New Geocache on Lake Minnetonka

For readers who may geocache in the west metro of the Twin Cities, this post may contain spoilers.

We hid our first 5-star terrain, Geocache last Sunday. It's rated a five because it's on Lake Minnetonka, accessible only by boat or a walk across the ice.

We sometimes boat over to a little bay on Lake Minnetonka to lounge or swim. On several occasions, we’ve seen dog owners stop at this spot for a chance to get Fido off the boat for a little exercise. What fun - throwing the ball and watching a good retriever do his work!

Photo by Pirate Scott.

Since this little bay didn’t officially have a name, we decided to unofficially call it Puppy Cove - and thought, what a great place to hide a geocache!

To place the hide, we anchored offshore and I slid onto the air mattress - careful not to drop the GPSr into the lake. (Paddling toward shore, I was glad there were no Greenpeace folks around. They probably would have tried to roll me back into the water.)

But I've digressed!

Knowing the limitations of my GPS unit in heavy tree cover, I decided to place the cache right the water's edge. A cavity in a downed willow tree provided the perfect spot. You can actually see the tree from outer space!

Click the photo to enlarge it. The downed willow is on the left, sticking out into the water. Crazy stuff!

I finally got to use my peanut butter jar container.

My faithful readers may remember that I once hid the peanut butter jar, but decided to replace it with a larger container for the TB Hotel Wannabe. Now the peanut butter jar is serving well out on the shoreline.

Here's an aerial photo of Halstead (Halstead's) Bay on Lake Minnetonka. The hide is about 1300 feet from the King's Point Landing cache, that once ate our lunch in trying to find.

Congratulations to ruderat for the FTF. And to Dances with Beehives for STF. You can see the listing and their comments here.

Technorati Tags: Geocache,Geocaching,Lake Minnetonka

FTF on a Dead Body

Hadn't heard about this until today, so thought I would pass it on.

norma'sgirl and lostlookingforyou are a couple of geocachers from Texas. While looking for geocache GC10XNQ at the Grove Hill Cemetery in Dallas last 4th of July, they discovered a dead body.

One expects bodies in cemeteries, but this one was above ground!

You can read all about it on their blog.

Technorati Tags: FTF,dead body,geocaching

Non Geocaching GPS Follies

The headline reads: A GPS device led a convoy of tourists astray, finally stranding them on the edge of a sheer cliff.

No, they weren't geocaching. Just trusting way too much on technology and not enough on trust in good common sense. I've had a couple of experiences with GPS (street navigation systems) that have left me scratching my head. I must ask, how can people be so stupid? Note: I do not use a automobile navigational system.

In my line of work, I often have to meet some of our illustrious sales reps at the client's office. Running a bit late one afternoon, I called the sales rep, who was already on site, and asked for directions.

Me: Which street do I turn on to get there?

Sales rep: *Silence* Um... Uh... I don't know.

Me: Well, what street did you take to get there?

Sales rep: *Silence* Um... Uh... I don't know.

Me: How did you get there?

Sales rep: I just followed my TomTom.

Me: But what street did you take to get there?

Sales rep: *Silence* Um... Uh... I don't know.

The sales rep was at the client's office. Had no clue where she was. Had no clue how she got there. Just followed the GPS arrow! (?)

On another occasion I chose to ride along with a different sales rep to a client's office. (The point of this story is not to cast dispersions on sales reps. Our office just had a sales contest and a bunch of them won new TomToms. I'll cast dispersions on our sales rep in another post.)

Anyway he's driving along, dutifully following the arrow - turning when the GPSr instructed him to. All was well until we came to the cloverleaf ramp of interstate highways 394 and 494.

Click on the photo to enjoy our trip. That's 494, north and south. 394, is east and west.

We were traveling north on 494 and the device told him to take the westbound ramp to 394.

We loop around, and as soon as we reached the bottom of the ramp heading west, the British accented voice on the TomTom instructed him to take the ramp to southbound 494. Which he did. Now we were driving south - the same direction from which we had just come.

You guessed it.

The authoritative voice demanded the we take the ramp to eastbound 394. And he did - totally oblivious to what was happening.

You guessed right again.

Back on northbound 494 - and he had his turn signal on to exit to 394 west!

I'd had enough. I figured we'd run out of gas soon. I intervened, and we continued north to the next exit and safely arrived at the client's office on a nearby frontage road.

So the above news story is not as incredible as it seems. Blindly following that little arrow is not always the brightest thing to do. I think we call that bushwhacking?

Technorati Tags: GPS,geocaching

Another Travel Bug Stolen from a Geocache

While composing a post about our Rails to Trails Travel Bug a couple of month as ago I wrote, "This one is a bit cute. I expect it will go into someone's private collection before it travels too far."  How prophetic was that?

We released it on June 8th of this year, and on August 3rd I received this email: "Found the tag only on the ground next to a nearby but different cache than this is listed for (was near Hanging Out at Lake Ann.)  Is it supposed to be attached to something?  Maybe I can rescue it?  Let me know." 

So it lasted less than two months.

I did some detective work and here's what I can piece together.

July 21: A geocacher whom we know personally and trust, dropped the TB in FTF Hounds MN Style - timewellspent.

July 22: The very next day, four DNFs were posted on that cache. I can't tell from the logs if they were all caching together that day, but certainly were in parties of two and two. These were experienced geocachers with 200 to 500 finds each. I find it hard to believe that four good geocachers would post DNFs if the cache were there. It appears that the cache was gone that day.

August 2: Two geocachers post finds on FTF Hounds, but neither report the travel bug. The cache has obviously been placed back in its hiding spot, minus the TB and possibly other SWAG.

Here's the log entries from Hanging out on Lake Ann, a cache just 900 feet away from FTF Hounds.

July 27: Very well done. Some effort went into this one. May need some re-design. Found part of cache on ground, and TB. Signed log, and returned to original configuration.

August 2: Whole cache assembly was on the ground and open, needs some re-engineering I guess. I found a travel bug tag on the ground but no bug.

So here's my theory. FTF Hounds was found and removed by muggles, only to be returned at a later date. Maybe they read the description inside, logged onto geocaching.com, and figured out what a geocache was - but they didn't do enough investigating to learn what a travel bug is. Once realizing that geocaching is a game, they replaced the cache, but not the TB.

Having spotted the nearby Hanging Out cache online, they decided to muggle that one too. That's where they removed the tracking dog tag and decided to keep the toy train.

And I think I see a pattern developing. The FTF Hounds geocache is located just 639 feet from the now archived, My Favorite Cache Container, from which our Raceway Woods Christmas Golfer disappeared. (click on photo to enlarge)

Someone in that area is making a habit of pilfering the contents of geocaches. All the caches are owned by the same person. I'm going to contact him and see if he has noticed the pattern.

Geocaching at French Creek Preserve

This post may contain spoilers.

For those of our loyal readers who may plan on geocaching in the west Minneapolis metro area, this post may contain spoilers. Either don't read, or don't complain.

Wayfarer and I took advantage of the lovely weather and ventured out to score five geocaches at the nearby French Creek Preserve. The location of the caches are shown in the photo. The center smiley on the bottom is a Mystery Cache, and clues from the other four lead to the mystery.

French Creek Preserve encompasses a seven acre pond and a four acre restored prairie which are the cornerstone of a large wetland complex. The wetlands ultimately drains to Crystal Bay in Lake Minnetonka and is home to many land and water species. The restored prairie was planted in the fall of 1993, and is now a flourishing wetland.

After an earlier experience with TICKS (!) we liberally applied the 40% deet to our shoes and ankles, and started down the trail. Only then did we realize our folly. There was no tick problem - just mosquitoes. The good news is... we didn't get bit on our ankles!

We hiked the trail that circled the lake, spooked a murder of crows, found the geocaches, and generally enjoyed the day. And where do you suppose the final mystery cache was located? Out on the Luce Line Trail. Cool!

The geocache was on a section of trail where we had never been, and finding the right access turned out to be the biggest challenge of the day. During the search, we drove into a neighborhood cul-du-sac that did not yet have homes on it. And there, just 20 yards away, stood a "family" of white tailed deer - a buck in velvet, two does, and three spotted fawns. They seemed to have no fear of us and continued to frolic and play while we watched.

Note to self: Always keep camera up front, within reach. We didn't get pictures of the deer. But here's some other photos we took that day.

A shot of French Lake through the willows.

A view of the large wetlands complex.

False sunflowers along the trail.

Nice hidey hole for the final.

Technorati Tags: Geocaching,French Creek Preserve