GeoRoo

Only since Sept 26?....I had a TB sit in a cache near San Fran CA for over 9 months and then it finally went MIA. Be careful what you ask for. Seems like any TB I ask about disappears. 4 out of 7 I let loose are now MIA. I'm about to give up on sending out TB's. Good luck and I found the cachers in MT are some of the best. They'll get to it in their own time. Just don't get them riled up.......

Darn, I could be up for a Swamp Edge Heckler, but I have my girls this weekend. Little Blue was just wet behind the ears this time last year.....and that was swamp water too!....... Have fun.

Wow!....Blindleader if you have it all wiped out then I bow down in your presence. I started out last week thinking I was the only one insane enough to try for this in a short time. I'm just getting home from my 1,100 mile plus WDC trip and I'm not anywhere close to finishing it, so you don't have to worry. I did 36 pages, so if my math is right I should be at 76. I have all the hard ones done, so it won't be too tough to knock out the remaining. What a awesome drive around the state. I started out last Wed. in the pouring down rain to grab pages 63 and 64. Got as far as Auburn and said to heck with driving further south and went back home for the night. Got up early Th. morn and headed south. Started at page 47 and worked my way counter clockwise around the state. I see I was behind you on 3 caches through the SE section. Darn, I see you didn't have any problem with Cultus Hole. I was going to do the northern route, but didn't hear back from the cache owner and was afraid to do that in my car. I did the southern route and came up with a DNE on page 35 at A Great Little Overlook cache. What an incredible drive that is from Glenwood to Goldendale. I skipped pages 37 and 38 as I get down that way hunting and fishing quite often, so I can knock them out any time. The ones all through the SE corner were the toughest in terms of driving. Long way between caches or lack of caches!.....I wish I had waited a week and been able to grab your caches. I'm sure it would have saved me hundreds of miles of driving. I placed a total of 5 caches, so I'm going to freak if they are right next to yours!....... I placed micros in 36, 29A, 29B a small cache in 35 and a regular in 116. I didn't have any caches around the Spokane area, so grabbed those late in the day. Drove through downtown Spokane at 7pm and figured I could grab an easy micro in the dark....NOT All the bums come out at night and it's sad that Spokane has a large population. After giving up on several I headed out of town. I saw the Dirt Hill micro come up and went after that........Not my idea of a nice caching experience with dozens of beer bottles and cans all over the place. As I walked down the trail with my flashlite I really had to question my sanity. There was a ????? coming up the road/trail at me and he said Hi, so I said Hi back. It took me 5 mins or so to find the micro. Why was a micro in the woods in a homeless area????? I found it and got the heck out of there. That took care of page 89. I then headed north to nicer country and needed to find a place to camp for the night. Many of the campgrounds and parks are now closed for the season, so I pulled into the closed Pend Orielle County Park. There was a nice new bathroom and a nice enough spot I could throw up my tent for the night. It was only 8pm, so figured I'd run into the park and grab page 105. Walking down the road I could see lights and a big dog started to bark! I could see a guy standing at the window of a mobile home, so walked up the driveway. Turned out that he's the park ranger and lives there year around. He was nice enough to allow me to camp at the gate and when I asked if he knew about the geocache he said he knew about it, but didn't know where it was. I said it was .24 miles NW and would he mind if I went after it. He said no problem and have fun. Wow, cool guy. Off I went and then up the side road. Cache description was confusing, so I ended up hiking way farther than I had to. I was in a hurry, so when I got close to the cache a large animal exploded from the side of the trail. Deer, bear?????most likely a deer, as this happened several times on this cache!......Cache was an easy find, so I took a short cut back to my camp. Not quite as I came out on a unrecognizable road and went the wrong way!........Luckily I could see the glow from the rangers house about 1/4 mile away and got headed in the right direction. Note to self always waymark where I'm camped....... From there it was a beautiful drive north and west as I worked my way across the northern half of the state. The fall colors were absolutely gorgeous and if you get the chance do that part of the state ASAP. Blindleader helped me out as I was able to see what caches he did 2 weeks ago and follow in his foot steps. Pages 103 and 102 and then to 116 will add about 100 plus miles of driving. I was running late on 116 last night, so took a short cut up the Aeneas Valley and placed a new cache along the Sanpoli River in a beautiful valley. It's a crime there aren't more caches in this part of the state. Today was my best page count at 8. You can't bang out caches like some think. The lack of caches in the SE and NE make it tough. My caches and Blindleaders will help out, but it's still going to involve over 1,000 miles of driving. I was using my laptop and National Geographic TOPO software. I was very impressed with the TOPO software and it only took me on one "dead end" road. I averaged 37mpg in my Honda and camped out every night. Weather was mild all week and other than the rain at the start was dry all week. No flat tires and I missed all the deer that tried to commit suicide. One sad note a chipmunk is no more near Gifford. Lots of hunters especially near Omak and Winthrop. I met a nice couple from Ohio at Washington Pass and introduced them to geocaching. I see M10bike was up that way the other day. Won't be long till this cache is buried in deep snow and page 112 is unreachable. This trip was definately one of my geocaching highlites, so thanks to M10Bike. Quad challenge is NOT going to happen with me! well at least till I get the WDC done........

I'm just checking in via wireless in SE WA and see there is a conflict of interest on placing caches to accomplish the WDC. I'm doing all of the southern and eastern sections and then heading north and hope to get all the northern sections in the next few days. I've placed 4 micros and 1 small cache and activated 2 pages and added caches to 3 more pages that had only 1 and 2 caches. None of the caches are really lame except for one at a rest stop. One is going to be a real challenge as it's hidden in a sneaky spot. None are really easy finds in dumb places. All of the areas are scenic and much of what I drove was the Lewis and Clark trail. I have 20 or so caches already in E.WA, so don't see this as a problem in maintaining. I hunt in the SE corner, so that area is covered as well. Blindleader is right ahead of me as I've done 2 caches that he's already done. Looks like he's on a quest. I'm wondering how many caches he's hidden on this trip??? I see his total is updated to 62. I'm about at that today with the N section of the state to go. If my car doesn't blow up or we get a snowstorm I'll be knocking those out. The way I look at it is if someone doesn't place caches in the "cacheless" areas then how is any one able to complete the challenge? Most aren't going to have weeks to drive like crazy all over the state and some "easy" ones out in the middle of no where are going to be mighty welcome. I've driven about 600 miles so far and I'm having a awesome time seeing some gorgeous Fall colors in E.WA. The driving part is challenge enough for me and the caches are just secondary. Cache on!

Thanks TL. Figures, I should never have opened it. Now I see that it doesn't support GPX files, so that shoots that idea down. I spent quite awhile on the MS Troubleshooting site last night and that is in reference to the included GPS that is bundled with S&T. There is a program called GPS Gate that is suppose to work and make your USB a virtual port, but I can't get that to work either. That costs $30, so I'm out more money. I give up!......By the time I buy a Serial cable and USB-Serial adapter I could go out and buy 2006 version. I wish I had known about the issues and ordered the 2006 version. Yeah right, I'd buy another S&T again!......This 2005 version is going in a geocache or the nearest garbage can ASAP.....

I decided to install MS Streets and Trips 2005 that I bought the other day and it doesn't support USB!.......Worthless!....I've spent hours searching for a solution, but haven't found anything that works. I don't have a serial port on my laptop, so is anyone using a Garmin 60CS with S&T. I know they make USB-Serial adapters, but I don't really want to hassle with that if I don't have to. Is anyone using a software solution? I know this should go to the software section, but I got no where with a post similar to this one. I was planning to to head out in the morning on a Delorme caching trip, but PQ's aren't coming through and this S&T's has me frazzled.....I'm about to go Postal!.....

Thanks, that makes clearer sense. I kept seeing that there were missing caches and it finally clicked that I wasn't running them as placed, but as found. Wouldn't that be a nice addition to the PQ to have a date rather than placed? Or just eliminate the 5 PQ, 500 cache limit altogether. I'm sure this is discussed all over the forum as a future update. So how do I get the archived caches? I thought I saw them show up on GSAK??? I do so many caches all over the state I'd like to get an accurate file I can send M10Bike, but this is taxing my feeble brain. Just wait till I start asking questions about GSAK!....... Edit: GG, thanks for expanding on what Tudles said. I tried your primer yesterday and just now and I get a broken link????? Is your website down? Edit: I found it. Extra stuff in the link. Not sure what is wrong with the link on the WSGA page. I have it now. Thanks Edit Again!....Opps M10's website. I'm looking at your primer and thanks, I think that makes it doable. I was wondering how to merge the different GPX files and your primer answers that. Now I think I burned up PQ's for the day, so will have to wait till 12am. Oh I hate that 5 PQ limit!........

Ok call me stupid, but I have a question about Pocket Queries. I have over 500 finds, so how do you seperate that on the PQ page??? I've been using the Placed date section, but doesn't that go by when the cache was placed??? not my found caches???? I can get my first 500 cache finds, but how do I get the remaining 300???? Or does the date you put in go off your found caches if you check that??? Everytime I do this I see I have caches missing. This is the first time I've messed with PQ's other than pulling up caches for my PDA. I think I'm missing something really simple with this, but my brain is dead. I'm not a GSAK user and that program has been driving me bug eyed too! I have the most up to date version and it's crashed a number of times, so I've been pulling my hair out. I'm sure it's a fine program once you figure out all the little doo dads on using it. I hope I still have hair left when I do!......

Thanks M10 you're my hero!......Works great, now I need to drop my finds on the map and figure out what I've done. I picked up Microsoft Streets and Trips 2005 yesterday at Staples. If they've dropped some forest roads then maybe I'll take it back.

I'm interested. Anytime durring the week is fine with me. Or even a weekend if I don't have soccer.

Thanks, I'll have to check in to that. We have a fancy new Costco in Woodinville that I need to check out. Maybe I'll drop by there tomorrow on the way back from soccer. I wonder why they would delete roads on a newer edition?......I see 2005 for about $25, so that's not too bad.

I'm a bit behind in getting caught up on this new cache, but it looks great. I'm currently using National Geographic Topo software on my laptop. Does anyone have an over lay for this software or is it possible to import either of the 2 files M10 posted and use those on Topo??? I'm thinking probably not, because they all seem to have proprietory file formats and I have no idea what Topo allows. My second question. Barnabirdy (Al), was that Microsoft Streets and Trips you had on your laptop at the campout? That had some interesting features that I liked, so maybe I'll shell out the $ for that one. I see the 2006 version just came out, so is that worth getting the new version or should I go with the cheaper 2005 version? I have GSAK that Jester was kind enough to download on my laptop, but I haven't cached much since the campout, so I'm lost when it comes to the usability of this program. Sounds like I need to get with the program and get busy......

Yime, that gives me hope for one of my bugs. Fly Away#2 I've messaged and e-mailed and nobody knows where it's gone. My sad story is my other 2 TB's made from souvenir key chains have come up missing also. One almost a year and another in April. 4 out of 7 TB's released in the past 1.5 years are missing now. I can understand how one could get misplaced or muggles could find, but 3 of mine were geocacher related MIA. I know life goes on, but it still angers me to think they were stolen by fellow geocachers. I know I'll think twice about making a TB out of anything "attractive" now.

What ever you do, don't try to arrest your fall and grab a devils club.......don't ask me how I know...... The first 4 weren't that bad, but the last one kicked my butt. I took a short cut through the neighborhood back to my car after the last one and I scared a group of kids. They saw this crazed, beaten, bleeding, filthy man with stinckers poking out all over and ran screaming!...... Have fun.

I wasn't out today, but did receive 6 e-alerts on geomagnetic activety in a 3 hour period. Conditions shot way up in a short time. The K index went from a relatively quiet 1 to 6 in one hour. Suffice it to say the conditions were not favorable for HF propagation and no doubt this threw some curves in the GPS sats.

I'm about to head out. Hope more can make it this weekend or drop by. EGH, bring mom along!......Here's a cache that's not too far from Fish Lake that I've had my eye on. Last Will and Testament This one could be a fun day. Patudles, I'll keep an eye open for you. That area does need more caches. I missed out on your series at Lake Wenatchee. Last week I drove up the White River Rd and it's passable to about the 12 mile point. I'm sure with all this hot weather what little snow is melted now. Couple of those caches won't be reachable for awhile I'm sure. Lion Rock and the Quartz Mtn ones for sure. Well I don't know maybe you can now. We had such an odd winter and this past weeks heat wave might have opened up even Lion Rock. Lion Rock is one of my all time fav places to camp. Quartz is another spot with knock out views. Better get moving here. Camp on!

Here's where we'll be camping. There are a number of large campsites along the north side of Fish Lake, so I'll get over there on Thursday and grab one. The one I like to camp at is near the gate and at the end of the road. Check out my directions to my new cache This Old Campsite The large campsite that I'll most likely get is at the parking cords. for this cache at the end of the road. If this site is taken, then I'll be back up the road. Very close. I'll make sure of the cords. by Th night. If you have an FRS radio call on Chnl 2. This area is all free camping with no water or power. Lots of room and good fishing in Fish Lake. This weekend is the opening of fishing season in many lakes, so I don't expect it to be people free. I'm going to take my pontoon boat and if anyone wants to get over early on Thursday that would be fine too. I fished there earlier this week and caught and released over 50 fish, so the lake is loaded. There's a resort....Cove Resort...across the lake if you had a camper or trailer that you wanted to park with power and water. There is room for both on the north side. Some of us are going to head out on Sunday and do the new Earthcache. There are quite a few local caches around Lake Wenatchee that are excellent caches too, so many options.

I'd say 3 days from tomorrow!......

I'm up for this one too. I have an assortment of floating apparatus. Float tube, canoe, 12 ft. cartopper, several rubber rafts, pontoon boat and a new 22 oz. backpacking raft on the way. Wow, we could line them all up and walk over!.....

Congrats to you both. Fun watching the run. I haven't been on here for about a week and wow, LB you picked up ground fast. Way To Go!.....

Sorry you couldn't make it Nav. You were missed. Your Panorama was one of the more enjoyable caches for me. This cache was one of the few I grabbed and actually opened up to see what was inside. Ray and Rose geocoin was sitting there happily looking up at me and I grabbed it before Hydensek could latch on to it. This was their only geo coin they placed, so a very worthy find. Hydensek tried to tackle me and push me over the edge, but calmer minds prevailed!.... Darn, when I checked my numbers this cache was my 599th, so missed 600 by one and didn't want to go back and fudge numbers. I didn't see any caches above King Granite and Under the Saddle. How come? It's looks like there's a trail all the way to the top and on several other high points that I bet would be fantastic cache spots. Music Sweet Music was another nice hiking trail and could use a cache up top on the rock knob. There were several caches that didn't make the CM list that we were curious why they weren't added. Goose Egg and Wearing the Green were 2 easy ones that we spotted and made a quick grab on.

I'd say mid to late June. Even with the past several weeks of snow there still is a severe lack of snow in the high country. Unless this cold wet spring continues another 2 months much of the state will be bone dry by July. There's interest on my part that's for sure!

Come on Era, Little Blue is bound to slow down soon. Big chunk was grabbed over the weekend, so she'll have some burn out from that. If you want some of us later "guesses" could stop by LB's and flatten a few tires......borrow her skates, or steal her bike!.....you gotta make it last at least another say 34 days.

Thank you all for making my first cache machine a rousing success. Now I can put a face to my "Toodles" dents on my car..... Was Navigatorz at either dinner? I was disappointed to miss him if he was. We did meet Subie21 at the movie theater on Sunday. How he recognized us as geocachers was short of amazing!......Don't ask why we were in the movie theater, but it had to do something with finding a coat hanger. You know how hard it is to find a metal coat hanger on a Sunday morning in sleepy downtown Wenatchee?...... Many of the logs will need to be replaced, especially the ones along the east side of the river. I was surprised at the number of micros you have in the Wenatchee area. You have all been very busy. What a wonderful hiking/biking trail you have on both sides. I wish I could have brought my mtn bike and done a good portion of the CM with that. Sure would have avoided the wandering we did on some of the road directions. My first time caching with a group and I found it interesting how much our GPS's could vary in signals. We had 3 Garmin 60's and mine seemed to zero consistently 10-15 ft. to one side on almost every cache. I generally don't do many micros, so this has never been noticed. I would be curious if anyone has ever done a GPS test on accuracy among the various GPS makes and models? Most of my experience on the CM was positive, but there were a few negative ones too. I wish everyone could have CITOed as we worked our way through. I know that's asking a lot and most don't want to hassle with the garbage, but I was disgusted with some of the mess I saw. Several caches I had to scratch my head and wonder what the cache hider was thinking by placing it here. Few more observations......Stepped in 2 piles of dog poop......Errrrrrrrr! Found 8 coins, 36 cents, golf ball, roll of kite string, tennis balls, unbroken wine glass on the Valley View cache. How the heck did that get out in the middle of the sage brush? Several dead animals, dozens of quail and not a single snake. Clipboard and a GPSr in hand makes you look official. We were asked by several women if we had organized the large event near the Lunchtime cache. Official looking geocachers poking around a bridge causes concern. Geocachers poking around a mailbox and a cementery causes concern too. Thanks for all the fun and I'm looking forward to coming back for the few DNF's we had. Now I won't start to twitch when ever I go through your area on my way to the Potholes.....

I'm finally able to take a breath after running non stop all week. This was my first CM and I was very impressed. Robinego it's sad you are upset over one crotchy curmungeon when you did a fantastic job on everything. From all the comments I heard this weekend it was the best CM to date, so you deserve a huge congratulations. Even though I didn't take you up on your offer of backyard camping I was amazed you would even offer. It was great finally putting faces to so many cachers out there. I'll treasure the memories and the companionship I found. Special thanks go out to our driver Hydensek. She was sick all weekend, but still managed to tough it out and did a great job of negotiating the one way streets of downtown Wenatchee in spite of the mapping difficulties. No tickets or accidents, so all I can say is WOW!...... Even the minor "problem" we had Sunday morning turned out to be fun. We had a chance to meet Subie 21 and add a little break to our caching day. Pencil me in for the next CM and THANKS to all the eastside cachers for your efforts and time. You all ROCK! TravisL, I can't imagine the logistics of organizing and putting a CM together. WAY TO GO! It was definately a winner for me. Thank you all.