LSUFan

Hey Slukster, thanks for the heads up on JC Penney. They have several different sets for $20 per. You can check them out online and then see if your local store has them in stock. Luckily mine did, and I sent the wife to pick up a couple of sets. http://www2.jcpenney.com/jcp/X6.aspx?DeptI...agpageview=true

View Carre' is the most popular (and visited) cache in LA. There are a lot of good (and historical) caches around the French Quarter----then widened out around New Orleans. The Mandeville area above New Orleans has some extremely unique caches. I would post this question in the local forum and you will get all kind of good answers. The owners of all the caches I described above will be able to tell you all you want to know there. They are always extremely hospitable, and may even take you on a personal guided tour. www.louisianageocaching.org

LSFan, Thank you very much for the info on gpxsonar. The boxscores look pretty darn good. I will look into that. However, after this weekend's trial, I am pretty happy with NGSREAD. (I have been to Monroe quite a few times. I fly into there on my way to Hodge, LA.) Yeah, I think NGSREAD is going to be the way to go too. I am glad you started this forum so I could learn about the PDA options for BDT's program. I was going to try it out this weekend, but ended up geocaching instead. You must be doing something for Smurfit-Stone if you go to Hodge. There isn't a whole lot else there. Give me some forwarning the next time you might be in the area, and we might can meet up for lunch, benchmarking, or such.

Hey Black Dog Trackers, I didn't realize that NGSRead had a pda capability feature built into it, until reading this forum. I am going to try it out this weekend. Thanks

Tillamurphs, I took a few screenshots today of gpxsonar and how it formats the boxscores from my pda. It usually puts it on one screen width where you don't have to scroll sideways. Is this what you are wanting? I can provide more screenshots if you like.

Down here in Louisiana, even a surveyor cannot trespass if the property owner tells them not to. I had to familiarize myself with all of this a few years back when me and my good neighbor got into a boundary dispute with our sorry neighbor, who tried to take fences down that had been in place since 1948. Louisiana Revised Statute 14:63 states: F. The following persons may enter or remain upon immovable property of another, unless specifically forbidden to do so by the owner or other person with authority, either orally or in writing: (1) A professional land surveyor or his authorized personnel, engaged in the "Practice of Land Surveying", as defined in R.S. 37:682. Our bad neighbor was trying to get his son-in-law (a surveyor) to try and put property corner marker pins about 20-50 feet back onto our properties. We forbid him to trespass on our property. This surveyor tried to pull a bluff that as a surveyor he could trespass all he wanted. The sheriff's dept didn't even know better until we showed them the law. He never tried that again after that day. The LSPS has even made a section on their website alerting their surveying members of the law. http://www.lsps.net/mediawiki/index.php/Tresspass_Law_Impact

I use a dell axim X50 for geocaching and benchmarking. I download the datasheets and convert them into gpx format with bmgpx software, then use gpxsonar to view them. Seems to work good for me. I am sure there are better alternatives and others will point them out.

"In surveying, monuments rule!" That's what matters. A very good article by the NGS.

That is very interesting. Thanks for the education. It really surprises me that anything has survived down here in Louisiana, with all of our winds (spelled hurricanes). I remember seeing a geocoin somewhere with a Bilby tower on it, but didn't have a clue to what it was. I'll probably never get to see a Bilby tower (or even the geocoin again.)

We put a little tutorial on our local geocaching website, about converting the NGS .dat files to gpx files. http://www.nelageo.net/index.php?topic=245.msg6841#msg6841

Have you tried asking this in either the Arkansas or Ark/Missouri geocaching websites? http://arkgeocaching.org/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ark-Mo-Geocachers/

Yep, we have a lot of cotton spindles used for that same thing down here in my neck of the woods.

Kudos to Dave Doyle and JLW for getting it corrected in the press and on the forums. It all reminds me of a quote by Mark Twain possibly: If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.

I would have expected some kind of press release from the NGS if this news story was accurate. I started playing on the internet and found just about everything that JLW accurately informed us on. It was very informative and I learned several historical facts about the way our country did things. Here are some of the links if anyone is interested. The first one is the Supreme Court decision JLW told us about that sets the boundary between New Mexico and Colorado http://supreme.justia.com/us/267/30/case.html#F1 The next one is about the Washington Meridian itself, and which states boundaries were based from it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_meridian And lastly, is the actual datasheet from the current monument at four corners. http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/ds_mark.prl?PidBox=AD9256 Thanks JLW for setting the record straight on this, and for providing the information.

YMMV, but I've always found those Javascript maps on government sites to be slow and persnickety. Also, I see that the Louisiana folks haven't updated their benchmark database since 2002. You may instead want to use the maps of one of our very own benchmark hunters, which he updates frequently. His maps also offer links to Geocaching.com reports. Here's the link to his Lousiana map: http://benchmarks.scaredycatfilms.com/LA.html Patty Thanks Patty. I didn't even notice that it was a 2002 database. Sorry, it took me so long to acknowledge your help. I somehow missed the post.

Hey M&H, your advice to Mike helped me find something too. I was curious after reading your post above, and decided to look at the Louisiana Department of Transportations website just to see if they had anything like you were talking about. Well, lo and behold, they have an interactive map of the NGS benchmarks for the entire state, which allows you to link back to the original datasheets for them. http://dotdgis.dotd.louisiana.gov/website/...arks/viewer.htm I would have never thought to look on their site for anything like that. Thanks for teaching me something new today. Bobby

I would agree with Bill on that. In fact, you might want to move this topic to the 201 section of the tutorial rather than the 101. Good points to consider. I like Papa-Bear-NYCs suggestion of it being a 201 class. Our whole point of the 101 tutorials, either for geocaching or benchmarking is to help everyone learn. The hardest thing in my mind is at what point does someone (as in amateurs like myself) have enough real world experience in benchmark hunting to start benchmark reporting to the NGS. Is there such a thing as (pardon the pun) a benchmark for benchmarkers?

I have been writing a 101 section on benchmarks for our local geocaching organization down here in Louisiana. I added a section on submitting official recovery reports to the NGS, from things I have learned here in the forums. Would the experts here mind taking a look at it and let me know what I may need to add, change, or delete. Hopefully, any geocachers who read it, will learn enough not to make the same mistake as the one who this topic originally started about. Thanks http://www.nelageo.net/index.php?topic=248.msg6862#msg6862

Yes, there are definitely others. I placed a cache at the site of the Bonnie and Clyde ambush. Later on it was discovered that someone else had placed a letterbox there the same week as my placement. The containers were the same (lock and locks) and not too far apart. Several geocachers have actually found the letterbox and signed it's log, as well as leave trade items, thinking it is the geocache. I have corrected the webpage, and pointed out to make sure that everyone finds the geocache and not the letterbox. Whenever I do maintenance on this cache, I always check the letterbox too. From reading it's logbook, it seems that is a popular game also. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...77-e139d32a76f8

HERE! 'Find A Benchmark' from the sidebar on any Geocaching.com page, then click on 'Other Search Options'. EDIT:punctuation malfunction Many Thanks AZCachemeister. I didn't know that you could do that from gc.com's site. I appreciate you sharing that information. I've always used the ngs site below, then clicked on "Datasheets", then selected the retrieval method I needed. Do you know if gc.com's search just shows the ones in their database or links back to the ngs database? I guess I can go try it out for myself to see. http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/datasheet.prl

I'll send Chuck (the site owner) an email about it. I know sometimes that certain letter combinations won't let you register, and the owner has to manually do it. However that usually shows up in the registration process and you won't get a confirmation email. We'll get you onboard as fast as possible. Thanks for your interest in joining. EDIT: I posted the problem you are having in the LAGeocachers forums, with a link to this one. It shouldn't be long before everything is taken care of.

I'll field that question. Because our job is not to "clean up the database". Well-meaning folks from GEOCACHING.COM have done harm by engaging in this activity. Many times, the only reference to a station (historic or otherwise) is in the datasheet for another station which no longer exists. When this datasheet becomes unavailable, valuable reference data is lost. Cross-references have been instrumental in many of my finds of granite state-line and magnetic stations from the 1800s. Ditto for many USE disks. And recently I was searching for a 1960's mark with SCALED coordinates when I realized there was a cross reference to a radio tower. The tower is long gone, but the data sheet is still available. And aerial intersection points have adjusted coordinates! Problem solved. So, please! No crusades. Log what you find. Log what you witnessed regarding a water tank or tower. But be cautious about requesting that a station be classified as "destroyed". -Paul- Hey Lost02, I think I can add a little more on what Paul said. I had asked the question in the forums awhile back on reporting marks as either "not found" or "destroyed". Here is a link to it: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...=199037&hl= What was explained to me in that forum was when I submitted a NGS recovery, to log it as a dnf if I didn't find it. I should then put in my comments, that I ASSUMED the mark was destroyed . By doing it this way, the datasheet is preserved for reasons like Paul stated above.........but at the same time, it lets anyone reading the datasheet after you know that there is a high degree of probability that the mark really isn't there, and they can decide if they want to expend energies searching for it. Here is an example of one of my recoveries and dnf logs, where I without a doubt know the mark is long gone. I just put in the comments, the reasons why I assumed it is destroyed. CQ0044 Logging it this way, provides accuracy, yet also CYA.....just in case. On another note, Thanks Black Dog Trackers, for the link earlier about the discussion on Cadastral marks. I learned so much there, that I feel like I should be paying someone.

Although I have never searched for Cadastral marks , I have learned a lot about them from this forum thread. I want to thank everyone here for their excellent comments and for the education I just received about them.

Did you catch any rolls at Lambert's?

I haven't attempted a search for it, so don't know if there is a date on it or not. However, I believe you have shown concrete proof, that it's definitely just an error, by showing all the other benchmarks in Madison Parish (we don't have counties in LA ). You also got me started off on another chase now. It appears the LAGS (Louisiana Geological Survey) that is listed as the monumenting agency for this benchmark has a website. It shows that they started off in 1934.(another sign it couldn't be 1896) Thanks for the guidance on it. I never would have thought to do that. http://www.lgs.lsu.edu/deploy/content/GINF...ntentpage12.php I really do appreciate everyone helping me with this, as they always do. I hope ya don't mind me asking these questions, so I can hopefully learn more. I know if I ask a question, I am always going to get great answers from everyone here in the forums. I guess I won't be getting an extra 10 points for a pre-1935 disk for UNK1's contest on this one.