March 26, 2004

• That is a cool idea! If I had one, I'd do it.
• I just found this Geocaching article from Wired. Best part is, it talks about a cache that promised a drink from the owner's favourite bar if you email the password... That's the kind of geocaching I need to get involved in. Trinkets, logs etc just aren't as cool.
• Since you brought this up .... I talked the BlueHorse's Other Half into buying a GPS. Wasn't hard, he likes gizmos. I ride Mounted Orienteering, and I figgered it would be a good way to get out together and do map and compass stuff. Anyway, last weekend we set out to find Our First Cache. We found a yoghurt cup from the given coordinates which contained a second set of coordinates that appeared to lead onto private property. There was a fella feeding a bunch of mules, and we decided to ask him if he knew anything about it--if not, I could ask him about his mules--I'm a FOOL for a good-lookin' riding mule. Anyway, we never found the cache, but the guy turned out to be a close friend of my Other Half that he hadn't seen for thirty years. He'd actually lived with the family and nearly married the oldest sister. Hugs ensued. I'm going to go mule riding next weekend. Strange, what you can find with a GPS.
• Cool story, BlueHorse.
• Well, I had heard of this, but never really thought about GPS. I remember being with someone in '97 in Germany, and they pulled out this monster device and told me it was called a "Garmin". All it could do was point and give your location. None of the maps, guides or anything. Being as we used it to get from the parking lot to a castle you could see from said parking lot I saw little purpose in this, how you say, GPS. Squeak, you have opened my eyes! This truly sounds awesome. I've been looking at this stuff for a while, and I want in. I'm amazed how many geocaches seem to be everywhere. And the community of people doing it in different regions sounds cool. In the belief that a good commentary requires good supplemental material I found this site, Geosnapper, that has the purpose to upload photos of particular GPS coordinates, and to allow others to find this, this, and this. They even have the park where I play flying disc! Cool post. Great story also, Bluehorse.
• The wife and I have found around 50 of them in several different states. They have ranged from 5 minute searches to 3 day journeys. For the $100 for a GPS you get something that you can spend all kinds of time having fun with. Our favorite was on a road trip from Missouri where we hit a cache in northwestern Kansas. It was stereotypical Kansas (very flat) until we got within an eighth mile of the cache. Then the prairie opened up abruptly into something like the Badlands in South Dakota. On top of that we got to watch a thunderstorm roll into the area. It was so beautiful and we never would have found it without geocaching. That's really the main prize to geocaching: finding beautiful places you never knew existed (even in your hometown).
• Oh yeah, I meant to post the site whose maps I use for geocaching. From the world map click on you home country for a map of caches. As you can see they are everywhere. In the US there are even maps of states, and then regions in states.
• I'm sorely tempted to buy a GPS just to do this. It just sounds so awesome. I want to read more stories!