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TheLoneGrangers

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    Finding Treasure in the desert...

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    I am a jeeper and visit another forum jk-forum.com, just joined the site there actually and they have a geocaching section. This thread was posted in 2008 and I apologize if it made it over here already, but it's so good it's worth sharing.

     

    Finding Treasure in the Desert

     

    JESUS…it was a beautiful day…66 degrees, a light breeze, and not a cloud in the sky. Heavenly! A perfect day to either put the top down and take my Jeep out to the desert or clean out the garage. Personally, I would rather spend a week in a line at the Dept of Motor Vehicles than clean out the garage, so the desert was an obvious choice. It’s quiet and I can think peacefully, plus…I like my Jeep the same way I enjoy my martinis and my women…dirty.

     

    The desert here in El Paso is everything you would expect. Tumbleweeds, lizards, snakes, garbage, sand, sand, sand, and oh…did I mention the freaking sand. In my experience, people usually use the desert for a few reasons – to go off-roading, exercise, shoot guns, or dump garbage (jerks). But I am also painfully well aware that there are other possible no-so-good purposes for that vast wasteland too and I always take caution.

     

    Sunday afternoon and all of the usual suspects were accounted for; helmetless atv riders, drunken 4x4er’s, and expert target shooters killing the ever dangerous empty beer bottle. Countless years of human evolution and this was the inevitable circus showcasing the finest in our species. Now, I normally avoid the insanity of this Ringling Brothers hooligan-esque weekend madness like homeless people asking me for change, but I couldn’t resist today and I casually made my way out to a quieter spot overlooking the El Paso valley.

     

    From my hilltop perch, I listened to sports radio while I fumbled through my

    Dayplanner – trying to strategize my world takeover – when I noticed an suv

    parked off in the distance. Nothing unusual, but when Captain Kangaroo (what can I say, he was old & had a beard) came stumbling out of this extremely rugged little arroyo, it piqued my curiosity. Being a former conman, drug dealer, DEA informant (READ MY STORY @ WWW.ZYOOSE.COM), and all around social engineer…I tend to notice things that other people completely miss. I took my usual mental inventory of this guys dress, walk, behavior, whatever and it didn’t make any sense to me, but then again – I am a cantankerous, suspicious, overly-imaginative pain-in-the-rear. But about 30 minutes after the ‘Captain’ hastily left, a nagging feeling in my gut prompted me to go check it out.

     

    After making my way down the hill, I performed a careful initial examination of the scene that would have made a criminalist proud. I picked up his trail and noticed that this fellow took a circuitous route back to a secluded part of this deep arroyo where I surmised that only tarantulas and people trying to hide something would go. And being the ever curious cat that I am, I decided to press on. Maybe I would find D.B. Coopers secret loot or a small fortune in hidden drug money or Onate’s gold or the entrance to the bat cave or maybe an tail whooping, but whatever it was…I WAS THERE! I got about 50 yards in, when I realized that I was just wearing flip flops and that I had left the keys in the Jeep with my cell phone in it. I also realized that Captain Suspicious might come back to the scene, while I was being the curious little cat. And since I have already used up a good portion of my nine lives in the past, I decided to regroup. So I went back to the Jeep and prepared for a hike. Keys, check. Cell phone, check. Hiking boots, machete, and a bottle of

    water; check, check, & let’s get the hell out of here already!

     

    Now I was curious, probably too curious. But what in the heck was this guy doing? Who was he? If I find money am I gonna turn it in to the authorities…? Well, I knew he answer to this one…NO! Should I buy a Dodge Viper? Another laptop? A new flatscreen? Ohhhh, a trip to Cancun would be nice this time of year, but wait I don’t have a passport…SHUT UP ALREADY…my alter ego screamed! I needed to concentrate, so I went back to tracking and I found his trail & took notice of his gate in the sand. It looked from his strides that he was my height but heavier. I couldn’t see if he was fat from the distance, but could he have been carrying something? A body? I better get a freaking reward for this.

     

    Up one ridge, down another, across some railroad tracks, over a barbed wire fence – that decided it needed to eat & took a bite from a very private area – across a small valley and up a steep hill. I painfully followed each step looking for a clue, while thinking about all the ways that I was gonna either find treasure or how long it would take them to find my body in the desert. I estimated that I was about a mile away from where I started when I climbed this steep embankment. Ever alert for rattlers, scorpions, anything else that bites, desperate illegals, drug runners – basically anything dangerous – I relied on all of my life experience to constantly survey my surroundings while dreaming of treasure. That was…until his trail came to an end behind some overgrown desert brush on the edge of a steep embankment. I looked down and couldn’t believe it; half buried in the sand was an ammo box. Bloodied, dirty, tired and needing a tetanus shot…I froze. This was too good to be

    true. I found treasure and I was gonna be rich! I wanted a gold Rolex, no…a silver one with diamonds, maybe BOTH! As my heart thumped, I double checked that I wasn’t followed and slowly knelt near the box. I looked for booby traps and gently nudged it with my machete. After pulling it out, I opened it facing away from me and peeked inside awaiting my spoils.

     

    Butt kiss! The only thing in there was a bunch of childish knickknacks that only

    retarded kids would find interesting, but nothing cool. Some notebooks, several

    quarters, a 2 dollar lottery ticket, pencils, some coasters, a GI Joe, a bolo, and other assorted crap not worth mentioning. I wanted to take a leak in it, but then I began to profile Captain Crazy. What type of guy would do this? Would my disturbing his stash cause him to kill someone? What if this lunatic caught me here? My mind was racing and my flight or fight response kicked in. I was ready to jet, when I decided to quickly take a peek at the journals.

     

    “This was too easy, didn’t have to use the GPS.”

     

    “Greetings from the visiting Blueheels.”

     

    “Cachers, this was a beautiful hike.”

     

    WTH? There were several different handwriting styles and all the posts had dates. Obviously I had found someone’s game. DAMMIT! How come I am never the guy that finds that lost bag of money from a Brinks armored truck? You won’t see me on the evening news collecting my $1000 reward for turning in a couple of hundred thousand bucks. I will be that lucky turd at the Hummer stealership paying cash for a new H1. You gotta give my instincts credit though; I pegged this one on the nose.

     

    Later – after some research on the net referencing some of the journal entries that I read, I found out that there is this group of people called Geocachers

    (www.geocaching.com) that like to hide stuff and then go look for it. They leave a note and a memento while taking a memento and doing the Hokey-Pokey dance in a Hula dress or some stupid crap like that. C’est la vie – but thanks anyways for the two dollar lottery ticket and buck fifty in quarters – it paid for a donut & a soda. That’s the least they could do after making me walk two miles looking for buried treasures and dumped bodies!

     

    I guess the moral of the story is that we often take a walk down the path of life looking for a treasure that will make us happy. We do things like – go to school, find a job, get married, start a business, whatever – but more often than we would like to admit, we either struggle or worse…fail at these endeavors…never reaching that treasured outcome that we covet.

     

    Stop and smell the roses.

     

    Sit back and enjoy the ride.

     

    Do what you enjoy and you will never work a day in your life.

     

    You have heard it all before, but it has never been truer. Why chase outcomes? Poop happens and happens often. You are not in control of things like you would like to think, so why set yourself up to be disappointed by defining yourself only by a final moment. And let me tell you a little secret, highly successful people don’t purely chase outcomes either. They chase the process.

     

    Life, just like success, is a process. Successful people never know how things are going to work out, so they marry the process. Their process is to develop fantastic habits – exercise, attitude, effort, practice, and work, whatever-it-may-be – and they religiously follow this routine. When they fail, they keep doing the process and eventually success in some form follows. This is not true for people that only chase outcomes, when they fail, they quit. But that brings us to the real secret; successful people enjoy doing their processes. They love their highly productive habits & routine. So if you want to be successful, create a process/routine & start with some good basic habits, such as having a positive attitude. Things won’t change overnight, but you CAN do it…start with just one new habit, then two, then three and next thing you know the results – TREASURED OUTCOMES – will magically appear! What have you got to lose? And it’s too easy to not try.

     

    And in case you were wondering, I plan on taking a copy of this story and some

    mementos back to the 'cachers' little box, but I don't think I will be doing any more geocaching anytime soon.

     

    Over and out,

    zyoose.com

    National Geographic TOPO! with Garmin?

    in GPS technology and devices

    Posted

    Well you can't beat free! went to gpsfiledepot...and got topo maps of south carolina (where I live)....so so so so much better improvement. I am so glad I read this thread..Thanks!

     

    I had to install mapsource, cgpsmapperfree, and went ahead and installed basecamp while I was at it. LOL A little bit of a learning curve but I figured it out

    National Geographic TOPO! with Garmin?

    in GPS technology and devices

    Posted

    Seriously you guys have no idea what you just taught me, my wife and I have over 500 finds, and we have been using the dakota 20 with just what it came with, a arrow with a pink line towards the cache, with only main highways identifable. I seriously had no idea I could put a topo map on it WOW THANK YOU...i feel dumb right now lol

    Our 1st Geocache experience

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    Congratulations!

     

    Tip.

    Sometimes, if you find yourself 'Bushwacking' through the undergrowth, just look around... There may be another way in, along an easy path. :laughing:

     

    Yes, very important lol, I found my self on some of our first finds making a 2 terrain difficulty into a 4 lol, one example that comes to mind is that a me and a buddy went after a cache that was a 2 terrain, we bushwacked down a very steep hill, and then traversed a 12 foot wide creek that was a foot deep in a swampy looking area....total trip was about .5 miles not counting the hiking to the other caches. Got to the 2 terrain cache and it was 100 feet off a very well marked trail, and all I had to do was go back to the vehicle and park in a different spot. LOL

    How did you get your start?

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    I heard my two coworkers having a conversation about caching or geohunting, they didn't know exactly what it was, but they were interested in finding something to do when thier kids get alittle older. I talked to them about it and decided to google "caching". And found geocaching.com. I thought this would be something my wife and I would enjoy. My boss offered me his old GPSr from 1994 (its Oct. 2010). I went home, created a account that night and loaded manually the 6 closiest caches. I explained it to my wife, which she didn't seem very interested and thought it was dumb, but that sat. morning we went out to find the 6 i loaded in this ancient GPSr. We only found 3 of them, with DNFing the first one we searched for. (we looked for that one 3 times and its a 1/1)

     

    My wife and I were instantly hooked, but not 100% convienced we went to Best Buy Sunday and bought a car NUVI 1300. We thought if we didn't like it, we would at least have a car GPSr. We been caching ever since, she bought me a dakota 20 for Christmas and we love it. Geocaching has changed my life. I traded in my 2010 Camaro SS for a 2007 Jeep wrangler. I've taken up mountian biking because of it, we have started camping to find them, and are slowly gathering gear to backpack to find them. I am also wanting a Kayak.

    The return of Virtuals

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    I enjoy the current virtuals because they are rare. Thats the only reason, I don't want to see them return. This new "challenge" although sounds like fun, and will probably be, I have no intentions of finding any of them, if I don't get a smiley or a number there is no point IMO, just like benchmarks.

     

    I think you said a mouthful there! Well put.

     

    Thanks knowschad

    The return of Virtuals

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    This new "challenge" although sounds like fun, and will probably be, I have no intentions of finding any of them, if I don't get a smiley or a number there is no point IMO, just like benchmarks.

     

    I find it a little sad that your desire for a number outweighs your desire to even try something that you say sounds like and probably would be fun.

     

    I intend to "wait and see" what the product looks like before I pass judgement one way or the other.

     

    Given that both the "bring back Virtuals" and "Virtuals aren't Geocaches" crowds both cling to their beliefs with near-religious furor, makes me think a solution that makes both sides equally angry might just mean Groundspeak got it perfectly right.

     

    One of the coolest things is to log into the site and pull up your local map and see all those containers turn into smilies. I am not competing against anyone, I enjoy watching my numbers increase, and seeing all the smilies on the map. If the new thing doesn't show that, again I don't see the point. It's hardly sad, it's just a game and we all play it our own way.

    The return of Virtuals

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    I enjoy the current virtuals because they are rare. Thats the only reason, I don't want to see them return. This new "challenge" although sounds like fun, and will probably be, I have no intentions of finding any of them, if I don't get a smiley or a number there is no point IMO, just like benchmarks.

    A great log entry

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    thanks for the log entry, enjoyed reading it, and I highly suggest a bike helmet if you mountain bike, the only ones who will see you wearing it, are other riders, and they will be wearing them as well. LOL. One wrong turn or slip in the sand, or navigated a obstacle wrong, and your head may meet a tree

    almost to 500!

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    It's hard because I want to put out a fun one, or one with a great view, but I don't think there are alot of cool enough places around my location that I may be forced to place a guard rail or LPC or something simuliar. I have a challenge in mind, but do I want to place a challenge as my first cache??? I think the regulars around here would just appreciate another cache nearby. But I want something that earns favorite points...thats what I want for any cache I place. I want people to see my CO name, and can't wait to go find my cache because they know it will be awesome...Maybe I set to high of standards? lol

    Should there be a limit to # of caches in one area by one person?

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    Now, I don't have 2 or 3 hundred caches out there like some people. I have a couple that I think are enjoyable. However, I've noticed that there are some members that "carpet bomb" an area with caches. Most don't even put any thought into them; they're slapdash affairs and often no more than a film canister. In a nutshell; boring.

     

    The result of this though, is that the casual cache placer can't find any decent areas to place a cache. The geocacher themselves too suffer, because all they can find is "RIdogz5, RIDogz6, RIDogz7"...just one lame cache after another after another for a couple of miles sometimes.

     

    Should there be a limit on the amount of caches placed by one member in a small amount of time in the same general area?

    I think to suggest that the hider didn't "even put any thougth into them" is unfair and insulting. I bet the CO put a lot of work trying to find locatins that were available, making log sheets, purchasing cache containers etc. I think more cachers need to be happy that there are caches to find. And if you don't like them, there are plenty more or there to find.

     

    This ^^

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