Bernsports

It's been done for the past 5 years in the Northern Nevada area. It is hosted by GBES (Great Basin Eastern Sierra Geocachers). Here's the GC code for this past years Rally: GC19H7H It's an off-road navigational rally with about 50 caches that you can log. We just had the 2008 Rally a couple of weeks ago. It's an amazing event and something I look forward to each year. Not only do you get the fun of geocaching, you are being timed doing it, and you get to use your navigational skill away from the city streets. They put on a Friday night run and a Saturday run. It's a total blast! Bernard (Bernsports)

I just received Steel City Babes in the mail the other day and it has all the Pittsburgh teams listed, including the Penguins. What's really cool is the coins icon, which is a Penguin coming out of an igloo. I would say it's a must have for any sports or hockey fan.

The Great Nevada Travel Bug Race is now off and running. TB's were launched on Saturday the 17th and it didn't take long for some of them to get moving. There are currently 43 bugs registered in the race and one has already traveled over 200 miles. 8 of the TB's have moved within the first weekend. It's a race from Nevada to the Atlantic Ocean and back. If you happen to see one of these racers in a cache near you, help them out, and even take a photo of them. You can also follow along with any racer you run into by visiting the web sight that is dedicated to the race and clicking on the stats link. There seems to be a lot of statewide excitement. http://www.phantoms-lair.com/tbrace.html Bernard (Bernsports)

We'll take pictures tonight at the event. I'm going to buy a large US map for a backdrop. Plus, with a lot of people asking about TBs, might give a quickie lesson on how to activate and edit your bug. Also, for you and Holly, remember you will need to delete your 'dropped' log on your racer, otherwise when you launch on Saturday, it will add the mileage from the event to the starting cache onto your bug, giving you a head start. OOPS! I didn't realize I was geting a head start! See Ya! I didn't realize you could delete a 'dropped' on the log, so Stat Man had a solution in hand. If it showed 10 miles to the next cache, I was going to make their starting miles 10 instead of 0. Gotta keep an eye on these shady cachers. Just remember, there is no getting by the Stat Man, until of course all these bugs start moving at once and I'm completely lost and don't know which numbers to enter where. Nervously waiting the start of the race, Bernard (Bernsports)

My folks always stayed there when they had their RV. They loved the place, but their priority was more one of having a clean place to camp with full hookups and cable TV over beautiful wilderness scenery. You can step right onto the Green River Trail from the campground, though. I have seen this KOA online as well. For us, it is also about a clean RV Park, with full hookups, and a safe environment. It's not really camping for us. We go on our 2 week vacation and instead of staying at motels, we bring the travel trailer along. We don't spend anytime during the day at the RV Parks. We usually eat breakfast at the RV and then we are gone during the days doing our vacation things and return at night to sleep. Our main thing is to be at an RV Park where we feel safe to leave the trailer there while we are gone for the day. For us, it's not the traditional term of camping with the wildlife and scenery. It's our for of vacationing and not having to stay at motels for 2 weeks. Thanks for the replies, Bernard (Bernsports)

Thanks for the responses. I checked out the Kayak County Park online and it's like a lot of the state parks. They are in great areas and have nice settings, but they don't have the amenities. Kayak only has electrical hookup with no water or sewer. For us, if we stay for a week or more, we like to get full hookups. If it's only for a day or so, we can get by. As for the park in Belevue, I have seen that one online as well and I think it's on our list. The only problem there is they have no pictures at all of the park and that always makes us wonder. They do have full hookups and WiFi access so we will be researching that one some more. I really do appreciate both of you guys taking the time to respond. Thanks, Bernard (Bernsports)

I have just spent over an hour reading all the posts and let me tell you, I have gathered more information than any of the brochures we have been reading. I don't know why I didn't think of coming here sooner for some local info. My wife, 10 year old son, and I have been kicking around the idea of going to Seattle for our 2 week vacation. We will be traveling by pickup and travel trailer and were looking to spend about 8-10 days in the Seattle area. The hardest part about RVing is you don't know what kind of condition an RV park actually is until you get there. All the web sights have nice pictures and you try to gather as much information as possible about these RV parks. The thing is that during the summer, reservations are a must to or you might get stuck with nothing. Making a reservation for a week at an RV Park and then getting there to only see it's not what the picture showed, can be pretty dis-heartening. The one RV Park we have had our eye on is Lake Pleasant RV Park in Bothell. The reviews have been great and the distance doesn't seem to be too far from downtown Seattle. Wi-fi is a must for us especially now that Geocaching is part of our vacation activities. Have any of you seen or been near Lake Pleasant RV Park? Are there any other RV Parks near Seattle that cater to vacationers? We try to stay away from RV Parks that have permanent residents. Anyway, I have really found the past posts to be very informative. Now, I'm going to go back and start taking some serious notes on what we need to do and see. We are coming in the middle part of July and after reading these posts, my excitement factor has really gone up. Bernard (Bernsports)

I'm by no means a web designer and still know nothing about HTML, but I have used Geocities for a web sight that I have constructed for our fantasy baseball league and it was pretty easy to build with Geocities. You can also upload your own pictures, backgrounds, and most cliparts. For beginners, it'll pretty much walk you through step by step on how to do it.

I've seen some cache pages with images that border the whole cache page. How is that done? Bernard (Bernsports)

I just bought the Palm Z22 at Office Depot last week and it works perfectly with the Cachemate. I don't see anywhere that says Garnett on mine. I think mine is operating on the Palm OS 5.0, and it's color. It was the cheapest one they had there and using GSAK, it downloaded everything onto my Palm into Cachemate with my 1st hotsync. So far, I have absolutely no complaints with it. Bernard (Bernsports)

Here is the blueprint of what I have planned. First off, I am building a web sight on geocities that will work along with the puzzle. I will hide 10 caches around the area that are small and micro caches. Each cache will have a password in it that will be used on the web sight. The first cache will have the password for the lineup cards for both teams. The other 9 caches will have passwords that will link them to 1 inning of my simulated game that has been played. For example, once you find the cache for the 1st inning and you enter that password, it will send you to a web page with the play by play results of that inning. It would look something like this: Dan Haren pitching for Oakland G Sizemore struck out swinging. C Crisp singled to right. J Peralta struck out swinging. V Martinez singled to center, C Crisp to third. J Liefer flied out to left. After you have collected all 9 innings, you can actually piece the whole game together and build a boxscore. Kind of like keeping score as a kid when you went to the ballgames with your dad. Then, there will be 10 questions you have to answer about the game, to give you the coordinates of the final cache. The final coordinates would look like: N 39 AB.CDE W 119 FG.HIJ You would then have to answer 10 questions (A-J) from the box score you have built to get the final coordinates. For example, Question A: How many rbi's did the clean up hitter for the home team have? 3 so A=3 If you have all 10 answers correct, you should have the exact coordinates for the final cache. I understand that not all people like puzzle caches and the final cache may have very few visits. Even if you don't want to solve the puzzle, you can still search for and log finds for the other 10 caches. Those should get normal traffic visits. By looking this over, is it considered a puzzle cache since you have to solve for the 10 questions? Or is it more of a multi-cache? Also, as far as coordinates go, which digit is the most important for accuracy? I know for like E & J, you could be off by a few digits but still be able to get close to the cache. I want to make my tougher questions for the tougher digits. This way a person must find all the caches to find the final location. I've seen other posts on here where guys can bust a puzzle and go right to the end without going through all the preliminary caches and logging the find. I don't have a problem with that, but I'll try to make it as hard as possible for them to do so. Thanks for all the responses so far. Bernard (Bernsports)

Thanks for the suggestions. My final cache is going to be an ammo container. All the caches leading up to the final one, will be micros and small ones and easy terrain, so I don't want to make the last one a 4 star terrain or a 2 mile hike, but it will have to be somewhere out of the way. I'm going to try and make sure it's at least 2-wd friendly. I was a huge baseball card collector when I was a kid so I will have rookie cards and other baseball stuff in the final cache. Nothing like a Honus Wagner card, but I will put so good stuff in there. I guess if I plan on making it real hard, I could even put a gift certificate in there to a local sporting goods store for at least the FTF. I am trying to make all the caches baseball related and I have eyed a few spots near sports complexes and baseball fields. From everything I have been researching, I guess I am headed in the right direction. Thanks for the ideas, Bernard (Bernsports)

To give a brief summary, I'm working on a baseball puzzle cache and I'm wondering how hard or (tricky) I should make it? I know the general answer is to make it as hard as I want. For a true baseball fan, it should still be fairly easy to solve, and I'd like non-baseball fans to be able to solve it with a little extra homework as well. Here's how I'm working the puzzle. You will basically have to build a box score for a game that has been played. There will be 9 caches that will have passwords to a web page and each page will have the summary of 1 inning played. After you have found all 9 caches, you can use those inning summaries to build an accurate box score of the game that was played. From there, you will answer 10 questions about that game to give you 10 of the digits for the coordinates of the final cache. For example, Question A: How many runs were scored in the game? That would be an easy answer. Here's where I can make it a bit tricky. Let's say a batter strikesout 3 times and walks once. Question B may ask: How many At Bats did he have? For a non-baseball fan, it looks like 4. He had 4 Plate Appearances, but only 3 At Bats (walks do not count as an AB). Putting the wrong answer in the coordinates, can put you miles away from the locaction of the final cache. To me, asking detailed questions like that to fill in the coordinates are fine, but I could see some people arguing that I may be getting too ticky/tacky. Would the puzzle be interesting enough to just ask 10 pretty obvious questions? Or should I ask some of the tougher baseball questions? In general, all 9 caches will most likely be found in one weekend. Piecing the innings together and building the boxscore shouldn't be too hard. I think the toughest part will be answering the questions correctly and I am leaning toward throwning in a curveball or two. I guess I'm just looking for some confirmation before I get too devious. I've even seen some puzzle caches where the owner requires you to log a DNF before he will give you a hint. In reality, all the answers will be there, it will be a matter of how well you know the in's and out's of baseball. Bernard (Bernsports)

Now, when you find a mystery or puzzle cache without actually solving the puzzle, does that mean the puzzle wasn't set up well enough? I agree that if you find the cache and sign the log, you should record the find. Then, looking at it from the hiders point of view, he's got to be dissappointed that the puzzle didn't even need to be solved to find the cache. Did you post in the find that you didn't need to solve the puzzle to find it? Just curious. Bernsports

Thanks. It just took me a while to figure out I wasn't standing at home(lol). Sometimes I just make things more complicated than they are insted of trying to simplify it. I got it figured out now. Time to make my purchase. Bernsports

Thanks Polar, I hate being a rookie(lol). In GSAK, I had them in order in miles from home. Right now, I am at work so when the GPS ordered them, it was doing it by nearest from here at work. That's why my lists weren't matching up. It wasn't until I read your post that it dawned on me that I was basically working from two different locations. Dang rookies(lol)! Thanks for the quick response, it saved me from getting a migrane. Bernsports.

I have downloaded the trial version of GSAK to see if I can figure it out before purchasing it. I ran a querry of the 200 caches nearest my home coordinates and it worked. I sorted them by miles from home so I can start with the closest ones and work my way out. That also worked on GSAK. I downloaded the waypoints to the SD card and inserted the SD card into my Magellan Gold. From there, I load the SD card waypoints onto my GPS and all 200 of them are now on my GPS. My problem is, somewhere along the way, they are no longer in order by distance from my house. I can't figure out what order my GPS has placed them. It's not ordered alphabetically either. I also cleared my memory before installing the SD card so those are the only waypoints on my GPS. Is there a step I'm missing somewhere along the line? I even closed GSAK, opened my SD card, using GSAK as the program to open the file and they were generated in GSAK in milage order. Any help would be appreciated. Bernsports

Might as well test mine.

Might as well test mine.