rtreit
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Posts posted by rtreit
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I suspect a lot of cachers get started the way we did: get a GPSr for Christmas and that sparks an interest in trying out geocaching, which means winter caching. Our first cache was in the woods in the snow, and a few our our first efforts were DNF because of snow covering the hide. I suppose it really comes down to where you live - Illinois is presumably a much more challenging environment to hide snow-friendly caches then here in western Washington State. I would definitely check the nearby cache logs and looks for caches that others have found recently and go after those. Good luck!
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I have a 60CSx also and after a few months of caching and trying out some of the free maps finally broke down and shelled out for the 1:24k Garmin Topographical maps for my area. It's been helpful, especially this summer out hiking and doing some caching around Mt. Ranier here in Washington. Sounds like eventually you'd like to get out in the woods and the topo maps might be useful in that case. But I would probably start with the free maps and see how you like it.
Good luck.
rtreit
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Add me to the list of 200 users. The GE KML plug-in was one of the coolest features of geocaching.com and easily the feature I use the most often. After a day of caching I simply fire up Google Earth and grab my track log from my GPSr, and then use the caches shown from the KML along my track to quickly jump to the GC.com page for the cache and log my visit. The fact that this is being discontinued for performance reasons is really a bit dispiriting, as performance issues should be fairly straightforward to solve. Taking away the feature rather than fixing the underlying perf issues is something of a step backward. I will miss this feature greatly but I'm guessing it won't be too long before it either comes back or someone finds a clever way to provide the same capability.
I'll also say that the coolest part of KML was just being able to randomly "spin the globe" and see what kind of geocaches were around that area. I was explaining geocaching to my mother-in-law (who is of Norwegian heritage) and when she mused whether there were any caches near some fjord in Norway, I just punched in the fjord name in GE and it took us to that location and then a bunch of caches popped up. I've done this over and over with friends and family and they always get a kick out of it. Losing that kind of spontaneous tie to the geocache data is really too bad.
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Why not an EarthCache?
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You no longer think that hiding a cache under a light pole skirt represents skillful cunning on the part of the cache owner.
You no longer start digging when you get to ground zero.
You no longer spend five minutes trying to get your GPSr to show precisely "0 feet" from the cache before starting to hunt.
After finding a cache while out with your kids, you suggest they search "around that big cedar tree" instead of hauling out the cache and dancing around waving it in the air.
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I saw this coin in one of the diplays at the GPS Adevnture Maze exhibit in Seattle yesterday:
http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=144305
I was going to log this as "Discovered" but when I pull it up it just says that it hasn't been activated yet.
I don't see any way to log it yet I see from the logs that others have logged it at some of the other maze events. So...how did they do that?
Thanks,
rtreit
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I try to avoid the hints until I've made a good effort to find the cache without them.
Unfortunately I have the bad habit of looking at the first page of cache info stored on my handheld, aiming to just see the short description but often it's so short that I inadvertently see something like:
H: base of cedar...
And then I feel a bit chagrined - I'm getting good at not letting on to the kids though that I have some extra info, which usually gets convereted into "hey, why don't you try looking around that cedar while I look over by this stump"
For small/regular caches I usually don't need the hints but for micros I almost always wind up going to the hint (LPC's exceptec).
It's always interesting to see the different approaches to hints. I tend to prefer hints that are more engimatic than direct. "Think magnet" or "some roots run deep" are more fun than "in root ball at E end of log across trail" at least to me. Being told exactly where the cache is kind of kills the point of hunting.
rtreit
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As a newbie still looking for my first FTF (I've been first on the scene but DNF - aarrrggghh), I have to say it wouldn't be nearly as much fun if I knew others were holding back to give me or others the opportunity. When I finally get one I'll exult that I beat out all those crazy folks who jump in their trucks and rush through the drizzle in the pitch black to grab it. It just wouldn't be the same if I knew the old pros were throwing me a bone. Kind of like beating my dad at chess when I was 15 after ten years of defeat - wouldn't have meant anything if he had let me do it somehow.
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On a related note, FizzyCalc is a great little program for converting coordinates between the various formats.
You can get it here.
rtreit
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Excellent, thanks for getting it corrected!
rtreit
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Thanks Paul and Dave. I'll see if I can find the mark and get coordinates for it. Should be a fun adventure.
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Great, thanks!
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I noticed that the listed coordinates for a benchmark in my area, SW1616, are a bit...off.
Based on the datasheet description it's located in Marysville, WA here in Snohomish County.
But the coordinates:
NAD 83(1986)- 47 24 16. (N) 118 19 53. (W) SCALED
Would put it SE from Marysville by 185 miles and on the other end of the state.
Any advice on how to get this corrected?
I haven't tried to find it yet, but hopefully will get out that way soon for an attempt.
Thanks,
rtreit
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rtreit, if you like Google Earth, you could try ngsread. It makes a .kml file for Google Earth from NGS county or state archives. The popups include all the recovery notes.
Thanks, this is very cool. I've been using bmgpx and then loading the GPX file in Google Earth, but NGSREAD is better. The color coding is a real time saver, and I love that it has the links to both the actual datasheet and geocaching.com.
I wonder if the FAQ could be updated with a section on using Google Earth that summarizes some of the great tools available...
rtreit
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There is a cache that I tried to find today -admittedly, probably a bit tough for a newbie- and I did not find it. Should I log that DNF and try again? Is it commonplace to need more than one attempt to find a cache, especially as a newbie? I want to maintain the integrity of the game, but I also hated to give up after one attempt.
I definitely wouldn't give up after one attempt. I've had quite a few caches in my limited experience so far that have taken me several times to find. Logging a DNF and then triumphantly logging the find a week later is pure pleasure. Re-reading my DNF log and remembering the bitterness of defeat makes the find that much sweeter.
rtreit
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I'm a newbie here, still in the early learning phase.
But that DSWORLD program is pretty neat; much faster to load up all the results for a given county into Google Earth.
The one disadvantage it seems to have compared to bmgpx is that you only get a link to the datasheet, rather than the actual info from the datasheet. When I load the bmgpx results after processing a county file into Google Earth, I can quickly browse the recovery results. But of course it's a bit more work to get those results into Google Earth (several manual steps, at least the way I'm doing it).
Are the DSWORLD results using the yearly county archives (which for me is 2006 for WA state) ?
Now if I can only find some time to get out and actually hunt for a few of these...
Thanks,
rtreit
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Excellent, thanks!
rtreit
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It's so much fun, isn't it? Welcome to a wonderful pastime. So far what I appreciate about geocaching more than anything else is that it has opened my eyes to so many wonderful areas nearby that I had no idea existed.
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Thanks so much for the detailed answers. I really appreciate it!
I'll check out a surveying book, as hard-core mathematical sounds a bit intimidating.
Thanks again!
rtreit
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I'm curious, do people hunt state survey markers (such as this)? Are they considered "benchmarks" in the context of benchmark hunting or is benchmark hunting strictly about NGS benchmarks?
Also, do surveyors still use NGS markers or are they mostly using the state variety? Or both? In other words, are NGS benchmarks mostly historical or still being actively used for practical purposes? Also does NGS create new benchmarks very often?
The more I learn about benchmark hunting the more I feel I should go buy a geodesy textbook.
Thanks,
rtreit
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Ok, makes sense. Thanks for clarifying!
rtreit
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I'm new to geocaching and even newer to benchmark hunting, so this may be a total beginner's question.
My question regards this benchmark:
Here are the last two recovery notes:
SY4859 STATION RECOVERY (1999)
SY4859
SY4859'RECOVERY NOTE BY US POWER SQUADRON 1999
SY4859'RECOVERED IN GOOD CONDITION.
SY4859
SY4859 STATION RECOVERY (2004)
SY4859
SY4859'RECOVERY NOTE BY US POWER SQUADRON 2004
SY4859'MARK NOT FOUND, ACCESS NOT AVAIL
From reading the description, it seems like the pinnacle atop the lighthouse, directly over the light, is the actual mark:
SY4859'RECOVERY NOTE BY COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY 1968 (NET)
SY4859'THE LIGHTHOUSE STILL STANDS ABOUT 1 BLOCK SOUTH OF THE FERRY
SY4859'DOCK IN MUKILTEO. THE STATION IS THE FINIAL OVER THE LIGHT, ABOUT
SY4859'30 FEET ABOVE THE GROUND. THE BUILDINGS AND LIGHTHOUSE ARE WHITE
SY4859'WITH RED ROOFS.
So I'm trying to understand what the last recovery note means: does one need to get right up close to the finial in order to officially recover it or something?
Thanks,
rtreit
Newbie - First Cache!
in How do I...?
Posted
Welcome aboard! I've been geocaching for a year - my favorite part by far is the opportunity to see new and interesting places in my area that I had no idea existed. Best of luck!