Moving to Knoxville Travel Bug Race Kicked-Off!

We're moving to Knoxville in a few weeks. We're packing up stuff, getting rid of things, trying to figure out how we're going to travel all the way across the country. And it occurred to me that this would be a perfect time to set-free a brace of bugs and see if I can capture them in Knoxville in the next few years. I give them only a 15% chance of success, so releasing 6 bugs ought to be enough to get at least one.

The 6 travel bugs being released are a Brass NM tag, a Dream-catcher, an Angry-Bird, a Magellan SporTrak, A Bonhomme and a piece of driftwood. Some of them have back-stories, and others were simply picked up at a truck stop. I hope all of them go to fun places, and eventually make it to Knoxville. I'll be keeping track of their progress and locations at this webpage which can also be accessed from the header in my blog. And if any of them beat us to Knoxville, I will be utterly floored.

The Legend of Dan Cooper

WARNING: SPOILER PICTURES BELOW

After attending a birthday party at the Alamogordo Zoo today, I dragged the family on a pursuit of Dan Cooper. This is a delightful geocaching series that can be done in about an hour with a bunch of driving around town. The write up online for each stage tells a part of the D.B. Cooper story, and the final is an awesome find in a desert barren.

1. Cooper's Flight
2. Cooper's Ransom
3. Cooper's Jump
4. Cooper's Manhunt
5. The Legend

This is the kind of cache that is easy to drag the family on, has lot's of goodies for the kids and is a fun story. Plus the final was big enough for both Levin and Ada to sit in while they perused the contents. The only thing that could have been better would be if the winds were not gusting 60 mph.

Passover with Fugads... or how I managed to get almost all my relatives to go geocaching with me.

Passover has always been the big family holiday for my family. Ever since we were little, my family would drive (or alter fly) to Baltimore where my grandparents lived, where we would join up with uncles, aunts, cousins and the like for a big Passover Seder. As a kid, I wasn't so fond of these annual family gatherings. I was made to wear an uncomfortable starched shirt and clip-on tie. The reading of the Hagadah before the Seder meal seemed to take forever, and for a fidgety kid, having to sit patiently at the table for long periods, smelling dinner in the room just next door, but not being able to eat any of it was just short of torture. But the older I got, the more I appreciated these rare family gatherings. And this so even more so since it was the first Passover gathering I've been able to attend since 2011.

What does any of this have to do with geocaching? You see, that last Seder I was at was right after I started geocaching but before I had become really nutty about it. But now, a visit to a new geocache rich area gets me all fired up. So many parks to explore, puzzles to solve, new stats to earn, challenges to complete. The thing is to try to get some of this enthusiasm to spread to other members of the family. A challenge indeed.

The first geocache foray of our Passover trip was on the Saturday right after we arrived. My youngest went down for a nap and my aunt had just left to pick up my sister (and family) from BWI. That left uncle Rob, cousin Jessie my son and me with a free afternoon. Uncle Rob suggested going to what they call the "Mink House", aka Meadowside Nature Center. Not only do they have a great visitor center with tons of kid friendly activities, but they also have some rescued raptors in an outdoor aviary, an obstacle course and nature trails. I brought my GPSr "just in case" and we made the short 10 minute drive over. After enjoying the visitor center and seeing the rescued raptors, I turned on my GPSr "just to check: and what do you know, there was a cache only 0.1 miles away. Of course my son wanted to go find it, and Uncle Rob and Jessie seemed game as well so off we went. Turns out it was a bit longer walk, down a meandering trail, but soon enough we were at GZ. I had given the GPSr to Jessie and she was trying to hone in on the elusive GZ. Treecover and the hillside made it jump around somewhat. Levin and I immediately went towards a downed log over some rocks, thinking that would be the most likely spot, but as we were searching all over, Jessie yelled out. She had found it on the other side of the trail. The cache turned out to be a decent size and had a bunch of fake spiders in it, fitting since it was named Arachnaphobia. Jessie was pretty buoyant about finding the cache and was game for finding another one (only 1/4 mile away!) but Uncle Rob's knee was giving him trouble so we opted to head back up to the car. On the way, we passed an obvious plastic toolbox at the base of a tree that had the words "Official Geocache" written on it. We of course investigated and found that it had been placed by the park staff and contained some rough tools for determining the height of a tree (a straw-and-paper inclinometer and tape measure. We measured the nearest tree, which was fun but Levin was more interested jumping across rocks in the nearby stream.

The next geocaching adventures were not even initiated by me. The park near my Rob and Kay's house hosts a nice playground, tennis courts a toad pond and... tons of caches. We visited mainly for the former, but on one of our trips Milo stopped by to find a few of the caches. Once he had found them, and the kids heard about it they had to go see them too. So the cache at Norbeck Meadow saw quite a bit of traffic. On Wednesday, I even got Alden and Levin to hike 1/2 mile with me to the cache Elephant's Trunk, which was disappointingly a micro. The trip their was awesome though, with Levin and Alden helping to figure out the best way to cross the creek without getting wet (I slipped and got wet on the return though, and almost took Alden in with me).

Our most fruitful Geocaching foray came on Thursday when I took Levin, Sarah and Kay out for a hike. The nearby Lake Needwood had a cache that had piqued my interest, one that used Geodesy and Godzilla. How cool is that! Turns out it is a nice park for a stroll as well. We were treated with a nice large geocache complete with Godzilla stuff in it. Riding the high of such a nice cache, we decided to strike off for the next nearest one, less than a 1/4 mile away. Unfortunately, that short walk involved steep loose slopes and a stream crossing, and Sarah was increasingly concerned that Aunt Kay's knees would give out (Aunt Kay stoically said she was fine though). We did manage to get to the coordinates for the cache though. I spotted it right off, but it took the others a bit more looking, since it was up high in a tree. I own a cache similar to this one, they make for fun finds.

Everyone who found some caches seemed to enjoy it, and Jessie and Sarah even talked about doing it on their own, but I'm not convinced that they will. I kept getting the feeling that they were all quietly amused at how much I get into this strange little hobby. I mean, can't I just enjoy going someplace without having to find something? I used to... but now I just can't resist that sirens call.

Levin at the National Zoo. Guess what, it's right near the GZ for a virtual cache. Surprise surprise huh?

Adopting out caches

I've started adopting out some of my caches in the Las Cruces area. It's something I've been hemming and hawing about for a couple reasons. It shouldn't be a big issue, but I've become pretty attached to my cache listings, perhaps unnaturally so. I don't want to let them go, I want them to forever be associated with my caching name, as memorials to my geocaching creativity. Utter hogwash, but sentimentality can get the best of me. It's not like I cannot still enjoy them if they are adopted out. I can continue to watch all the logs on them. But somehow the fact that those logs are no longer digitally tied to my geocaching persona irks me. Just plain silly. 

I started out by adopting out some caches to the GPSmen, who a have been big fans of my Datums series. Bye bye Matter of Datums 1, 2 and 3 as well as my Las Cruces Positioning System cache. GPSmen also got my Geohashing Challenge which they have been really into, continuing to find collisions even to this day. I know those cachse will be well looked after. The Marauders offered to keep an eye on my evil substitution puzzle, The Hills are Alive.. with the Sound of CODES. I suspect that that puzzle and cache location will have little to no need of maintenance for years to come, but if they ever do it's nice to know someone will be there. One of my caches which might require the most checking in on is my Young Park Scavenger Hunt, with it's 8+ stages in a popular park. Considering it has been going for a couple years now with only minor maintenance required, I'd like to think it was pretty well designed, but I'm still happy that Sexyboo graciously offered to keep it alive after we've moved.

But that's only 7 of more than 40 caches...In the end, I think most of them I will just leave as they are and hope for the best. Many are in areas that are unlikely to be disturbed, or found often. Hopefully they will survive many years to come. And when they need help, I can call on the friends I've made in Las Cruces to see if they can't be salvaged.

But what should I do about my all important ... stats! Yes, stats, that little number that assigns value or ranking. Something that drives one to madness. I am well aware of my stats, especially on such sites as the Lonely Cache Project. Many of these caches I am adopting out will mean my stats will change. no longer will I show as owner of XX number of caches, or a 5* difficulty puzzle. And my points on LCP will drop... that is unless I log all my caches as found. It sounds really cheesy, logging my own caches as found, but in a perverted way it makes sense. Whereas once these caches of mine contributed to my stats as ones I owned, they will be converted to stats by becoming caches I've found. I solicited some feedback on the LCP forums, but haven't had much response. I'd love to hear from folks though. Is this a brilliant or foolish thing to do?

Puzzle caching with the kids

The kids, the dog and I needed to be out of the house all day, to keep it clean and ready for showings... so we went caching of course. I had a bunch of puzzle caches that were high on my list to go after, and many of these promised to have good toys in them, so the kids were excited too.

Our first stop was at the new GPSmen puzzle cache, Feel Puzzle. Very straightforward, but I found reading the braille to be remarkably difficult, especially since you were forced to only use your fingertips. The cache was beautifully crafted, with a nice wooden box that had the entire Braille alphabet printed out in it's lid (guess i didn't need to bring that cheat sheet with me). The kdis were patient with me as I struggled to get the coords, but the desert here was friendly and they were soon playing around the creosote, and finding smooth arroyo pebbles to toss. Once I was happy that I had good coordinates, we traipsed back over to the car and drove a short ways before parking again and taking another short walk through the desert. I told Levin that he could make the find, and when we got close I was sure it was going to be under a lone scrubby tree. But it wasn't! It was close though, and camouflaged with great care. We really liked the execution, and the toys. Levin traded for the mini-cooper and Ada took a blue pebble. I left a funky magnetic clock that I've had at my desk at work for years.

Can you spot the cache?

Ada's blue pebble

On the walk back to the car, we finally wised up to the beauty around us. Funny how you can get blinded by geocaching and not see what is going on around you. Several hedgehog cacti we passed had fresh blooms. And there were massive flocks of sparrows singing up a storm. We would approach a flock and just stand nearby, quietly listening to the scores of voices trilling together.

We drove up into Soledad canyon next where I hoped to find a couple of different puzzle caches. What I didn't count on was the wind. I had not packed windbreakers or warm jackets for the kids, and after only 15 minutes of hiking they were both whining about the wind and cold. We got to the first puzzle cache I had solved, relatively close but up a steep hill, and were rewarded once again with nice toys. After making some more trades, we started off to the next solved puzzle, but the winds on the ridge-top were fierce and it was cold. We bailed about halfway to the next cache. It was too early in the day to have miserable kids. ON our way down we spotted a sheltered cave that looked just perfect for a lunch stop. It was difficult getting the kids to it, since it involved steep loose slopes, but when we finally got there it was perfect; completely sheltered from the wind, a nice flat pebbly area to relax, and interesting cave "drawings". Good thing the kids aren't savvy to graffiti yet.

Once we made it back to the car, I wasn't exactly sure where we should go next. So we ended up puttering around the campus of NMSU, finding a few of the new caches there (and not finding a bunch more). These caches weren't of much interest to the kids though, so once they started getting cranky, I called up our favorite Mexican restaurant and ordered lunch. We picnic'd on our front lawn.

IN the end, the house stayed clean, the kids got new toys, and I found 3 puzzle caches that were high on my list. Not too shabby.