The Navigatorz

I see your point, but I would never park my bicycle without locking it up. In reference to your example about losing your wallet. My example was of knowingly placing a camera and walking away from it. You may have missed my point, so I'll use your example of the wallet. Let's say you "place" your wallet on a park bench with a sign that reads "Do Not Take". If you return in a couple of days expecting to see your wallet where you left it, you may be disappointed. It will most likely be gone (and it probably will not be at a Lost and Found). Was the wallet stolen? I guess that's arguable. But I doubt if the police would help you much if they knew the circumstance. My point is this, if you don't want to lose something, then keep it in your possession. If you're going to place a trackable in a cache, then you may as well expect at some point along the way, it will come up missing. Unfortnately that is reality. I've come to that realization after placing 16 signature travel bugs, and only a couple are still in circulation. I have written to some of the takers who did not move them along, and also received no response. So the way I look at it, if a trackable of mine gets 500 miles before it disappears, Great. If it gets 10,000 miles before it disappears, even better. Am I condoning the bahavior of those who take travel bugs or coins and never move them along. No. But I conclude right from the offset that each trackable I send out will eventually come up missing, that way I don't sweat it if it does.

"FIRE LOOKOUTS OF THE NORTHWEST"- 3rd Edition By: Ray Kresek Features every lookout site (3,133) in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Hundreds of true stories about wildfires, wildlife encounters, and what life was like atop those remote and tall, shaky fire lookout towers in the backwoods of America. This book is used as a resource for the Washington Forest Fire Lookout Challenge, the Oregon Forest Fire Lookout Challenge, and the Idaho Forest Fire Lookout Challenge.

If you leave a posession of yours on property thats not your own, and you go back in a few days to check on it, and its gone...was it stolen? Lets say I leave my camera on a park bench, with a note that anyone can use it to take a picture, but please leave it on the park bench. When I go back in a few days and its gone....was it stolen? I think the word "stolen" is not the right term when it comes losing coins and travel bugs, when they're placed in containers, that are not our own, on property that's not our own. Just a thought. Going to crawl back under the boulder I was hiding under.

I see your point, but I'd participate if previous finds didn't count. That would seem like a real challenge. What's the challenge to those who have finished the original Delorme Challenge, to enter a new Delorme Challenge II, but log it as complete right from the get go? As a thought, perhaps continue with the original challenge that allows previous finds, but start a new Delorme Challenge where previous finds don't count. Then those presently participating, or those who enter one of the challenges later, can have a choice. Just my 2 Euros worth (I have some left over from my recent trip to Germany).

I understand that with the polar shift, Santa will need to relocate to the South Pole. I can hear it now... " You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen Comet and Cupid and Donder and Blitzen. But do you recall, the most famous Penguin of all..."

If you don't mind traveling a little further to the North, I'd suggest going to Orcas Island for the following reasons: Scenic ferry ride through the San Juan Islands Whale watching excursions that start and end at Orcas Camping (if that's what you like) or stay at the Resario Resort. You might even find a beach house to rent there. Hiking at Moran State Park Drive to Mt Constitution the highest point in the San Juan Islands for a magnificent view 14 geocaches on Orcas Island to hunt. Many more geocaches on other nearby islands Beachcombing

Here is a photo of my new geocoin. I will be dropping these into lookout caches, high elevation caches, or caches with a great view, and giving them as gifts to those who complete the WA Lookout Challenge. I thought they turned out pretty nice. I purchased 250 of them through coinsandpins.com. They are polished nickel and 1-5/8" diameter. The image on the front of the coin represents Red Top Mountain lookout (see my avatar photo). Unfortunately, since it is winter, I won't be able to get to the lookouts or high elevation caches for a few months, but look for these to appear in those locations beginning next spring. They are trackable at geocaching.com and have their own unique icon:

My wife asked me to see if there are any Christmas coinaments out there for 2007 so I found this thread, but I may be too late. Are there any more left? I only want one, any metal. If so, would someone be willing to sell me one if you have an extra. I will pay for shipping.

That's very cool. I happened to find out about the website through your soon to be new neighbor, who works with me at RI dam. I'm glad the guy you met who runs the Wenatchee Outdoor website accepts geocaching. Maybe he'll mention it as an activity on his website like he lists hiking, biking, skiing, etc. I'm glad you and All41 are working on an article for the site about geocaching. Let me know if I can help out.

Here is another link Wenatchee Outdoors with a different look. Interesting articles. This may be one of my favorite web sites to watch and read.

Has anyone in the Wenatchee area seen this: Wenatchee Outdoors. Its a new online outdoor magazine specifically for the Wenatchee area. What I found interesting in this edition is an article about extending the Foothills trail system. It appears that work has already started in connecting the trail system from the Horselake area across the west foothills and connect with the trail system in the Saddle Rock area: More about that here. Think of the geocaching site possibilities. All with great views! There is a short video on the web page about the Foothill Trails system. I wonder if the editors would be interested in an article on geocaching? The web page also features Photo of the week. There is an awesome photo of Rune Lake in the Enchantments.

WR7X was able to provide the location of a few more lookout sites without caches (blue dots). The updated map is found here and is also an uploaded photo link on the challenge cache page Thanks WR7X.

Hello from Czech Republic. I was fortunate to be able to go to an old fire watch lookout tower near Krnov (northeast Czech near the border of Poland). See my log with photos:Fire Lookout. One of the locals told me this tower is about 150 years old. Unfortunately the stairs to the top is open in the summer months and the geocache is at the very top. But it was nice to see it anyway and enjoy the view.

To those who like the challenge of geocaching in the winter, I ran across this awesome photo of Three Fingers Lookout taken in January this year.

I used a topographical map software for WA state and did search for each lookout by name. From the search result I took the coordinates and plugged them into Streets and Trips. There are a few that I couldn't confirm the location based on elevation or distance from a city. If I didn't get a match with elevations, it didn't go on the map. I didn't want to guess. For me to administer the lookout challenge, its a tool I can use to upload a weekly query of new caches and see which ones are within 0.1 miles of a lookout location. If you have coordinate info of any that are missing you'd like to share tht would be great.

I made a map showing the locations of the over 650 lookouts and lookout sites in the state of Washington. Its useful for me in that when new caches are hidden, I can check the distance from the cache to the lookout site. If anyone needs coordinates to a lookout you are interested in, send me an email and I will let you know. The red dots are the lookouts with geocaches, and the blue dots are lookouts without geocaches.

Since its inception in mid-July, there have been 21 new hides, meaning 21 caches have been bumped off the list. As a result I lost about 18,000 feet. Looking ahead, if there are another 20 new hides next spring/summer, I will lose over 60,000 feet. That would be a real oucher.

I revised the lookout challenge cache page to show links to google maps for each of the 9 areas. Also there is a new cache at Buttermilk Butte, in Area 3, about 10 miles SW of Twisp.

Anyone interested in a little WA Lookout Challenge trivia? I was bored today and while looking at a GSAK listing of the lookout caches, I noticed the following: 1) There are currently 121 caches available in the WA Lookout Challenge. 2) 91 of them are regular containers, 21 are small, 5 are micros, and 4 of the container sizes were not chosen. 3) The oldest lookout cache is Granite Mountain, placed on May 24, 2001. 4) The most common difficulty rating is 2.0 stars 5) The most common terrain rating is 3.0 stars 6) The cache with the highest difficuly rating: Granite Mountain with 4 stars 7) Two caches (tie) with the highest terrain rating: Top Side and Three Fingers (both with 5 stars) 8) The area with the most lookout caches: Area 3 with 25 caches available 9) The area with the least lookout caches: Area 7 with 6 caches available 10) The state with the most caches listed in the WA lookout challenge: Washington 11) The loneliest cache: The Butte (GCGEFH) by rentakid. Only 1 find in 4 over years. 12) The most visited cache: Big Cache at Little Mountain (GC1AC6). 200 finds 13) Number of Lookout caches hidden by year: 6 in 2001. 9 in 2002. 18 in 2003. 21 in 2004. 24 in 2005. 15 in 2006. 28 in 2007 (so far). See, I told you I was bored. ----- Edited to correct trivia #9.

I have noticed that the interactive google map either is using old data or isn't refreshing properly. There is a cache in section 9 near Dayton, WA that was placed since my ill fated trip that way, that shows up on your orrigional map but not on the google map. It was placed long enough ago that it shouldn't be a issue of just being too new. Figured you might want to check into that. Yes, I noticed after I sent the link that Google maps (at least the way I upload waypoints into it) only display 100 waypoints at a time. Since there are 121 lookout caches, then 21 don't get displayed on the initial view. If you notice on the left side, there is a list of caches on 2 pages (see the bottom of the list). Page 1 consists of 100 caches, page 2 consists of the remaining 21. I wasn't too happy about that, so I'm in the process of showing 9 links on the cache page, one link for each of the 9 areas. So when you click the link named "Area 1", you will view a Google map of the caches in Area 1, and so forth. I'll have that on the page in a few days. I think that will be better and less confusing. Any suggestions? This has been a learning experience for me.

The Lookout Caches may now be viewed on an Interactive Google Map. A link for this has been added to the WA Forest Fire Lookout Challenge cache page (about halfway down the page).

Cooper Mountain Lookout Site (Waypoint GC16GF5) was just published. It is located in Area 3, about 12 miles North of Chelan. I hid the cache today and there was no snow on the summit. Good roads all the way to the top. For the lookout challenge, it is located in Area 3.

Congratulations Mr. Gadget #2 on Milestone Find #1800 at Mission Peak Trail.

I tend to keep an eye on the bottom of the Bookmark list to see which Find of mine will get dropped off due to new higher caches. So far I have lost about 18,000 feet since the challenge began. Presently my lowest find from the highest list is #93, Trail to Cougar Valley. Hopefully I can finish before more are bumped, as I have 8 finds in the bottom 20.