Geocaching Makes Usa Today

1.1k · October 12, 2005

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destination...-yosemite_x.htm

October 12, 2005

1) Whose signature item is a tchotchki, and what is it? Is it a flare pin from the Office Space retaurant? :mad:

Great article! Glad to see good press coming from a more national publication!

6.5k · October 12, 2005

interesting, but whats a tchotchkes???

I was slightly concerned at the opening which seemed to imply there are geocaches in that National Park, rather than outside it (apperently?).

:mad: "When I switched on the unit, it locked onto four satellites in geostationary orbit — meaning they appear to hover over one point on the globe — and spat out our elevation (5,288 feet) and our exact location (37 degrees, 26.402 minutes by 119 degrees, 36.237 minutes.)", are there really that many WAAS out these days? :mad:

7.2k · October 12, 2005

Google is your friend.

tchotchke - (chats-ki) a toy; a small play thing; a bauble a trinket; a gewgaw; a gadget; a little knickknack that brings joy.

October 12, 2005

Last time someone left gewgaw in my cache, I had to replace the logbook.

1.1k · October 12, 2005

I was slightly concerned at the opening which seemed to imply there are geocaches in that National Park, rather than outside it (apperently?).

I had the same concern upon first read. I elected to post the link with no comment to see how quickly a respondent would make the same...I was not disappointed. :mad: :mad:

-Dave R.

October 12, 2005

Wish these reporters would check their facts, it's really easy to do.

GPS satellites do not orbit in 'geostationary' orbits at 22,240 miles. According to the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center*, they orbit with a 12-hour period at 22,200 kilometers, which equates to 10,900 nautical miles.

-Hugh Jazz

*http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/faq/gpsfaq.htm

Edited October 12, 2005 by Hugh Jazz

1.7k · October 12, 2005

Google is your friend.

tchotchke - (chats-ki) a toy; a small play thing; a bauble a trinket; a gewgaw; a gadget; a little knickknack that brings joy.

The word comes from Yiddish, name of the language, originally used by Eastern European Jews.

9.5k · October 12, 2005

Wish these reporters would check their facts, it's really easy to do.

GPS satellites do not orbit in 'geostationary' orbits at 22,240 miles. According to the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center*, they orbit with a 12-hour period at 22,200 kilometers, which equates to 10,900 nautical miles.

-Hugh Jazz

*http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/faq/gpsfaq.htm

Which for the nautically impaired that equates to 13794 standard miles.

1.7k · October 12, 2005

Its not a bad article, but is reprinted from the San Francisco Chronicle. The emphasis is on the hotel has included Geocaching as part of the activites they have available to their guests, simialr to golf courses, pools, tennis courts.

2.1k · October 12, 2005

Today's Google Word of the Day is gewgaw.

USA Today is the AOL of newspapers.

That is all.

1.3k · October 12, 2005

Anybody want to do a little gewgawcaching? :mad:

October 12, 2005

Wish these reporters would check their facts, it's really easy to do.

GPS satellites do not orbit in 'geostationary' orbits at 22,240 miles. According to the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center*, they orbit with a 12-hour period at 22,200 kilometers, which equates to 10,900 nautical miles.

*http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/faq/gpsfaq.htm

Or 12543.496004999999 statute miles. Still off by a little under 10,000 miles, even if you use statute miles, though.

Ah, back to geocaching. A Nautical Mile is 1/60th of a degree or one minute of latitude, which is why I use nautical measurements in my GPSr. It gives me a bit more understanding of my distance in relation to a cache coordinates.

The article was very nice! I wonder if the hotel sponsored the cache and listed it on GC? I'm too lazy to do a search for caches based on the journalist's coordinates listed in the article. :unsure:

At first I was panicked in the thought of a geocache in the NP. Then I read on, and applauded when he mentioned ending up in a grove of Sequioas not in the Park and not known to many folks. Ah, what a wonderful advertisement for geocaching!

Edited October 12, 2005 by Jeep_Dog

6.5k · October 12, 2005

The article was very nice! I wonder if the hotel sponsored the cache and listed it on GC? I'm too lazy to do a search for caches based on the journalist's coordinates listed in the article.

Thats what I was wondering too... and about those coords. Where they supposed to be where he found a cache? or just where he was when he noticed or ???

Around the town of FishCamp theres only a couple caches, but just north of town theres Welcome to Yosemite. Which seems to be right on the edge of the NP. But if you go with the articales coords, the The Hawksworth Tree is almost right there.

I also noticed that lodges website says (this is not an intented as an advert for this lodge) "Tenaya Lodge is joining the geocaching craze by setting up a "treasure hunt" in the national forest and on its own 35 acre reserve. The Geocaching Hiking Package begins with locating areas with a GPS unit and discovering caches along trails that wind through towering trees, whispering creeks and mountain meadows." So maybe they have a private one set up just for their guests?

Edited October 12, 2005 by welch

1.5k · October 12, 2005

The coordinates given in the article are within 100 feet of a cache, but from the description it doesn't sound like it's the one the author found. I quickly looked through the descriptions of a few of the nearby caches and while the lodge is mentioned a few times, I'm not sure if the cache he found is listed or not.

Caches from the listed coordinates

October 12, 2005

Hey, good PR for caching. With all of the SC mess, the articles posted about bomb squads, bridges and so on, some good PR is worth some missed facts.

:unsure:

October 12, 2005

I agree with Yamahammer. :unsure:

October 12, 2005

Well it's not quite as impressive as USA today, but geocaching also made this paper.

My brother-in-law the police officer would like for me to request a correction that states "My extremely attractive and intelligent brother-in-law introduced us to the game." So I'll plug his attrativeness and intelligience to all of you. :unsure:

p.s. She left out the fact that she snuck up on me from behind some bushes and scared the bee-jeezus out of me!

October 13, 2005

Well it's not quite as impressive as USA today, but geocaching also made this paper.

My brother-in-law the police officer would like for me to request a correction that states "My extremely attractive and intelligent brother-in-law introduced us to the game." So I'll plug his attrativeness and intelligience to all of you.

p.s. She left out the fact that she snuck up on me from behind some bushes and scared the bee-jeezus out of me!

Ok, I pictured him as extremely attractive and intelligent. :unsure:

Neat article.

3.9k · October 13, 2005

GPS satellites do not orbit in 'geostationary' orbits at 22,240 miles.

Of course not... but which USA Today journalist could resist a word like "geostationary" ? I bet whoever showed him around made the mistake of mentioning (geostationary) WAAS satellites, and the usual journo-techno-fog descended.

3.5k · October 13, 2005

Google is your friend.

tchotchke - (chats-ki) a toy; a small play thing; a bauble a trinket; a gewgaw; a gadget; a little knickknack that brings joy.

Sometimes it's spelled "Chachkis"

As in:

Bret

October 14, 2005

An article in USA Today back in 2001 is how I found out about geocaching so this is not their first article on the subject! As I recall the previous article back in 2001 was very favorable towards geocaching so I'm glad to see they are still keeping it in a positive light.

October 16, 2005

Wish these reporters would check their facts, it's really easy to do.

GPS satellites do not orbit in 'geostationary' orbits at 22,240 miles. According to the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center*, they orbit with a 12-hour period at 22,200 kilometers, which equates to 10,900 nautical miles.

-Hugh Jazz

*http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/faq/gpsfaq.htm

Does this really matter, if you are not, in fact, a satellite !

"way up thar and yonder" would even do.....

October 17, 2005

I am emailing this to all my non-geocaching friends who think I have a "problem" looking for tupperware in the woods.

Geocaching Makes Usa Today

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