Kite and Hawkeye
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Posts posted by Kite and Hawkeye
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I think it depends on the nature of the place. Run of the mill city park with nothing more endangered than house sparrows and dandelions? Probably not going to ask permission. Conservation trust land? I'd probably just not place a cache there at all, because no matter how many times you say "no bushwhacking" or "stay on the trail" some idiot will do it anyway, or someone will show up with coords but no printout and be unaware of any special warnings. But if I really, really wanted a cache in such a place, yes, I'd feel obliged to ask permission.
In most places, I feel no qualms hunting (did the placer ask to put that micro under the sidewalk bench? I doubt it). On the other hand, if I'm going in a place that advertises itself as an environmental sanctuary or breeding ground for some endangered critter, I'd feel much better about it if the hider indicated they had permission, and/or that the actual placement was okayed as harmless to the main mission of the place.
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So, I express some slight trepidation about the potential steepness of the terrain around Ruscal's new cache on Mount Soledad, but vow to do it anyway (eventually). I check the cache page a few days later, and what do I see? Everyone's talking about the kite graveyard below the cache site.
I think Hawkeye's doing this one alone.
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Apparently yahoo no longer is able to plot a map using lat/long.
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I like to find plastic frogs/snakes/insects. Maybe a little rubber duckie. Personalized signature items are great, as are geocoins, especially a shiny one that I can keep. (I can dream, can't I?) My favorite finds have been a "duck crossing" domino, a clear glass cat paperweight, and a ceramic walnut made by the cache placer's mom (and/or some of her friends in a nursing home).
I'll settle for a dry logbook and a working pen, though.
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Originally posted by Tower247:Has anyone thought about making prediction tables for optimal satellite constelation times? Seems like they'd have something like that along with the best time to hunt & fish accessories.
K.I.S.S.
The satellites seem to move rather rapidly. If we start out with lousy geometry, by the time we reach the cache things have usually changed.
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"Check this box if you want to be the first to know when new things happen on the web site. You can unsubscribe at any time."
Has this ever been used? The recent redesign and ongoing tweaking would have been an excellent occasion. Those notes that Jeremy sometimes posts in the news forum would be great updates to mail to those who chose to receive them that way (I would guess a majority of cachers don't read the forums, and so never see the news, and are startled when one day the whole site looks different). I assumed when I signed up, way back when, I'd be the first to know everything, but no, I'm reading the forums with the rest of the unwashed (sweaty from geocaching, no doubt) masses. *sniff*
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I was having login problems for a very, very long time. A week or so ago, they finally stopped, and I'm staying logged in from multiple machines with no problem. I was hoping that "how come I can stay logged in" was going to be a thread where we all got to say how glad we were that everything was fixed... but it sounds like some problems are still persisting. :/
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Oh, I'm just kvetching. Hawkeye's much less intimidated by hills than I am, so at least one of us will make it to the cache. Besides, we need some more challenging caches to balance out all the quick micros. Variety is good. If I truly don't feel good about a hill, I won't climb it; I'd rather give up a find than mess up my Achilles tendon again. But caching has also encouraged me to push myself when it's just laziness saying, "Naw, I don't want to climb that high." It's just amusing that after FINALLY knocking off Soledad Splendor and swearing I'd never go up there again... a new cache appears and makes me eat my words.
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Is there any sort of guideline as to when event caches should be archived? I'm getting tired of looking at the Magellan "Pre-Launch Geocaching Challenge" at REI. The Challenge has a page of its own, the one that people get to log when they find all 25 caches. There's no further possibility of logging the Pre-Launch event. It is a blight upon our nearest unfound page!
But, then, there must always be unattainable caches to taunt us (like that 4.5 terrain above Black's Beach). And Ruscal, dangit, placing another cache on Mount Soledad when we just FINALLY logged Soledad Splendor, after a year of dawdling and dragging feet (and one not-found. It wasn't under the bloody rock! really!). I hate going down those steep trails, so I'm going to end up perched on the top like the wuss that I am while Hawkeye goes down the trail, and I will fear for his life after seeing some little memorial cross halfway down. A hiker that perished falling into the abyss? Someone who intentionally jumped? Mount Soledad makes me strangely uncomfortable. But there's a cache there, so we have to return.
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We've been getting the results of our queries much later than usual -- the ones we run weekly are arriving a good twelve hours late in some cases. We've had to start running it a day early to get results in time for weekend caching.
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Sounds like a great idea. It might be easier to maintain if the preliminary waypoints are virtual, though -- go to the building, answer a question, either have a numeric answer or a multiple-choice question whose answers correspond to numbers. If you are willing and able to maintain the markers, they'd be neat -- I like looking for hidden things, even if they're only little tags. But I know they do sometimes disappear. There was a great multi in Milwaukee called Points of Interest that had engraved dog tags at each point, attached with a little zip tie thingy. They were pretty discreet and withstood the elements. But they STILL disappeared, and finally the owners gave up. Sad. I think the plastic attachments had a tendency to weather -- I accidentally broke one myself when turning the tag to read the engraved numbers. But the idea was pretty neat.
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I like the frog (hey, frogs are our signature item, we're ahead of the times!). But that kid? I'll wait for the next frog shirt.
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So the USA GeoCoins come with activation codes, just like travel bugs?
I found one the other day -- was quite surprised at how tarnished it was, showing dirt and smudges. These things have only been in circulation for a few months, and this particular one hasn't been through a whole lot (it's been in one cacher's possession for a long trip, so it's been logged in and out of various caches, but it hasn't been exposed to the elements for any amount of time, unless the team that had it was testing its durability on the side). Wish they'd been made out of slightly better material, or is this a fluke?
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You're not expected to hike or bike this one, but we put 200 miles on the car in one day for Off to Find a Wizard: the SD Potluck Memorial. Worth it, at the end, to find the biggest ammo box ever
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What land do they manage? Just the recreation areas mapped at http://www.water.ca.gov/swp/facilities/recreation/? I hate to admit it, but I've always been a little confused as to how to find out who administers any given piece of land.
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Originally posted by sgkahu:We are staying at the Days Inn Hotel on Hotel Circle South (tourist centre by the sounds of it!). Any local caches?
You'll have a lot to choose from downtown. There's a cute little micro at on the grounds of a mall close by (the cache name is Boogity Boogity Boogity!). Conventional View and the other caches near it are also nice (there are quite a lot of downtown microcaches if you're interested). If you want something a little more natural, there are caches in the Balboa Park area that offer a bit more of a hike (that's right by the zoo and museums, but you don't need to go in any of them to complete the caches, and there's a surprisingly large natural area there). I'd say perhaps just do a search on nearest caches from Boogity, since it will be very close to your hotel, and pick some with fairly easy terrain, and you'll be in business.
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I read about Poison Oak on a couple of cache logs - does it do a lot of damage? Again, we don't have nasties like that here! I shall do a search to get a picture I think!I happen to be immune, so I'm lucky, but my caching partner, Hawkeye, sometimes gets a rash. It's annoyingly itchy, but usually it's just a small stripe on his leg, no wider than a scratch. Calamine lotion helps. We shower as soon as possible if we've been brushing up against plants -- it may help to bring some sort of wet wipes along and just wipe off your legs if there's been a lot of brush around. Poison Oak is fairly easy to recognize; it can vary in color from shiny green to red, but it's the only common plant with three leaflets. If you see clusters of three leaves, try not to touch them. Many caches are hidden *near* poison oak, but I've rarely seen one where you couldn't avoid the stuff if you tried. I'd have to recommend against our own "Bearly off the trail," though -- oak is quite thick in that canyon. You probably wouldn't venture that far north just for geocaching anyway, since there will be plenty closer.
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If you're doing the Wild Animal Park, you can safely skip the zoo, unless you're a big, big animal fan. The WAP is the more unusual of the two, and is highly recommended. If you've got your heart set on doing both, I believe you can buy a two-park ticket, or even a three-park ticket including Sea World, for a slight discount. I think you'd be quite parked-out if you tried to do them all, though.
I've never been out of the country, and I'd like to go, but I've been discouraged from doing Tijuana. Everyone I know who's been there says you don't really get the true Mexico experience; it's nasty and caters to gullible tourists and such. Or so they say, take it with a grain of salt and all.
There are caches near the Wild Animal Park, but I wouldn't recommend them as easy walks. Also, it will likely be quite hot out there in August. Depending on where your hotel is, you're almost certain to be able to find some caches in striking distance, though. Do you know where you'll be staying, roughly? We've got favorite caches scattered all over the county.
I hate to contradict radical geezer, but I guess he's more radical than we are, because we found Adobe Falls to be difficult! There may be an easy way to reach it, but we were stopped short by the terrain. I do definitely second his recommendation to bring a stick, wherever you go. Don't put your hand anywhere you can't see, or anywhere your stick hasn't poked first. Also, I don't know if you have poison oak in New Zealand, but if you don't know what it looks like, find out before you go hiking! It's very common near sources of water.
I'd recommend doing some of the coastal caches for nice views; there are quite a lot of them that are very easy walks and easy finds.
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I would definitely suggest looking for a surplus store in your area. I've ordered cans online, but then you might get a certain percentage that are dirty, rusty, smelly, have gunk from old stickers, etc. When you go in person, you can pick out the nicest ones. Plus, ammo cans are heavy, so shipping can be expensive. The cans I got online were okay, but the ones I picked out myself were much nicer (and, with shipping counted in, cheaper). At any rate, be prepared to air them out for several days if you don't want your cache contents to smell like ammo box.
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Originally posted by Mark 42:Where do I find out what the goal of the TB is?
Can I find out before I go to a cache? In other words, can I look at a few caches (online) with travel bugs, see what the goal of each bug is, and then decide which cache to look for based on trying to find one with a TB that has a goal which my trip would facilitate?
Yes, exactly as you describe. If there's a travel bug logged into the cache, a bug symbol and the bug's name will appear in the upper right-hand portion of the cache page. The name is a link; click it to see the bug's page, which will mention any goals it has. Plenty of bugs have no particular goals, and you can take them where you will.
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Let's say, a TB has a goal of reaching as close to the South Pole as possible... would I get (electronic) rotten tomatoes thrown at me for taking it from Seattle up to Alaska?In short, yes. The bug said SOUTH pole, not north. It's only polite to respect it as much as possible. If you were taking it a few miles north, say to a travel bug hotel near a major metropolitan area that's likely to contain some people who might be going to the South Pole eventually, that's one thing. But taking it hundreds of miles in the wrong direction, deliberately, would be rude. Can anyone stop you? No. But there are plenty of other bugs out there, and it would be nice of you to take one that would LIKE to go to Alaska rather than one that specifically wants to go the other way.
But I'd also say that keeping a bug moving is more important than any of this. I'd rather see my bug move five miles at a time, occasionally the wrong way, than be held by a cacher for three months and then flown to its goal. If you wonder whether Alaska might be a fun diversion for a South Pole-bound traveler, go to its page, find out who owns it, email its owner and ask. You can never go wrong asking, and maybe the owner would be pleased to go for either pole. Worked for Amundsen.
If you intend to hold a bug longer than a month or so, it's also nice to talk to the owner about it and see if that's okay by them. Our bug's been held since March, and it's very boring; I'd been hoping to get frequent emails about its travels, maybe some pictures or something, but instead it's made a couple of hops and come to a standstill. Nobody's so much as written an extra note in its logs. If you want to make travel bug owners happy, take some pictures of the bug at local attractions and write a nice little note to go with them. I'd be happy to let you take my San-Diego bound bug to Alaska if you'd just snap some pictures. But that's just me
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Originally posted by Moun10Bike:quote:
Originally posted by fly46:I want to know who aproved the cache being BURIED UNDER GROUND.
Please keep in mind that this cache was hidden in September of 2001, BEFORE THE GUIDELINES ABOUT BURIED CACHES WERE IN PLACE.
http://geocachingwa.org<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I can see how some caches get grandfathered, but a buried cache sounds like it should be archived and removed. It's one thing to have a no-logbook micro, or a virt where a physical cache could've been placed, but burying just gives us a bad name. Tell a park manager who uses that as an example that it was approved before the current regs went into place -- would it cut any ice? National Park caches were summarily archived, not grandfathered, right?
(In this cache's case, it has now been archived, but it's also missing.)
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Originally posted by The Adams Family Circus:hey now! We've hit 7 in the last three months due to one thing or another!!
You're different
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If you don't have a cable to download directly from your computer, the way to put coordinates into an Etrex is this: go to 'mark' a waypoint. Instead of saying 'ok' to what it brings up, hit the up/down buttons to highlight the coordinates it's showing, and hit enter. You can then edit the coordinates so they match the ones you want to input. You can also edit the 'name' of the waypoint to something easier to remember than "001" or whatever it offers to call it. When you're done, highlight the 'ok,' enter, and you've got yourself a waypoint. This works fine for a while, but if you get tired of entering them by hand you can look into getting a cable and delving into the mysteries of GPS software.
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Originally posted by Night Hunter:quote:
Originally posted by Kite & Hawkeye:The cacher that placed it has some nice hides, but has done some rather, well, odd things, as well.
Now, I have not found any of those caches, so I may be way out of line here, but I do have to wonder about somebody that has placed 19 caches and only found 6.
We did her(?) original quartet in Balboa Park and they were quite good, except for the one with way-off coordinates that was in a revegetation area. (Doggie Do Do, Sewer Sam's, Stonewall Jackson, Planes/Hawks/Automobiles). Since then, though, I've been reluctant to pursue more of them, since there's been a few cases of completely incorrect coordinates -- for example, no way is "Big Cliff Crab Cache" out in the ocean, when the hint says it's next to a parking lot. And the airport thing makes me even more dubious. We may not need more rules, but I suspect some of these problems may be due to inexperience.
I guess some people may be more into the hiding aspect than the finding aspect. Still, I'm a bit baffled as to how a San Diegan can manage to restrict themselves to only six caches in 3+ months. You can go for a walk in Penasquitos Canyon and *trip* over that many in an afternoon.
Not sure if we're anyone to complain, though. We're behind on *hiding* caches -- ought to give more back to the community, right? I seem blind to good spots, though -- someone else will come in, place a cache in our neighborhood, and leave us smacking our foreheads and muttering, "Why didn't we put one there?"
SoCalAdmin M.I.A.?
in West and Southwest
Posted
We submitted a cache Sunday afternoon; it's only Wednesday morning, so I'm not going to get all excited about the fact that it hasn't been approved yet, but I was beginning to wonder, idly, if SoCal was on vacation or something. Usually the approvals do come through faster than that. Actually, I was worried that the new form was broken or something and my submission wasn't in the queue, but it sounds like there's just a slightly longer wait right now.