I Couldn't ask for Better...

weather this holiday weekend ! It is supposed to get up into the 70's this weekend. Perfect caching weather, if you ask me :) I need to get out to my first cache nad hide it better. Both of the people who found it commented that it was to visible. I will hide it a bit better tomorrow. Other than that, I am just going to get some caches credits. I hope to find 10 or so caches on this 3 day weekend. I hope you all have a happy and safe New Year !!

I'd Rather Be Caching

Bummer that I can't ! It has been one of those weeks at work where I am getting to work around sunrise and leaving around sunset. I'm not big on caching at night, so that rules out night caching. I'm too worried about getting shot or arrested. Oh well, the weekend will be here soon enough.

I caught an interesting news story today. It is about the Galileo satellite system that is being placed in orbit. It will not replace GPS, but will be an alternate system for GPS users. It is civilian based, therefore, not suceptable to the whims of a government. On the plus side, it apparently will be much more accurate than GPS. Up to 5 times more accurate, apparently. It is supposed to narow down accuracy to 3 feet. If you can't find a cache with that kind of accuracy, you're in trouble ! The bad news is that it will not be available until 2010. Should be interesting to see what GPS producers jump on the bandwagon.

Geocaching Nightmare

Okay, not so much a nightmare as a bad dream. I'll start from the beginning and get to the bad stuff in a minute.

I decided to get out and hit a few caches today since the weather was so nice. Actually, I was hoping to hit 5-6 caches, but ended up only claiming three. My first stop was a second attempt at "End of the Road #15. I had tried this one once before and could not locate the cache. After about ten minutes of walking in circles, I thought I was going to have the same results today. I finally went back to my GPS and walked into the target from three different directions. Each time, it took me to the same spot, plus or minus a few feet. I knew I had to be right on top of it. Come to find out, I was more correct than I knew. It finally hit me where it was hidden and I brushed away a few leaves and there it was! It's nice to succeed when you have failed in the past. I took nothing but left a couple of foriegn coins and signed the log.

Next, I was off to find "Mastermind and Friends". This cache was a nice walk from the parking area to the cache. There was no one around so I took my time and located the cache with ease. The cache was in good shape and I traded a 1943 VF Mercury dime for a small package of zipties. Once the cache was replaced in it's hide spot, I walked back to the pickup. I then headed for "End of the Road #9" which turned into an adventure of it's own.

After arriving at the park and finding a parking spot, I jumped out of the pickup to find the cache. By the reading on my GPS, I had a fairly good idea of where to look for this cache. It was a small hike to the cache and once in the area, I spotted it right away. I retrieved the cache and removed the Thomas' Whistle TB and traded a couple of cool foriegn coins. One was a square coin that was a 2 cent piece from the East Caribbean. The other was a Panama coin from the 1960's. If you see a theme in my trades involving coins, you're correct. I collect coins and I know how much kids enjoy unusual coins, so I try to leave them at caches. As I was walking back to my pickup, I made a horrible discovery. I did not have my keys with me! This is where the bad dream part kicks in. After arriving at my pickup, to my dismay, I do not see the keys in the ignition, or any where else for that matter! After a short time, I figure out that they must be laying in the passenger seat covered up by my cache pages (sounds like a good reason to go paperless to me). I make a couple of attempts to gain entry to my vehicle without success. There were muggles around, so I was limited in what I could do. I ended up calling a good buddy of mine, Mike, and we worked on a couple of options. I was only a couple of blocks from work and we figured out that Gerald was up at work, so I called him. He showed up with various screwdrivers and hanger. This was an exercise in frustration. No luck on getting in to the truck. Gerald took me back up to work and I called Mike back. Mike came to work and picked me up and we again tried to access my truck to no avail. Finally, I ended up calling Pop-a-lock and they were enroute to rescue me. Mike took me up to Quik-Trip and bought me a cappucino and a Snikers because I'm sure I looked pathetic at that point. We returned to the scene of the crime and waited. In the mean time, we chatted and listened to Toby Keith and Kris Kristofferson. Pop-A-Lock finally arrived after dark sometime and let me into my truck. Amazing that it only took them about 15 seconds to gain access to my truck. Needless to say, it was dark and I was cold, so I called it a day and headed home. I'm very blessed to have friends like Mike and Gerald that will take care of me even on a holiday!! True friends like them are hard to come by.

Oh, congrats to stoneposse for being the FTF on my new cache, Polecat Creek Cache !! I was excited to see someone find it on the first day !

Approved

Ah, I'm thrilled to announce that I have received word from Reviewer Jones that Polecat Creek Cache has been approved and published ! Hmmm....wonder how long until it's found for the first time?

Well, I'm off to do a little caching myself this afternoon. I'm hoping to pick up a travel bug or two that I can move to West Texas this next weekend. Wish me luck :)

My First Cache Hide

We had a beautiful Christmas day here with a high in the upper fifties. Quite a turn around from yesterdays cold rain. I decided to take advantage of it and place my first cache. As was pointed out in an earlier post, my plan was thrown a curve ball by two new caches that were placed in the park I intended to place my cache. The rule is that no two caches can be closer than one tenth of a mile apart. The good news is that it is a big park :) My fears were for naught. I was able to place my cache where I had intended to place it and was still .2 miles from Parkwest Rocky Trail and .3 miles from Parkwest Nature Trail. I hiked into my location from the park. The descent from the park was pretty steep and rocky. Geocachers will need to be careful if the rocks are wet. Once I got past the descent it was relatively flat, but heavily wooded. Fortunately, there is something there that resembles a trail. I assume it is used by people that fish in Polecat Creek. After some hiking and bushwacking, I found a nice spot to place my cache. It had a nice view of Polecat Creek and somewhat of a tree-free sky view. That will help with GPS reception. As you can tell from the photo taken about 20 foot from the cache, the view is pretty nice. My hopes are to take people to views that they haven't seen before. After I got the cache situated, I created a waypoint using the averaging function of my GPS. The GPS collected about 500 readings over 5 minutes and averaged them. The coordinates should be pretty accurate. I hiked back out and headed home. I did make one stop to see if I could be the first to find Parkwest Rocky Trail. I hunted for it about 30 minutes but was unable to find the cache. From the cache description, I wasn't real sure exactly what I was looking for anyways. It must have been well hidden, well camoed, or my eyes are just getting old. I logged it as a DNF on Geocaching.com. I'm going to get out and do some cache hunting tomorrow since Monday is our "observed" holiday at work. I'm kinda on the tail end of a chest cold and didn't feel up to much today. My real goal was to get my new cache out and I accomplished that. It has been submitted to GC.com and hopefully it will get approved soon !

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe holiday !

Rain and More Rain

Well, I had hoped to get out and do some geocaching, but the rain put a stop to that. I'm sure that there are a lot of geocachers that are not stopped by rain, but I'm not one of them. I don't mind being cold, but cold and wet is a whole other story! I can tell I'm addicted to geocaching by the way I have been sitting here all day clicking the refresh button on the radar web page :) It does appear that it will soon end, but with it already being 4PM, I doubt that I will get out to cache today. No worries, tomorrow is forecast to be much nicer that it was today. If I'm lucky, I will get my cache placed and find a few caches while I'm out tomorrow. Yes, I'm gonna go geocaching on Christmas Day.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas, or what ever you celebrate this time of the year. I was going to be in West Texas with my family, but due to unforseen circumstances, I will spend the holiday here in Tulsa. I'm not complaining because I am here with my wonderful wife and the two dogs so it will be a great Christmas. I will, however, miss seeing my neices and the rest of my family opening presents tonight.

Go easy on the eggnog tonight !

EDIT: Geez, you would think I had been hitting the eggnog by looking at my spelling !!

I was Wrong...

bummer. As I stated in my post last night, I was scared that someone had placed a cache near where I was going to place mine this weekend. I was releived to see that it wasn't in the same spot. I was wrong. It is exactly where I had chosen to place my first cache !! Well, now I'm bummed out. I think there still may be a spot where I can place a cache and be okay with the .1 of a mile rule. I will have to check and see tomorrow. If not, I have another idea but I'm not sure it will work....dang it !