HuggyFamily

Thanks Doug for your efforts. In rethinking this I am wondering a few things: 1. What's the likelihood that they walked six miles through this relatively up and down terrain. He is "in shape and a jogger" according to some interviews I listened to, but he is 92, and a six mile walk is a long ways for most people. Assuming they started on the Christian Loop, they may have walked south, which as I said is often the case for lost hikers (they unconsciously face the sun, which is to the south for a good part of the day). That certainly points them toward your rectangular area. 2. There is a strong chance that the daughter, under the stress of the situation, remembered something from long ago, rather than a structure on the hike out. However, what is also interesting is that she remembered it in extreme detail (colours, dimensions, materials, etc.) but couldn't remember the way back in. That is explainable, as the terrain often looks the same after a while. Unless you were experienced, you would likely not remember details as to your path of travel, yet coming across a strange and unique structure would stick. As you have said, lost people do strange things, so I wouldn't rule out anything. Also, from Wikipedia: "Also a part of the history is the settlement of New Ireland (Carrollton, New York) which was formed in the early 1900s near Limestone, New York. The village since was incorporated into Limestone, New York, and no longer exists. Ruins of the old village are still visible and are accessible from the Limestone Run Road." I assume that your photos are ruins from this area..... Pete.

UPDATE: The top left corner of the structure diagram notes "Christian Hollow into valley on side of forest only". I would assume this was the description given by the daughter as to where they hiked before getting lost. Looking at the Allegheny State Park map, the trail numbered 14 is the Christian Hollow Loop. I have saved that map as an image and overlaid it in Google Earth to narrow down the visual. There is a valley and forested area to the northwest (around N42.8.181' W78° 41.815') From an elevation of 2500', a 15' - 20' structure would be about the size of your baby fingernail. The resolution of GE is decent here, but still hard to pick out something so small. Has anyone looked at Bing Maps? PH.

Been looking for clues all afternoon. Without some more detail as to where the daughter was found and/or where they started their hike, it's a pretty large area. Here are some thoughts: The structure looks to me like the foundation of some kind of home-made place of worship. The shape, mosaic floor, entry at one end, and low walls. Perhaps it was started and never finished. There are examples elsewhere of "mini churches" that would hold just a few people. A 6' wide x 15' long structure, with 3' high walls would require at least 2 cubic yards of cement/concrete, which if hand mixed would require around 100 - 80 lb. bags. Of course it could have been mixed on site with some natural materials, but the description does say cement/concrete.... Assuming cement was used, that is a tremendous amount to carry in by hand. I would suspect that it would have been brought in by horse and cart (or even by motor vehicle and then carried the last part perhaps). That may limit where the structure could be. If I were building it, it would be on a hill (closer to the heavens :-)), and in some treed cover to avoid someone seeing it. I have searched some Pennsylvania antiquities sites and come up empty-handed. I panned extensively around the "summit" area of the park but the resolution would barely show a structure of that size - and if under treed cover it probably couldn't be seen at all. All massive speculation but if it triggers ideas or thoughts by others that is good. There must be local cachers who have hiked the park. I hope they are forum readers. One more thought - in my experience (21 years ski patrol, SAR), lost parties often walk to the south in the daytime to keep the sun in their faces. If only we knew where she was found, that might narrow the digital search. PH.

Not sure what a "robo-puritan" is, but I found this fact.... From http://www.geocaching.com/faq/default.aspx What are the rules in Geocaching? 1. If you take something from the cache, leave something of equal or greater value. 2. Write about your find in the cache logbook. 3. Log your experience at www.geocaching.com. These look like pretty simple rules to me....or am I missing something?

But it violates the Terms of Use, and that's not a good thing. Interesting - I hadn't realized that. Been reading the debate at Link I have both c:geo and the "official" GC app on my phone. In many ways, I prefer the c:geo as it has a better feature set (like being able to type in coords and navigate to them... ). Hoping that version 2 of the Groundspeak application is better, and a free upgrade.

Or you could try an app called c:geo. It seems to do exactly what you want without the fuss.

Thanks MissJenn.

I just received an email from noreply@geocaching.com advising that my premium membership had expired. The e-mail appears legitimate (i.e. not a phishing scam) but you never know. It includes a link to renew but the link is not valid (directs to localhost). Puzzled, I checked my profile and my membership is good through October of this year. Wondering if anybody else has seen this..... Here's the body of the message: ----------------------------------------------------- Hello from Groundspeak! This is just a quick note to let you know your Groundspeak Premium Membership for the username "HuggyFamily" has expired. You may continue to use Geocaching.com, Waymarking.com or Wherigo.com as a Basic Member, or create a new Premium Membership here: http://localhost:2020/Membership/default.aspx Thank you for supporting Groundspeak! Cheers, The Groundspeak Team © 2009 Groundspeak, Inc., All Rights Reserved. -----------------------------------------------------

Came across this cacher who placed a cache that got published last evening. This definitely takes it to a new level. 0 finds, 1 hide. Name removed for privacy.

Kheara is our new geo-dog. She's a 4-month old Australian Labradoodle. The Poodle genes make her smart; the Lab genes make her dig holes and eat things she's not supposed to. She loves geocaching and anything to do with the outdoors.

When making a pocket query, I'd like to see two changes made in the form interface. In both the "Type" and "Container" areas, it would be better if the initial choices (radio buttons) were mutually exclusive. For example, a common mistake (at least for me) is to click a series of specific cache types, while the "Any Type" button is still active. In this case, the check boxes are ignored and the radio button choice supercedes. This may not be possible, but IMHO would be better interface design. Thanks.

Duplicate post

Dude, you are brilliant.

Dude, you are brilliant.

Bang on Dew. Last time I checked, a portable DVD player at Circuit City was under $100. COmpared to my GPSr that's cheap. I would be ALL OVER this cache. Sounds like a creative idea and a fun way to spend a misty December evening.

Interesting discussion. In the mid 1970's, here in Canada, we were told that the SI metric system was our future. Albeit people were reluctant to change, it was generally accepted that the change was for the good. The biggest problem was in the building industry. Canadian lumber mills started to make metric length lumber (wood studs for instance), but that didn't necessarily work because the drywall that would be used often came from a US manufacturer. Etc. Etc. Etc. Until our biggest trading partner (US of A) switched to SI, there was going to be problems. Here in Vancouver, the local building department issued a memo a number of years back that all future projects submitted would have to be drawn in metric. The industry went nuts, and the city backed off. To this date, the majority of projects (unless they are government projects) are drawn in good old feet and inches. My school-aged children can just as easily estimate that a living room is 15' or 5m, depending on who is asking. In other words, they have been taught/conditioned to think bilingually as far as measurement is concerned. I, on the other hand, think in feet and inches and instantly convert to metric as over time, I have simply memorized conversion factors for length, weight, and volume. Generally speaking, as far as distance measurement in Canada is concerned, we have adopted a "soft" conversion mentality. Rather than using the full power of the metric system (the order and interval of 10), we simply convert for convenience (i.e. 12'-0" = 3658mm). Kind of destroys the idea. Because our road signs are in metric, I prefer to geocache in kilometres and metres. A good article on the history of measures and metric can be found here: http://www.cftech.com/BrainBank/OTHERREFER...ricHistory.html

I took mine on a flight from Vancouver to London, UK (Air Transat) . Asked the flight crew if I could power it up during the flight and they had no problems with it. Tracked our voyage all the way. Also did the same on a flight from Paris to Edinburgh (British Airways). HTH. P.

To me, geocaching is a bit like golf. The GPS is the driver and 5-iron and wedge (i.e. it gets you most of the way to the hole). But your eyes and geo-sense are the putter. I tend to use the Mapping feature of my 60cs to get to the general location (and save gas). Once there, I recalculate to "off-road" and get a bearing to the cache. Most importantly, around 75 feet from the cache, I stop and let the GPS settle down. From that point, I get a good bearing and then walk in that direction. At this point, the geo-sense has to kick in to expedite the find. Often, the little Huggies run directly to (and find) the cache so the GPS has really just got us in the general vicinity.

Night caching is one of my favourite challenges. There is something about it that I can't describe. As FTF hounds, we're on "alert" 24-7 (well, almost). Not long ago, a cache was published in our area at about 2:00 p.m. Being at the office, I couldn't jump on it so I left it for one of the other hounds to get. Lo and behold, I got home at around 8:00 pm and it was still not found (or so the cache page said...!!!) At 11:30 pm, I decided that although it may have been found and not logged (hate that), I couldn't sleep if I didn't go. So, I left the family asleep and headed to a busy section of highway in a remote industrial area, headlamp on, and geosense on "extra-high". The cache was cammo'd and hidden in a wall of ivy about 16 feet high and 100 feet long. So here I am, with semi-trailer trucks blowing by every 30 seconds, inspecting every frickin' strand of ivy to locate the micro. Within 15 minutes, I had it and whilst signing the log (yes, got the FTF), I remember yelling (nobody could hear me of course) - "WHO'S YOUR DADDY!!!" Now our geo-bag has 2 flashlights, 2 headlamps, and various other night-devices in case we're called out in the wee hours. From that experience, I now take a flashlight on EVERY cache hunt. Seems my failing 46 year old vision is insipred when a little bit of LED-power is handy. Great thread, hope I haven't rambled too long. HuggyFamily (Huggy Bear).

Also make sure that you have a unique notification for EACH type of cache that you want (i.e. Traditional, Multi, Unknown etc.). HTH.

I get the notifications by having the feature send an e-mail to my cel #. It arrives as a text message (actually two text messages as the character count must be limited), but has only the cache name, waymark name, and distance from my home coords. You are right about the web access... After playing some more with my cel phone, I remembered that my provider does offer some rudimentary web browsing abilities on my Motorola Razr. I can browse to http://wap.geocaching.com, however when I try any of the links, I get the following error: Server Error in / System.FormatException Invalid length for a Base-64 char array. Method:FromBase64String Any of you web gurus know what that might be? Could there be a fix? PH.

I'd like to see a feature where I can "watch" another geocacher. We have many geo-friends and I'd like to keep track of their finds as I would my own. It would be nice to add them to a watchlist so I get notified when they find any (or a filtered set of) caches. Thanks. PH.

Of course. Fact is, that represents a small portion of caches (at least in these parts). It is no doubt a small percentage of caches where the page has important NEED to know details. But they do exist. We really don't need any more black eyes to our little activity from people in too much of a hurry to know what they are going after. Agreed on the bad publicity part. As for being in a hurry, I believe everybody gets something unique out of geocaching, whether it's the hike, the technology or whatever. For us, the prospects of FTF's is our form of "reality TV", only it's really reality....so we are just looking for a faster fix (no pun intended). Also, we live in an area already experiencing severe traffic issues. To head home and use more gas, just to access the web is not really what we want. Looks like I may have to invest in that new "smart" phone with integrated wifi and web access after all ;-) Thanks for weighing in. PH.

Of course. Fact is, that represents a small portion of caches (at least in these parts). Also, re: unknown caches, I filter those out in my notifications, so I only get new listings of traditionals. Otherwise, that would be annoying.

Thanks for that site, but my question presumes that we would not necessarily have Wireless access on the road (if we did, we could login to the normal geocaching website). So my request still stands...... PH.