Scout Caches and Reviewing

I went with my family camping this last weekend to Maple Dell Scout camp.  I was there for July 4-7, enjoying the mountains and relaxing for a few days.  It was a good time except for one small detail, two small details actually.

I was trying to review caches.  Quite often it is a bit of work.  Checking for all the possible issues and looking for problems, and most of the time publishing them.  This was a holiday weekend, and cachers were out around the state placing caches wherever they could find them.  So I ended up looking at all the caches that were available on my little cell phone screen.  It was harder than I expected.  I have done 2-3.. or even a dozen.  But trying to go through 15-20 each day was a bit tricky.  I cannot really leave a note for people if there was a problem, so I just tried to list the ones that I could.  Sorry for those that waited until Wednesday for an answer.

I am shocked at the amount of caches that people are asking to be listed.  So many new players are appearing.  There are a lot of new people out to place caches, and so many are being listed.  If you are from the Vernal Area you are seeing a huge group of new listings appear.  Great series and trails are being worked on, and many creative and interesting caches are being listed. 

I headed up to do the scout caches around the camp.  I still have a number more to go.  You can see above that I have done a number but I still have a few others.  I normally avoid puzzle caches. (You can guess why).  These are relitivly easy puzzles so I have taken the time to get them done. 

Hopefully I will get up soon and do some more of them.  This has been my most enjoyable series so far.  I hiked about 3 miles this vacation to get a group of them. (about 10 I think).

From Fires to Squaw Peak Road

We headed out today for an afternoon drive with the two girls.  I had decided that I wanted to go somewhere else, rather than a normal drive.  As I was driving up Hobble Creek Canyon we passed a small fire burning on a hill.  I was tempted to stop, but it a few guys were staring at it, so I assumed they were burning the weeds off the hillside.

A little further up the canyon I came to the catch basin.  There was a fire burning on the hill, and people were rushing up to put it out.  I jumped out of my truck and grabbed a shovel that I had in the back and began to put the fire out with the group.  It took about 15 minutes and the fire department started to show up.  At that point the fire was contained.  The fire under the trees was the hardest to put out.  The oak tree bark had burned, and they were full of hot coals.  If you backed into them, or brushed them you were scorched.  I limb with a red hot spot on it stabbed me in the back of the head, the bright side was that the coal cauterized the wound.

We had to wait until the police and the fire department cleared things up and we were able to start heading up the canyon. I wanted to take squaw peak road.  I had seen it on maps for many months and never taken the time.

We were there about 30-40 minutes in all.  Everything is so dry, it could all go up pretty easily. 

The road was pretty good until we hit our first cache. GC1X3TK Our First Cache

I dug around a bit for that one without much luck. A regular one near a tree or a post.  I was sure that I should find it quickly.  Well I did finally discover it, but it was not a regular but a micro. That made me look far harder than I normally would.

We continued up the canyon. and was having a pretty good ride except for one thing.  This road was rougher than crap.  It was not impassable, just rough.  The road gravel was entirely gone and the stones that made up the mountain were poking through.  That threw us all over.

GC1H24P The Hollow was our next stop. It is always nice to find a nice ammo can.  It was kind of steep to get to.  I was not having any luck at all getting my daughter down to it.  She had worn flip flops (note as a parent to check kids before leaving house).  So stumbling down a steep and rocky hillside for a can hiding in bushes was not one of my best ideas. Thanks Baldin' Eagle for getting it our for me.

One other one was found while on the trip.  GC1E6VJ  Utah Valley View.  It was near the road by Caverspencer.  As we headed up up up.

The road around the mountain finally came to a spot where I thought we could take a break.  We had bounced a few thousand times and we needed a break. 

There I hiked up into the trees with my daughter and placed a cache.  I would have gone farther but one of them got caught by a tree limb and wanted to head down.   So there I placed GC2B6NH Kolob Basin Overlook It was a nice spot and took a while for us to climb up to.  It is at the high point of our trip, at 8700 feet.  I hope to go up and follow this trail to the peak.  Maybe in a month or so I can trick Jac0b or Balding into coming up with me.

After a great little break, a snack and our walk, we headed on down the other side.  Not nearly as steep and a lot longer it was a nice ride.  The girls where upset that we did not find a place with trees.  So I waited until I found a place. And pulled off.

I walked out to a point there.  I was looking for the name of this little ridge and did not have any luck finding it.  It is  one a topo map somewhere, but I did not feel like digging for it.  So way up in the hills is now GC2B6NV What a Knob.  It is a nice overlook of a canyon.  I think it is little rock canyon.  But without the map I will never know.

It was a really sharp edge ridge.  One side protect the aspens on the East side.  The other side is steep. and full of a lot of loose rocks.  I gathered some and made a small pile of stones to put it under.  The places up here need the extra weight to hold the containers down.  I can picture the snow pushing it down the mountain unless I have the stones in place. 

It was a good ride.  Rough and it took more effort than I planned, but it was enjoyable.  the road got better and better as I headed north. Until soon there were cars driving past me the other way.

Well.  Thats it for today.  Enjoy the caching.

Welcome to the Jungle, Bling, and stuff

Welcome to the Jungle

Last night started quietly enough. I left work and headed home.  Everything was quiet, my wife and kids were at seven peaks.  So I sent a sad and lonely message to Jac0b begging him to do something.  I was pretty bored, and did not want to be alone on a nice evening. 

So he wandered over and off we went geocaching.  It was about that point that I realized that my gps was filled with caches from my trip to southern Utah.  So I was at his mercy.  We decided to head off and look for two.

The first was one that I had not found before and apparently needed the help of another village idiot to not be able to find it.  Success!! well if you mean failure.  GC1QB3K Cricket Lake We had no luck at all.  Well we did notice that people almost drained this tiny swamp at one time.  Wow it was sure nice someone put an info sign in the middle of an industrial park at some stupid pond.

Well we headed for the next one.  GC1efeg Computer Geek.  That was apparently was far more difficult then either of us had hoped. But right next to it was a trail heading off into the reeds.  Of course neither one of us could pass this opportunity down.  So off we went down the trail.  We were kicking ourselves that we had not brought a cache container.  What a great place.  Reeds were head high, under and over logs, fish and muskrats were running off.  It was a great place and spooky as well.

Well it just so happened that I had a cache container in my pocket.  Thanks to LV2WJ I had a dna tube in my pocket.  Not what we wanted, but evil anyway. After a long drawn out hike we found a home for the little evil thing.  Today it became GC2B07J Rumble in the Jungle.  We discussed the name for some time.  And there was a desire by one of our party to place a second evil cache here, but perhaps I will come back and place a larger one.

Bling

Woo hoo today my coin came

I thought it looked sweet.  It is possibly the largest coin that I have seen.  2" round or a tiny bit bigger.

Stuff

Today was the new code realease from Geocaching.com.  If you did not notice the little "feedback" button on the right of your screen you should.  It takes you too a new page called "get satisfaction".  It is a specialized forum for sharing ideas, and for reporting and responding to bugs.

For example two of the largest ideas (after about 5 hours) are

Bring Back Virtual Caches with 474 votes in favor, and listed as "under consideration".

Challenge Icon with 272 in favor, also "under consideration" and has the following lackey comment "We are exploring the idea of more official Geocaching Challenges now. There are many different types of challenges so this can be... erm... challenging. I would love to hear your thoughts on what challenges everyone enjoys the most and how they can be better integrated with the site."

There are a number of other tweaks. GC codes pull down to links if you wish to copy them.  Feel free to poke around. Hopefully it is friendlier than ever to play on the site.

This weeks Podcacher, friends.

I really liked this weeks Podcacher Show 275.0: A Puzzling Day. It was one of the better podcasts that I have heard in the last few weeks.  I think it appealed to my evil streak.  Anytime you can come up with new puzzles it is a good thing.  Podcacher is one of my insperations.  I have a few that I took ideas from them.

In all it was a great show.  The pet GPS tracker would be good.  I really love the reverse geocache you can check it out here.   It is an idea where you need to get a box to a particular spot.  Then it will open. You need to take the cache container to the coordinates, then it will unlock.  I looked at the design at one point.  I should delve into it a little more.  i have a few hardwood boxes that I made some time ago that I would like to try it on.

I am still working through some of the caches in my list.  I am down to about 140 caches to go through.. i have a lot on hold that I am working on as well.  If I have not looked at your cache, or if you are wondering what is going on.  I have forgotten them before.  I have had as many as 300+ caches in my queue and on hold when I got back from scout camp.  So feel free to pipe up if you are wondering what is going on with yours.  That is what email is for. 

Friends

I wanted to toss in a bit about my friends.  I was reading the latitude 47.  The blog of groundspeak.  they just had an article A Journey of 1001 Days of Geocaching.  It made me think of some of the great friends and local cachers there are.  I will try and write a bit about them when I get the chance.  This guy has done 1000+ days of caching.  Yet Dr Jay passed 1200 in the past few weeks, and he has 700+ ftf's.  Jac0b passed 1800 caches.  I remember early on wondering who these two were. I am happy to have met them and count them among my friends.  

We have so many fantastic people here in Utah.  I have a hard time listing and naming them all.  Many I have met, and many more I have yet to meet. So until we do meet.  Good luck and good caching.