UTAG Event and Cache Day

Prologue

I received an phone call earlier in the week from Peanuts Parents.  He was wondering if I would go out to the event with him this last weekend with him.

Friday night. - The Drive

Well after a quick review of things with my wife, I got the green light.  So Friday night we headed south to Kanosh.  He has a little cabin there. 

The drive was a long one, about two hours.  Ok well it was not really long, but it was long enough for me.  I am not big on many hours in the car.  The plus is that I was able to grab caches on the way south. Normally that is a no no.  Kids are not fond of stopping for a lot of caches.  We took the time to find a mystery cache in Nephi, then stopping in Fillmore to grab another cache.

When we got to Kanosh, Utah just as it was just getting dark.  He showed me around the area, inside and out.  There is a great view of Utah's West desert with various cinder cones and old extinct volcanoes.

PeanutsParents had a ton of caches. And I do mean a ton.  So we spent a good part of the night talking and putting together many of the containers for his cache run.

Sunrise over Utah's west desert. Saturday Morning

The next morning is when the adventure began.  We left early in the morning. About 7:00 AM if my mind is correct. Things are fuzzy for me early in the morning.  We packed things up, and got everything ready.  Neither of us wanted to sleep too long.

There are no stores in Kanosh.  So food is what be had brought with us.  Well, that was some Jolly Ranchers and a few V8's.  what more could you ask for.

Our drive began and we stopped for one or two caches that Peanuts had never grabbed before even though he was nearby.  He had left them for the perfect moment. Now.

Then our drive included him placing a number of caches.  So as we headed into town and he took me to a few caches, we started to see many of the nice caches that I had never been to. 

Then off into the desert.

The desert west of Kanosh is pretty sparse.  This year as you walk around there are a number of desert flowers blooming, and a little green.  It has been pretty wet (for a desert) this year.

We headed to a string of caches that had been placed earlier this year down a little dirt road. Well that is where things got strange.  The road was no more than a few car tracks into the desert.  We needed to go three miles.  So off we went in our truck.  (Bad Idea #1) Those car tracks dwindled until we were on a ATV trail.  That was getting a little nerve wracking.  Then it turned into a cow trail only a few hundred yards from where we were going.  Then little by little a few tracks joined ours. (We did get the caches)

I am not sure that was the wisest choice, but it was not our last dumb one.

The race to the event.The roadless road.

We headed off to the event so we would not be late.  The event was about 30-40 miles to the north. Well we were heading west.  In the desert.  At one point we had a choice.  Head south, 8 miles to the road, or take a dirt road to the north. 

Well I voted for north.  It seemed logical, we were going that way.

Bad idea #2 - Eventually the road got nasty.  very nasty.  In fact it was not there.  You could see remains. It had been a road where they placed a power-line up out in the desert.  in the 70's.  but not much of one now.

I admitted that I had made a bad decision. Peanuts decided perhaps we would drive on. (Bad Idea #3).  So off we went.  I snapped a pic out the window.  You can see where the road was, but not much of a road, and few have traveled it in years.

Happily we reached the rail line and there was an option to go North or South (there was a road there).  Well once again, why go south to reach or destination in the North. (Bad Idea #4).  It was 7 miles.  but the roads were even worse.  I wish I had taken a photo or video.  Eventually the road turned into a two-track trail, then a single track. We could see where the road had been. It would have been in the 50's.  We traveled wash outs and horrible ledges. And eventually it faded to a cow trail.  Eventually as we came within a mile the road started to appear again. People had traveled it from the other end anyway.

We got to the event an hour late.  Oh yea... did I forget to mention we had a flat?  When we finally hit the highway we found out that we had a flat.  The tire was so hot I could hardly touch it. Same with the lug nuts.  Ahhh life int he desert.   Welll not many were at the event, but it was nice anyway.

Hunting for the benchmark.Drive home

The drive home was an afternoon with benchmarks.  Peanuts was putting caches near them.  We actually found three that were placed by other cachers doing the same thing.  So we were pre publishing ftfs on them.   Ahhh the joy of people with the same ideas.

We had fun hunting for them on the way.  Especially the ones buried, that we actually had to find. 

Benchmarks can be way off anyway.  A hundred feet or more. If you can find the sign marking them you may be in luck.  But even then they are buried in the sand in the desert.  So we had to work to drag them out.

That was the afternoon drive home.  We found another 10 benchmarks, making for about 20 benchmarks on the day, with about 50 caches. Plus Peanuts placed another 25-30.  So it was a long fun day.  We were tired when we made it back home.

Update on 2011-09-27 05:15 by firennice

Say Hello to Geocaching Challenges

Well we can say welcome to the new Geocaching Challenges.  After months of waiting and seeing what is in store we can now see the advent of the new system for handling Virtual type challenges.

What are they?

People will get them confused with challege caches.  Where there is a cache waiting at the end of the trail.  Try and meet a certain challenge and then sign the log.  However geocaching challenges are different in a few ways.  You are challanging someone to Perform an action at a particular location, or to take a photo at a particular location.  There will be a third type that groundspeak forms known as a worldwide challenge.  Perform some action anyway in the world.  (think locationless caches).

Differences you can see

The first thing that you will notice is on your profile page that your finds, hides and challeges are all broken out under your name.  And if you hover your mouse over challenges you see the challenges that you have accepted, completed and created.

It is a good idea so people can break down those things seperatly.  Some cachers do not want their finds "polluted" by the find count from the challenges. So this lets them see those numbers without them being combined

The next thing that pops is on your personal page that everyone can see.  This time you will see three numbers again, Those that you have found, trackables, and challenges completed.  Similar to the other without the caches placed, now you see trackable info.

I created a few challeges, but the bugs and the up and down of the website keeps me from writing more.

I will follow up soon with more info.

Update on 2011-08-18 21:02 by firennice

Introducing Geocaching Challenges - Sort Of

Well someone threw it out on the forums, so I thought I would throw a little bone out here.  This new geocaching.com update added some of the backbone for the challenges/virtual system, and some forum discussion is going on about it.

http://www.geocaching.com/my/challenges.aspx

I know they have spoken about it at a couple of events, but I really do not know what has been discussed.  Without knowing what can and cannot be discussed I will stop my personal discussions here.

Here is a clip from Jeremy Irish:

In the UserVoice updates I never said that virtuals were coming back in their previous form, but instead something would be available that should capture the interest in virtuals without the baggage (such as the subjective review process).

To me, this is the most exciting project that we've worked on in years, but it will take some time to iterate through the idea and I know we'll get some things wrong, but the framework is solid. We'll be investing a substantial amount of effort with this project moving forward.

Some points:

• It will be on Geocaching.com, not a new web site. It will be a separate section in the beta, but I expect it to be integrated into a joined search at some point.
• Currently they will not go towards your find count, but it might at some point. It won't at the beginning though.
• It will be a visible statistic, so you will see them on the profile, on the logs, etc.
• We'll be hopefully launching with mobile applications to compliment the activity. I expect that the majority of participants will be using smartphones, but we will have components (Pocket Queries, GPX file downloads, etc) for traditional GPS devices.

So that is what I have to share.  Some who went to Mega Events might want to share info that you have heard.  

My GUESS as to the release.  End of the month, I would also think at the same time all the phone apps will be upgraded to them as well.

Update on 2011-08-06 17:02 by firennice

Highlight - Germany

Population 81 Million people, 138,000 square miles, Nearing 200,000 geocaches

Comparison to California

Population 37 Million people, 160,000 square miles, Nearing 100,000 geocaches.

It is amazing to me to see a country where caching has taken off like Germany.  So much so that groundspeak is doing a series of videos highlighting caching there.

The thought I had was a country the size of Montana or New Mexico.  With 81 million people in it.  (That is a lot of people) and not a lot of country and mountains has nearly 200,000 geocaches.  Making it the biggest group of cachers outside the United States. 

There is a large group of reviewers for Germany.  There are about 35 reviewers in Germany, and they review a vast number of different kinds of caches.  On a day to day basis 15-20 come across my queue in Utah.  Sometimes far more, and in the winter maybe 5-15.  I think about 15% are puzzle caches, and 2-3% multi caches, it is rare that I see anything else.

However Germany is full of creative puzzles and multi caches.  The sheer number make people take the time and look at what they are doing. Make something that people can talk about and stand in awe of.

I notice the difference when I look at the map.  In Utah and many of the other states in the US you see a sea of green tiles with some blue tossed in.  here you see the yellow of the multicaches as well.

That creates a huge challenge for the cache placer and the reviewers.  there are far many more caches where you may not know where the physical stages or the finals are.  You have to be much more careful and expect to be told that there is a problem.

In any case I recommend that a cache page be created with the approximate coords then email the reviewer asking if there are issues.  Nothing is more depressing than someone traveling 50 miles up into an area and finding out that there is a cache located nearby.

Well.  That is it for today.  See you soon on the trail.

Update on 2011-08-05 16:31 by firennice

International Geocaching Day

August 20th 2011

The magic day.  On that day will be the International Geocaching Day.  In the future the plan is that we hold it every 3rd Saturday of August.

Groundspeak has said they are making a special souvenir for everyone that caches or attends an event that day.

Contrary to some rumors there is no special Icon for events held that day.  There will be one event in Seattle that appears to have a special icon, but it will not be available for other events.   It is a one shot deal, go there and get it or miss it.

Remember to take the time to go find a cache that day, and celebrate.

Update on 2011-07-29 22:57 by firennice