Short caching trip - McKaig Nature Education Center

My son and I had a short caching day several weeks ago, and while the bulk of my photos were taken at Skunk Hollow, we did manage to hit a few more spots on our day off.  One of the places we visited was the McKaig Nature Education Center in Upper Merion Township.

There are two caches in the park - Just Toying Around and McKaig's Scenic Simion.  I had originally visited this spot way back in February to pick both caches up, and what impressed me at the time was a largish hill that you climb up to reach GZ of McKaig's Scenic Simion.  Jack loves climbing stuff (generally furniture, but hills are good too) and I filed this location away for a future revisit.  As things worked out, we ended up having a reason to visit - Jack's Travel Bug Game was there, and we wanted to get it moving again.

I had placed Jack's Travel Bug Game in a cache near my work way back in February.  After a month and a half of waiting with bated breath, it was finally picked up and taken on a trip to Pittsburgh. It made several cache visits (and someone rolled a 6 and posted a haiku!) and then came back to the general area - specifically, back to the Scenic Simion cache.  Knowing that Jack and I had the whole day to visit caches we decided to stop by here, pick up the bug, and give it to my father in law in NJ, so he could get the game moving again.

The McKaig Nature Education Center was created in 1979 to preserve open land in Upper Merion.  It occupies 89 acres of land, and has several hiking trails and two creeks.

Jack, hiking up the hill.

There is a main entrance on the north side of the park, but both caches are located near the two southern entrances on Brower Road - Just Toying Around is a short walk from the Southwest entrance, and McKaig's Scenic Simion is a hike up a hill from the Southeast entrance.  Seeing as we had already braved a dog attack and vicious thorn wounds earlier in the day, I decided that we would only take the trip to get our travel bug, rather than get both caches.

While I'm only documenting our trip to McKaig's Scenic Simion, be assured that it's worth the trip over to Just Toying Around. It is one of the largest containers I have ever seen while caching, and it's on my short list of places that I can drop of large trackables.   The key difference between the hikes is that Scenic Simion is high up a hill, while Toying Around is in a relatively flat area.

You can see my car way down the hill.

The hill to the cache is pretty steep, but has a clearly marked trail that switches back and forth, so it's not that difficult of a climb.

Whoops - we ended up on the wrong side of this sign after going off trail for a bit.

Going off trail and straight up the hill isn't too hard, but we found out that we had wandered into a closed area after reaching the trail again.

The cache hints reference the waterbars, but coming from the main entrance.  Just follow your GPS and look around a bit.

There is a trail map available on the McKaig website.  The cache is located near where Laurel Trail and Fire Road intersect.  When I found it in February, it was lying exposed near a log that had rotted away some time in the past.  I re-hid it under some bark and debris to make it a little less obvious.  This time, it was even more exposed, so I'm kinda glad we grabbed the travel bug, as anyone wandering a little off trail could have spotted it easily.  I did hide it in some debris again, but since it's been 0 for 2 in the visits that I have made, I don't trust that it will stay hidden all that long.

This was taken right when the leaves were coming in.

The whole cache trip, from walking the hill up to getting back to the car, takes a little more than 15 minutes. Jack enjoyed this trip as well, though we did run into another dog walker, and after the Skunk Hollow Incident he was a little wary.  All in all, it's a decent park with two largish caches, so if you have 45 minutes to an hour to kill it's certainly worth stopping by and picking them both up.

Caches in this post:

• McKaig's Scenic Simion
• Just Toying Around

Update on the trackables.

It's been a while since I reviewed some of my trackables, so here goes:

• Jack's Traveling Purple Dice - My first trackable, and what actually got me into caching.  This bounced around a bit when we first set it out, and then went missing for about 6 weeks.  It started moving around again and was picked up in October.  It hasn't been logged since, though I'm guessing that it'll start moving again once the weather warms up a bit.
• Flip For It Micro Geocoin - I picked this up right around my birthday and sent it out in late November.  It was picked up within days, moved once, and then picked up a few weeks later.  It hasn't been logged since, but like the dice, I'm thinking it'll show up again when the weather gets better.
• Jack's Travel Bug Game - This is the trackable I'm most excited about.  I put this out in Ithan Valley Park about two weeks ago.  Nobody has picked it up yet, though I'm hoping that someone gets it this weekend.  The cache I left it in is very difficult to get to in the warmer months, so this is the prime time to pick it up.
• Compass Rose Geocoin Micro - I just placed this earlier in the week.  The cache I left it in gets a good amount of traffic, so I'm hoping someone picks it up soon.

That's all of them.  I'm hoping that these see some movement by the end of March, as I have a week off with Jack for spring break and he's way more into caching when he can follow what's going on with the trackables.  If these are moving around a bit by then I'm sure he'll be willing to check out some of the locations where they have been logged, and that will get us out of the house a bit.

Jack's Travel Bug Game is live!

I finally had a chance on lunch break today to drop off Jack's Travel Bug Game.  If you happen to be in the vicinity of Ithan Valley Park in Bryn Mawr, PA try to pick up Spectacular Crash II.  You may end up being the first person to play the game!

My new trackable - "Jack's Travel Bug Game"

I picked up a few trackables way back around my birthday, and have been slowly getting them out into the world.  I knew that I wanted to do something different for our newest Travel Bug, and came up with the idea of making some sort of simple game.  My original thought was that you would have to roll an 8 side die, each number of which was assigned a cardinal or intermediate direction, i.e. 1 = North, 2 = North East, 3 = East, etc...

I kept this idea in the back of my mind and started talking it over with Jack, and he really wanted another trackable named after him (he's so humble, isn't he?) like the original Traveling Purple Dice.  He wanted to make the game a bit fancier, so I started jotting down ideas as they hit me.

The final result is shown below.  It's 2 sided, so I just combined both sides into one image. If the image below isn't clear enough to read, you can see a better version here.

Feb. 19, 2013 EDIT - I'm finally sending the bug out, so created a page with the instructions here in case the original copy goes missing or anything.

Click to enlarge.

This will be laminated (with packing tape - cheesy, but effective) and rolled up as a scroll.  I have a large bison tube with an attached key ring that's big enough to hold this scroll and the 8 sided die. I'm still working out how to decorate the tube so that people actually open it, and don't just assume that the tube itself is the Travel Bug.

Bison tube, die, and game scroll.

I think that this strikes a nice balance - the original, easy, no-need-to-think game is still here, and the newer rules make up the "full" game.  I think my favorite part of this is Step 3 of the full game, where you have to sneak an odd word into your next cache log.  I actually made the list out of words that were all visible from my desk at work, so yeah, it's an interesting place to try to be productive.

I think I'm going to try etching The Game or Jack's Game on the bison tube with my Dremel, and then using crayons to really get a bunch of wax in the etched grooves.  Even if the wax eventually wears away, it will still be visible.  I'll post a picture when I figure it out.

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)?

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

Post vacation wrap up - NJ Shore

It's been a busy week!  I went after 30 caches in three states, and found 22 of them. First things first - the Garmin is great!  I have learned a ton about it in the past week, and will be posting some tutorials at some point.

I have the eTrex 20, which is the middle model in the current eTrex line.  The eTrex 10 has a black and white screen, the eTrex 20 has color, and the eTrex 30 has a magnetic compass built in and the ability to interact with the Garmin Chirp beacons.  All three support paperless Geocaching, and can also receive signals from GLONASS (Russian GPS satellite system).  From what I've noticed, GLONASS isn't affecting the GPS accuracy as much as it is improving the GPS time to acquire a signal.  My car's TomTom can take a minute or more to acquire a GPS signal, but my Garmin is usually up and connected by the time it's done starting up, which is about 20 seconds.  Freaking sweet!

Caching at the shore

All told, I went after 14 caches in Cape May Court House, Wildwood, and Cape May.  I logged 3 DNFs and one "Needs Maintenance", and I also found my first three trackables!  One Travel Bug, one Geocoin, and a copy of a Geocoin that was left in a cache with a note to just log it as "discovered".

Wildwood shot I took in 2010. Kite Aerial Photography is another hobby of mine.
That's me holding the kite line in the lower right of the picture. 

An interesting thing about caches in this area was that Cape May County, New Jersey has an official series of caches called CMCST, which is the Cape May County Sites Tour.  Each of these caches is placed in an area that's either a good spot for sightseeing, local tourist interest (the Cape May County Zoo had one), or of historical interest (a WWII bunker on the beach in Cape May).  Very cool.

Wildwood had two of my favorite caches, and one of my DNFs was at a great location.  The Captain Was Here... well, I'm not going to spoil it, but if you do the street view thing on Google Maps with the coordinates from the cache description, you'll see where it was.  Very, very neat.  I grew up in South Jersey and spent a lot of time at the shore growing up, and had driven by this spot quite a few times.  This was the first time I actually got out checked it out.

Wild Thing - Holy crap this was neat, but hard.  The cache itself is nothing fancy, but it's in a major landmark and is constantly surrounded by people taking pictures.  I'm 6'8" tall and don't exactly blend into the background, so it was nerve wracking (but fun, in its own way) to try to be stealthy enough to pick it up.  Luckily (?) the weather was starting to turn, so when the crowd thinned out I made the grab.

The Ships Will Find Their Way! II - This was one of my DNFs, but later logs show that the cache had gone missing and I wasn't just losing my mind trying to find it.  This was located at the Hereford Inlet Lighthouse, which I didn't even know existed. Beautiful gardens, and there is a museum tour that I now will definitely check out when we visit the area again in 2013.

Wikimedia Commons image shown.

Another one notable for it's location was The Stinton Family Lighthouse Cache. This was one of two caches placed near the Cape May Lighthouse.  This is also where I picked up the Geocoin.

Wikimedia Commons image shown.

All in all I saw a ton of different types of caches, and most of them were in very cool locations.  The cache locations all seem to fall into a few categories:

• Beautiful location
• Interesting / historical location
• Good hiding spot, but not much else going for it
• Totally random spot, placed on a whim, or possibly while intoxicated

Luckily, most of them fell within the first two categories, but I saw a few of the other ones as well.  Now that I've been doing this for a few weeks I'm getting a better idea about what I want to do when I create my own caches.  I'd like to strike a balance between location and interesting cache container.

I spent the rest of the week picking up caches back home in PA, and then swung down to Delaware to get my first two in that state, and the badge to go along with it.  I picked up quite a few in Rose Tree Park, which is pretty local, and another spot where I've done a little Kite Aerial Photography.

Kite photo I took in Rose Tree Park in 2011. That's me again.

This was honestly the first place where I've been that took me "into the woods" so to speak.  All of my caches to date were in very public areas, but most of the ones here were down trails in the woods.  I have to say, I found the experience terrific and can't wait to find more local caches that are off the beaten path.

Saw this hollow tree.  I could stand up in it comfortably (except for the spiders).

While I have been getting more interested in caching (obsessed?), I think I have reached the limit with Emily and Jack.  Emily doesn't mind caches if they are part of what we're doing, but gets frustrated if I want to "pick up a cache on the way", which I have to admit I've been doing quite often this week.  Jack likes caching, but gets totally pissed off if he isn't the one who finds it. It's no good pretending to play dumb and act like I don't know where it is - I have spent his whole life messing with his head, so he's on to me, ha ha. 

In truth, Emily is right - I have to be able to strike a balance between having fun on my own, trying to have fun as a family, and driving the two of them nuts.  Seeing as vacation is over and we're all back to the daily grind, I don't think this will be much of an issue, but I will keep it in the back of my mind as I cache.

One final note - I picked up a few souvenir badges for my profile this week - Delaware State and Second International Geocaching Day. 

Trackables mentioned in this post:

• POELOELOEP-TRACK03
• Casper the Cache Ghost
• Geo-Achievement Finds 500 Geocoin

Caches picked up on vacation:

• CMCST - Park/Zoo
• Snark in the Park (DNF)
• Who's got a boo-boo?
• CMCST - NW Meadow View
• Wild ramp
• Wild Thing
• CMCST - War and Memories (Needs Maintenance)
• Wild Flower
• CMCST - SL (DNF)
• Wild About Diamonds
• Wild West
• The Ships Will Find Their Way! II (DNF)
• The Captain Was Here
• The Stinton Family Lighthouse Cache
• where the platypus lie
• Bat in the Woods
• Mohawk Cache
• AMERICA ONE
• The King of Boxes (DNF)
• dnf 777 (DNF)
• Ithan Park Cache
• By-Way to the HighWay
• Emlen Tunnell Park
• Lone Ranger #7 Is it fair or foul?
• Austin Holly Cache
• Taking care of business
• Coming Soon
• You can do it; we can help....
• More Railroad History (DNF)
• BAAAH HUMBUG!!! (DNF)

Update on the Travel Bug

Almost forgot - Jack's Travel Bug was picked up within three days of us placing it in the cache, and the note said that it was going on its way to Seattle, which would have been perfect for getting to Japan.  Of course, that didn't actually happen, and it ended up back in its original location a few weeks later.  From what I have read, this kind of stuff is common, and I should expect the Travel Bug to go missing for long stretches.

Someone picked it up today, though, so we'll see where it ends up.  Even if it doesn't end up in Japan, I'm still happy to see it moving around a bit.

One other note - I'm on Reddit pretty much daily, and have now spent some time on the Geocaching subreddit. I've learned a lot, and the folks there seem to be pretty helpful.  I'm keeping the link on the sidebar of the blog, and I highly recommend checking it out if you get a chance.

The Travel Bug that started it all

Yesterday, my father gave Jack a Travel Bug for his 7th birthday.  We have named it "Jack's Traveling Purple Dice" and have given it the goal of getting to Japan and back within a year.

Seeing as this is a single die and we named it "dice", I'm having all sorts of issues with it... but hey, "Traveling Purple Dice" rolls better off the tongue than "Traveling Purple Die", so I guess I'll live.

Jack has been obsessed with Godzilla, so Japan seems like a natural choice for the destination.  Seeing as we live relatively close to the Philadelphia Airport, and also seeing as there is a great cache nearby, it was easy getting this out into the wild.  We can't wait to see where it ends up!