Names & Faces....and a full day of caching.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Today we attended our second caching event.  This one was called Names & Faces, Part V.  We obviously spent the rest of the day caching both before and after the event.  We had a great time, and ended up finding 17 caches, which is not a ton, but we had some very enjoyable hikes mixed it.  Here are a bunch of random pictures taken throughout the day.

 

 

We plan on going out caching tomorrow for most of the day as well, our goal is to get to 399 by next Saturday...that way our Leprechauns outing will be our 400th find.  

Cache Run, More Cops, and Leprechauns

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Today I went on another caching run, what a perfect day to be outside!!!  I chose to do a few caches that were a little bit more of a hike than the normal park and go.  I took just a few pictures of the winter scenery, enjoy.




Once again I had another run-in with the police...this time no tickets were written, and I did not get in any trouble.  Once again I will post what I wrote in the cache log instead of typing it all over again.


-----When I got back to the truck, things got a little more interesting. I just got back in and was plugging the next set of coordinates into the nuvi, and the lowrance. I look in the mirror, and there are the familiar cherries and berries flashing behind me(just got pulled over on Monday while caching). The officer walked up to my window and smiled.....this is different I thought to myself! He said, "we received a call, and you are suspicious". I said "well, I am geocaching", and he smiled again, I asked "have you heard of it". He replied right away, "oh yes, a friend of mine is a geocacher". He asked if I was able to find the cache and if I knew the person that placed this cache. I told him, I have never met the cache owner, but I believe they are from the area. He was just wondering if the cache owner was a member of the school district. or not. He then asked me if I had found the one on the south shore of Big Green Lake at Dodge County park. I said yes I had, he said he had found that one with his buddy. He wished me luck on the rest of my searches and we were both on our separate ways. It was very cool to see a police officer that had been geocaching, and I thought it was funny he would bring up a certain cache that I had done before. It was nice talking to him, and to prove that I really was not suspicious.-----


It was definitely an interesting day.  One of my favorite days of caching yet, nice and relaxed.





I am setting up a small outing to go get "The Green Lake Leprechauns" cache, we will be going after it on the 13th of this month.  If you are in the area, stop out and join the fun.  There will be food and drink to be had by all after the cache is logged.  I will be sure to post pictures on the blog after the outing is complete.  Get the details at the WGA Forum Page for this outing.

Caching in outer space?

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

I was reading through the WGA Forums(Wisconsin Geocaching Association) and saw a post under the "recommended caches" for this cache.  It is placed on the International Space Station!  There is actually a travel bug there as well.  As you would expect, it is still awaiting for its first to find.  Check out the main cache page HERE.

I think it is pretty cool, and expect it will be successfully logged in the near future, as in this year.  I think it is going to be fun to watch this cache, I have added it to my watch list, just to see what happens. 

This one might have the best view possible for any cache that exists.

Monday Cache Run

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Yesterday, Ruth had the day off so we decided to run some errands in Fond Du Lac and do a little caching after we were done.  We were able to find 14 caches, every one that we went after, which was nice. 

We did have a run in with the cops yesterday, but nothing cache related or anything cool like that.  Here is the post from the log.....

"Found this cache today right after our run-in with the State Trooper...nothing cache related, or cool like that. We were pulled over just before finding this for not having our seat-belts on...which is rare. Our Nuvi took us in off of Rolling Meadows drive, we got out at the gate to check things out, and figured out we had to drive around and search this one from the other end of the road. We needed gas, so why put on the seat-belts for the .3 mile drive to the BP station?? Well, in that .3 miles of road there happens to be a State Trooper headquarters...he literally pulled out of his lot, flipped on his lights and pulled us over within feet of the BP station we were headed to. After all of that we found the cache, right next to a nice little creek, which happened to be flowing pretty swiftly today. TFTC!!!"   


Thankfully we have not gotten any fines lately, so the seat-belt fine was only 10 bucks.


Keep posted, I am hoping to make a few runs yet this week, and we might be taking our friends out caching this weekend, they are rookies and seem really interested in trying it out.

Should have cached!

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Well after my complete weekend of ice fishing, I realize I should have gone caching.  I spent a total of 20 hours on the ice this weekend and had exactly 0(zero) tip-ups.  Not even a nibble.  We did have fun playing cards though, I did manage to win a few bucks playing 31.  Today we also watched a recovery team pull an ice-shack out of the water that fell through a little while ago during the warm weather/rainstorms we had.  It was very interesting to see them do it, I did take some pictures, but the camera is still in the ice-shack on the lake.  I will post if I think of it. 

The whole weekend I was within a mile of the great 4/4 cache on Big Green Lake called "The Green Lake Leprechauns". This is a cache I have wanted to do since day one, which is landlocked and can only be reached by water.  The ice as good as it is, I might have to knock this one off of the to-do-list this week maybe. 

Don't forget to vote for the February Poll question!!!  Also, please check out the chat room whenever you can, you could possibly be the first person to actually chat with me!!  Not to popular yet, but I am hoping everyone gets some use out of it.

The battle for MuddyBottoms's time.

Friday, January 29, 2010

During the winter there is nothing I love to do more than ice-fish.  So, this weekend instead of geocaching, which I really want to do, I will be spending both days in the confines of the heated ice shack.  I would not say much fishing goes on, technically we have our 3 tip ups out per person, but that's about it.  We do, on the other hand, play lots of cards, shake lots of dice, eat lots of food, and of course drink lots of beersoda...yeah soda. 

I have all the necessities loaded up.  I have the beer, venison, snacks, propane, and I even have the auger and the rest of the fishing gear.  Oh yeah, and a roll of quarters which I am sure to lose playing ship, captain, crew.  I LOVE IT!!

This is exactly what I am after!!! Wish me luck!!

Mini Cache Run

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Today I went on a short little run for 9 caches in the Randolph, Cambria, Dalton area.  I had a great time finding a few more winter caches.  The wind was brutaly cold, but it was definitely a fun time.  I had 12 caches on the list but did not even attempt 3 of them due to roads being plowed in, or muggles in the area.

I did a few cemetery caches, one of which was a multi and a few traditionals on public land and in parks.

Paperless...I thought it would never happen to me.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Well, if you have read the blog in the past you remember my post about how I like to cache at a low-tech level.  I used custom made paper sheets to write down every cache and its details.  I also use a paper map book to lay out the caches in order so we can easily drive to each one.

Those days are gone, but purely by accident.  This year I bought my wife an Ipod Nano for Christmas.  While on the WGA Forums, I realized there was a program designed just for nano's to go paperless.  This program is called CacheMagnet, and I had to try it.  It is a totally free download, and it works absolutely flawlessly.

I thought I would never go paperless, but the fact that I already had the Ipod, and the program is free, I had to make the switch.  I will be the first to admit that it is really nice to have all of that information at my fingertips.

The program loads all of the information about the cache, size, D/T, cache owner, coordinates, even the hint and a few previous logs.  All of this information is great to have with you at ground zero, especially if you are having trouble finding the cache.  There is usually great information to be had in the last few logs, and that is nice to have.  It is so easy to load, even for a technology illiterate person like me.  What I do is make a bookmark list of all of the caches I want to hunt in a day, then create a pocket query out of the bookmark list.  When you open the PQ, CacheMagnet automatically opens the zipped file and it is as simple as sending it to your Ipod.

 Here are a few screen shots of our Ipod running CacheMagnet.

 Here is a list of all of the caches I put into this PQ'ed bookmark list. I think you can put up to like 400 caches in at once, and the clicker wheel lets you move up and down on any screen.

When you click on the cache you wish, you can from there look at the description(main page), look at the hint(if available) or check out the last 5 logs.

Here is what the main page looks like, it has every bit of info you need.

What a great tool, I am glad I took the time to check it out, and glad I let my stubbornness go for a second to give it a chance.  

First Winter Caching

Monday, January 25, 2010

Today I finally got out to find my first two winter caches.  With it being warmer the last couple of days, I figured that most of the snow was melted.  It was also very comfortable outside for caching.  It is also supposed to get rather cold in the next few days, and those are the days I like to retreat to the ice shack, so I figured today was the day.  My plan was to knock out a cache that I would not be able to get to in the summer months...and the perfect candidate was "Wet Maze".  This cache has a stout reputation as being a winter only cache, and I quickly figured out why.  Lets just say that it really is wet, and it really is a maze.  I was super glad I had on my new waterproof boots, because the whole time I was walking through 3 inches of water on top of glare, super slippery ice.  I made the find and really enjoyed myself on a great day to be caching.

This was my first obstacle, this ice was covered by 3 inches of water and it was super slippery, and thin.  I waddled my way across it while it was cracking the whole way.  The cache was located on "the island" in the background.  If it was easy everyone would do it!

 

 This was the trail I followed the whole way..."the island" is in the background.

 

 This was the view from the cache looking back toward where the journey started.

I then stopped at another cache in the Eldorado Marsh called Slips Cache.  This one took me on a much easier hike though an open grassy field.  This cache had no attributes and the hint was "one odd rock", so I figured it would be in a rock pile and very much not winter friendly.  I was correct, it is definitely not winter friendly, but with the recent snow melt, I was able to see the container nice and easy with no snow cover. 

Although it was only two caches, it felt great to get out again.  Tomorrow I will most likely spend the day in the heated shack watching my tip-ups not go up.

Welcome 2010!!

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Happy New Year to all of you blog readers!  It is crazy how busy I am, you would think unemployment would be boring!  I have been super busy in the woodshop, and really need to get out caching.  The worse thing is that we are totally winter people, and have all of the gear to get us to just about any geocache.  I am hoping to get out soon!  Keep checking back, and vote on the poll question.