+the hermit crabs Posted September 30, 2004 Share Posted September 30, 2004 Hi folks-- We'll be visiting the Cedar Falls, Iowa area next week, and are looking for cache recommendations. We'll have about four days that we can devote solely to caching. There are quite a few in that area, and we were planning to just pick a bunch at random, but if there are some that are on anybody's "must-do" list, we'll try to bump them to the top of our list. We prefer regular-sized caches rather than micros or virtuals. Other than that, there's a wide range of ones we like -- traditionals, multis, puzzles, woods, parks, 15-minute walks, 3-hour hikes... Any level of difficulty is fine, and probably no terrain higher than 4. (A night cache or two would be terrific!) Thanks in advance for your suggestions --the hermit crabs (from Massachusetts) Quote Link to comment
+welch Posted October 1, 2004 Share Posted October 1, 2004 DANG YOU! Come a week sooner and you could have gotten in on a nice event!! Haven't found that many of the waterloo area cache, but I don't think they're night only caches, as cool as they are. If you plan it out you could probably get a lot of the caches in the area.... (meaning I have no real suggestions ) Quote Link to comment
+WindChill Posted October 1, 2004 Share Posted October 1, 2004 Hi Hermit Crabs, welcome to our playground. Here is a link to the Waterloo page on the Eastern Iowa Geocachers Assoc. website. It lists a couple of recommended caches and the name of a local cacher that can answer specific questions. In addition, the EIGA has recently been contacted by the Waterloo Convention and Visitors Bureau about working together. They recogonize that geocaching is a growing "tourist" activity and have offered coupons and such good at area businesses. Drop them a note and let them know you are a geocacher and will be staying in the area for a few days. Let us know what they will do for you. On specific caches, if you are up for a good puzzle, I highly recommend Unusualoo (bring a good calculator). Most caches by Iowa Tom are micros but will have an interesting story or some local history associated with them. There are a couple of caches in Hickory Hills park, a very nice county park about 10-15 miles south of town. If you have time for a daytrip, and especially if you'll have kids along, go east about 30 miles to the trout hatchery near Manchester (Beaglebox cache) or to Backbone State Park (Maltese Goldfinch cache). Good Hunting... Quote Link to comment
+the hermit crabs Posted October 1, 2004 Author Share Posted October 1, 2004 DANG YOU! Come a week sooner and you could have gotten in on a nice event!! What? You mean the event won't still be going on?? Here we were thinking that Iowa was a 24/7 party state... We'll have to pick up the broken bits of our shattered illusions (and maybe use them as trade items) Quote Link to comment
+the hermit crabs Posted October 1, 2004 Author Share Posted October 1, 2004 Hi Hermit Crabs, welcome to our playground. Here is a link to the Waterloo page on the Eastern Iowa Geocachers Assoc. website. It lists a couple of recommended caches and the name of a local cacher that can answer specific questions. In addition, the EIGA has recently been contacted by the Waterloo Convention and Visitors Bureau about working together. They recogonize that geocaching is a growing "tourist" activity and have offered coupons and such good at area businesses. Drop them a note and let them know you are a geocacher and will be staying in the area for a few days. Let us know what they will do for you. On specific caches, if you are up for a good puzzle, I highly recommend Unusualoo (bring a good calculator). Most caches by Iowa Tom are micros but will have an interesting story or some local history associated with them. There are a couple of caches in Hickory Hills park, a very nice county park about 10-15 miles south of town. If you have time for a daytrip, and especially if you'll have kids along, go east about 30 miles to the trout hatchery near Manchester (Beaglebox cache) or to Backbone State Park (Maltese Goldfinch cache). Good Hunting... Hey, thanks for the great recommendations. Some of Iowa Tom's caches were on our list of possibilities already, since they looked interesting -- it's good to have an insider's opinion to confirm it. I hadn't noticed the "Unusualoo" one yet in our searches -- but now it's definitely on our list! I just read the page for it; it looks incredibly fun. I hope I qualify for the "relatively skinny" requirement; I just barely make the "at least 5 feet tall one ) Thanks again for your recommendations. Quote Link to comment
+BlueDeuce Posted October 1, 2004 Share Posted October 1, 2004 Here we were thinking that Iowa was a 24/7 party state. It is. It's just that not everybody is invited. Quote Link to comment
+the hermit crabs Posted October 1, 2004 Author Share Posted October 1, 2004 Here we were thinking that Iowa was a 24/7 party state. It is. It's just that not everybody is invited. it's... it's because we're crabs, isn't it? Quote Link to comment
+BlueDeuce Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 Nobody thinks to put a hermit on the invite list. You figure they'll just say 'no thanks' anyway. That's what they do, they spend most of their time in a cave (or shell) turning down party invites. Quote Link to comment
+welch Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 Anyone know any good jokes involving an Elf and Hermit? Quote Link to comment
+BlueDeuce Posted October 12, 2004 Share Posted October 12, 2004 22 finds, not bad! Quote Link to comment
+the hermit crabs Posted October 13, 2004 Author Share Posted October 13, 2004 22 finds, not bad! ...And three DNFs! We just got home tonight. Had lots of fun caching in Iowa. Unusualoo was the first one we tried, and one of our favorites. We also really liked several others, especially including Maltese Goldfinch (Resurrected) and Picture Puzzler. One of the more interesting finds was for a cache that had apparently moved from its previous placement -- a very short distance, but just enough to make it almost invisible and almost almost unreachable. I thought we'd have to log a DNF for something that we could just about see and just barely touch, but eventually we managed to extract it. We were pleased with ourselves after that one . The differences between caching in MA and IA were subtle but interesting. The most noticable thing to me was that the ground feels different out there, presumably due to a lot of flooding over the past year. And the sky is ... bigger. The best thing we did to prepare was to buy & download the Mapsource MetroGuide maps for our Garmins -- otherwise we would never have found the starting points for a lot of the caches! Thanks again for your suggestions, especially for "Unusualoo". --the hermit crabs Quote Link to comment
+WindChill Posted October 13, 2004 Share Posted October 13, 2004 Sounds like a good trip. Im glad we could help. Quote Link to comment
+the hermit crabs Posted October 14, 2004 Author Share Posted October 14, 2004 Most of the non-wedding pictures we took on our trip were related to caches or bugs so we uploaded them to their related pages. This one had nothing to do with any of them, but I really like it, so I'm posting it here. It's the Iowa sunrise as seen from our hotel room window this past Monday morning. Quote Link to comment
+BlueDeuce Posted October 14, 2004 Share Posted October 14, 2004 (edited) ... Edited October 15, 2004 by Elf Danach Quote Link to comment
+carleenp Posted October 14, 2004 Share Posted October 14, 2004 Most of the non-wedding pictures we took on our trip were related to caches or bugs so we uploaded them to their related pages. This one had nothing to do with any of them, but I really like it, so I'm posting it here. It's the Iowa sunrise as seen from our hotel room window this past Monday morning. Very nice Pic!!!! Quote Link to comment
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