LeoGeo

Their problem ID was 0x3eec5c48747e951d although I have no URL for it. Google just now responded in email as follows: "Your Google Maps problem report has been reviewed, and you were right! We'll update the map within a month and email you when you can see the change." So, stay tuned, and I'll post the final response when it arrives. At the moment, some but not all of the Adirondacks Preserve is back, and a few pieces of the Catskills. At least there is some forward momentum....

Google Maps has suddenly destroyed hugh swaths of the Catskill and Adirondack state parks. Up until this week, for example, Ashokan and Turnwood and Oliverea, N.Y., used to appear smack in the middle of a gigantic swath of green that represented the Catskill State Park. Today, the only bits of park that show up on Google are a little patch east of Oliverea, and another little patch southeast of Windham. Similarly, the southern three-quarters or so of the Adirondack Preserve has disappeared. Indian Lake and Long Lake, which used to be well inside the Preserve boundaries, are now in white, not green, areas, with only the extreme northern bit of the preserve showing up in green. And I thought we had problems with our state park funding here in California! I sent an error report to Google about this, but I wondered: has anybody else noticed this or know what underlying dataset may have changed (e.g., something supplied by the NY state parks agency) and why?

Now here's a difficulty 5 cache! (Would you call it a multi because of the extra clue? Or, since the clue is on a flag, is this Geovexilla rather than Geocaching?) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/science/...amp;ref=science

I found a corkscrew/bottle-opener with a TB tag attached to it, but when I enter the TB number I get a message that the number is not in the system. If this belongs to you, please let me know and I'll get it back to you. Otherwise, I'll just use it to open a bottle of something!

I've moved a couple of Piglet-doll TB's in past years -- but the next time I see one I'll be sure to scrub with hand sanitizer afterwards!

New cache. Size: Extra Large. Difficulty: 5.

A Union-Tribune article posted at signonsandiego.com said that the closures would be temporary (though of course that could be a long time). Apparently the state would continue to own the land; it's just that the gates would be shut to the public and, presumably, most of the rangers and other staff laid off. Some beaches would be closed, too, including Torrey Pines. In those cases, they said, you can't really fence them off, but the state would no longer provide lifeguards or maintain the toilets and other facilities.

OK, I have deleted all my logs for all caches in the following now-frowned-upon series, a total of 55 finds and 1 DNF: Doctor's Orders BikeNCache WalkNCache PLNMC G4T50 They were nice walks, though.

How about a big W000h000 (spelled with the correct number of zeroes) for the BadSquirrel family, who have racked up ONE THOUSAND finds!!!

A big WoooHooo to des614 on find #900 (plus a good chunk of the distance to 1,000 already, too)!

Consider a TB like TB11A8W. It's been loaned to a moon of Jupiter for aeons, yet neither its owner nor the owner of the cache it was last placed into seems to be willing to mark it "missing," so it still shows up as being "in" a cache. Could we please have a way to mark a TB as "Needs Maintenance" just as we have long been able to do with a cache that is damaged or missing? For those of us who like to seek TB's in vacation spots, etc., going to a cache and "discovering" that a TB that was placed there in 1847 is no longer present is kinda a bummer. The ability to get rid of these phantom TB's might be helpful. Thx k bai.

I knew there must be a better way -- thanks, Duncan!(!)

Hmm, I wondered, how can I generate a Pocket Query that'll give me all of Ritz Crackers' new 50-states caches, without anything else, that I can load into GSAK? Probably everybody else has figured this out by now, but in case anybody hasn't, here's what I did: I noticed they were all placed on March 8, except for Alabama, placed earlier, and the 3 non-states (Guam, P.R., and V.I., which were placed later). And they're all members-only. So the following plan at least gets 49 of the 53 and the rest you can get on paper or individual downloads. Choose a cache more or less in the middle of the route; say, New Mexico. Run a PQ that gives you all active caches within 8 miles of that cache, that are members-only, and that were placed between March 8 and March 8. Bingo, exactly the 49 caches you want. As I said, most of you probably figured this out, or an easier way, right around the time fire or the wheel were invented, but sum ov us iz kinda slo. I'll see y'all out there, breathing the fumes of the 56, real soon!

And for Tecolote Canyon, Marion Bear and Rose Canyon Parks, you can call (858) 581-9961 For Black Mountain Preserve, you can call (858) 538-8082 For Mission Trails, you can call 619) 668-3275 Thanks!

I guess Penasquitos Canyon Mudslide will be closed for a while. Does anyone know of a website or phone number where we can check in a few days to see if it has been reopened? I can't find one, but there must be one, especially for the horsie people who wouldn't want to load up ol' Dobbin in the trailer and drive over there only to find it closed.

In my old hometown of Chapel Hill, N.C., there is a cacher, "maingray," who likes to keep a 10-mile radius cleared. So a bunch of his very best friends started deliberately placing new caches within what came to be known as the "Radius of Wonder." Ultimately they placed this multi/puzzle called "RoW, RoW, Row Your Cache" http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...d8-469a2fc778f4

What amazes me is that this thread has been going on for several days now, and still, none of our resident right-wing nutcases has dropped in to splutter out the phrase "nanny state." I guess they're all busy on some other forum trying to keep the Commies from taking away their God-given right to set off kids' life-threatening allergies by using peanut butter jars as caches.

Often, though, those "just-some-words" are fascinating descriptions of the hunt, or hilarious anecdotes, or they contain interesting information about an area that has changed greatly since the cache was first hidden. Old local newspapers are also "just some words" on a piece of paper, and a lot (but definitely not all) of what they contain is utterly trivial, but libraries keep them anyway, and historians use them all the time. "History" isn't just lists of presidents and wars; it's also knowledge and understanding of everyday life, and old cache logs, like old grocery coupons and help-wanted ads and ordinary people's obituaries from old newspapers, definitely contain information that's useful to that kind of understanding. See, for example, the thread at http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=172314, in which the legendary Texas cacher "9Key" bemoans the lost art of log-writing. Here in San Diego, the late "Yrium" was famous for his beautifully crafted log comments, but eventually, as TPTB make archived caches' pages impossible to find, his great prose is disappearing into an inaccessible dungeon somewhere in Seattle.

I can't seem to find this cache's page now, but wasn't there a 5/5 that required SCUBA gear, in a decommissioned Canadian Navy ship that was deliberately sunk near here as a fish reef and diving destination? I don't know if that qualifies as part of SD county, though.

Thanks for posting this, FlagMan! I just made my first visit to the nature center recently and it would certainly be a shame if it closed down. Lots of great birds and lizards there, ruins of an old gunpowder factory -- plus there's a loggable benchmark with at least 2 visible RMs! I can't make the event but will send a letter to the Chula Vista City Council in case that would help.

As a ham who's just getting back on the radio after a long time, I wondered how many other local cachers are hams. Yesterday I ran into Team Adelos on the air. My call is N4JIU (yeah, from that "4", y'all can tell I ain't from around heah).

Woo-hoo! The Tranquility caches are "back by popular demand" and are already getting finds again! Thanks!

Not only that, but Groundspeak's other project, Waymarking.org, has a whole category devoted to bringing people to birdwatching locations. Speaking of YG's Biblical clues, something about "left hand not knowing what right hand is doing" comes to mind.

Yep, for example, I was at La Fuenta Bonita just yesterday (for culinary, not caching, reasons ) and saw it in its usual place.

True -- the Sterns have some good recommendations of food through south Texas, and once you get into Cajun country in extreme southeast Texas you can get some good food in places like Nederland, the home town of singer Tex Ritter, and despite its name, it's mostly French not Dutch. But at that point you're almost in Louisiana anyway. Sounds like a fun trip!