Boating and Geocaching

Wayfarer and I were interviewed by a reporter last month, and are now featured in an article in the May issue of Lakeland Boating Magazine!

How'd we get involved in that, you ask? I'll tell you. There was a post on the Groundspeak forums asking if any geocachers were also boaters. I thought, Gosh, we've done that, so I answered the post. Amazingly, no one else did. So the next thing I know, we're in a feature magazine article! Here's the photo they used. That's me at the helm of my brother-in-law, Dave's, boat. That's the lovely wayfarer on my right. Dave is seated in the bow, and his wife, wayfarer's sister, is the one in the orange top. Another brother-in-law salutes from the stern. This picture was taken last summer in Fish Creek Harbor, Door County, Wisconsin, on Lake Michigan. (Click photos to enlarge.)

Here's a picture of me fishing with the nephews later that same day. In the background is Horseshoe Island in Green Bay. We found the only geocache on the island.

Our best find of that trip was a FTF out on Chambers Island. The island is several miles out into Lake Michigan and was the farthest we've ever ventured out there. Luckily, it was a lovely day for boating. The article mentions our geocaching on Lake Minnetonka. Funny thing about that, this winter, people were walking out on the ice to score those geocaches!

You can read the entire article here at lakelandboating.com. While there, sign up to win a new Colorado.

 

Technorati Tags: Boating and Geocaching,Door County,Wisconsin

Clever Geocaching High School Students

Here's a geocaching video made by the students of Centura High School out there in rural Nebraska. I just hope they're not studying filmmaking!

For more fun, you could watch their other video about learning the laws of physics on deserted country roads. It's not about geocaching, but it is entertaining!

Technorati Tags: geocaching,filmmaking

Geocaching Confession: What's in Your Geo-bag?

Without Wayfarer by my side, I'd never find a single geocache! On top of that, I'd still be out in the woods - lost. That's because she carries the geo-bag; and the geo-bag is our magic carpet to geocaches, travel bugs, geocoins, and all the other wonders of the hobby. Here's what's in her geo-bag.

1. Garmin GPS Unit: But she lets me carry it while we are on the hunt. Ours is a Garmin Map 12. (We like the challenge of geocaching with antiques.)
2. Silva Compass: Comes in handy when zeroing in on those difficult caches. Resorting to lat/lon readings, requires that you know which way is north.
3. PDA: For paperless caching. Ours is a Handspring Visor. (More antiques.)
4. Spare Batteries: Many a geo-trip cut short due to low batteries.
5. Mini LED Flashlight: I stick my hand in no dark places without looking to see what's in there first.
6. SWAG: Always trade up. For very cool but inexpensive do it yourself SWAG, check out Renzos Custom Cache Blog.
7. Trackables: Always put Geocoins and Travel Bugs in the same place! That way they don't get lost.
8. Pen & Pencil: Mr Obvious. She takes few extras to drop in a cache that may not have one.
9. Swiss Army Knife: No, not GSAK! A real knife. It has tweezers, screwdriver, scissors, can opener, cork screw. (Don't ask me, but it's in there.)
10. Note book: Sometimes the PDA can be cumbersome for logging trackables or jotting down other notes.
11. Mini First Aid Kit: Band Aids, mole skin, ect.
12. Sunscreen: Although we haven't needed it here in Minnesota, PJ!
13. Bug spray: That either!
14. Zip Lock Bags: For replacing soggy or damaged log bags.
15. Duct Tape: For repairing cracked or broken caches. You can carry quite a bit of the stuff by re-wrapping it in a 6-inch loop.
16. Camera: Our's is a Olympus C4000. (Yet more antiques.) Because memories don't last a lifetime, but digital photos can. (Is that a commercial?)
17. Snacks & Water: I usually carry that in a fanny or backpack. (I've got her pretty loaded down at this point.)
18. Plastic Garbage Bag: When muggels are about, this is our CITO stealth. We start picking up trash.

Wow that's quite the list! So, what's in your geo-bag? What did I miss?

Now for the Shameless

Self Promotion

Get your geo-bag from CafePress. Click on the pics for more info.

One front adjustable clasp closure.

Main compartment has inside slip pocket.

Front panel has zipper compartment.

Adjustable 2" shoulder strap.

600 Denier Polyester

Size: 14 1/2" x 12" x 5"

Technorati Tags: geocaching,geocache,geocoins,garmin gps unit,cafepress

Stubbs Bay Travel Bug Hotel Geocache

Due to the feedback from you, our readers, we replaced the smaller geocache previously hidden last week along the Luce Line Trail. As you may remember, we had prepared a peanut butter jar with camo and hid it along the trail. That's when we discovered the nearby geo-beacon that would hold a much larger cache container.

As pointed out to us, when possible, a larger container should be hidden. In thinking about our hide, we decided to go one step further and designate the cache as a Travel Bug Hotel.

But that adds a little trepidation, knowing that TBs may be short lived in this world. As was our experience with our Christmas Golfer TB. I just don't want anything to happen to other cacher's travel bugs when the little buggers are in our hotel.

So here's before camo and after camo photos of the container. It's a full 12 inches tall, and six inches in diameter. Original contents are a Wisconsin travel book that we wrote, a Minnesota Wild necklace, a Viagra pen, a firearm safety lock that I got at a police station, and an un-activated TB dog tag for the FTF.

It will go into the woods tomorrow and will take a few days to get published.

GPS - less Geocaching?

As geocaching gets more and more exposure in the media, more and more would-be geocachers log onto the Groundspeak forums to ask the question, "Do you really need to have a GPS unit to find geocaches?" Hmmm, difficult question. But an intriguing idea. Geocaching is usually done by following the lead of a GPS unit. However, geocaches can be found without one. If you are interested in a more traditional follow-a-pirates-map-to-secret-treasure, I would suggest Letterboxing. But if you are intent to find geocaches without the GPSr, here's a tutorial on how to do it.

Access to a couple of websites makes the task a little easier.

• Geocaching.com
• maps.live.com
• Terraserver

Downloading Google Earth would help too.

Satellite photo coverage may vary from location to location, so it's best to check the views of each web site. Some areas may have very poor satellite photo coverage, and the method for finding geocaches described here may not work. You just might have to break down and purchase that GPSr. Sorry.

The first step is to log onto geocaching.com and identify the geocache you want to find. For this exercise, we are going to use geocache, GC10XBK, Sugar and Spice. We can see from the geocaching.com web page that it's an easy cache to find, and that people are still finding it. ( Don't go looking for a cache that's got a bunch of DNFs posted.) Also, it might be easier to find a cache that is larger in size, but this one will do for our example.

Here's the satellite view of the cache in Google Earth. I've stuck a yellow pin to the cache location. (Click photo to enlarge.) I wouldn't rely on the cache icons on geocaching.com. I've verified that the pin stuck in that photo is the exact location of the cache. Although the scale is not visible in my screen shot, with it, you would see that the exact location of the cache is about 10 to 15 feet south of the main Luce Line bike path. But how do you find that exact spot on the Luce Line Trail?

Here's a shot of the same area on maps.live.com. The views look very different don't they. One is a summertime photo, the other, early spring or late fall. I know that the maps.live.com view is more recent - and probably more reliable because it's early spring right now. Plus, I can see through some of the trees.

I planned the screen shot of the upper photo so that I could draw a line from the upper left-hand corner of photo, straight through the house, and hit the pin. Now I do the same thing with the other photo and it should reveal the visual location of the cache.

Now I shoot a close up of that photo and I can see a second trail - the horse trail that parallels the bike path. So the geocache has to be located about 10 to 15 feet south of the main bike path, within a few feet of where the horse trail intersects the main bike path! So if I were to seek this cache without a GPSr, I would walk along the trail until I came to the spot where the horse trail connects with the main trail. Then walk south about 10 feet. That would easily put me within 20 feet of the cache. On an average day, with that kind of tree coverage, that's about how close a GPSr might get you.

I would use this method for seeking larger cache containers. There's not too many places to hide a large container in a circle with a 20 foot radius. The hiding place should be pretty obvious at that point.

Technorati Tags: Geocaching,GPS,Google Earth,maps.live.com