Zzyzx Road

Our small town (barely 10K this last census) has a cemetary that is about 3/4 decorated with flags at Memorial day. They have a wonderful row of large flags up the drive into the place. I have taken some wonderful pics of the sun setting behind the flags, with the wind rippling them out a bit. Really pretty! It would be disrespectful to me if the town (who turn out by the dozens!) didn't walk all over and place the flags. Kids from scouting (boys and girls both) run all over afterwards collecting the flags. I have taken my girls for walks in the cemetary, just to read the stones and markers. Based on the years and ages of the people you can tell whether they were in a war, died of disease (like children with measles) or just were really old! My grandmother was two weeks shy of 98 when she died, and I would be proud of someone reading her dates and saying, "Dang she was a tough old bat!" - because she was! One of the stones in our cemetary has a beautiful portrait painted on it. I have not really taken the time to go look at it - it is one of the newer ones, but from a distance I can see that it is really pretty. There are also some with really ornate carvings too... I think that if I were to have a cache in a cemetary, it would be a virtual/historical, mainly because of the history our town has...I would love to see that prairie place!

We collect themes of McD toys, recently we got a whole load of the same thing. We have been leaving those... I also got some beanies from a friend (tried selling them on eBay, but with only mixed results) and some are teenie beanies, which fit quite nicely into the caches we have found. The Woody toys we left are opened, only so they would fit into the caches. Teenies are small enough. My girls like the idea of taking something from the cache, so we will always leave something fun enough for a 5-11 year old - since those are the people helping me. I would never leave anything trashy or dirty or used... Should we be doing something better/different?

I bought a Kodak Easyshare DX4330 (several years ago when it was middle-line and more expensive) because it had lens capabilities. I love the lenses with it, except for the panoramic. It gives me some rainbow effects around the edges of my pictures. The features on it (nighttime, closeup, action, etc are really a great help!) BUT: 3 MP (megapixel) will give you adequate prints up to 8x10. Unless you have a printer that will print larger, that should be fine - and they are a lot less expensive now! Optical zoom definitely! More of that = better resolution when cropping and enlarging. I use the USB with mine for uploading photos. I have had to update the software from the website so it doesn't fight with my scanner software, but the Kodak site is quite easy and they have been most helpful along the way. Until this camera absolutely dies on me (in which case, I will upgrade to a bigger/better/newer one!) I have been most happy with it! Costco actually has some good models of digitals right now...

Well, Disneyland was a bust. The 5 year old was wanting to go on all the little rides, and the 11 year old wanted to hit the coasters, and hubby (the oldest child!) was griping about all the people. It WAS busy though. There were a whole bunch of school groups, cheerleaders, some folks who were on a trip because their HS wrestling team placed...It was almost as busy as in July. I DO however, know how to use the features on the GPS now...so the next time we go (annual passholders) I will have my list of clues/descriptions printed out in a more useable format, and the individual coordinates on the GPS. Try and try again...!

ASAP on ours. This may be due to the "New and Exciting" that we are experiencing. If I ever get so tired of this new sport that I should not WANT to log them in a decent amount of time, I will also be at a point to quit looking for them so vigorously. That is how I do things though. We are interested in the Travel bugs, and with so many of them AWOL (whether missing or just behind in info) I would think that prompt logging would be important. Just our two geocents worth.

My 5 yr old and I found our first two yesterday. I knew by the clues and location on the simple map where they should be, so it was fun watching the gps do it's stuff. A little later on, hubby drove a mile or two down the hwy to a third cache, and both the 5 and 11 yr old found the container. THAT's how to do it. Get really close and let the monsters do the actual digging... Seriously though, they were jumping up and down as though we had told them we were really driving to Disneyland! (which we will be this next week - and of course we will do the puzzle/virtuals in the park...) Took us one each I guess. Now both kids, getting out of school early today, want to spend the rest of our shrinking daylight (tut-tut, it looks like rain!) looking for more... No, there's not a problem started here!!!

Based on a topic I read yesterday (I am digging through history) one should also include a small vial of "Blue Water"...

I just want to see if I got this right, so when the time comes I can pull it off without help... Correct me where I am wrong please... Travelbugs are items (chosen by the creator) that have a dogtag (with a specific and unique number) attached (purchased from Groundspeak store) so they can be tracked as they travel. When you pick one up from a cache, you will log it as "picked up" and then when you deposit it (sooner, rather than later - never longer than 2 weeks unless you email the creator about the delay) in another cache, you will log it as "dropped off". I am intrigued about these little guys and am contemplating what I can send out from somewhere. Thanks for not only your answers, but your patience also with my simpleton questions...

Our town is so small (+/- 10000) that I know where the one benchmark and two caches are. I have yet to take the time to find them exactly though - I know the police chief kinda' (his kid is at school with mine, they're buds) and I would hate to meet him under suspicious circumstances! The clues are great. I was actually surprised to see the map show a road behind some businesses that I never knew were there! (We have lived here 3 years ) I personally think that getting close or finding without a gadget is great!

Thanks to all of you, I now will just blend in!

Alrighty then...I have now dried behind my ears (at least I WASHED back there!) I will now make a few more posts, then that darned Amphibious moniker will go away...

Well, I went out and looked at all these markers. There are 9 all together for this new subdivision. 5 intersections of road to road, 2 road to alley and two more that seem to be sidewalk to road. They all are the same size, set in the asphault in a small round of concrete, and they all have the same number inscribed. LS6619. Now, are these something to try to find or are they an insignificant temporary marker for the contractor and not a noteable item? I guess that was my original question. I was all excited to begin with that there was something of "value" that was undocumented and I could "claim" it. I also managed to take pictures of each one without getting run over!

And here I just asked some of these same ?? elsewhere. Instead of coming here and reading first - although my ? wasn't about tadpole status. So, you move up in the world after 10 posts, but you can change your avatar caption with a premium membership?

DANG IT... How do I get a caption under my avatar? Or is that something I have to wait until I morph into a frog first?

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Thanks! I hope that we will be able to stop (getting hubby to do that is like visiting the dentist sometimes! Or maybe it is like bleeding turnips...) at many caches along our future routes. I think our new GPS will allow us to plot the entire route so we can seek out each one along the way. I know that the zzyzx is also a genus/species of butterfly...that is why I thought it was kinda' cool for an email...

While we have not used ours yet, it is still in transit, I chose a Magellan eXplorist 600 because: Hubby wanted the altimeter, barometer feature for hunting. I wanted the compass and expandable memory for Geocaching. It came with both of the above, in a color screen, with rechargable batteries. And the fellow from eBay from whom we purchased it also had it for cheaper than Cabela's, with the TOPO cd and an SD card. Was a nice neat package. We'll see what I can do with it. A friend, (the one who introduced me to Geocaching) saw what I got and said something to the effect of "Holy CR*P!" I want a new one too!" Of course I would like to have an iPod, and a PDA and all of the other new and fun toys, but I was price-conscious. I wanted a Lowrance iFinder Explorer (From a web-site description) but couldn't find one on eBay. Since I was to get my own "Christmas Present", that is what I chose. I do enjoy reading all the opinions!

Well, I guessed at our home coordinates, looking at the map until I got close enough. But the GPS unit we are using (soon!) is en route, to be here by Wednesday I think. THEN I will have a way to log coordinates. I hope I will get them correct, and in the right spot! Zzyzx Road is a long story. I have been to Vegas several times, passing that sign and wondering what exactly is there. When we first set up an online account, every single screen name I chose was used somehow! This was back when Compuserve, Prodigy and AOL were first competing. I finally, out of desperation, chose an incorrect spelling of that road. Since then I have butchered it several times for email addresses. Finally I got it correct for this site! We plan on taking another trip from here to Mt Shasta this next fall, one to Pahrump NV this next spring (I think we will go by Zzyzx Road then), and the pending trip to the big "D" next week. Thanks for the direction/input! I look forward to having some great fun here.

Happy Holidays all! My first post here, hopefully with many more to come! We are looking forward to the list of virtuals at Disneyland/DCA next week. Thanks to Jen & crew (TakeaWAG) for setting me on this great (historical, mathematical, physical, FUN) new hobby! My question for today (trust me there will be more!) is: Benchmarks. I understand the brass survey markers with the info enscribed on them. But what do we call the small gold-colored markers (no marks or notations on them at all) in the intersections of streets? We just had a new section of our subdivision put in over the last 2 years, and while riding my bike through the area, I noticed small markers in the exact centers of the new roads. Hubby thinks those are merely contractor markers for the elevation of the area for drainage. (we have MANY ponding basins here for rain) Anyhow, if those are of some value in logging benchmarks, I have two new ones to "submit", because they don't show up on the map by my zip code. (I did read the FAQS page, but I couldn't find anything about these particular markers) Help? Thanks!