Heading to London

Hi All -

I am flying to London today on a business trip. I will also get a day of geocaching in. There are lots of caches and things to see there. Three travel bugs will be making the voyage as their mission includes Europe. I will be returning on Friday and will write a post about the trip then.

A true smiley face!

All geocachers want to go out and log smiley faces.

Last year we met a non-geocaching couple while canoeing and doing some water caches at Selden Island. We heard the girl scream. We knew right away that we had witnessed the guy proposing to her.

While reading blogs tonight I read a post about a similar situation. Only this time the couple were geocachers. Rather than try to describe their post you can read it for yourselves at Andrew and Meghan's Blog. We are sure that there was at least one smiley face on this find!

Congrats to Drew and Meghan!
Mike and Barb

Early history of the compass

The history of the compass can be traced back to the use of lodestones used by Chinese fortune tellers on their fortune telling boards as early as 200 AD. Lodestones, although rare, are a product of mother nature. They are primarily composed of magnetite. When magnetite becomes magnetized, probably from a lightning strike, you have a lodestone.

At some point it was observed that the handle of the spoon shaped lodestones pointed consistently to the south. This led to a board being contructed with drawings of directions and constellations and the lodestone sitting in the middle of the board. By 800 AD magnetized needles were used instead of the lodestones. They were either hung by a silk thread or placed on a piece of wood in a bowl of water. The compass was adopted as a navigation device on ships as early as 1000 AD.

Did the Chinese hide boxes of booty in the woods and use these ancient tools to seek them out?

GPS - The early history

In October 1957 the U.S.S.R launched the Sputnik the first artificail satellite to orbit the Earth. Two junior physicists at John Hopkins, William Guier and George Weiffenbach, decided to listen in on the satellite using a supersensitive shortwave receiver. As it passed overhead they noticed a change in the frequency due to the doppler effect. Guier came up with a theory that the satellite could be tracked by analyzing the change of the slope of the frequency shift. They proved the theory by tracking Sputnik and later on the Explorer I satellite, the first satellite launched by the United States.

In March 1958 Frank McClure the head of the Advanced Physics Laboratory Research Center questioned Guier and Weffenbach about their findings. McClure later came up with the idea of reversing the idea so it be used by ships for navigation. McClure teamed up with Richard Kershner and drew up plans for a navigation system using satellites. It was later adopted and prefected for the United States Polaris Submarine program. The system was called Transit and was in use for over 30 years until 1996. It was not only used by Navy, but also by merchant marine ships, civilians and was even used to position oil rigs.

The work of these great physicists paved the way for the current GPS system that powers our Magellans and Garmins that we use for geocaching.

Geocaching Trivia - Most Extreme Geocache

We don't know if Rainbow Hydrothermal Vents is the longest geocache without a find, but it very well could be. This geocache is the most extreme though. It is at a depth of 1.43 miles in the Atlantic Ocean near a hydrothermal vent. It was placed 19 July 2002 by LordBritish. Wonder if my Garmin Vista GPS will work at this depth??

So - If you think that last geocache was tough one you should give this one a try!!

United States Map of Geocache Finds

XC Tracer created a map showing the number of finders with over 1000 geocaching finds in each state. You can vist Nolan's Cerebrations and Explanations Blog to see his handiwork.

Thanx - Nolan

EXTRA - EXTRA - A Geocaching Milestone

I have been patiently watching the online statistics generated by Grand High Pobah so that I could announce this grand geocaching event. As of today 1000 geocachers have found at least 1000 geocaches. That is over 1,000,000 finds by this elite group of 1000. Here are a few breakdowns:

By Country:
United States 885
Germany 34
Canada 30
United Kingdom 15
Netherlands 14
Australia 7
Sweden 5
Belgium 3
Norway 2
Denmark 1
Finland 1
Luxembourg 1

Top Ten U.S. States:
California 187
Florida 56
Texas 46
Washington 43
Tennesee 42
Oregon 39
Illinios 36
Ohio 33
Wisconsin 33
Arizona 25
Missouri 25

If you would like a full breakdown by state you can post a comment to the blog or email Jestjuggle and I will email the complete list. You can also read about how the list is generated and mine the data yourself at Grand High Pobah's website.

Now grab your GPS and find some more geocaches to keep the hobby going!!!

Hiking Sticks

When out geocaching we like to take our high-tech hiking sticks. Now a days they call them trekking poles. There are a variety of different types ranging from cane-like sticks to ones that look like old time hiking sticks to others that look like ski poles. The new trekking poles are telescopic so that you can adjust them to any height you need. This is usefull when going up or down steep hills or when crossing a brook. When you cross a brook by walking across a downed tree adjust the trekking pole to the highest length so you can use it to steady yourself. The one I use also can be turned into a monopod for your camera or binoculars. Both mine and Barb's have shock absorbers in them which is supposed to be easier on your arms although we really have nothing to judge them against so we can't confirm that theory. The poles are also useful for poking around stone walls or in the snow to here that "thunking" sound we have grown to love as the pole hits an ammo can . Probing around with the poles will also scare away any critters that could be troublesome or for me at least in the case of snakes - VERY SCARY!!

We recommed that you go to a store and try them all out before buying one so you can find the style that suits you best. We got ours at Eastern Mountain Sports. The people there are always friendly and helpful.

So -- Go get a trekking pole(s) and find some geocaches!!

Coin Quest

There is a new treasue hunt out there called Coin Quest based on Geocaching. It requires the entrants to find a variety of different types of caches to get 16 pieces of a decoded treasure map leading them to a box of coins. Looks pretty interesting. Not sure if being an experienced geocacher will help or hurt your chances. For instance one of the categories is a virtual geocache. That might be a tough one for people with lots of finds as there haven't been any approved in quite some time. So if you have done all of them in your area than you might have to travel a long ways to find one. Some of the other categories are a river cache and a geocache in a forest. Might be hard if you live in the middle of desert.

Not sure if we will compete, but it will be fun to watch!

Travel Bugs

Travel bugs are not prizes. They are the property of their owners and if possible we should respect their owners requests. The owners love to watch the journeys that their travel bugs go on. Therefore they should travel to another location at the earliest convenience of the finder. But, try and make sure that you move them where they wish to go to or at least in the right direction. For example, if you pick up a Travel Bug and it wants to travel North, don't move it South just because you are geocaching South of where you found it the day before. It is perfectly okay to keep it a few extra days and move it North the next time you are going that way. Another way to make it more fun for the owners of Travel Bugs is to take pictures of them and post them on the TB page.

July 2004 we found a Travel Bug named Felix the Cat The mission was visit any cache that the owner could not visit, but especially to go to Europe. We emailed the owner saying that we were going to England in December, but that he probably didn't want to have his TB in our hands that long. His response was "Felix can wait". We took Felix all over New England posting pictures to the Bug page. About a month ago to our delight we found Felix the Cat # 5. #5 is now on a similar journey around New England including pictures of vistas and historic locations for Bo Leggs to see and live the experience. Bo Leggs is a geocacher in Kansas that doesn't get to cache very often, but gets to see the world through the eyes of his Travel Bugs. As a result of taking Felix to other caches and posting pictures we have developed a pen pal relationship with Bo Leggs. It is really cool that we have become friends because of his Travel Bugs.

We would also like to mention a geocacher in New England that has logged over 1900 Travel Bugs not including Jeeps and Geocoins. His geocaching handle is Feathers and he is a legend in these parts. Feathers is a remarkable person with a great memory. He somehow seems to know the name, mission and cache location of hundreds of Travel Bugs at a time. He travels from cache to cache trying to move Travel Bugs along on their current mission. Not being selfish about how many caches he finds he revisits caches just to pick up and move TB's.

Now a quick piece of advice for gecocachers that are thinking of releasing a Travel Bug. Laminate a description of the TB's mission and attach it to the Travel Bug or put the TB in a plastic bag with a print out of what you what you would like the Travel Bug to do. This makes it easier for the finder of the cache to decide whether they should pick up the Travel Bug or leave it for the next person.

Have fun with your travel bugs and make them fun for other owners!!

What is a good hide?

What is a good hide?

Well in reality a good geocache hide is one that the finder enjoys and has fun finding. If you asked different cachers what kind of cache they enjoyed you would get a variety of answers. The variety of answers is probably due to "flow". Flow is determined by the challenge vs your abilities. This is true in every life endeavor. If something is too challenging vs your abilities the experience ends in frustration. If the challenge is not up to your abilites the experience is boring. But find the right balance between the two and you are in the "flow" having fun!!

In our opinion a good geocache to find is one that is rated in the 5 - 7 range based on multipling the terrain rating vs the difficulty rating. In other words a 1 - 5 or a 5 -1 are good caches. On the other end of the spectrum a 2 - 3.5 or a 3.5 - 2 are good caches. What we are saying is that if you walk for several miles over tough terrain, canoe to the cache, or do rock climbing it should be an easy find. I am sure every experienced geocacher gets frustrated when they hike a couple of miles and have to search for hours for a cleverly hidden micro when there are many appropriate hiding spots for a full size cache. The more devious hides are more appropriate if the hike is a short easy one. If the cache is a devious hide, insure that your coordinates are dead on. This may take several readings from several days and if you can, use WAAS. Everybody likes good coordinates for all caches, but they should be a must for high difficulty caches.

There is an exception to the 5 - 7 rule. And that is a puzzle cache. These can be great fun, but in most cases the high difficulty rating is expeienced in the comfort of your home. Sometimes over a period of days giving great enjoyment and accomplishment. The second part - the actual finding - can be a high terrain rating yielding yet another time of enjoyment and accomplishment. Some good examples of these are Smith's Chase and Smith's Identity hidden by TheWilkens.

Our personal favorites vary. On a good day we like a few long hikes mixed with some easier hides at historic places. This makes for a full day of geocaching with a lot of stories for the way home. And many logs when you get home.

In conclusion. If you are hiding a cache you should consider flow, the combined ratings, what you want people to see and strive to get the best coordinates possible. When you venture out to find some caches, pick ones that match your abilities so that they are challengining enough for you to go with the "flow" and have fun!!!