Goecaching for Days Continued

Well I tried to blog on Monday using Picasa. It is a photo program made by Google. When I tried to upload to Blogger I lost connection to my router and Picasa decided to lose my draft. Thanks Picasa.

So anyway Saturday we grabbed 10 caches. First we went for a group of 3 where the first 2 had the coords for the third. It was a pretty nice hike but when we had to go off trail it was some of the most dense woods I have ever been in. That took us about 2 hours, so we ate lunch in the cachemobile.

After lunch we went for our first multi. It was a nice easy walk through the park. We were on walking trails until the final then we had to go into the woods where there are Lions and tigers and bears, OH MY! Here is a pic of the first stage...


We followed that up with 4 more. All of them were micros. Now I can understand micros in an urban environment, but when you have acres and acres of woods there really isn't a need for micros. Luckily we didn't trade Awesome to those Gypsies for some handmade beads. (those were some SWEET beads) This kid can smell out micros. We were 10 feet from the cache and he is finding these things. At one point we were at GZ and we yelled at Awesome to get out of a tree and help. As he was coming down he finds the cache.

We finished the day out with a couple of Earth Caches. I love these things.


Sunday we also knocked out 2 on the way to Grandma's for Easter.

Geocaching for Days

So where to begin. Since I can't seem to get my kids to go caching with me I decided to do a little caching after work. Add the fact that they are in a new after school program and they complain if I pick them up too early.

There have been a couple of new caches placed along a road that is about 1 mile away from where I am working. So I decided to go up there Wednesday and knock them out. The first was a cool hide in the side of an overpass. The next wasn't so easy. I don't think I would have found it had it not fallen out when I moved a piece of wood. The container was a little micro with some rocks epoxied to it. I made sure the next guy would have to work to find it. It won't be falling out. One was real clever. It was a fake mushroom that was stuck to a log. I was stumped for a bit, but I figured it out.I logged 6 on this trip. I had to pass 2 by because of muggles. but I went back Thursday and got those.

The highlight of the day was meeting up with another cacher to knock out 2 caches I didn't want to take the kids on. One was Adrenaline Rush, it was pretty extreme. The other was Operation Night Hawk. This one is a night cache. You have to shine a flashlight around and find reflective marks until you find the cache.

I got 2 on Thursday and I thought about snagging one on Friday just to keep the streak going. But I was just too lazy to plan that one.

So I logged 8 in 2 days with Saturday just around the corner. It is going to be a good week.

Geocaching Lull

Cachin' has been slow for me lately. It seems my kids have decided they aren't into caching as much as I am. I think I'll just load up the gps and hit 1 or 2 on my way home from work every day. I've been working overtime and with school 2 nights a week I haven't been able to do that yet.

We did buy an ammo can from the local army surplus store yesterday. I want to get some cammo paint so I can make it look as cool as Hick's. We also bought some swag to put in it. We got some mini motorcycles, some erasers and stuff like that. I an also going to put some Geocaching license kits with the laminating pouches in there. I'll probably put some code wheels in there too. Buttons, is another idea runnin through my head, but I need to shop for an affordable button maker. I have a great idea for the FTF prize but need to iron some things out on that. I'll give more information later.

On another note there is a team in my area named Slowpokes. This couple logged 5 FTF's
in one day! Now that must be some sort of record. If it isn't I bet I could put my twist on it to make it a record. They found: A Prize is Hidden in Black Partridge Park, A Quiet Spot in Eureka, A Quiet Spot Near Secor, A Quiet Place in Roanoke, and A Quiet Spot in ElPaso. Now that is some cachin'! Congrats to Slowpokes. At least someone gets to go out and get some cachin' done

Geocache Handicapping

I've decided there should be some sort of handicapping for geocaching. Hick@Heart posted a question in Groundspeak Forums about "How many caches have you found in one day?" People responded anywhere form 7 to 114. 114! Are you kidding? Then I got this picture from Hick@Heart



Now here in Illinois there is nothing like this. This is borderline ridiculous.

This is the reasoning behind my Caching Handicap. You are given a handicap in bowling, as well as golf. If I had actually calculated my handicap in these 2 sports, it would definitely be a large number.

So I haven't come up with the exact formula but I think it should take into account:

1: number of caches per square mile, because as shown in the picture there are quite a few compared to here, where besides a few parks with about 4 to 5 caches in it you have to drive to the next cache.

2:Difficulty of these caches, because there is no way that any of those pictured can be more than a 2 difficulty. Or maybe they all are, but I doubt it!

3:Type of GPSr being used, some GPSr don't have as much memory as others. All those waypoints could fill up some GPSr.

Even Muggles shouldn't be a factor in this scenario. If there is a muggle by the cache you just move 50 feet to the next one.

Realistically there is only one way for me to resolve this problem! I am going to have to go on vacation to Hick's house for a week. We'll drop the wives and kids off at Disneyland while we log 500 caches. How bout it Hick?