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SF Bay Area geocachers

Team Dralasites

By Team Dralasites
in West and Southwest

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GeoBrowns

+GeoBrowns

Posted
Posted

so, I posted 4 new caches on Monday and had them on hold for activation for the earliest AM today in time for the Badges dinner. I know that everyone gets their queries done early to get out the door so we were hoping it would be done much earlier. Did we do the request properly? I thought we had made the request clear enough in a note with each cache. :rolleyes:

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stbk

+stbk

Posted
Posted
so, I posted 4 new caches on Monday and had them on hold for activation for the earliest AM today in time for the Badges dinner. I know that everyone gets their queries done early to get out the door so we were hoping it would be done much earlier. Did we do the request properly? I thought we had made the request clear enough in a note with each cache.   <_<

One of them (Not Rainbow Camo) went semi-live (meaning it hit my "new caches" PQ but the cache page said it was unapproved) around 8:30 AM. The other three seem to have gone live around 9:45. Too late for my PQs to hit them, but just fine if you can access the website on the road. If this is part of the reason I got FTFs on two of them, then I'd say you did the request properly. :rolleyes:

 

Thanks for the nice new caches, BTW. The three that I found were VERY well done, and the one that I didn't find (City Center) seems to have been quite well hidden.

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boulter

+boulter

Posted
Posted
I've spent the last few hours trying to get it down to a reasonable size. I've got a 178MB MPEG2 movie, but I can't seem to find any free software to do the conversion to anything else. Windows Movie Maker keeps crashing. Anybody else want a crack at it? Email me and I can give you the URL of the big file.

Alright, the video is up for those of you that missed it or if you're in and and are feeling narcissistic. Watch it here!

 

or you can read my full blog post about it.

 

Nice seeing you all this evening and thanks to the BADGES folks for putting it on.

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GeoBrowns

+GeoBrowns

Posted
Posted
If this is part of the reason I got FTFs on two of them, then I'd say you did the request properly. :huh:

 

Thanks for the nice new caches, BTW. The three that I found were VERY well done, and the one that I didn't find (City Center) seems to have been quite well hidden.

Well then it's a good!!

They started appearing right after I posted a new note to the approver. I spoke to that approver at the dinner and got a clearer picture how things are done.

We had fun checking on some of them, had to fix one between searchers but I think they were all well received.

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Nazgul

+Nazgul

Posted
Posted
Okay, ya'all, let's hear all the dirt from the BADGES party. I feel like I missed some major stuff. :P (But at least I stayed dry... Well sort of... Did have to run out for an evening cache!)

I talked to LOTS of people at the event. It was packed and from my own perspective it was mostly a lot of "Hey, there's ____ and I've been meaning to tell/ask him/her about ______." I had a really good time.

 

Oh, and absolutely everyone was complaining that you and ND haven't been dropping enough of your new geocoins in caches very close to my house. B)

 

I was reminded what a great group of people geocachers are. And that includes the kids.

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sammydee

+sammydee

Posted
Posted

FYI - please mark your calendar to come help for the upcoming Trail Days event at Almaden Quicksilver County Park. Here's some information from Santa Clara County Parks and Rec:

 

Thanks for your interest in the our volunteer trail events.

April 23rd's trail event is part of California Trail Days and will help

complete the New Almaden trail between Mine Hill and Senador Mine.

We are in the process of building a new bridge including a reroute from Mine

Hill to the new bridge. April's work will complete the trail and open this

area for the first time in over two years.

We will be meeting at the Castillero school parking lot and transporting

volunteers up to the work site via our van. This will help with the limited

parking around the McAbee entrance area.

 

If you think you can help, please email me (drake@timesten.com). I'd like to get a rough count. I'm sure that we'll turn this into a more formal "Event" pretty soon.

 

Thanks,

 

...Sam

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Nazgul

+Nazgul

Posted
Posted
FYI - please mark your calendar to come help for the upcoming Trail Days event at Almaden Quicksilver County Park.

Maybe you could start populating the otherwise empty calendar in the Yahoo group with the various meetings, trail days, etc. ?

 

I can't commit to the trail day yet but I'll put it on my calendar. It would be great if we could get everyone that owns a cache in the park there.

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MaxEntropy

+MaxEntropy

Posted
Posted
Copy of e-mail sent to Geowomyn .... Bad news on her excellent Ardenwood series. This stuff is depressing, I wonder if we've hit some sort of "critical mass" in the bay area where the game is awaking folks in authority and inviting such responses. Maybe we should come up with some simple guidelines on saturation levels within a park or region. Not that Geowomyn's series violated any of this. Depressing.

 

A portion of my e-mail reviewing the Ardenwood reaction.

 

I went over to Ardenwood around noon to eat a picnic lunch and pick-up a few of your caches in this excellently designed series.  While paying my $2 entrance fee the young Ranger manning the desk noticed my GPSr.  His comment, in politely official tone, "We don't allow GPS stuff in this park"; of course he meant caching as opposed to simply using a GPS device.  After realizing he wasn't joking, I questioned him on this in my best low key manner and was told that his boss had found out about the Ardenwood caches and that they would be removed because they involved digging within the park  and were not approved.  His comment, "My supervisor was pretty upset".  He also said that three caches had been removed and they were looking for the others.  I let him know that it would surprise me if any digging was involved given my experience with your caches and that I was sorry about their decision.

 

I did a quick search for "Moosic" and didn't find it, the cache may still be there but I wasn't going to look too hard today in order to avoid antagonizing the rangers.  I went on to eat my lunch and then returned to talk to the same ranger again after giving the matter some thought.  In my conversation I let the ranger know how Geocaching works and that your series had probably brought over 70 families to the park.  I also let him know that common practice was to make caches "minimally invasive" and that most of the Ardenwood caches were probably of the 35 mm log only variety.  I dropped off a couple of your Ardenwood cache printouts so they could see how well designed the series was and let him know that his supervisor could contact you via e-mail link from the cache web page.  I also let him know that normally a GeoCacher will remove their own caches if requested to do so by someone in authority as a matter of game policy. 

 

The ranger was polite but a wary and said he would pass on the info and cache sheets to his supervisor.  I  believe Ardenwood is part of the EBRP group which has had a couple of run-ins with Geocachers in the past although this was not brought up in our conversation.

 

Sigh ... Probably should have mentioned CITO and other positive things about Geocaching but it wouldn't have helped. The decision is being made above him and the impression this man's supervisor had passed on to his crew of Ardenwood rangers was uniformly negative.

 

/Lefty

I live about 1.9 miles from Ardenwood. I've tried several times to get permission to put caches in there but I've had NO response. I've written two letters with no response, called several times and showed-up twice, both times the supervisor was unavailable or out to lunch.

Ardenwood is public land but I thought that I would try to get permission because they are trying to maintain an 1890s theme and I wanted to work with them. I got the feeling from the people that I spoke with that though it's public property that they treat it as some sort of private fifedom. They were arrogant at best and once fairly rude.

I just had to grin when I saw Geowomyn's caches there. I found several and got skunked on one. They were well done and absolutely none of them involved any digging! I'm a little ticked-off at Ardenwood for failing to respond to my requests and now for apparently kicking Geocaching out. I'm going to avoid Ardenwood and their creepy Patterson Family worship.

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Marky

+Marky

Posted
Posted

ALERT!

TravelingViking is coming to town and we are going to meet up with him on the afternoon of Sunday the 13th around 4:00pm. Haven't figured out exactly where yet. Last time we met at the coffee place that the travel bug hotel lives in, in Sunnyvale. If you happen to run across any bugs that might like to jump across the pond, Travelling Viking would love to move them. He has already helped 140 travel bugs jump the Atlantic. I'll update this forum with a meeting location when I get more details.

 

--Marky.

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bullit

+bullit

Posted
Posted
FYI - please mark your calendar to come help for the upcoming Trail Days event at Almaden Quicksilver County Park.

Maybe you could start populating the otherwise empty calendar in the Yahoo group with the various meetings, trail days, etc. ?

 

I can't commit to the trail day yet but I'll put it on my calendar. It would be great if we could get everyone that owns a cache in the park there.

By that reasoning WoW is going to have to spend a month in there working on the trails with his 45 + x number caches :)

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Nazgul

+Nazgul

Posted
Posted
It would be great if we could get everyone that owns a cache in the park there.

By that reasoning WoW is going to have to spend a month in there working on the trails with his 45 + x number caches :)

Your point being? :)

 

What I meant was: if Quicksilvercacheowner=yes then attendtraildayonApril23=yes.

 

Obviously it wouldn't be based on the number of caches someone had in Quicksilver... Otherwise WoW, ProTech, Marky & Joani and I would be serving 10-to-life there. :)

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stbk

+stbk

Posted
Posted
Maybe you could start populating the otherwise empty calendar in the Yahoo group with the various meetings, trail days, etc. ?

The Yahoo group?

 

(I suppose I could walk back through the 80 pages of old messages on this thread and find more info, but I'm lazy and I bet others would like to know as well.)

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beckerbuns

+beckerbuns

Posted
Posted
ALERT!

TravelingViking is coming to town and we are going to meet up with him on the afternoon of Sunday the 13th around 4:00pm. Haven't figured out exactly where yet. Last time we met at the coffee place that the travel bug hotel lives in, in Sunnyvale. If you happen to run across any bugs that might like to jump across the pond, Travelling Viking would love to move them. He has already helped 140 travel bugs jump the Atlantic. I'll update this forum with a meeting location when I get more details.

 

--Marky.

A coffee place in Sunnyvale with TBs? Do tell! I thought I knew where all of these TB hotels were. ;)

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beckerbuns

+beckerbuns

Posted
Posted
Maybe you could start populating the otherwise empty calendar in the Yahoo group with the various meetings, trail days, etc. ?

The Yahoo group?

 

(I suppose I could walk back through the 80 pages of old messages on this thread and find more info, but I'm lazy and I bet others would like to know as well.)

Steve and others:

 

The Yahoogroup page can be found here.

 

It hasn't been too active lately but maybe we could inject some life into it.

 

And why haven't we formed a formal group yet? The idea was to make a Silicon Valley Geocahers organization of some kind (I'd imagine parallel to BADGES).

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Bughound

+Bughound

Posted
Posted

The SJ Meercury News today (3/1/05) has an interesting article on the front of the Valley (;) section. It discusses a Mountain View store, Global Beads. Interesting.

 

If you don't know what I am talking about check the cache list for GeoBeads #1, a great series.

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WalruZ

+WalruZ

Posted
Posted
So the TB Hotel, that Marky referred to, is actually in Cupertino, not Sunnyvale, right?

 

That's how I understand it, but frankly it's almost impossible to know what town you're in when you're down there. San Jose? Cupertino? Santa Clara? Sunnyvale? They all run together in odd ways, and if you look at a Thomas Brothers guidebook you'll see that there are odd pockets of one or the other scattered here and there. If you're not from the area it's just that much easier to call it all San Jose and be done with it.

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Marky

+Marky

Posted
Posted
Marky,

 

I have a couple of TB's that want to go to England and Scotland. ;)    I'll watch for the post on the location.  Thanks.

Yes, please hang on to them.

 

Time Update!

I forgot that we are having a going away party for Anthony from 1pm to 5pm on the 13th, so now I am thinking 7PM and dinner sounds better. I found out that Olaf is staying in Milpitas, so I thought maybe we could have it at the the Pizza Place where JoeSpaz has his Highway 84 Travelbug Hotel cache.

 

--Marky

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GeoWomyn_SF_CA

+GeoWomyn_SF_CA

Posted
Posted

 

I live about 1.9 miles from Ardenwood. I've tried several times to get permission to put caches in there but I've had NO response. I've written two letters with no response, called several times and showed-up twice, both times the supervisor was unavailable or out to lunch.

    Ardenwood is public land but I thought that I would try to get permission because they are trying to maintain an 1890s theme and I wanted to work with them. I got the feeling from the people that I spoke with that though it's public property that they treat it as some sort of private fifedom. They were arrogant at best and once fairly rude.

    I just had to grin when I saw Geowomyn's caches there. I found several and got skunked on one. They were well done and absolutely none of them involved any digging! I'm a little ticked-off at Ardenwood for failing to respond to my requests and now for apparently kicking Geocaching out. I'm going to avoid Ardenwood and their creepy Patterson Family worship.

 

Well, I just went to Ardenwood today and all my caches are still there! The only thing (person) I could not find was the supervisor... SO..the cache series will remain there until I am informed to do otherwise. ;)

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workerofwood

+workerofwood

Posted
Posted

 

I live about 1.9 miles from Ardenwood. I've tried several times to get permission to put caches in there but I've had NO response. I've written two letters with no response, called several times and showed-up twice, both times the supervisor was unavailable or out to lunch.

    Ardenwood is public land but I thought that I would try to get permission because they are trying to maintain an 1890s theme and I wanted to work with them. I got the feeling from the people that I spoke with that though it's public property that they treat it as some sort of private fifedom. They were arrogant at best and once fairly rude.

    I just had to grin when I saw Geowomyn's caches there. I found several and got skunked on one. They were well done and absolutely none of them involved any digging! I'm a little ticked-off at Ardenwood for failing to respond to my requests and now for apparently kicking Geocaching out. I'm going to avoid Ardenwood and their creepy Patterson Family worship.

 

Well, I just went to Ardenwood today and all my caches are still there! The only thing (person) I could not find was the supervisor... SO..the cache series will remain there until I am informed to do otherwise. :tired:

:tired:;);)

Bet they couldn't find them!

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workerofwood

+workerofwood

Posted
Posted

Clay Class update:

 

I have a location, Saratoga Federated Church in Saratoga (directly across the street from my In Memoriam cache.) I can have a large meeting room pretty much as often as I need it at no charge (right price for me).

 

I am awaiting an opinion from our esteemed approvers on whether this could be an event (gotta get those smilies eh?), then I will post the particulars. I will do more than one to fit demand.

 

First dates I have in mind are Fri 3/11, or Sat 3/12, in the evening. Class will be about 2 hours. Seating will be for 15, but there is room for an unlimited number of spectators.

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Nazgul

+Nazgul

Posted
Posted
First dates I have in mind are Fri 3/11, or Sat 3/12, in the evening. Class will be about 2 hours. Seating will be for 15, but there is room for an unlimited number of spectators.

Saturday's better for my wife, who would like to reserve a spot if you're taking reservations for the class. Earlier in the evening is better for me if there's an icon involved. ;)

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Kealia

+Kealia

Posted
Posted

Should have gone after the FTF on ND's new cache.....I would have arrived right around the same time as WoW (since I work from home on Tuesdays) - BUT I also play hockey on Tuesday & Thursdays and wasn't going to have time to hit the cache and make my game with evrything to do in between.

 

So I ignored the little voice in my head that was saying "FTF....FTF......" and went to my game.

I got lit up for 10 goals (yes, I'm the goalie). :D

 

Must get my priorities straight.

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workerofwood

+workerofwood

Posted
Posted
Should have gone after the FTF on ND's new cache.....I would have arrived right around the same time as WoW (since I work from home on Tuesdays) - BUT I also play hockey on Tuesday & Thursdays and wasn't going to have time to hit the cache and make my game with evrything to do in between.

 

So I ignored the little voice in my head that was saying "FTF....FTF......" and went to my game.

I got lit up for 10 goals (yes, I'm the goalie). :D

 

Must get my priorities straight.

ND's new cache was a blast. Wait till you arrive at the site and read the hint. Be sure to work out a bit beforehand, heaviest cache I've run into.

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Alamogul

+Alamogul

Posted
Posted

Can someone in the South Bay please retrieve this TB. I don't know why all you hard core hikers have shunned Team Nazgul's cache (GCM8J3). We figured that there would have been a rash of finders Xmas week, goes to thow you. Thank you.

-----------------

"Hi,

 

I don't suppose there is any chance that you could rescue my travel bug from Grant Overlook. The bug is in a race and the cache you dropped it in hasn't been visited sine you went there in December.

 

Alex. (Slytherin)

 

User's Profile: http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=11...344981baf"

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Nazgul

+Nazgul

Posted
Posted
I don't know why all you hard core hikers have shunned Team Nazgul's cache (GCM8J3)

The caches requiring actual hikes get visited a LOT less than the urban ones around here. And with the rain/mud the visits to those kinds of trail caches have been pretty sparse except where there are additional caches for incentive, like the new ones in Stevens Creek.

 

Also it's a bit out of the way, people often don't like the drive there in the rain, and I've noticed that it's easy to miss in PQs if you don't have them set for a pretty wide radius.

 

Hopefully the next people to go will do it on a day when the views are clear, they're really nice from there. (See what few logs there are if you don't believe me. :D )

 

Uh-oh, there's the sound of rain on my skylight again. That TB will probably be lonely until that stuff stops.

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sammydee

+sammydee

Posted
Posted
The caches requiring actual hikes get visited a LOT less than the urban ones around here.

Yeah, I went to one a few weeks ago in Calero that was a 25 minute hike in from the parking lot, was 3 feet off the trail - and that hadn't been visited since August. Sigh.....

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KennyHannahJacobKatie

+KennyHannahJacobKatie

Posted
Posted (edited)

Calero is an interesting thought ... I haven't been there for years although recent logs mention trail closures.

 

Since a notorious family incident I'll never live down relating to a July excursion to Pinnacles, I tend to hike the Santa Cruz mountains in the summer and the more Eastern parks in the Winter. I notice that this Winter I've mainly concentrated on Almaden Quicksilver and Sierra Azul.

 

What do folks here see as the "Can't Miss" winter parks/caches for our last months of this glorious winter?

 

/Lefty

Edited by KennyHannahJacob
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Marky

+Marky

Posted
Posted (edited)

What do folks here see as the "Can't Miss" winter parks/caches for our last months of this glorious winter? 

 

/Lefty

Alum Rock comes to mind. :rolleyes: Probably Santa Teresa and any down south. I know we plan on hiking those before the weather warms too much.

Uvas Canyon is a great park to hit while the creeks have good water flow. There are some decent elevation changes, making it fall into the 'do it before it gets too warm' category. Plus, it's just an awesome park.

 

--Marky

Edited by Marky
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Nazgul

+Nazgul

Posted
Posted

Uvas Canyon: If you're going to go up cardiac hill or knobcone, this is the best time to do those if it's not muddy. Like Marky said, this is a good time for the waterflow to the waterfalls and streams.

 

That said, it's actually one of our favorite summer parks too because there are several great trails that are almost entirely in tree cover and most of them have milder terrain, making them perfect for hot weather. Also the stream by the two lower caches (Waterfall cache and Enchanted Moss) is there and COLD year round. It's always very pretty too.

 

Again excepting mud, this is a great time for any of the parks or trails that really bake in the summer, and there are a lot of those around here. With everything so green and the flowers blooming everywhere and with full streams, you almost can't go wrong. Lucky us!

 

If you want to hit some that are a lot more comfortable now than when it gets warmer, hit the trails that have long uphill climbs with little/no shade like Monument Peak etc., Lexington View, Knob Cache....

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Marky

+Marky

Posted
Posted
...hit the trails that have long uphill climbs with little/no shade like ..., Lexington View, ...

I can't believe I haven't done this one yet. I keep meaning to, but never seem to. Maybe I'm waiting for more caches to lure me. I guess that's not going to happen so maybe I should do the luring...

 

--Marky

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beckerbuns

+beckerbuns

Posted
Posted
Marky,

 

I have a couple of TB's that want to go to England and Scotland. :rolleyes:    I'll watch for the post on the location.  Thanks.

Yes, please hang on to them.

 

Time Update!

I forgot that we are having a going away party for Anthony from 1pm to 5pm on the 13th, so now I am thinking 7PM and dinner sounds better. I found out that Olaf is staying in Milpitas, so I thought maybe we could have it at the the Pizza Place where JoeSpaz has his Highway 84 Travelbug Hotel cache.

 

--Marky

Sounds good to me too! Is this going to be official or unofficial?

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