consumed by the thrill of the hunt.......I wasn't thinking.

HS2994 , REG

Today's finds: HT1518, REG HT1484, REG HT1496, REG HT1529, REG I have high hopes of getting my count into double digits soon!

Have you considered a Garmin Quest? That's the unit I use when I'm driving around. My primary Geocaching GPSr is a eTrex Vista, which I use after I get to the cache location. The Quest doesn't say street names, but you do get verbal directions ("In 300 hundred feet turn left"). You can manually enter coordinates. I've also used it to find geocaches on occassion when I didn't want to haul two GPSrs on trips. A big bonus is that the Quest and eTrex use the same mapping program so I only need to know one program! Not sure about the chip. I just know I've been happy with my Quest and eTrex combination. Oh, and it is within your price range. (Another bonus! ) Have fun shopping!

I'm getting off to a slow start this contest. Oh well. HT3003, REG HT3424, REG HT3414, REG