monkeykat
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Posts posted by monkeykat
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Nice finds B. Nasty, I'll have to go back and see if I can do some kind of translation of the old RG&E pole numbers with the new one you found the mark at for OF2380. Maybe some of the other marks can be found in the general area.
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You found a National Ocean Service disk that I also happened to find while visiting the Nobska lighthouse and US Defense Agency Disk. The Ocean Service disk has been noted on the Waymarking web site.
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I was benchmarking in Central Jersey. Raritan Borough, to be exact. Hey, this is the suburbs. Walking near the rail lines, lookin for a bridge with a bechmark disk on it. I heard a rather loud noise approaching from the north. I contiued on, to the bridge. The disk was missing. I took a look back up the tracks, and found this critter watching me. Not the greatest picture, from about 500' away, but I was not about to get any closer. We all know that there are no mountain lions in New Jersey, but... This sure as heck looks like one!
Looks like the Jersey Devil to me...
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My Geocaching-mobile is a 1995, 2-Door Camry. Seen here with a knocked over concrete setting with a benchmark disk on top.
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In Southern California, BM'ing is an all-year around sport / hobby. Just a few days of rain now and then. Come out & join us sometime!
Ahhh, you have my envy. Having just started geocaching and benchmarking this summer, I will be approaching my first winter as a cacher. With Rochester Snowfall Totals regularly exceeding 100 inches, and a 30 year average of 95 inches, I am not planning on a very active winter of caching and disk hunting. I am sure I will get out for some Church Spires and Standpipes though.
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Hey I thought that location looked familiar. I climbed Flattop and Hallet in August of... must have been 1996. It was a memorable trip. We made it to the top around 11am I think and that was when remnants of a pacific hurricane pushed in from the South West. It was very windy, and then it started raining hard. My rain gear managed to funnel all the water right into my boots. Then it got cold and started to snow. We raced down the peak and scrambled to find anything warm and not wet. I remember helping pull my dad's spare socks onto his hands because he was to cold to do it himself. By the time we made it back down to the lake it was still sunny and 70 degrees out. Crazy Rocky Mountain weather.
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In general, I was wondering how many older benchmarks cannot be found in the NGS Database? I came across this mark while out geocaching over the weekend. I was surprised when nothing showed up in the database from my coordinate search, because the disk is in good condition, and I guess I just assumed the only disks that wouldn't be in the database would be recent marks, like post 1990?
(Its a large file 2.3 megabytes, but I just uploaded it so I could reference it and attempt to find its data sheet from work)
I was surprised that the Geocaching and NGS Database seemed to show the closest mark to be 5 miles away. So far my efforts to locate information on this mark have proved fruitless. I tried searching the NGS Data Sheets using GPS Coords and the "34 WSM" designation, but didn't find any hits I thought were it.
Seemed like a slow day on the forum, so have at this one guys. If I couldn't find any more info on it I was planning on adding it to the Waymarking site. The disk is in the top of a concrete monument that is tilted at a 30 degree angle from the ground. I suspect it was hit by some farming equipment as I found the disk in Genesee county on some backroads that disect some large local farms.
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I think BDT is referring to the Gallery tab that is accessible from you geocaching profile. Any image you upload to a geocache will appear in this gallery, but any picture uploaded to a benchmark will not appear there. Just the way it seems to be...
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The price for one coin is 8,5$. Shipping prices come later.
So what's the price? $5, $8, something else?
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And here is a link to a PDF file from the USGS with a very detailed description of symbols and markings found on topo maps.
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Dredging up an old forum topic here, but I was wondering if anyone has ever met, or seen someone from the power squadron out benchmarking?
On the way into work today I happened to see three "kids" (I think they could have been anywhere from 18-28) in a parking lot for an abandoned store on a busy street corner. They were looking at the ground and poking about at things that looked like steel covers for manholes, or other pipes. One of them had a tall staff with what looked like some electronics in a "T" at the top. A second was waving what looked like a really long geiger counter at the ground, and the third had a three ring binder and was looking around the parking lot.
The one with the "T" looking device kept walking up to different metal plate covers and placing it on the center of them, and kicking stones around. The other with the geiger counter type thing (metal detector?) kept waving it around pointed toward the ground. I looked online, and I don't think there is a survey marker on that corner.
The three of them didn't really look like the kind that would be close friends, a tall skinny black guy, a short stocky guy with piercings and facial hair, and a ordinary white guy. No uniforms or hard hats or anything, just shirts and jackets. I wondered if they were part of a surveying class at a local school or college, or maybe the power squadron? I thought maybe its a school thing because they didn't really seem interested in what they were doing (and who liked school back then).
I saw them in a downtown area that isn't the most friendliest of places, in fact there were 3 police cars on the next corner. They also didn't seem like the type of people that wanted to discuss benchmarking so I drove on. I have actually been thinking of looking for some disks in the area, but it is really lousy, the kind of area you don't want to be poking around peoples yards or anywhere near the street.
But it made me wonder, has anyone met the power squadron?
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Thanks for the info. You know I did a search, but not well enough apparently. When I tried the search again after a few tries I found no fewer than 8 previous threads on this topic. Gotta do better with my searches. And I'm a software engineer too! Argh, how embarrassing.
Love that photo too.
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On several benchmark datasheets for my area I have seen the text "HEIGHT OF LIGHT ABOVE STATION MARK..." listed as the last item in the description. Does anyone know what this refers to? Here are a couple examples:
OF2498 - Gotta love the "find" on this one, but to each his own...
and
I originally noticed the text when searching for OF2312, and figured it referenced a parking lot light. Now after reading it again, I am not so sure. 30 meters seems pretty high for a parking lot light. In fact, i can't remember if the parking lot even had lights in it. But it may be possible though.
Does it refer to some other light source, or something to do with time of day and measuring heights using the angle of elevation and trigonometry? Also, on the data sheets I noticed the phrase is always the last item of the description. I find it hard to believe that the mark with a "light" over it is always the last disk listed.
Any insight? Thanks.
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Getting back to the forum topic, I don't think anybody really likes to hear that their find may not actually be a find. And they especially may not want to hear it from what they consider to be some "benchmarking policeman". I for one, was contacted by BuckBrooke for some incorrect finds that I made, and I consider myself a better benchmarker because of it. Done the right way, some constructive advice can go a long way. After all, I did find my way to these forums, and still am quite interested in benchmarking.
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pretty close to "oh no" number 1, but I hate it when the cache is in some woods near a soccer field where there inevitably happens to be a girls soccer practice, and you become the creepy weird guy in the woods with a "camera" when the Moms and Dads come to pick up their kids.
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I was doing a 4 part multi cache at a Christian College nearby my house and the last 2 parts ended up being in a cemetery. I really don't like cemetery caches because they seem inappropriate, but I was almost done, so I decided to respectively finish it up and leave. As I was getting the final coordinates to decipher the cache from the College founders gravestone, a couple came to visit a tombstone adjacent to me. I felt really awkward scribbling dates and numbers and doing math while they were having a private moment. Eventually they left only to be replaced by 6 roudy teens that were cutting through the graveyard to get somewhere else. After they left I found the cache in a nearby tree, grabbed it and headed to a slightly secluded area to sign and get out!
When I went to replace the cache a groundskeeper had arrived to pick up some tools about 300 feet away. Then his assistant showed up. At the same time a car pulled up to an adjacent parking lot to drop off someone who had done some carpooling. They talked for a while about 150 ft away and then left. As they were pulling out, another woman showed up to get into her car. Then a guy came to the cemetery to walk his dog. It was just insane. I couldn't wait to get out of there, and then 5 people showed up while I had the cache in my hand and couldn't replace it until they all left. I had to look busy for an extra 15 minutes, and this was all around 5:30pm on a Friday afternoon. Who knew that was a busy time for a cemetery?
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I recently made probably one of the best decisions I have ever made while gecocaching when I decided not to go for a FTF downtown. I noticed the cache was posted at 9:45pm. The caches was about 9 miles away in the city. I hadn't been to that particular area in about 2 years, but I knew there was a bridge over a gorge with waterfalls, and it was where I expected the cache to be. About 10pm I decided to go for the FTF. I got my GPS gear together and got ready to go out the door and then reality struck me. It was 10pm at night, I was driving 20 minutes downtown to look for a micro cache on a bridge over a river, and my car currently had a leaky fuel line that I was going to have fixed in the morning. I went back inside, closed the door, and about 30 seconds later it started raining. I think I made the right choice.
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I've been looking around today doing some searches on ethics and such, but not really finding a topic devoted to it. This seems close enough. I am more of a 1:1 trade type of guy, let everyone enjoy the fun. But I got a guy near me who must have a lot of free time, because he seems to go out and grab lots of coins and TBs as soon as they show up in the area. I mean he's got 8 Jeeps in his posession. Says he plans to move them along in his logs, but come on.
I call him a "camper" cause he seems to just run around grabbing whatever you put out there. Is there are forum topic that discusses what to do about this? Do I quit leaving TBs in our area? Why should he spoil everyone elses fun? Some items he does eventually move along. Is this just part of the geocaching experience?
What do these have in common?
in Benchmarking
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I'm in, still a bit of a newbie, but learning with each one. Going to be a fun challenge, as we have about 6 inches of snow on the ground here in Rochester at this time of the year, but its gotta melt some time soon. I'll have to search the forums to learn more about last years contest. Benchmarks are way more fun than caches! Woo - hoo!