dcrep

I'm sorry you weren't able to create this challenge cache. I would normally never do a challenge cache, but this one sounds like fun. This biggest issues I see are the fact that benchmark posts are unmoderated, so they can easily be backdated. Also, in my neck of the woods, a lot of benchmarks (that are unfound on GC) have recent photos uploaded over on the NGS benchmark page. That makes finding them easy, and IMHO, pointless.

I'm guessing it would be this cemetery? Haunt in Woodlock Cemetery (scroll down to see users comments. (Most recent comments are at the bottom) That would be it. And as much as I love a good ghost story, I saw nothing out of the ordinary there.

This will be my last post on this thread, but here is a cemetery cache story I just thought about. A few years back I did a cemetery cache out in the sticks of Missouri. For this particular cemetery, you park along the road, then go up steps to the top of a hill, where there is a large headstone in the middle with a bunch of other headstones in a circular pattern around it. Unknown to me at the time, but this cemetery was well known as an area for paranormal activity, something about pentagrams, and witches being buried there, etc. I was just looking for the cache, which was along the perimeter. Next thing I know a guy is standing 25 yards behind me, demanding to know what I'm doing. He was a security guard. When I said geocaching, he seemed to understand, then told me the owner of the cemetery was tired of the illicit activity there and had the place under surveillance 24/7. I was told neither me nor the geocache were welcome there. He escorted me back to my car. I never did find the cache, which was archived a short time later. It was a neat cemetery, and I wish I could have spent more time there to look around.

These are from the Midwest, some are related to puzzle caches, all have (or had) a physical cache in or just outside to the cemetery. None qualify for the Abandoned Cemeteries category in Waymarking.

Abandoned cemeteries, all found while caching, near St. Louis.

I've been extremely happy with my Specialized Hardrock Sport, which I paid exactly $400 (before tax) for brand-new a few years ago. It's the lowest-end model of Specialized, a well-respected brand.

Your fixation on that particular cacher is quite strange (he's the only one who thinks there are too many lame caches?). I'd be inclined to agree with him, and wish there was a meaningful rating system to weed out lame caches. I define meaningful rating system as one that allows negative feedback to be left.

And if you found 10 really cool areas for quality caches would the $25 fee stop you? I would choose the best of the best, and hide maybe 2 or 3. Seriously, the maintenance issues would probably overshadow the fee issue. Then again, maybe I would make it a multi cache and run you all around those woods! I'm glad I'm not alone in thinking the $25 fee is a fantastic idea. I think Groundspeak should charge everyone $25 to place a cache. That one move alone would fix everything I currently dislike about geocaching. If $25 is too steep, then make it $10. Same effect.

I waymarked this monument a little while back. Your source book on the directrix is good, and is a bit more specific than what I had found. A neat book for the history of this marker is "Forest Park" by Caroline Loughlin and Catherine Anderson, 1986. It is partially online (snippets) but can be found in the stacks at Buder library near Forest Park. A photo of the police substation building the marker was originally next to is here. The meteorological station was in the tower of that building. The building was torn down around 1960.

Fascinating! Thanks for digging up that link. Paraphrased for posterity: It commemorates a nineteenth century meteorological station that existed in Forest Park, which was replaced by a twentieth century station at Lambert field airport.

In Forest Park, in St. Louis City. In a grassy field, all by itself, is this monument. This thing has bugged me for years. Anyone hazard a guess why it was put there? I'm guessing it's not a geodetic control point. Are there any similar monuments elsewhere?

I was hiking the Bright Angel Trail in the Grand Canyon, and looked for some non-PID marks along the way. This one had a nice view, from 4844 feet elevation along the trail. Unfortunately my camera failed to record the close-up shot of the disk.

Topographical maps of that spot a benchmark there. If your mark is stamped 1178 feet elevation, then that's what you found. There are lots of those marks out there that aren't included in the database that geocaching.com uses, so they can't be directly logged on the geocaching website.

I love these benchmark/photography threads. Here is the azimuth mark of ES1096 from last summer.

It can also be fun to specifically look for those marks not in the NGS database. The mark you photo'd shows up on topo maps. See if this link works for you: MyTopo. At least I think that's your mark. You can't necessarily log them on geocaching.com, but you could always make a waymark for it.

If you're using the Scaredy Cat topo map viewer, then you're looking at Saguaro Lake, which isn't actually where those coords are. Look at the coords in Google Earth (or google maps) and it'll show you a spot a bit to the south and west. If you see the word "Bulldog", you're looking in the right place.

I was inspired to see how difficult this sort of thing would be to do. (looks like I'm too late, Okie got it already) Here's what I came up with after 15 minutes of monkeying with it. I'm using Photoshop elements version 3. I loaded both photos into the photo bin, and resized the disk closeup to an appropriate ratio for the other image. Then I selected just the disk by using the "rectangular marquee tool", except after you click on "rectangular marquee tool" there is an option to change it to "eliptical marquee tool". It takes practice, but using that you can highlight just the disk. Then do a copy, then paste on the other image. Then you can move around what you just pasted with the "move tool". Then draw your lines with the "line tool". Go into the layer menu, click "merge visible", and you're all set. With practice you could do it in a minute or two.

I don't have any info on it, but it appears that someone waymarked that disk: Corp of Engineering disc - Etowah Memorial Bridge - Gadsden, AL

While I personally take a photo of every cache I find, for my own benefit, I would never post a photo of the cache or the immediate area of the hide. I don't particularly like it when I see other people's photos of a cache before I hunt it. I guess part of it is when I find it, I say to myself "yep, looks just like the photo I saw". This is true for me even for an unmodified ammo can. But I recognize others love posting/seeing photos of caches, so I normally don't look at the photo section before hunting.

One more from Arizona's Mogollon Rim. Up at 7000 feet, it's a nice escape hatch from Phoenix's heat. This is RM1 of ES1096 RIM LINE.

The so-called 'fuzziness' of GE was irrelevant to its utility. No one grabbed exact coords of a cache by zooming in on the GE icon; as a planning tool, close is close enough. The benefits of GE outweighed, by an order of magnitude, the inaccuracy of the GE cache icon.

I might be in your group of non-renewers as well. I cache infrequently as it is, and GE was a great tool to let me target the sorts of caches I wanted to find. Google maps doesn't have the richness or integration I desire, and pocket queries are nearly useless for the type of caching I do.

Thank you for asking this question; I would love to hear a technical explanation of the difference. That was my first question upon discovering this thread today. I noticed a while ago that GE KML was broken, but I cache infrequently, and hey, sometimes things break. But a cache overlay on GE will really force me to change things up, especially when planning vacation sidetrips. PQ's are more trouble than they're worth for people with certain types of caching styles (very targeted or infrequent caching). What I liked about GE was being able to do a Waymarking overlay and a benchmarking overlay along with caches... all in one neat application, with terrain info, and the other photos that show up in GE.

This won't help you log the mark, but if you pull up a topo map, such as topozone, you can see your benchmark (the triangle with the cross through it, in the previous link). It's in a database somewhere, just not online, as far as I know.

Glad you enjoyed the photo. For anyone familiar with the area, the tallest peak in that photo (a bit right of center) is the Four Peaks, 50 miles away.