Caching with non-cachers

Today we visited some friends in NJ, and since I'm a nerd and always have my Geocaching kit with me, I convinced my non-cacher friend and his son (a little older than Jack - they've been friends since they were babies) to go caching with Jack and I for a bit.

Side note - for no particular reason, I refuse to use the term muggle when referring to non-cachers.  I liked the Harry Potter books, and I totally get why the term muggle is totally appropriate for someone not in the know, but for some reason I just can't bring myself to use it in this context.  I mean, I also can't let different foods touch when they're on the same plate, so maybe this is the same thing - I can't let my different nerdy topics intersect like that without getting uncomfortable.

But anyway....

We swung by a shopping center near where they live and picked up a little bison tube hide, and then went to a nearby park where we found a great little two stage multi - BEAR'S PICNIC POND.  It was two adults and two kids, and this was a perfect little caching trip.  I let the kids use the GPS to get us to the first stage, where we ended up spending over 10 minutes looking around.  Just about when we were giving up, I noticed something out of place, and lo and behold, there was the clue that led us down the path to stage 2.

Google Street View picture of the parking area for BEAR'S PICNIC POND.

Exactly the same situation at stage 2 - we spent a little while looking, and right about when we were turning around to leave, I took one last look and found the cache.  This was a decent sized container, so I traded two trinkets and actually just gave the kids one each out of the cache.  They were thrilled, and we ended up having a fun little day out.

If you're in the area and have about 30 minutes to kill, this is a quick little multi in a cute little park.  It was totally worth checking out, and both stages were challenging without being too frustrating.

Caches in this post:

• Requiem for Brad and Janet
• BEAR'S PICNIC POND

100 Caches in just over 2 months!

I wasn't sure if I was gonna hit this yesterday, but today ended up being the day I reached 100 caches!  Technically it would have been 99 caches since I started in July (since I had that one find in 2011), but I picked up 2 more today for good measure, putting me at 102 total and 101 since July 22nd of this year.

I'm pretty proud of my achievement, but am still trying to ensure that this remains a hobby and not an obsession.  It's borderline obsession now, but since I'm doing 99% of my caching on lunch breaks at work, it's not affecting my social or family life all that much.

As far as the caches went, I was actually planning to pick up just one cache on lunch - reduce reuse recycle, but as I was driving there I saw a multi listed as being right in the middle of the road I happened to be on.  I didn't have time to stop, but when I got there I saw something pretty unusual and thought that it might be the cache... and indeed, it was.  MLF4: Ford Explorer is listed as a multi because it's no longer possible to create new virtual caches.  This was a very unusual sight, so I took a quick pic with my "cell phone" for verification and made log #100.

The cache I was going for originally was in a nice little park, and I met someone there walking a dog who knew what I was doing and had some interest in caching.  I have seen people print out that official brochure off of the web site, and I think I may start carrying a few with me.  That way, if someone wants more info I have it, and if I ever get questioned for looking suspicious, I can at least document that what I'm doing is not crazy.

After that cache I swung by another old virtual, so technically today was three types of caches in one day... though the multi really wasn't a multi.  Oh well.

Update on the Garmin - I finally picked up a Micro SD card and loaded up the Open Street Maps for Garmin. Holy crap, this has been awesome!!!  Now, when I select a Geocache, I have the option to either route off-road, where it just points me in the direction, or create a routable map, which has turn directions and everything. I mean, it doesn't talk, like my TomTom, but it beeps loudly and is very readable and accurate.  It works fine as a driving GPS now, and I still keep the topo maps in there for when I'm on a hiking trail.  I couldn't be happier with this GPS, and honestly I'm still working out details on how to do a few things. The documentation is a bit spotty, so I'll post some guides here as I develop them.

Caches in this post:

• reduce reuse recycle
• MLF4: Ford Explorer
• MLF: Camelot

Who IS buried in Wayne's Tomb?

One of the great thing about living in this area is the history.  Philadelphia and the surrounding area played an important role both during and after the Revolutionary War, and many famous historical folks from that era have local ties.

On lunch break today I found my first Virtual cache - Who's Buried in Wayne's Tomb(s)?  A 10 minute drive from work got me to the St. David's Episcopal Church in Radnor, where Revolutionary War General "Mad Anthony" Wayne is buried... sort of.

The coordinates got me to the church, and then I spent a few minutes wandering around until I found the grave.  Seeing as you need to take a picture of yourself at the grave in order to get credit for the find, and the cache logs are full of these pictures, I knew what I was looking for.

The grave, and my hand holding my Garmin.

I love caches with a little bit of history to them, so I was as giddy as a schoolgirl while looking for this one.

If you're in the area, I highly recommend checking this one out.  It's a quick find at a beautiful location with a nice bit of history thrown in for good measure.

Update on the Travel Bug

I have to say that watching Jack's Traveling Purple Dice has been both fascinating and stressful.  The second person who had it visited a bunch of caches in NJ and then placed it in a cache in an area that I'm very familiar with.  I was half tempted to swing by and pick it up, but my father decided he wanted to get it and move it to a bug hotel that he has used in the past.

Sure enough, when he went there, the bug was missing.  I figured that this might happen, but Jack was pretty upset when I broke the news to him.  Not crying upset or anything that dramatic, just disappointed.

Imagine my surprise yesterday when I get a text message from my watch list saying that someone logged the TB!  Apparently someone had picked it up over a month ago and never logged it, so now they are planning on moving it around again.  Jack was thrilled, but I'm trying to play it down a bit as I am beginning to understand that many trackables don't survive long in the wild.

I have managed to find some Travel Bugs, Geocoins, and the like while out caching, and it's always fun to bring them along for visits until I find a home.  I've noticed that many people don't really follow the goals... but unless you print the goal on a tag and attach it, you may never really know what the goal is.  I'm planning on getting some trackables in the next few weeks, so I'll see if I can develop a way to come up with a goal and securely attach it.

Cache in this post:

• Who's Buried in Wayne's Tomb(s)?

Working on my first caches!

I'm officially working on my first caches!  My plan is to spend the next few weeks putting them together, and then having them ready to submit by mid October.  My birthday is on October 17th and I'm taking a few days off that week, with nothing planned but Geocaching.  I figure it'll be as good a time as any to get my caches out into the wild.

I've been on the Geocaching subreddit a lot these days, and a common discussion has been about the frustration people feel when new cachers flood an area with simple, uninspired caches.  I have to admit that my original ideas for caches when I first started out in July are significantly different than what I'm working on now.  I'm up to over 80 caches found so far, and each one has given me ideas to use on my own.

Without any spoilers, I can let you in on a few things.  I'm working on three caches, two of which are based on Video Game History.  I built an arcade machine a few years back that played every arcade, Nintendo, Atari, Commodore 64, Intellivision, Vectrex, Sega, Neo-Geo, etc... game ever made.  I'm using the theme of a particular game for each cache, and the container and/or location will reflect that theme. I have been ruminating on this for a while, and have come up with decent ideas for:

• Asteroids
• Battlezone
• Breakout
• BurgerTime
• Centipede
• Dig Dug
• Dragon's Lair
• Donkey Kong
• Frogger
• Galaxian / Galaga
• Joust
• Minecraft
• Moon Patrol
• Pac Man / Ms. Pac Man
• Paperboy
• Plants vs. Zombies
• Pole Position
• Q*Bert
• River Raid
• Space Invaders
• Spy Hunter
• Tapper
• Zaxxon
• Zork

I can probably come up with even more than that, but this gives me plenty to start with.  The neat thing about these is that none of them are a nano, magnetic keyholder, bison tube, or lock and lock container.  At least not standard models of them.  I have a heavily modified bison tube in the works that will look nothing like a bison tube when it's done.

The first two that I'll have ready are Breakout and Frogger.  I'm also actively working on Pac-Man, Joust, and Plants vs. Zombies, but I'm not planning on them going out for a few months at least.

The best part of this is that I live right down the street from a park that's begging for caches.  There is one cache there now (View of the Lake, which was the first one I ever found), and room for at least two more.  I've been scouting spots and have a good idea of where I'll place them, and once I'm sure I'll spend a few days getting good averaged coordinates from my Garmin.

I also have a third cache in the works that's unrelated to the Video Game theme - it's an idea that my wife came up with, and I'm running with it.  We'll see how that one turns out.

All in all, it's an exciting time for me these days.  I have a little work area set up to create the caches, and it's a bit of a mess, with paint and other stuff cluttering things up a bit.

Before I forget  - here's a neat tip.  I'm making a custom container for one of the caches, and needed a way to seal up the container.  I ended up going online and buying some piggy bank stoppers.  They are soft and flexible enough to make a really good seal against the elements, and were really cheap.

Idea for Travel Bug Hotels

I found my first bug hotel of sorts today - Vikings TB Stash.  This was cache in a large container (ammo can) that is large enough to hold a lot of trackables, and close enough to a busy area to get a lot of traffic.

Most of the caches I've found have been Micro or Nano sized, so I'll keep this one in mind when I need to trade trackables. It's less than a minute off of the Blue Route, so I drive by it almost daily and can easily spend the 5 minutes stopping by, trading trackables, and moving on.

This whole bug hotel thing got me thinking a bit.  I've seen some videos online of some really impressive bug hotels, with multiple bins and room for dozens of trackables.  What if there was a way to hide that in plain sight, and do something neat for the community at the same time?

My idea is to combine a bug hotel with a Little Free Library.  I am a bit of a book nerd, with approximately 1000 books in my numerous bookshelves.  I also love visiting our local libraries, both for the books, and for the information on local history.

Wikimedia Commons image of a Little Free Library in Massachusetts.

Little Free Libraries have been getting a lot of press in the past few months.  Basically, people offer free books to borrow in little containers that are often made to look like little buildings.  There are plans available on the website, and once you create your library you register it to get a steward's kit, and your library is added to the national database.

It would be pretty easy to develop a Little Free Library box that had a second, locked compartment for travel bugs.  It could even be set up as a puzzle or multi cache, with waypoint of the cache giving you either a clue toward a combination lock, or access to a key or something.

This is nothing more than a pipe dream for me at this point - I am only now starting to work on the first caches of my own, and this would take more time and cash than I'm willing to put into it at the moment... but I can't get the idea out of my head, and it's definitely in my "things to do - someday" file.

A related bit of info - Jack's Traveling Purple Dice has disappeared.  I'm not sure if it's gone for good, or simply hasn't been logged, but after checking the cache it was supposedly left in, my father confirmed that it's gone.  Fun stuff.

Cache in this post:

• Vikings TB Stash