A ‘lil HooHaa

Did my first CITO (cache in, trash out) event two Saturdays ago. It was in a park in my town where I never realized there would be a lot of trash. It’s a nice park, good trails (four caches, too) and it lines the river. But, again, it’sone of those parks that I don’t think a lot of people know about, therefore I wouldn’t think there would be a lot of trash.

Quite the interesting event. Not many people were there and I got there a little late, but I went out with a trash bag and was shocked how much trash I actually found. Hopefully this park will be used a little more and kept up a bit more, which would be nice. It’s a good little place and people apparently like to fish down here as well.

Following the event, I had to decide what to do. I was closing in on 200 caches and really wanted to get it. After logging the event, I needed six and figured I could easily do that if I went somewhere to tackle it.

So, off I went to Syracuse with a friend to watch a baseball game. We left early enough, too, where I could get some caches along the way.

The first two were easy enough — and one was a letterbox hybrid, which was cool. We then went a back way toward Syracuse to get a few cache-and-dashes. The first was cool — one of the popular “Welcome to …” caches. On the small square, there was a small bell that isn’t used anymore. It was in the bell, which made it not-so-normal.

Then we hit a small town where there was some magnetic thing on a bridge. I found it easy enough, but it started to down pour and by the time I reached the car, it was POURING and I was soaked.

Off we went.

We stopped at a rest area and there was a TB Hotel that would prove to be Number 200. I had to wade through some wet grass and such, but heck, I was already soaked. Got the cache and signed in, which was nice. I then realized I had extra clothes in the car, so I went into the rest area and got changed and was dry. Now that was nice. There was also a quick micro to grab at the rest area and we got that as well.

The game was good. For baseball fans, we saw Chuck James of the Braves pitch for Richmond. It was a good game overall (though a slight delay). Syracuse also offers the chance to get a replica batting helmet loaded with popcorn. That’s lots of corn! The hot dogs weren’t bad, but not top of the line.

We followed that up with eight more caches after the game on the way home. Most were cache-and-dashes, which was fine. The best, however, was one that we didn’t get. I didn’t post a did not find on the cache page, but I did leave a note as there was a reason I didn’t go after it (it wasn’t 24 hours, but I thought I could have gotten it).

OK, I’m not going to DNF this one for a few reasons, but I have to leave a story. We’re on our way back from a Chiefs game. It’s nearly 11 p.m. and there’s no 24/7 thing on this cache. Still, we’re near it, I see if I park on the road my GPS says I’m 30-40 feet away, so I have to go for it. I’ll just use the light of my GPS and cell phone.

I didn’t park in the near area as there was a Wegmans truck parked there. No biggie. He’s probably taking a snooze.

Ha!

I slowly started to night bushwack and I started hearing noises coming from or from near the truck. These weren’t your normal sounds, either.

They were, uh, well, ya know, sounds of “fun.”

Needless to say, I quickly retreated to car and penciled this one up to another day if I’m on my way to Syracuse and it’s daylight out. Yikes!

Just wanted to share the story.

What an experience that was. Needless to say, we bolted in a hurry.

I’m behind in my blogging and such, but I have a few other adventures to write about as well as some real-life things. I go on a short vacation starting Thursday and will try and post a little more to catch up. I might head up to Montreal this weekend, too.

More later!

For those of you who geocache, do you have signature items? You know, something you leave that is you? Wood coins? Buttons? Some sort of the same toy? Does it say your caching name?

I love trading for these items. It’s about the only thing I actually trade for. My collection is getting bigger and I enjoy watching it grow every time I go caching. However, I find there’s not always sig items out there!

These are my latest:

I am stoked with how they came out. I’ll drop them in caches here and there — not always every one I visit. I will put them in caches where I take TBs/geocoins (even though those aren’t trade items) or if I grab a sig item. I will also leave them in caches I think were really good to get to or if there’s even room for one. I also recently got some buttons made up and this is what it looks like:

Basically, I do the same with these as the coins. I don’t leave them in the same cache, however, as it would defeat the purpose! I also have some handmade ones I had before I ordered these other two. What I did was pick up the wood hat at A.C. Moore and then wrote my name. I still have a few of these left and I’ll drop them sometimes, too.

It seems signature items go beyond the personalized ones, however. I have heard of some people who will drop the same thing in every cache — a certain type of ball, a certain animal-related toy, a photo of some sort or things like that. Although it doesn’t say who the person is, it is their “calling card” and is what they enjoy doing.

The sig items I collect are the personal ones. Buttons, coins, pathtags and anything else that might have a cachers name on it. Some of my favorites are wood coins that are pieces of art, done by the cacher. These are amazing and I really would like to get more, eventually!

I actually think I am going to try and find a way to frame these two coins together so I can hang them up. I like art and have a pretty strong collection of street, professional and amateur art that I’ve purchased and collected over the years. Though I know these coins are signature items, they are more than that in my eyes and I feel they would be better off being displayed somewhere so people visiting me can actually see and admire the talent put into these coins.

I have a bunch of items I’ve collected though and here’s a few of them:

So what about those of you who cache? Anything special you put in when you are on the hunt? Or do you just sign the logbook and move on? Let me know!

More later!

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Yes, I’ll steal a line from Simon and Garfunkel’s famous song “Mrs. Robinson.” But, it seems like I disappeared weeks ago and haven’t been seen since. So it seems. No problem, just means I have a lot to catch up on, right?

We’ll start with the geocaching world and move forward.

Last weekend, a few of us made a trip to Connecticut to see the GPS Maze exhibit as well as attend the event there to meet Jeremy, the president and one of the co-founders of Groundspeak — the owners of geocaching.com. I wrote a story for the magazine that is published by the paper where I work. In the story, I had interviewed Jeremy as well as Bryan, one of the other co-founders.

This was too good a chance to meet one of them, so we set forth. (We also got a cool new icon for the profile!)

Of course while we’re going too and from, we’re going to geocache, right?

The way down wasn’t going to be a big caching haul. Just a few off the route, no major hikes or anything (oh, it was hot as hell, too, so no major hikes anyway!)

We hit a few and got into Connecticut, so we went looking for our first in that state. After finding and replacing this one, it was discovered that a tick was on one of us. No bites or anything, just crawling. So we got rid of it and tried to check as best as possible. Since I started caching, that was my first true dealing with a tick.

We went up another exit to the Welcome to Connecticut Center and stopped there (another cache, of course) and as I got out of the car, there was something crawling on the seat. Guess what? Another tick. This one had been ON ME somewhere. We got it out of the car and did a closer inspection. I went into the bathroom and basically disrobed to look at my clothes and everything and luckily there were no more.

Turns out, after talking to a friend from Connecticut, that ticks are pretty widespread in that state. We only did one more cache the rest of the day in a true “woods” area where we were worried about getting any ticks on us. I didn’t want to risk it, in all honesty. There were probably a couple other spots we went that could have been tick areas, but we stayed clean the rest of the day, which was nice. Those little buggers are not something I need to be dealing with.

We did a couple more on the way to Bridgeport and got to the event. The building itself is a really nice place (it’s a Discovery Museum) and the GPS Maze is really wild. It seems like a great event for young and old, new and experienced and anyone in between. You can get the Maze icon for your profile through September at this exhibit.

The maze itself is a four-stage setup. You go through and learn about GPS’, geocaching and everything like that. To get to the next part, you need to find a cache, get the info needed and punch a code into the door and move on. You also stamp a card that you take with you to show you’ve completed each spot.

Here are some photos from the event:

The Maze

This is a case showing some swag people will leave as well as travel bugs and geocoins:

Want to learn what a GPS can do for you?

The sizes of packs you can take with you on hikes and caching hikes:

This is a station where you can see how well you can pack a bag:

Meeting Jeremy, the president, was pretty cool. Really down to Earth and nice to chat with. He took down the number for my 100-finds geocoin and hopefully will eventually discover it. Pretty cool to have the big man as someone to discover the coin, eh?

We also met some other cool cachers. Chatted with a few in the Maze. They could be discovered as they had one of these geocoins. I like events and plan on attending more. If you are the same, this might be a cool coin to purchase and carry to events. I am debating buying one as I think it would be pretty fun to have.

We did the four caches at the event. They weren’t ones to log, however, as they’ll only be there for the time of the exhibit and all. Still, it was fun to find them as we got to chat with more cachers and such. We also swapped some coin discoveries with others and peeked around the parking lot for car bugs.

I have one of these and haven’t put it on my car yet as I wasn’t sure my plan. However, I think I’m am going to buy it instead of turning it in (lease ends soon), so I’ll be putting it on my car. Basically, it’s a sticker travel bug. If people see it, they can discover it and such. Pretty neat.

We left the event and did a few caches nearby. We found a place to eat and then headed to New Haven to grab an Earthcache. The view from the top was pretty incredible (I will likely have this image, better cropped/processed, on my photoblog in the near future):

After this one, we hit one in the town where I used to live and headed home. We did find two more on the way home — one in Connecticut, one in New York — on the way home. We also drove through a wild thunderstorm with some awesome lightning displays.

We ended up — with the event and maze — hitting 14 for the day. Not too bad overall, despite the tick finds. Also got an Earthcache in another state and had the opportunity to just cache in another state and one where I used to live. Overall, a fun day!

I’ll have more in the coming days about some signature items, my first CITO event and more.

More later!

OK, maybe the title is a stretch, but for me, it was downright uncomfortable.

Oh, by the way, hi. Been a while, eh?

Anyway, last Saturday we made a trip to Scranton. There were two specific goals we wanted to get — an Earthcache in Pennsylvania and a webcam cache in downtown Scranton. We had 75 on a list that we were going to try and get and see what we could do.

And on a normal, 60-65 degree day, we might have approached 50 or more caches. Not this day.

We left New York around 8 a.m. and returned around 1 a.m. So, one hell of a long day.

In all, we hit 26 caches. Not a bad day overall, but we missed a couple I really would have liked to have seen and didn’t hit a couple of others because they were long hikes. This wasn’t a day for that.

The temps went anywhere from like 90-95 and it was very humid. You walked 25 feet and you were sweating like hell. It was uncomfortable.

So, to get 26 was a bonus.

We got to sit in the car during a 20-30 minute rain delay and the A/C was very nice.

A lot of cache-and-dashes were done that day. We did hit some really nice caches — including a DNF near a great little waterfall. We hit the webcam and the Earthcache.

Later in the day, it got cooler and we hit a few more. We also did our first night cache — one where there are the tacks to follow to the cache. Pretty cool, but harsh on the feet with the terrain. We hit a few others at night, but they weren’t true “night caches.”

Though it was hot and uncomfortable, it was a good, fun day. I enjoyed it and wouldn’t mind going to Scranton to cache again in the future. I know we can conquer a lot more in a day!

Other caching notes: 

Heading to one of those GPS Maze things this weekend. Looks pretty fun. It’s in Bridgeport, Connecticut, so it will be a fun little trip to an area where I went to school and such. Get a new icon by doing the maze as well as an event icon! We’ll do some caching in that area and hit another Earthcache or two.

I’m hoping to create and develop an Earthcache soon. I want to be able to get one of those under my belt. They seem like a blast.

The Connecticut trip should be fun — though I hope a little shorter than last week. I want to be home when it’s light out! I’m going with some other local cachers, so I look forward to it. Hopefully we can get at least 10-12 caches as I haven’t been this week.

I got my first true sig items in the mail today — some wood coins. The person I ordered them from did a fantastic job. They are circles and look like a softball. It shows my caching name on one side (softball29) and looks like a signature on the ball. On the opposite side, it says “Team HooHaa.” I’ll post a photo when I can get a scan.

Anyway, I’m pooped after a softball game tonight. More later!

It was in the mid-90s Saturday and very humid. A couple of rain storms hit, but we were OK.

I’ll be doing a longer post soon, but a quick update.

We ended up doing 26 and had, I believe, four or five DNFs.

I also don’t like caching when sweat is dripping off you. It somewhat limits the fun and makes you only want to do quicker ones and no good, long hikes.

Still a pretty fun day. Got another Earthcache and my first Webcam cache. Really cool!

More later!

I’m heading to bed soon as I have to be up at 7 and be ready to bolt by 8.

Everything is well worth it, though.

Scranton caching trip is Saturday and I am ready to roll. The weather looks like we could see a thunderstorm or two, but we’ll see.

From the NWS:

Saturday: A chance of showers and thunderstorms after 1pm. Partly cloudy, with a high near 92. Calm wind becoming west between 10 and 13 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%.

Saturday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 69. West wind between 5 and 8 mph becoming calm.

Hopefully it will hold off, especially being as we’re taking Darren’s Jeep and want the top down.

There are 75 caches in the till and we’re hoping to hit most. There’s no timelimit, so we might not get back here until 11 or 12 at night. No biggie. It’s all in the name of caching.

Then, I’m off Sunday, so I’ll be able to log, blog and post photos and recoup. Thankfully. While I’m at it, I might hit a good-hike cache or two as well Sunday. We’ll see.

That’s the plan though. More updates later!

Sigh.

I have a three-day weekend starting Friday. I’m pumped. Maybe head to the Baseball Hall on Friday for a bit, do a little caching and hang out.

Saturday starts at around 8 a.m. and we plan on at least a 12-hour day of caching to Scranton and back. We’d like to attempt to get 30-50 caches and we have some solid routes planned.

I look at the weather and thunderstorms are in the forecast. Now, it’s isolated, but still. One or two “hits” and the day could be ruined.

Seems whenever Darren and I plan a weekend, this happens. We even have a third coming this weekend, so more eyes to search.

If the rain holds.

Argh. I am really pumped and ready to go. Hopefully the rain holds off for us. We need to do some caching!

Same with next weekend. If I don’t end up having to work, heading to an event in Connecticut that looks really cool. Of course, I’ll end up having to work and blow those plans…

Ugh.

More later.

With a three-day weekend coming up (the boss set it up so me and the other writer each had a three-day weekend, and his was last week), I’m hoping to plan some caching or some sort of fun event this weekend.

A roadtrip to Scranton (Pa.) is in the works for one day. I was hoping Saturday, but looks like it might be Sunday if it happens at all. Hopefully it does because I’ve put a bunch of time into plotting this trip and really want to go after a bunch of these caches.

Which means I have Friday and Saturday to do some other things. I might try and do a couple of the bigger hike caches around here on those days. Just get one or two or whatever, but ones that really will be worth it when all said and done. I might also attempt to put a couple of caches out. I have some ready, just need to fill ‘em up and put ‘em out.

I also just purchased some sig buttons (ordered 30 of them) to be able to put out in caches and such. I’m pretty sure I won’t have them by this weekend, but hopefully in a couple of weeks!

Also planning on hitting up an event at the end of the month. I need to be in New Jersey for a graduation party, then will be hitting the cache on the way home Sunday. I just ordered an event geocoin, so that will be cool to have from the event. I look forward to meeting other cachers and doing a little finding before heading home later that afternoon. Also hoping some others will meet me at the event.

I’ve got to get into updating this blog and my photo blog more often. I’m still on the laptop as I haven’t figured the monitor situation on the desktop yet. But I need to do that soon as it’s quite important to have! There’s a lot on there I need to eventually get to.

Anyway, that’s about it for now. More later!

Been a while since I last posted. Softball has started, so that’s been taking up a little time and all. Also, just haven’t been able to bring myself to get writing. So I’ll give some quick thoughts and updates here.

Geocaching

Well, I haven’t done as much as I did during my vacation, but still plugging along toward the next milestone and all that.

After the vacation ended, I did get a chance to go here and there. Poked around and got one FTF (first to find), thought it was harder than it should have been. Too many people one day and one night, so left and came back the next day and was able to quickly score it.

Grabbed another FTF a few days later at one in my town. Worked out well as Darren was in town, so we got the FTF together. Pretty cool.

Then this past weekend, Darren and I went on a mini adventure. He recently got a new Jeep Wrangler, so it was perfect for a geocaching day. Sun was out (for the most part), top down and away we went.

We found 10 on the day, including our first two Earthcaches and a virtual. Logged some miles and still got home before it got dark, which was really nice. We also did two multis, including one that had got us the first time.

The worst part happened on a DNF, however. This one is on a non-used covered bridge. We looked for about an hour. Under, over all around. One of those times going down to the ground to look under something must have jarred the point-and-shoot camera and something inside the viewing screen broke as it no longer works. It will take a photo, but I can’t see where the heck I am shooting, unfortunately. I’ll be needing a new one shortly.

Here are a few images from the day:

This view was about 100 feet from a cache. Well worth visiting. In a state park. Below is a different view from a lookout way above the cache.

I br ought my good camera and have much better shots of these falls, but haven’t had the time to go through and process because I still don’t have a new monitor for my main computer. However, I’m hoping to be able to process a bunch of photos I’ve taken over the past few weeks and get posting on my photo blog (which I’ve neglected recently).

Also from the trip, this is Darren checking out a fossil at one of the Earthcaches we visited:

The adventure for that day, however, was Darren taking a back way to the final cache we needed to find. Turned out to be an easy find, but he took the Jeep on this seasonal road and it was seasonal, all right. In other words, no season would be wise taking a car on it. The Jeep bounced around a bit, but that’s what those things are made for, right? Quite the adventure.

After, to get out of this place, we pointed the TomTom to another town and it tookj us through state forest area and all sorts of places. We finally had to turn around and go another way as it was taking us in placed we couldn’t go anymore — even with a Jeep!

We finished the day plotting a spot for a short multi-cache. Haven’t set this one yet, but hopefully soon. It’s a nice location.

Saturday was a nice day, too. So I visited three that day, which was nice. We got stumped on one that had stumped us before, so a second DNF. The owner sent me a hint, however, so I’ll likely try it again.

We then went and found another from the same owner and then went to an area overlooking a local reservoir. Couldn’t find it and there were two people on a motorcycle. Little did we know, they, too, were cachers. Anyway, somehow they replaced the cache (I think we were each trying to avoid one another and it worked out well to replace!) As we drove back to our area, they were looking for the one we had just found, so we stopped and chatted for a few minutes. Quite funny. That’s when they told us they had replaced the cache while we were there. Too much! Always fun to meet people on the trail.

I was then off Wednesday and two new ones showed up in a park in the next town over. So, we headed over and grabbed a couple more FTFs (now up to nine). Later than night, I pulled Brendan (he’s like a little brother to me, the one I never had to kick around, ya know) on his first geocaching adventure.

We replaced one of my caches (apparently some animals had gotten to it):

I replaced the canister, put it in a different spot in the same area and we opted to try the two caches I hadn’t got on this nature trail. It would require a lot of climbing.

We found the first, DNFd the second (one I likely won’t try again as the climb it quite far for one cache and I’m not convinced I’d find it if I did go again). We got a little lost coming back down as darkness started to come, but we found a trail and made our way down without incident.

Yesterday, I placed my first multi-cache, so I’ll be looking forward to seeing who gets the FTF there and others who follow.

I see there are two new ones near me, so I’ll likely go grab them in a little while. Someone hit the FTFs earlier this morning, so I got beat out on that. I’m not a super FTF hound by any stretch, but it is kind of fun to grab them. I’d like to get one more because that would give me 10. From there, whatever happens, happens. Heck, from here whatever happens, happens!

This weekend is Warren’s second annual Bocce Tournament, so likely no caching Saturday. Rain is in the forecast, however, so that could make for sloppy Bocce! Next weekend, I’ve somehow been given a three-day weekend, so I’ve been looking at an event to maybe attend, or at least making one full geocaching day where I get as many as I can!

The caching adventures will continue, that’s for sure. Summer is here!

——-

Car update:

I have one payment left on my lease and two months left before I have to buy or turn it in.

The best option will likely be to keep it and hold on to it for a while. The buyout is solid for this car (05 VW Jetta) and, to be honest, I’m about 12,000 miles over my mileage count, so I’d be looking at like $1,500 in fees for that one. Not a chance that’s happening.

I do need new tires for it, but that’s fine. I just put new brakes on the rear, so I can deal there. And the car is, obviously, in solid shape. So, I’ll likely purchase it outright and keep it for a few more years before looking into a new car.

——–

Baseball season has been fun thus far. The Phils are in the thick of it and that’s all I can ask for. Hopefully they can make it two NL East titles in a row and the pitching can get going a bit more. Would be nice anyway.

——–

I’m pretty sure there were a couple of other things I wanted to post about, but for the life of me I can’t remember. If it comes to me, I’ll have to do another post later. So, on that note…

More later!

Monday was the final day of my vacation, so, of course, I needed to make it a geocaching adventure of sorts. The road took me back to Binghamton for the second time and besides a couple of stops at some stores, there was some geocaching to be had (and dinner at Cracker Barrel!)

We hit 11 caches that day, dodging rain here and there (nothing major, but a little every once in a while, then the sun would come out).

I also picked up a rubber stamp that day, which proved to be very important. I had wanted to be able to do some letterbox hybrids. So while at AC Moore, I found a softball stamp. Thought it fit, so I grabbed it and a thing of ink. Now, I’ve gone from paperless back to paper caching. I think it’s easier to do a route if you have everything out in front of you. Though it takes longer to print and you have to have the ink/paper, I feel it works better.

We get to the one park where we’re going to hit three caches and I see one is even closer. In the same park. I don’t have it printed, however. But, I had my PDA with me, so I checked. It was a letterbox hybrid! So, I made sure the stamp and the ink were in my cache pack and we set out.

Ahh, but detours happen, no? We started one way and all of a sudden we’re going further away. Argh!

Maybe seeing this should have given me the head’s up, no?

We turned around and found the letterbox and I happily put my stamp in the log book. We then headed toward the second and third caches. In this park, there are signs with exercises and all, so I’m sure people use the trails a lot. But, the park also runs next to some private property. We went past two gates and it was quite original on how the owner wanted to keep people off his property.

We got both of the caches in that area. One took a pretty decent hike down and up a hill and the second ended up being a 50mm ammo can, which is always welcomed. I grabbed a micro geocoin that had been there for a while to help it along. From there, it seemed the final cache in the park was on the edge of the park, so after dodging some rain (and hail!), we got back to the car and went to a parking lot up front. We were barely 125 feet away, so we found it quickly and signed the log. I also thought it would be a good spot to place this guy:

From there, we found a bunch of others. A couple of micros and all, but it was starting to get cold, too! The one I was super pumped about was getting one I had DNF’d before — Vestal is Gore-gous too. We were ready to call it good, but I decided to go back one last time and see if I could see something. I did as something looked slightly amiss. I pulled some rocks away and whammy! There it was. Rescued a TB there, too.

Something else was pretty cool. Not sure if this is done all over, but it seems in the one area here, when someone reaches, 1,000 finds, someone releases a Golden Ammo Can in their honor. I found my first of these on this trip and it was pretty cool. Here’s what it looks like:

This hide also turned out to be a little harder than it should have. I looked at the location three or four times and didn’t even realize it was there. So awful!

One that I’ve wanted to do is also one called “What is this made out of?”

The cache is somewhere on this:

Needless to say, I didn’t find it. I’ll look again next time I’m there, but I looked pretty close and couldn’t figure where it might be. Rather nuts, I must say.

Anyway, a quick (well, somewhat) stop at Cracker Barrel for dinner was next. We waited about 10 minutes to get dinner, then they served us at different points, so it was longer than expected. After filling up the gas tank, we went for one more. It was in a park I’ve cached before, but it had a TB I really wanted because it had something to do with my college alma mater.

It was a good, long walk after dinner. Found the cache, signed the log and grabbed the TB. That ended the day with 11 finds and, also, ended my vacation. Argh. It was back to work the next day.

Overall though, a great short vacation with a lot of caching. I did some more caching since, and I’ll catch up with those reports soon.

More later!