Raceway Woods Christmas Golfer

While at Raceway Woods, we picked up this Christmas ornament from A Pink Floyd Experience (GCGVG0). What better tribute to the raceway, and to our Christmas visit, than to transform it into a world-traveling bug. The Raceway Woods Christmas Golfer will be released in Minnesota as soon as we get back into the field.

Geocaching at Raceway Woods

Over the Christmas holiday, we visited relatives in the Chicagoland area and went geocaching at Raceway Woods - formally known as Meadowdale International Raceway. It was built in 1958 near Carpentersville, Illinois, some 40 miles northwest of Chicago - designed to rival the great race tracks of Europe. The track was 3.27 miles long, and had a variety of turns and elevation changes. Its signature feature was the Monza Wall, a 180 degree steeply banked turn that led onto the 4,000 foot main straightaway. Raceway Woods is open to the public for hiking, biking, horseback riding, picnicking and other outdoor recreation - including geocaching.

Here's a 1958 view of the Monza Wall.

Below is a view of the straightaway in 1968.

Here's what it looks like today.

Meadowdale International Raceway has a great website, chock full of vintage and contemporary photos. I encourage the reader to visit that link.

It was a beautiful Christmas day for geocaching at Raceway Woods. The skies were clear with temps in the mid 30's. With no leaf cover the GPSrs were spot on and the caches easy to find.

The nephews show the size of this hide.

And here's the whole gang at the wall.

Save the Silo!

The famous Pure silo that graced the early track was slated for demolition until racing enthusiasts and local residents got wind of it. A fund was set up to save the silo, the goal reached, and the silo is nearing complete restoration. The addition of benches, landscaping, and possibly a geocache will make it all complete. Click on either picture to read all about the restoration.

Coming Soon - Where I go.com

The author of the game, using Wherigo Builder, creates rules that generate media events on a hand-held device. For example, when a person enters a game zone, the device can play a sound or show a picture. The author can also create virtual objects and characters that "live" within the zone for the person to interact with. A person could "talk" to a virtual character, "pull" a virtual switch or "give" a virtual item from their inventory to a character. Using rules within the Wherigo Builder the author can tell a story, create a puzzle game, or generate a tour guide.

Read about it here.

Listen to it here.

OCCCS - Obsessive Compulsive Cache Craving Syndrome

You know that you are addicted to Geocaching when... read more.

Sell Your Soul Geocache???

In recognition of what they claim to be the sudden and recent popularity of selling souls, and the fact that many geocachers nowadays are into the numbers game and will do lots of things in order to score a quick and easy find on a cache, Vinny & Sue Team proposed a cache called, Sell Your Soul for a Smiley! But it seems the reviewers don't really like the idea. My favorite quote in the thread is, Found the cache. The soul inside was wet, so I replaced it with a new one.You can read the entire thread here.

Geocaching in the Snow

Determined to make geocaching in the snow work for us, we did a query for winter friendly caches and headed out. We promptly logged two DNFs (did not find). Which leads me to ask the question, What makes a 'winter friendly' cache? Is it one that requires kneeling, crawling, or digging with your hands through snow up to 12 inches deep? Hmmmm? That may be winter friendly to a badger, but this is not Wisconsin! Not giving up, we pressed on to the next cache and hit pay dirt.

We went to Baylor Regional Park in Carver County. A great place! We wished that we had brought our skis along. In fact, we could have skied right up to the caches! Lots of folks out ice fishing today.

The temps got up to a balmy 20 degrees. The warmest its been in a long time. We ended the afternoon with four new finds that puts us at 192 finds. Just another eight and we will hit our goal of 200 by the end of the year. Many folks don't know that the wild west starts near here in Buffalo, Minnesota. Here's a couple of coyboys ice fishing in Wright County.

Rake The Table: Blog Worthy?

Here's a post from The Rake. After posting two DNFs in one morning, he asks the question, is it Blog Worthy? He's got some great photos, including a doll house built on a child's grave - completely furnished. Check it out.

Jeep Travel Bugs

Keep your eyes out for one of these little babies - Jeep TBs! Every year, Jeep releases a bunch of these into the geocaching community to be hidden all over the world. If you find one in a cache, take a picture of it - keeping with the theme of the month - and post the picture on the TB's tracking page. A new GPS unit is given away every month for the best photo. Here's some past winners. You can see, the competition is pretty fierce!

But don't wait to find a Jeep to enter a drawing for a new Jeep Commander. Anyone is eligible.

We just happened to find three of them in one week. The green one on the left is last year's. The red one on the right is this year's. The tag for the big one in the middle is this year's tag, but someone replaced the Jeep!

As with all Travel Bugs, record and keep a record of the unique number on the dog tag! You will need it to prove that you found it.

Geocaching in Education

It looks like we'll be seeing more and more young geocachers out there in the field as educators employ GPS technology for education. The idea was pitched recently at a meeting of the National Council for Geographic Education. (You can read more here.) Educators have been using GPS for some time now, but not on a national level. For example, the School District of the Menomonie,WI Area integrated the The Bjornson Education-Recreation Center into its regular educational program. There, educator and geocacher, mama kat, has hidden over two dozen caches on the property - and as you can read from a previous post - some of them can be very challenging! Local schools routinely schedule field trips to the property. What better way to combine geography, biology, and technology to keep kids interested in the world around us.

Electric Cache

Here's a quick park & grab micro. The cache is the small electric box attached to the large box with magnets. Figuring this one out brought a lot of satisfaction.

The Caching Pump

Geocoins

I ran across this entry on Selina Fenech's blog. She's getting geocoins made with her artwork imprinted on them. Geocoins, one of several facets of geocaching, are both trackable and collectible. Once a coin is registered or "activated", it has a mission to travel the globe from geocache to geocache. Coins that have not been activated, or do not include traveling instructions, can be collected and traded. Watch for them in a cache near you.

The Ultimate GPS Buyers Guide

No, this is not a Google ad. It's a real site loaded with the latest & greatest information for those of you looking for a new GPSr. There's a Handheld Buyers Guide, GPS Reviews, and a GPS Comparison Page where you can do a head-to-head comparison of your favorite receivers. This site is a must-read for anyone looking to purchase a GPS receiver. To go to that page, click on the picture of the GPSr right here.

DNF in the Snow

Well we tried to find a new cache just down the street from us. We would have been STF, but the snow was too deep for me to go crawling around in. The GPSr was right on one of those little playground thingies, but to get under would have required digging snow out from around it. Click on the pic to enlarge it, and you can barely see the thing just beyond the swing. Plus, I could feel a dozen eyeballs on my back from the muggle homes across the street. The FTF was over a week a go (before it snowed) and no one has found it since. It was a whole 3 degrees out, so what should have been a quick park & grab, turned out to be a DNF. Bummer!

Travel Bugs Gone Missing

Here's a sad story about lost travel bugs - some due to natural causes, some stolen. Miragee's blog post tells the whole story.

Wait Time at geocaching.com fixed!

Here's some great news for those of us that have had performance issues with geocaching.com. (That would be all of us!) They've fixed the problems! At least until a million more people log into it. According to Jeremy Irish, founder of Groundspeak - parent company of geocaching.com, they've added 25 more hard drives to the back-end database and fixed a few - previously unknown - bugs that were causing performance issues. You can read the entire story here.

Geocaching Visit Cards

Leaving a unique, I found it card, in caches is either a brand new idea, or one that just hasn't caught on. There are a few geocachers in our area that always leave cards in caches they've found. And it's always fun for us to open up a cache and find a card that we recognize. EskoClimber has a card that we've seen a lot - even way over by South Dakota! So, we're going to order some cards to leave in caches.

Above is one idea we had. This card is from Vista Print. I'm not endorsing their product, because a person could create their own cards at home. A unique design would be fun - kind of like the unique stamp used for letterboxing. We haven't decided on a final design, so we'll let you know what we come up with.

All the Leaves are Brown

All the leaves are brown
And the sky is grey
I went for a walk
On a winter's day
I'd be safe and warm
If I was in L.A.
California dreamin'
On such a winter's day.*

Matthew Greenwald, The Mammas & the Papas biographer, wrote, If this was the only hit song that the group ever recorded, they (still) would have made it into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Like most everybody else, I love this song! The harvest moon has passed, along with the hunter's moon. The next one, I think will be the long nights moon. It is indeed winter here!
We drove past the little park down the street, in which the new cache is hidden, and couldn't even get near it. Dad muggle was giving his little girl snowmobile driving lessons in the parking lot. So we opted for the local to watch the Vikings. A slow geocaching weekend!
Here's another version with better audio. Put on the headphones and do some California Dreamin.
*Lyrics written by John and Michelle Phillips

Geocaching in the snow?

With 20 MPH winds and often blizzard-like conditions here in Minnesota, yesterday was the first Saturday in a long time that we didn't go geocaching. And there's a new cache just down the street from us. We missed the FTF, but wouldn't have gone out anyway. We did all of our shopping the day before, and did all of our geocaching yesterday by internet.

In the Iowaadmin's Geocaching Blog, it's reported that only four new placements were submitted all day. You know the weather is bad! We'll get out today, for sure, and probably try our skills at geocaching in the snow.

What to Get That Geocacher on Your List

Looking for a special gift for that special someone in your geo-life? The Granite State Geocachers Podcast site has the perfect list.