the spot on the topo map where all the lines are crowded together. But on the high side.

Do you use a GPS, Wolf or do you go by dead reckoning? I love going out with my topo maps to some lost place and then seeing how precisely I can locate my position. I check my work against my GPS. Its great fun. I minored in geography myself.

Is it in here?

Actually no. There are apparently more planning jokes than I realized.

An architect, an electrical engineer, and a planner are having a discussion about God.

The architect says that by looking at the construction of the human body, the strength of the pelvis, the structure of the bones, and the intricate linkage of tendons to musculature proves that God is an architect.

The electrical engineer points out the way that the nervous system transmits electrical impulses throughout the body, proving that God is an electrical engineer.

The planner says no, gentlemen. Look at a woman. Who but a planner would locate waste disposal areas on either side of a recreational area?

guffaw.

Ran another errand, hit another cache, bringing me to a total of 10 caches, and 2 automotive-mounted travel bugs.

I mainly use the GPS, but if I do have a bit of extra time for planning, I will sometimes check the site maps for cache locations ... for example, the two I got yesterday and today I snagged based on the maps, but the ones that are a bit more off the beaten path, I get close and then rely on the GPS. There's a fellow locally who is part of the Delaware Valley Orienteering Association who doesn't use a GPS at all and has a ridiculously huge number of found caches (in the thousands). Groundspeak did a feature on him a couple of months ago.

Leap Day has some sort of mystical association for geocachers, so there were many events across the country to bring solitary, asocial people together to eat some lunch and talk some caching.

I went to one. It was fun. There was even an amusing ice-breaker game to get people who aren't usually given to talking to others to do so.

Afterwards, the friend I went with and I did some caching ... we found 5, mostly I was the finder, there was one that was part of a series she's doing, and they're all placed similarly, so she found that one straight off. Three out of the five I found were teensy-weensy magnetic nanocaches. I was quite proud of myself for those.

This brings my cache total to 20.

Yay, me.

There was a fellow at the event who has 16K+ caches found. I was appropriately amazed.

Double yay me ... it was pissing down rain the whole time, and I didn't whine, even when I had to slog through mushy ground and puddles. I may have to put my sneakers in the dryer.

I am now at home trying to get warm again. I've had one coffee already, not sure if I will stick with that or switch to hot cider.

Sounds like fun... even in the rain.
In the Oregon Willamette valley, it 's the default condition this time of year.

Today I was all ready to go caching. See, there's this cache that I've been referring to as my white whale. I've been after it multiple times (twice before today, including yesterday), and I really wanted to get this one, because there was a trackable item in the cache ... it's a harder cache, there are more attempted not founds than founds listed for it. Anyway, today I had arranged with a friend to meet in the parking lot near the cache site, and we were going to try together because I swear I looked at and turned over every stinking rock in the location, making sure they were really rocks. One of the issues is that the site is in a corner behind a shopping center and a lot of trash gets either dumped there or blows into that corner. It's nasty, to say the least.

So, I hop into the wolfmobile and ... you know that annoying clicky-clicky-clicky noise that non-functioning cars make? Yeah, that one.

Called my caching buddy, and let her know of my dilemma. She picked me up, we went caching, and she did the difficult and nasty climbing bits and ... I found the damn thing. Yay, me.

It was in a piece of debris that I had looked at every other time I was there.

After I got home I arranged for towing the car. I may not find out how it is or how much it will cost me until next week.

That's dedication... and success ! Yea-You


(Like a fish story, then next telling needs wind and rain and snow and...)

Hopefully it's just a dead battery.

wtg wolf on landing your white whale!

too bad about your car though. sorry.

***
At a store the other day, I found a bin of tiny knick knacks called "message capsules". It looked like a little box of metal pills. They were, appropriately enough, capsule shaped. Each half had a knurled rim and when spun apart revealed two small caps like valve stem caps, but one male, one female. The center of the male end was hollow, and allowed enough space for a tightly rolled up slip of paper, about the size of a cookie fortune. They were $2.50 each.

wolf, have you seen these in any of your caches?

Something similar, but those seem to be just right for tying onto the legs of pigeons! Yes, they would work very well for geocaching.

What are called "nano" caches are pretty popular. They are about the size you describe, and are serious buggers to find because they are usually magnetic.

I've also seen a lot of containers around the size that you find at the pharmacy counter that are sized to hold bottles of nitro. Those are considered micros.

Got my car back today, and bless it's little heart, it was just the battery.

I'll be going caching with friends tomorrow early afternoon ... and hopefully there will be time for lunch. We're going to a great area for lunching.

BigV, I once had a special candle that, when burned down, revealed several little trinkets hidden in the wax, plus one of those pill capsules you describe with a little fortune inside.

I thought the capsule was cool, so I kept it. Several months later, my mom was snooping in my room and found it in my jewelry box. "And just what is this?" was her subtle conversation starter... :rolleyes: She got fairly embarassed after I explained and reminded her that she was the one who had given me the candle in the first place.

How do you geocache on a pigeon? Don't they fly around? Or would you have a battery operated GPS tracer in there too?

Pigeons home. You just have to catch them in the coop.

I just found my second geocache.

As with the first, I was just out hiking with a friend and we discovered it by chance.