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Missoula Cache Machine - June 21st


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I thought I would start a new thread to discuss the Missoula Cache Machine since a lot of people tend to overlook things burried in other threads.

 

We had a blast in Yakima and are already excited about heading over to Missoula in a couple of months!

 

We just booked our hotel. We are going to be at the Wingate by Wyndham. I am sure people will find cheaper rooms but for anyone with kids - it is a great place to stay since they have indoor waterslides.

 

I tried to book on Expedia, but the hotel is already showing sold out there and on the Wyndham website they have rates that have to be fully prepaid with no cancel policy. I was able to get a 2 Queen bed room for $125 by calling the hotel direct.

 

I don't know if hotels will be an issue generally that weekend with availability. I just thought I would give the heads-up.

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Cool!

The MOOG group field tested the currently planned dinner location last night and it worked fairly well for a 31 person group. We should be able to fit another 30 folks in the banquet room fairly easily and then any overflow to the rest of the restaurant. Unfortunately Missoula doesn't have a really big buffet type restaurant currently.

We will be pre-running the route and will definitely be updating a bunch of caches to prep for the event. There is now a Smoke Jumper cache (real quick multi) as well as potential for an Earthcache by June.

Our night cache at Greenough Park is one we will recommend folks go for the night before if possible.

More to be posted later!

Jennifer

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Looking forward to it!

 

I just booked my hotel for June 20-22 through Choice Hotels.

 

Econo Lodge (MT048)

4953 North Reserve Street , Missoula, MT, US, 59808

Phone: (406) 542-7550 Fax: (406) 721-5931

 

AAA rate was $67.49 for 1 Queen.

 

Just out of curiosity, and heaven knows I don't want to start a flood of "will this one be on or will that one be on" before the 1st route is published, BUT, will GCD7DE (the Webcam) be on the route (kind of like the SCM2?)

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Looking forward to it!

 

I just booked my hotel for June 20-22 through Choice Hotels.

 

Econo Lodge (MT048)

4953 North Reserve Street , Missoula, MT, US, 59808

Phone: (406) 542-7550 Fax: (406) 721-5931

 

AAA rate was $67.49 for 1 Queen.

 

Just out of curiosity, and heaven knows I don't want to start a flood of "will this one be on or will that one be on" before the 1st route is published, BUT, will GCD7DE (the Webcam) be on the route (kind of like the SCM2?)

I am going to try to get it on there. I may be able to borrow a wireless card from work and use my laptop to capture folks visiting the camera location. It may be something where you have to go there between certain hours to be caught on jpeg.

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Just out of curiosity, and heaven knows I don't want to start a flood of "will this one be on or will that one be on" before the 1st route is published, BUT, will GCD7DE (the Webcam) be on the route (kind of like the SCM2?)

I am going to try to get it on there. I may be able to borrow a wireless card from work and use my laptop to capture folks visiting the camera location. It may be something where you have to go there between certain hours to be caught on jpeg.

Maybe it could be the starting cache, like SCM2. Most of the participants would be gathered, and our wonderful hosts only have to stationed there for a short time.

Edited by hydnsek
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We just booked our hotel. We are going to be at the Wingate by Wyndham. I am sure people will find cheaper rooms but for anyone with kids - it is a great place to stay since they have indoor waterslides.

Good call on the Wingate. We stayed there two years ago and the kids loved it. The water park isn't real big, but more than adequate for the kids to play in for a few hours. I think we paid about $125 as well. On a side note, if your daughter happens to get sick while you're staying there, they'll let you keep the ice bucket to take home as a souvenir. ;)

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Sun and Moon Data for Saturday, 21 June 2008 (Mountain Daylight Time)

 

SUN

Begin civil twilight 5:02 a.m.

Sunrise 5:42 a.m.

Sun transit 1:38 p.m.

Sunset 9:34 p.m.

End civil twilight 10:14 p.m.

 

MOON

Moonset 8:18 a.m.

Moonrise 11:49 p.m.

Moonset 9:28 a.m. on following day

Phase of the Moon on 21 June: waning gibbous with 92% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated.

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Okay, folks.

 

We have basically two (maybe three) options for Saturday dinner -

 

A banquet room at a local family-style restaurant that has options for pretty much everyone. They think they can seat 80 or so; we've tried it out and think we can easily handle 65+ with no problem, 80 would be ... cozy. If we fill the space we can overflow into the restaurant proper and folks can can come and visit the main group. Cachers can buy in or not.

 

Or we can take over most of a Chinese buffet. Lots more room and we can probably all sit together. Typical fare but you almost have to buy into the buffet. They theoretically serve the usual dinners, but I doubt anyone actually buys those.

 

Dark horse option - we could try to convince the pizza buffet in town that we can make it worth their while to reserve the place for just us. On a Saturday night. You must buy in to be there. (This might be a better option for Friday night.)

 

We have spoken with the first location regarding the cache machine weekend, but we haven't run our plans by anyone else. Personally I think the family restaurant is the way to go, but I want to leave it open to some outside input.

 

Travis, coordinates to follow once a decision is made.

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Just out of curiosity, and heaven knows I don't want to start a flood of "will this one be on or will that one be on" before the 1st route is published, BUT, will GCD7DE (the Webcam) be on the route (kind of like the SCM2?)

I am going to try to get it on there. I may be able to borrow a wireless card from work and use my laptop to capture folks visiting the camera location. It may be something where you have to go there between certain hours to be caught on jpeg.

Maybe it could be the starting cache, like SCM2. Most of the participants would be gathered, and our wonderful hosts only have to stationed there for a short time.

I'll have my laptop along again... so if there is Sprint coverage, I am more than willing to capture a group image at the webcam, like I did at the SCM2 :)

Edited by Lookout Lisa
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A banquet room ... family-style restaurant that ... can easily handle 65+ with no problem, 80 ... can overflow into the restaurant proper ... Cachers can buy in or not.

...

A Chinese buffet. Lots more room and we can probably all sit together. Typical fare but you almost have to buy into the buffet.

...

The pizza buffet in town ... You must buy in to be there.

By "have to buy in," do you mean to say that "if you want to sit in their seats, you have to pay for their food"? That sounds reasonable. If on the other hand, you mean that we would have to pre-pay ahead of the event or commit to a certain number, then nuh-uh, no way. Twice bitten, once shy.

 

This lack of committal makes the pizza buffet sound like it's probably out of the question. If we're taking over the restaurant, I'm sure they'll want some minimum commitment.

 

I'm leaning towards the first option.

 

And speculating about which caches will or won't be on the route is premature at this point. Generally, though, it's safe to say that for any cache machine:

  • Caches involving a hike of more than 0.25 miles will not be included
  • Caches with a difficulty or terrain of 4-stars or more will not be included
  • Multicaches with more than two steps will not be included
  • Virtuals and webcams will usually be included

And, being the wishy-washy guy I am, I'm leaning towards including micros this time.

 

I've got a draft route that Jennifer & Dean already sent me (thanks!) that I need to review more closely, but it looks very similar to my first draft 0 attempt. For those of you familiar with the area, our first look at the area seemed to include caches not more than a mile outside of the I-90/US-12/SR-93 triangle, plus several along Blue Mountain Road in the southwest. I won't seriously start to nail down the route until mid May, however; caches appear and disappear too frequently to use today as a start point.

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A banquet room ... family-style restaurant that ... can easily handle 65+ with no problem, 80 ... can overflow into the restaurant proper ... Cachers can buy in or not.

...

A Chinese buffet. Lots more room and we can probably all sit together. Typical fare but you almost have to buy into the buffet.

...

The pizza buffet in town ... You must buy in to be there.

By "have to buy in," do you mean to say that "if you want to sit in their seats, you have to pay for their food"? That sounds reasonable. If on the other hand, you mean that we would have to pre-pay ahead of the event or commit to a certain number, then nuh-uh, no way. Twice bitten, once shy.

 

This lack of committal makes the pizza buffet sound like it's probably out of the question. If we're taking over the restaurant, I'm sure they'll want some minimum commitment.

 

I'm leaning towards the first option.

 

And speculating about which caches will or won't be on the route is premature at this point. Generally, though, it's safe to say that for any cache machine:

  • Caches involving a hike of more than 0.25 miles will not be included
  • Caches with a difficulty or terrain of 4-stars or more will not be included
  • Multicaches with more than two steps will not be included
  • Virtuals and webcams will usually be included

And, being the wishy-washy guy I am, I'm leaning towards including micros this time.

 

I've got a draft route that Jennifer & Dean already sent me (thanks!) that I need to review more closely, but it looks very similar to my first draft 0 attempt. For those of you familiar with the area, our first look at the area seemed to include caches not more than a mile outside of the I-90/US-12/SR-93 triangle, plus several along Blue Mountain Road in the southwest. I won't seriously start to nail down the route until mid May, however; caches appear and disappear too frequently to use today as a start point.

 

Can I throw a vote towards an eating establishment with enough room to seat us all?? I couldn't care less what kind of food, just so long as half our group doesn't get turned away at the door.

 

:D

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I am really trying to figure out how to make this happen! If I do finagle going, it will definitely be a 2 or 3 day trip. Is there anyway to coerce the locals to update their attributes and if their cache can be found 24/7 that they would include it? It would make it easier on me to find caches that the gals can do at night.

Link to comment
A banquet room ... family-style restaurant that ... can easily handle 65+ with no problem, 80 ... can overflow into the restaurant proper ... Cachers can buy in or not.

...

A Chinese buffet. Lots more room and we can probably all sit together. Typical fare but you almost have to buy into the buffet.

...

The pizza buffet in town ... You must buy in to be there.

By "have to buy in," do you mean to say that "if you want to sit in their seats, you have to pay for their food"? That sounds reasonable. If on the other hand, you mean that we would have to pre-pay ahead of the event or commit to a certain number, then nuh-uh, no way. Twice bitten, once shy.

 

This lack of committal makes the pizza buffet sound like it's probably out of the question. If we're taking over the restaurant, I'm sure they'll want some minimum commitment.

 

I'm leaning towards the first option.

 

And speculating about which caches will or won't be on the route is premature at this point. Generally, though, it's safe to say that for any cache machine:

  • Caches involving a hike of more than 0.25 miles will not be included
  • Caches with a difficulty or terrain of 4-stars or more will not be included
  • Multicaches with more than two steps will not be included
  • Virtuals and webcams will usually be included

And, being the wishy-washy guy I am, I'm leaning towards including micros this time.

 

I've got a draft route that Jennifer & Dean already sent me (thanks!) that I need to review more closely, but it looks very similar to my first draft 0 attempt. For those of you familiar with the area, our first look at the area seemed to include caches not more than a mile outside of the I-90/US-12/SR-93 triangle, plus several along Blue Mountain Road in the southwest. I won't seriously start to nail down the route until mid May, however; caches appear and disappear too frequently to use today as a start point.

 

Can I throw a vote towards an eating establishment with enough room to seat us all?? I couldn't care less what kind of food, just so long as half our group doesn't get turned away at the door.

 

:anibad:

Enough room to seat everyone is a hard find in Missoula. Our big buffets went out of business a few years back and we don't have many places with Banquet rooms that won't require a catering contract of some type.

 

Knowing how many people to expect would help a bunch!

 

One idea that was thrown around was having a big get-together at a park and not worrying about trying to get space at a restaurant.

 

Missoula locals will want to show up and meet folks. If everyone around here shows up we can easily see 35-45 folks attending. If another 40-50 cachers attend, then we will outgrow anyplace available that isn't a catered banquet. Which leaves a place like the Montana Club as an option- a Banquet room for 65ish people and the rest of the restaurant available for overflow.

 

My understanding is that a catered banquet didn't work very well previously. Too few folks showed up to cover the costs or something.

 

We are working on ideas still, give us a chance! Yumitori, Leonata, Raynebeau, Dean and I as well as MtnGoat50 and his wife ended up having a nice dinner at the Red Robin in Yakima because of the space issues. We understand the disappointment of not joining the main group quite well.

-J

Edited by Jennifer&Dean
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I am really trying to figure out how to make this happen! If I do finagle going, it will definitely be a 2 or 3 day trip. Is there anyway to coerce the locals to update their attributes and if their cache can be found 24/7 that they would include it? It would make it easier on me to find caches that the gals can do at night.

I'll post a note on our group site asking folks to update their cache page attributes and pages themselves if things have changed since the original placement of the cache.

-Jen

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A banquet room ... family-style restaurant that ... can easily handle 65+ with no problem, 80 ... can overflow into the restaurant proper ... Cachers can buy in or not.

...

A Chinese buffet. Lots more room and we can probably all sit together. Typical fare but you almost have to buy into the buffet.

...

The pizza buffet in town ... You must buy in to be there.

By "have to buy in," do you mean to say that "if you want to sit in their seats, you have to pay for their food"? That sounds reasonable. If on the other hand, you mean that we would have to pre-pay ahead of the event or commit to a certain number, then nuh-uh, no way. Twice bitten, once shy.

 

This lack of committal makes the pizza buffet sound like it's probably out of the question. If we're taking over the restaurant, I'm sure they'll want some minimum commitment.

 

I'm leaning towards the first option.

 

And speculating about which caches will or won't be on the route is premature at this point. Generally, though, it's safe to say that for any cache machine:

  • Caches involving a hike of more than 0.25 miles will not be included
  • Caches with a difficulty or terrain of 4-stars or more will not be included
  • Multicaches with more than two steps will not be included
  • Virtuals and webcams will usually be included

And, being the wishy-washy guy I am, I'm leaning towards including micros this time.

 

I've got a draft route that Jennifer & Dean already sent me (thanks!) that I need to review more closely, but it looks very similar to my first draft 0 attempt. For those of you familiar with the area, our first look at the area seemed to include caches not more than a mile outside of the I-90/US-12/SR-93 triangle, plus several along Blue Mountain Road in the southwest. I won't seriously start to nail down the route until mid May, however; caches appear and disappear too frequently to use today as a start point.

 

Can I throw a vote towards an eating establishment with enough room to seat us all?? I couldn't care less what kind of food, just so long as half our group doesn't get turned away at the door.

 

B)

Enough room to seat everyone is a hard find in Missoula. Our big buffets went out of business a few years back and we don't have many places with Banquet rooms that won't require a catering contract of some type.

 

Knowing how many people to expect would help a bunch!

 

One idea that was thrown around was having a big get-together at a park and not worrying about trying to get space at a restaurant.

 

Missoula locals will want to show up and meet folks. If everyone around here shows up we can easily see 35-45 folks attending. If another 40-50 cachers attend, then we will outgrow anyplace available that isn't a catered banquet. Which leaves a place like the Montana Club as an option- a Banquet room for 65ish people and the rest of the restaurant available for overflow.

 

My understanding is that a catered banquet didn't work very well previously. Too few folks showed up to cover the costs or something.

 

We are working on ideas still, give us a chance! Yumitori, Leonata, Raynebeau, Dean and I as well as MtnGoat50 and his wife ended up having a nice dinner at the Red Robin in Yakima because of the space issues. We understand the disappointment of not joining the main group quite well.

-J

You might try contacting one or several of your local Fraternal organizations that have their own Lodges such as the Elks, Waterbuffaloes, Masons, the Rotary or Kiwanis and see if they might be interested in setting something up. The often have fundraising dinners such as spaghetti feeds and the like.

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Personally I like the idea of bagging dinner and instead planning a meet in a park.

As much fun as it is to meet within everyone after the hunt trying to do that and eat is something that I believe we've outgrown. Even if we do find some place that can pack us all in that means the staff is overloaded and service suffers. I like the idea of meeting in small groups to eat a quick meal then gathering for a large group meeting.

Just my $.25 worth.

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My understanding is that a catered banquet didn't work very well previously. Too few folks showed up to cover the costs or something.
Correct. At the Wenatchee Cache Machine, RobinEgo got stuck with a significant bill when we ended up ordering more food than we expected for the number of hungry cachers who attended. And at the Grays Harbor Cache Machine, we had about 30 fewer people than we expected, and those who did attend ended up passing the hat to collect the difference.

 

Getting people to confirm ahead of time, and correctly estimating a head count based on those confirmations, is just about impossible. Sometimes I figure it's weather dependent, and then something like Yakima turns around and surprises me with the high attendance.

 

I'm sure that fraternal organizations, who may already be on a shoestring budget, would hesitate to buy enough food to feed our top estimate without some kind of pre-arranged financial commitment.

 

Meeting in a park after the event (instead of dinner) has several flaws, most of which could be worked through with enough pre-planning.

  • Many cachers will be hungry. They skipped lunch to do the CM, and they've been driving, walking, and climbing for 14 hours. Providing enough food would be a significant expense to the local organizers, much like the fraternal organizations I mentioned.
  • It's dark. There's a challenge in meeting people in a dark park.
  • Weather and temperature. Too hot, too cold, too rainy.
  • Having a place to wash your hands in warm water is nice after a day of digging in hidey holes and smelling like hand sanitizer.
  • Parks don't allow beer (but neither do most buffets), and most close at dusk.

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Currently the discussion locally has reached the tentative conclusion that we will have the Friday night meet and greet at the Missoula Club, which can handle a moderately sized group. That fits with our past experiences on cache machines. It is also on the hotel strip near the freeway, which makes for easy access. Saturday dinner will likely be at a pizza buffet in the middle of town. Food quality is about what you'd expect, but they seem willing to make it work for us and the individual buy-in isn't too outrageous. Folks can make private arrangements to hit one or more adult drinking establishments afterwards since there are several nearby.

 

Lunch will be provided by the locals at a park to be determined once the route is more fully finalized. We want to carry on the fine tradition set by both Yakima machines. Cooking will include the efforts of a past Champoeg Iron Chef (be afraid, be very afraid).

 

At this point it's clear that visitors will have more than enough to do just in the immediate Missoula area on Saturday. If there's interest, we can also put together an optional Sunday route up the Bitterroot Valley, starting and ending in Missoula.

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I've gone ahead and given Freemos Pizza and Buffet a heads up that on June 21st about 100 folks may be coming through. They have Pizza, Pasta, salad, soup, mashed potatoes and chicken nuggets on their buffet. Kid friendly location- some arcade games and games of skill.

 

We put together a route and sent it to TravisL earlier this week. The longest walk of the day would be the Maclay Flat loop- about 1.2 mile round-trip if you do all 9 caches on the main loop, add another .5 to the walk if you decide to hit our Ingenuity puzzle/multi cache that fills the secondary loop of the trail.

Ingenuity

 

There are 33 puzzle caches around here, so don't forget to check some of them out as you may be walking right by a few and never know it otherwise.

The zipcode for Missoula is 59801.

 

We are looking forward to seeing everyone!

Jen

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Was'nt this on the 28th of June last week???

The Missoula folks have a conflict on that date, and asked Travis to resched it to June 21. If you want the details, see this post and the ones around it in the Future Cache Machines thread.

The event that the Missoula cachers are going to is the Second Annual Lewis & Clark Festival Geocaching Event in Great Falls, MT. Check out The 2007 Event page.

Everyone is welcome to come to that event as well! ;) They do a great job of introducing geocaching to locals and throwing a potluck.

-J

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I've gone ahead and given Freemos Pizza and Buffet a heads up that on June 21st about 100 folks may be coming through. They have Pizza, Pasta, salad, soup, mashed potatoes and chicken nuggets on their buffet. Kid friendly location- some arcade games and games of skill.

 

We put together a route and sent it to TravisL earlier this week. The longest walk of the day would be the Maclay Flat loop- about 1.2 mile round-trip if you do all 9 caches on the main loop, add another .5 to the walk if you decide to hit our Ingenuity puzzle/multi cache that fills the secondary loop of the trail.

Ingenuity

 

There are 33 puzzle caches around here, so don't forget to check some of them out as you may be walking right by a few and never know it otherwise.

The zipcode for Missoula is 59801.

 

We are looking forward to seeing everyone!

Jen

 

Thanks for all your hard work, J&D, it is much appreciated.

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I'm going to try real hard to make this but not sure what June holds for me since I'll be graduated by then :laughing: Plus, I promised coreynjoey I'd go if I could :D

 

Thanks for all the hard work to the Missoula folks involved in this. Maybe we could have a giant potluck on the Griz field? Nevermind, I don't want Jennifer jinxing any games this season :laughing:

 

I'll post for sure on the event page beginning of June.

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