Geo_cats

Well I'm off tomorrow to visit Yuma AZ and Tallahassee FL to see daughters, g-kids and do some caching. I've preloaded my trusty Garmin with many geocaches, loaded my laptop and printed out a few interesting ones I really want to check out. Should be fun. BTW, if any POC would like to borrow my audio book on cassette tapes of, A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson, let me know. This is a humorous and educational story about hiking the AT, Appalachian Trail. I know OP will echo this, it is a very good and funny book. Well, ta ta for now. Catch you in about 10 days. And don't forget, the picnic is on May 4th. Mark your calendars.

As some of you have heard, I'm going to visit my daughters in Arizona and Florida at the end of the month. While researching caches I may go seek out I found this puzzle cache that has me stumped. Can any of you brilliant POCers help me figure this one out? Tallahassee Blues

I thank you all for directing me to these caches. I'll be in Yuma the 28th for about 4 days to visit my daughter. She loves the Yuma area and is helping spearhead a Yuma function called Endurance Days or something like that. She is into flying and learned that back in '49 pilots Bob Woodhouse and Woody Jongeward flew a 1948 Aeronca Sedan, named the City of Yuma, continuously for 1,124 hours from Aug. 24 to Oct. 10. Maybe some of the local geocachers can get involved and place a few caches commemorating the flight. For more info about the flight check Endurance flight

I see no one has checked in for a few days so I thought I better see if there are any diehard cachers lurking about. The gathering at Atascadero library went very well and everybody learned something. There were discussions about GPSrs, waypointing, bookmarks, PDAs, Cachemate and GPXsonar, online programs, geocoins and much more. I was torn between several discussions and wished I could clone myself to listen to everyone. I think we will do more of these. OP wants to start off the May 4th picnic with a meet at the library and then to Stadium Park for eating and caching. FYI, I compiled a comprehensive list of cache bookmarks of favorite local caches. If you want to check out the list, go to my profile and click on bookmarked caches. Bookmarks are a great way to learn about where to locate the better caches, especially if you are going out of the area and are limited on time. I'm soon to go to Yuma, AZ and Tallahassee, FL and I have been able to gather a nice bunch of caches to check out this way. When you go to a bookmark list you can create a Pocket Query that includes all of them. You can easily build a nice list of caches quickly.

Hi, I'll be visiting in the Yuma area in about 6 weeks and would like to see what are some of your favorite caches. We like parks, hikes and moderate climbs. We're not much into micros unless there is a good reason for it. I tried browsing for anyone who's created bookmark lists of their favorites but didn't find any. What's your favorite?

Maybe your spam blocking software or your internet provider is blocking the notices. I get most of them but sometimes I fail to get a notice. If your browser allows tabs I would create a homepage that opens several tabs, one being the forums.

Pretty cool elevation graphics OP. Are you going to tell us how you do them?

May is a GREAT time to meet in Atascadero! My dad's getting married on May 3, so that's out for me, but we'll be up that way anyhow, so May 4 would work for us! So would the 31, and perhaps 17. (We'll probably be headed up to the Sierra the 18th for the week.) Is there some way I can help? Jen/BooBooBee www.BestFamilyAdventures.com If we are somewhat agreed, lets figure on the 4th of May but with a raincheck in case of serious rain. If you can think of some activities for the younger cachers while some of us local folk try to figure out a good gpsr oriented game to play in the park. Stadium Park is an awesome park right in the heart of Atascadero but is totally undeveloped except for trails. So attendees will have to be prepared to sit on the ground, haul in anything they need and pee in the bushes. Right now there are three fairly easy caches to get near the park, one that is a pretty strenuous on top of the mountain and several on the other side of the mountain.

May 4th looks ok on the geo_cats calendar also. And a North county techy gathering sounds good to me also. I'll bring all my gpsrs, computers, digital compasses, battery backups, electronic camelbacks, gps enabled tennies, RPA drones etc.

Rikki & I went out today and found OP's new caches at Stadium Park. It was a lovely little hike and reminded us how lucky we are to live here in Atasadero. We discussed having a geomeet picnic in Stadium Park in the spring. It would be a fun venue and allow the out of towners to cache the mountain. I figure a few of us locals could sponsor it and create a few activities while cachers could come and go to find the caches in and around Stadium Park. I figure a good month would be May. A good day might be Saturday the 3, 17, 31 or Sunday the 4, 18. The other weekends are Mother's day or Memorial day and are to be avoided if possible. How about it? OP, you game?

Good job! I printed them out for some time I'm waayy down south there to check out. Looking forward to meeting you at the pizza meet and greet.

Rikki and I both hope to attend the pizza fest. Wow!, lots of people coming. I have a recommendation for you avid cachers to help others to find the good ones. Create a public bookmarks link in your 'My Accounts' page on the right side. (For premium members only). Mine is at Geo_cats Bookmarks If more people made bookmarks of their favorite caches it would be a big help to other cachers, especially out-of-towners who don't know the area or who places good caches and who places turkeys. When I am in other areas I would love it if people had bookmarked the best caches. When you create your bookmarks don't be shy, include some of your own caches if you think they are exceptional. C'mon guys, lets see some bookmarks.

I'm reading these posts but not sure whether that weekend is open yet. Also would like to make the pizza thing if possible. BTW, if anyone is interested in an inexpensive way to go paperless caching, I have an IPAQ for sale on Craigslist here locally. Craigslist

So the short answer to my question is no. So I need to get a GPS card for my E755. I tried looking around for what would work with it and there seem to be a number of GPS cards. Anyone know of one that is rated good?

I just read of Wherigo and am intrigued. I don't have the money to buy a new expensive GPSr but I do own a Toshiba E755 PDA and a Garmin GPSMAP 60CS. Can these be linked somehow or do I need to add a GPS card to the PDA?

I just read of Wherigo and am intrigued. I don't have the money to buy a new expensive GPSr but I do own a Toshiba E755 PDA and a Garmin GPSMAP 60CS. Can these be linked somehow or do I need to add a GPS card to the PDA?

Oh boy, we'd better start saving our dimes and quarters. I just read about a new GPSr Garmin is going to be selling called the Colorado that allows you to play a game called Wherigo with it. People will be able to build 'cartridges' to download and then do a historic walkabout, a fantasy interactive game, a virtual multicache or whatever your fevered little brain can concoct. Hey, this might get the wii addicted little darlings out of the house even.

Oh boy, we'd better start saving our dimes and quarters. I just read about a new GPSr Garmin is going to be selling called the Colorado that allows you to play a game called Wherigo with it. People will be able to build 'cartridges' to download and then do a historic walkabout, a fantasy interactive game, a virtual multicache or whatever your fevered little brain can concoct. Hey, this might get the wii addicted little darlings out of the house even.

I was curious to find out what the heck all those holes were dug for along our hike track. It looks like they were looking for chromium (chromite) for the most part. I couldn't find anything that said how successful they were at getting any but seeing there was not gobs of tailings, I suspect they didn't find much. It was a fun day out with my fellow cachers. I can't wait until the next hike, meet, or picnic function. What do we want to do next?

Ok, so far we have a hike from Cerro Alto trailhead to Cuesta grade top starting at 9am on the 29th, weather permitting. LOSt OSOS 1 pointsaljim 1 and a dog? Oreo Pony 3 or 5 BooBooBee and family 3? Geo_cats 1 car- 4, 5 in a pinch I count about 9-11 people. Now, how many people will your vehicle hold? We need to figure out what cars to leave at the Cuesta end and then carpool down to the Cerro Alto end to meet up with the rest of the intrepid explorers. I haven't seen BBB and PSJ on here lately. I'll email them to remind them to log in.

So, at this point it looks like we hike on the 29th and those that are interested are: So far we have: LOSt OSOS pointsaljim Oreo Pony BooBooBee and family Geo_cats 1 We'll need to know how many with each party so we can plan the car drops so we can get everyone back to the trailhead. How early did we want to meet?

The last time I walked it I started at the top near where OP used to have a cache and did not pass any gates anywhere along the nearly 11 mile walk. I would propose that several of the south of the grade cachers would meet at the East end of the TV tower road at the top and leave several cars there and carpool down to Cerro Alto campgrounds to meet up with the rest of us. I would have no objections to your lovely family walking with us. I was impressed with your girls stamina and found them to be bright and perky traveling companions. There is nothing that says that we all need to walk in lockstep either. If some want to go to the top of Cerro Alto and log the cache there but others would find it too taxing, they can continue on and maybe wait up for the others along the way. (It's a road most of the way, no way to get lost.) When I hiked this I tried finding The Treasure is Mine cache but it appeared to take some serious bushwacking to get to it and I wasn't up to it. I may not want to attempt that one because bushwacking is not my style. So like I say, we can pick and choose caches to to find or not, mountains to climb or not and on the average meet up along the way. I'm going to bring a cache repair kit as some of these caches may be in need of some TLC.

No reason that wouldn't work. Gets the climb out of the way when we're fresh and then eases up in the afternoon. Just need to leave a car or two at the end of the hike to bring us back to Cerro Alto. Works for me. So far we have: slmslo LOSt OSOS pointsaljim Oreo Pony Geo_cats Do we have a date, the 29th or the 30th?

Can you drive from Cuesta grade all the way to Cerro Alto campground? No, you have to drive down 41 and leave a car there then drive to Cuesta grade and walk to the car. Like I said, I've done that and it was a nice hike.

I might recommend several other hikes that aren't as long and would avoid walking in the dark. One, would be the hike on East Cuesta to High Lowe Mountain then hike down to Miner's Lettuceand Rinconada Mine and take a van parked there back to Cuesta Grade trailhead. Or Take the West Cuesta road starting at R.B.C. and hiking to Geico Caveman and Hikerbees then hike down to Cerro Alto campground where we would stash a van to haul everyone back to the start. I've done this hike and it is just short of 11 miles and is fairly easy hiking with only a short stretch that is somewhat steep and has 6-8 caches along the way. Or other thoughts would be to make a longish hike in Irish Hills or Montana de Oro. Just some ideas for discussion.