Harriet the Spy

The Everett Herald has a new article today about the Monte Cristo Cleanup http://heraldnet.com/article/20120916/NEWS01/709169973#What-the-miners-left-behind It says they are going to fell trees this month for the new access. Am I reading this right? No access for 3 years? and on a side note, Donald Trump's grandfather lived at Monte Cristo for a spell http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2200169/How-Trumps-struck-Klondike-gold-Donalds-grandfather-gave-birth-familys-glittering-empire-seedy-restaurant-catering-loose-moralled-men-women-seeking-fortune.html

I really like the new paging on the TBs! The page numbers are much much easier to view and use on my phone. Thanks so much!!

WOW! That is easy and fast! Thanks so much!!

Is there a way to get the benchmark files in .gpx form?

so.... after a flurry of texts between my husband and i... I of course being the right one and him being wrong that they were recently taken out when they fixed up the trail I decided to go take a gander for myself only to discover that I am 100% completely in the wrong! I arrived to find a road and some clearly logged trees and the old shingle mill house was gone too! ::inserts foot in mouth::

I don't know how to do a google earth screen shot, but actually they are on the left of that picture, about N 48 16.162 W 122 0.186 Its my best guesstimate based on the abandoned house you can see on google earth. But if you park in the parking area and walk the trail there is no missing them. You can see them from the parking area as well, if you know where to look.

Yup those are my trains at my geocaches less than a mile from my house as the crow flies. Those train cars are still there, as of yesterday. They would be really really difficult to remove as the the area is grown up around them and would take some logging as the tracks they were on is now the white horse trail, a spur of the centennial trail. They are still sitting on the old tracks, and for some reason were not removed. Looks like they were backed onto a spur track.. its all very odd. Lizzy dropped me off an excellent book about the Arlington to Darrington Branch and we are cooking up some stuff about the whitehorse trail and the rail cars.

A group of gals are coming to Geocoinfest. (you have been warned ) and are wondering what the best caches in the area are. We like all sorts of caches, although higher terrains don't bother us at home, we prolly won't want to go over a 3/3.5 while on vacation. If its cool we want to find it. We have parking lots at home, so we don't really feel as though we need to see Utah's, so we need recommendations! The more historic or scenic the better!

I am pretty sure that the geocaching KML was a premium member only feature, so a person just signed up to the site wouldn't have been able to use it anyway. Now they can still see what caches are close to home, premium or not, on the home page by "Enter your postal code or address and click "go" to explore the geocaches near you." which leads to me another idea. Get cords from google earth in an area you want to explore and put them in on the front page, or just put in the address of Grandmas. That is soooo much simpler, than my previous thoughts.

I suck too... my dnf bookmark Log all your dnfs! Its not like the smilie count that everybody can see. There is no public tally of them, only you can see your tally. Unless of course you keep a public bookmark of them. When you log your dnf, go ahead in your log and ask the owner for help. Or email them, or better yet go to an event and ask for help. EVERYBODY needs help in finding caches, and usually owners or other cachers are more than helpful.

I like to have icons in Google Earth, so I have downloaded a free program called Google Earth Tweaker After installing I drag and drop my gpx file, either a straight PQ fresh from the GC or one that I have created by hacking data in GSAK directly onto tweaker. Click the top bubble complete file. Tweaker then generates a .kml file. Then File-->Open-->your KML. Google Earth then flies to that location and you see your pretty caches. Sometimes I am running short on my daily PQ's, so I like to preview them before making them go towards my daily count. Do everything you usually do when you set up your PQ, but do not click a day to run. Instead sumbit information, and then you get the message "Thanks! Your pocket query has been modified and currently results in 500 caches. You can preview the search on the nearest cache page. " Click on preview search, then you get your pages of caches that you can browse through the caches. You can then make a "real" pq either off of coordinates or cache pages. Then I like to build my kml file as listed above. If you really really don't want to use your pq to see them, you can download the .loc files, dump into gsak, export a .gpx file and then lather rinse repeat. As for posting pictures... right now there is a group of cachers in the NW giggling at the thought of me figuring out how to do that. Wait... they are all at Champoeg drinking and laughing because I am the only that didn't make it down there.

I am not the best splainr especially when it comes to technical things. Which is why I offered anybody to email or pm me. I just re tried, it took me a couple of more clicks... but I hacked up my data in gsak exactly the way I wanted it. No puzzles, only puzzles with answers, found on a certain day, not found by me etc. It seems that it was easier to view caches, just the ones I wanted. If I remember correctly, on the old geocaching kml you had to view everything, and definitely not the finals to puzzles that I had stored. I like having control over my data and what I see.

This is what I am seeing in this thread. A group of people feel as their favorite cache planning tool was taken and feel as though they have no other options in planning their cache day. You can still use Google Earth with your GPX file. If for some reason loading a gpx file is an issue with you you can download google earth tweaker to make a kml file for you out of a gpx. You don't want to use up your PQ's for the day because you aren't quite sure where you are going. You can build a PQ by coordinates (that you can get off of google earth) or by zip code. Don't click the day to run, you can just preview it. It won't count against your daily totals if you don't click day to run. From there you can click on the caches to see if you want to use them to run a "real" PQ, or you can check the caches you want download the .loc and put them into your gsak export them and make a gpx then into a kml file. That way you can still use google earth to plan your day, and you don't have to learn to use google maps for your trip. Learning new techniques can take time, and you might find a couple of new tricks along the way. If you need help with using gpx and google earth feel free to contact me through the site or pm me. I will try to help. Change is not always bad, google earth is gone. But we have not had the regular sight down issues in a looooong time. I remember in the not too distant past trying to log caches on Sunday evening or Monday was a pipe dream. Now I don't even think twice about what day I am trying to log on. I think using resources for the greater good is a good thing. I think they are trying to use their resources best they can without increasing prices. I shop at Winco, they have a big sign that says in an effort to keep prices low, I have to bag my own groceries. If I didn't want to bag my own groceries, or take them out to my car I could pay a little more and go to Safeway. Same food more perks, higher prices. I am sure if GS were to raise prices for more resources so the minority could have google earth kml's there would be complete anarchy in the forums. Now if you want to chat about restructuring the price ranges with the most perks being expensive and a basic memebership being just being a pq runner thats a different thread.

By your finds it seems you are in the Everettish area. We are having an event very soon at the Silver Lake Alfy's! Hey Man Only 365 days to Geowoodstock! It should be lots of fun! Geotalk + Half Price Pizza= fun fun fun! Please come! You are more than invited!! We are more than happy to enable you in your addiction!

Just a heads up their is a fake logger in our midst. Logging caches here and in Latvia in the same day, not completing any of the requirements needed for the virtuals http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?ul=Geochacer

My ears were burning! If you liked Fortson Mill Ponds, you will <3 <3 Midnight in the Garden

There are two incredibly awesome ones in my area. The first Air of your Waysrequires you to follow the directions until you get the combo of the switches right to get the combo on the ammo can sitting 2 feet away from you. The switch pattern is the constellation of the name of the owner. And it punishes you for a wrong combo The second Outlet Mall has about 30 outlets, and 8 plugs. Just like the cache page says you have to put the plugs in the outlets to get the combo of the ammo can sitting 1 foot away from you. It uses solar power to charge the battery to make the cache work. Its very very cool and well thought out!

Hey thats a great idea! I heard Grievous Angel and Sassy are putting one on. Sassy always puts on the best pizza events!

OH! I am sorry! I had checked online and it was supposed to be open last Thursday! So So So Sorry! http://www1.co.snohomish.wa.us/Departments...ad_Closures.htm

I am so EXCITED the COWWS know how to PARTY!! I am in, and let me know what I can do to help.

No time like this weekend! Mountain Loop is open, and the views are GORGEOUS! I updated the bookmark list Air of your ways and Outlet Mall Bookmark

He is at it AGAIN!! Only this time its solar powered Outlet Mall and its AWESOME!!

I have to admit... I am interested in buying the geomate for my kids. I don't always cache with my kids, but when I do they always want to find the geocache themselves and hold my gps, I understand their wanting to do that as I like to hold my gps and find the cache myself too. I have 2 kids (my girls) that <3 to go geocaching, and this looks right up their alley, the other 2 (my boys) who like to go geocaching as long as there is a trail or park involved would like it too. My first thought was, "isn't that the same price as a yellow garmin?" but after a little research I found that it uses the same chip set as the Garmin 60csx. BIG difference, the little yellow loses signal when a bird flies over it, especially in the woods. I know, it was my first GPS. The more I look at the geomate, the more I think of it like the cellphone that was designed for kids, 4 buttons able to programmed by the parents. Or the simplified laptops designed for kids. I am pretty sure the folks at Groundspeak didn't just willy nilly load it with caches, they have a wide network of volunteers and maybe they had some caches nominated to them. (I don't know this for sure, but its seems highly plausible) and I guess if you didn't want your geocaches to go into the geomate you could make them all premium member only. This could be a really good thing for kids, and because of its low price and nice chip set this might help parents who geocache help get their kids to go with them more often. And the more times I can get my kids to go caching with me the better, as my hubby doesn't cache and it will help peer pressure him to go with us from time to time.

I wonder if there is a way to find out if any of my caches are pre loaded into the geomate.jr without buying one.

There was a Law and Order that involved geocaching linky