beatnik

Picked up a pretty cool Travel Bug this weekend. The Geo Gnome is quite a large fellow. I think he is pretty special and would like to see him get some great photos. He originated in Indiana and is now with me in Oklahoma. There is a really good chance I will be in the Denver (Littleton/Highlands Ranch), CO area on business in the next 2-3 weeks. I am wondering if anyone would like to meet me at a cache (or anywhere for that matter) and make a trade of this little fellow. I'm going to take several photos of him here in Tulsa. I'd like the person that takes him to have a camera so they can do the same. Even better is someone that would be willing to take him up into the mountains for some photos.

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GCJQ4R Come get some. Friday Night 7:00pm Tulsa, OK.

The person at the park may be confused with the event cache that was there. There were 3-4 caches pages that were for the event cache (back when that was allowed). One was turned into a permanent cache. The others were archived after the event. Jaberjah's permanent physical cache is the only one I know of ever in that park. SE Oklahoma as a whole is severely lacking in the cache department. There is such a large amount of beautiful public land down there with little to show for it. I have attempted to get interest by placing a few down there myself. One got muggled. One other I had to archive because I won't be able to check it monthly like I used to. It only had a few visits anyway. I still have a couple virtuals and two micros. They are seldom visited. Slowly they are popping up. JPenn's family and arkansas sticker dude have placed a few over in that area and a several have popped up in Broken Bow SP.

This is key! Work with them and let them in on the event. It's really nice to hear things like this from park staff. "Thanks so much to everyone who organized the event, and turned out to help! The photos and report of an impressive ten cubic yards of trash removed (again!) are already circulating at Parks Department and Public Works staff meetings, building on geocaching's good reputation." Good point, I really should have done this this year. I will have to remember that for next year. VERY good point. You can cover a lot of ground quickly! Pick an area that you know is really trashy. Not just your favorite park. We had about 15 people both years. As you can see from the above comment we had at least 10 cubic yards each year. Scout out illegal trash piles and mark them with your GPS. At the event hand out a list of key spots, mark it and they will clean.

And another photo of the TAG cleanup. There's more on our Tulsa Area Geocachers CITO Webpage of course

Well I didn't see a thread for the new 04 CITO so I made my own. Thought everyone would like to see our 2nd annual haul here in Tulsa. We got a little carried away and "darn if someone didn't throw out a perfectly good geocacher!" Quick grab that GPS from around his neck!

What happened to the "Search for nearest caches in -your state here-" which actually showed the newest caches in the state on order by date placed. That was my most used feature of all. I do like not having to see all my travel bugs. It was getting a little much for me.

Found this one out by a cache. The car wasn't there a month earlier when a previous cache 30 yards away from the car was archived.

Good Topic! The suggestions I had from our Tulsa Parks CITO day last year. 1. Do food first - you won't want to eat after when you are dirty and nasty from all the trash. Plus the food brings in people. We did a pot-luck brunch/picnic. As the sponser I brought 50 pieces of chicken which is cheap from Wal-Mart. Everyone else brought drinks, a CITO cake, and other sides and snacks. Food make people happy and ready to work. 2. As mentioned CALL FIRST! - Some parks have policies on cleaning up believe it or not. We work with Tulsa Parks Department. They love us for it. They even have a geocaching and letterboxing class at the nature center now! Approach them first and volunteer your time. Most all park people (state and local) I have worked with are more than happy to give you as many trash bags as you need. If you give them time they will usually assign a dumpster for you to use that they will haul off. They even provided us with a few pick up sticks and other cleaning tools. 3. Bring Gloves - People forget, remind everyone to bring a good pair of work gloves. You will need them and leather is best. Rubber if you are working around waterways. Never hurts to have a few extra pairs on hand. You should stress this a lot so that everyone is prepared and safe. There are sometime things in parks you want to be very careful picking up if you know what I mean. Having gloves limits the next topic greatly! 4. Liability - Again ask the parks department. Ours has a volunteer form they use. It holds the person liable and not the park for injury. It also lets them use any footage or photos royalty free for their purposes. In addition it has lines for listing emergency contact information if there is an accident. 5. Take lots of photos - Last year I scouted the park the night before and took before photos and took waypoints of hot spots. Then I could go back and take after photos. When you are done with the event post the photos to your event page. Tell people to upload photos and log the cache. Then e-mail the parks department a link to the cache page so they can see what you did. Send the person you worked with a CD full of photos of the event as well. Park workers love this kind of stuf to show their bosses, city council members, and even the mayor. "See, this why geocaching is good for our parks," they can say. 6. Prizes neve hurt - I gave away a few CITO shirts last year as prizes for the hardest workers that brought in the biggest haul. You shouldn't have to give prizes to get people to work but it keeps people interested and coming back. Makes them feel really good about what they did and rewards those people that deserve it. 7. Have fun - Never thought picking up trash could be so much fun. We had a blast last year. Looking forward to it again. The parks department is actually looking forward to us coming back again as well after the last event. See look at all these happy people! If you only knew the smell of death coming from that brown trash can behind us, you really be laughing.

Might as well make the best of it. Through rain and shine we managed 19 today.

Just noticed this since I don't read this forum much. I'm the contact for Tulsa Area Geocachers (TAG) I'll send off an e-mail shortly.

You use the PC cachemate program "cmconvert.exe" to load your .GPX files and turn them into a .PDB file for placing on your Palm. Once you place the palm database file for cachemate on the palm run Cachemate on your Palm and it will ask you about importing the cache pages. You can then load your .GPX file on to your GPS using EasyGPS or you can use GPX Spinner to spin the file first and place it on your GPS with EasyGPS just as you may have before. I put the full GPX file onto my Palm first. Then I usually use Watcher to filter my GPX files down for my trip. I then save them as a new GPX file with Watcher. I GPX-Spin that file and load it into my GPS with EasyGPS. Sounds like a lot of work but I can take a new GPX file fresh from my inbox and be ready to go caching in less than 5 minutes. Longer if I plan out my route of course.

That's because these are probably 2 of the hardest geocaches in OKC. We got very lucky on Tom's First after almost giving up on our search. I still have yet to find Happy Holiday's after 2 or 3 trips. I've heard of people going out there 4 and 5 times. Just way too many leaves and debris and the signals bounce off the bank walls. Actually this topic would be better if it was moved to the regional forum that covers Oklahoma.

If I happen to spot the FedEX plane going over my house can I log it. Or do I have to drive over to their office to get the TB# to log this one?

I've had Jeremy's Wee Three Monks I TB in my possesion before. Does that count.

We both touched the Timmy the Lobster Bug. Does that give me a Snoogans number of one? I've recently moved my Bacon number up to 3. Since Mystic River was made. I'm related to Tom Atkins who was in Escape from New York, Halloween III, and got shot up in his house by a helicopter gunman in Lethal Weapon, and most recently played Wilson Lowen on Oz. But I digress, Anyway... I'm related to Tom Atkins Tom Atkins was in Bob Roberts (1992) with Tim Robbins Tim Robbins was in Mystic River (2003) with Kevin Bacon

I've got the Z21 and use it almost strictly for geocaching. I bought it only for geocaching and don't have a whole lot of use for it otherwise. I figure I could put somewhere between 4000 to 5000 cache pages on it with CacheMate. Basically, more than you would ever need in an average cache trip.

Yea, come on, you know you are going just becuase I can't go. You want to get those numbers up because I have more finds than you. Confess you evil man confess! I'll permit you to go ahead and go on one condition. Save me a copy of the route you guys use so I can complete it later this spring. So are me and you going to team up to hit either Black Mesa or Dallas in March?

This question gets asked a lot. You are bound to get stopped sooner or later and questioned for what you are doing. Although It took me almost 2 years to the day of geocaching to get questioned. Like most have said before, just tell them the truth. You may be surprised at their reaction. Yes, there are always loose canons but most of the cops are doing their job which is looking out for you not trying to bust your balls for having innocent fun. We were out of state (MS) and parked beside an old barn just off a busy road and near the river levee. It was orange alert status and I was hunting a cache while the wife was in the car. As I came back victorious the wife explains a cop just went by and I think he saw us. Sure enough here he comes again speeding towards us. It's a county Sherrif vehicle with a young man behind the wheel. The wife a little scared asks what I'm going to tell him. The truth, of course, I replied. What do you expect me to tell him, some story about why we are hiding near this barn just sitting in the car? He asked if we were ok and then asked what I was doing. Geocaching I reply. I got that blank muggle stare of course. So I replied with the usual line when asked. It's like a scavenger hunt but you use your GPS to find hidden boxes of stuff. Oh, he replies, that's all? Yep. That's it?, he asks. Yep. And these things are all ove the place? Yep. The next reply had us laughing for 5 minutes after he drove away. In his best Southern drawl he says "No S$%t?" So at this point I get out of the car and show him the map of where we are. I then zoom out to a cluster of icons all over the screen. See, these are all caches. And people just hide these all over? he says. Yep. No S$%t!, he says again. See you can load the information on a PDA and just go around finding them. It's great fun while you are on vacation. And you came all the way here to find these?, he asks. Well, that and other things. No S$%t? Well, dadgum I'm just gonna have to look up that website when I get home. was his reply as he had to go.

Journalism: High-tech treasure hunt / scavenger hunt / hide 'n seek / etc. Encrypted Hints: It's easy, you don't need a hint (Oh yea! then why in the @#%@#$%#%#$ did I just decode it!) Hides: Green Decon container hung in a Cedar (often erroneously called a pine on the page or in the logs) and the ever popular pile o' barkoflauge Not so unique cache names: Walk in the Park (78 records)

Hmmmm Now I know what to look for when I finally make it over to Ponca City to log your caches.

This one will probably get frozen quick so I guess I should reply while I can. I'll just say, I'm pretty darn liberal in my viewpoints. I don't have problems with what rock stars do. Marilyn Manson doesn't phase me in the least bit. I wasn't shocked by Britney, Chirstina, and Madonna locking lips. South Park isn't the end of the world. Tom Green is just another hack shock artist. Hey you expect that kind of thing out of cable TV. I'm of the mindset, if you don't like it be smart enough not to watch it or let your kids watch it. That said, I found what happened totally unacceptable. Yea it was just a breast, but it was the Superbowl. Families have been watching the Superbowl together for a long time. I can turn off or keep my kids from watching other things. I love CSI but I don't let my 5 year old watch it. It's obvious which things you should avoid. But you don't expect to have to censor your kids when the Superbowl is on. So yea, I think it was a big mistake. "Costume malfuntion" or not.

Hmmmm. That doesn't work right. I have more finds than caches within 100 miles. I'm at 105%.

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