New Cachemobile

Yesterday we picked up a 2006 Jeep Wrangler Golden Eagle limited edition. In addition to some other cars we had a 1989 Jeep Wrangler. The old Jeep was a great vehicle for dirt roads, but wasn't much fun getting to them. The new Jeep is really comfortable for both. It is Dark Beryl Green with a black top and gold wheels. A really nice vehicle. We are having a bit of a dilemna though regarding the hood decal. It has a decal of an eagle that you can either save or have installed by the dealer. Because it is a limited edition it probably should be put on and it does look cool, but we are just not sure of what to do. So we are going to ask our readership of their thoughts on whether to have the decal put on the hood or not. We could not find a direct link to the picture of the decal so ask that you go Jeep Golden Eagle page and click on "Golden Eagle hood decal" in the 2006 Jeep Wrangler Golden Eagles feature box. You can post a comment or send an email with your thoughts.

We will post the results of the poll and our decision in the coming days.

Thanx
Mike and Barb

Waymarking review

Grounspeak the organization that maintains The Geocaching Website has a new website called Waymarking. The new site is dedicated to finding places whether physical or virtually that might be of interest to people. It seems to be a place to search for what were once labelled as virtual and locationless geocaches. We wonder how popular this will end up being. Although many geocachers say that the numbers are not important, most discuss numbers on a regular basis. Waymarking does not have a log of how many waymarks have been found. The site also has many categories that are pretty much worthless. There is a category for McDonald's Restaurants. Do you really need to grab your GPS to find a McDonald's? There is another category for blogs. You all know that we have a passion for writing and reading blogs, but do you expect us to hunt down blog writers with our trusty Garmin Vista?

There really is not much on the site yet. For our zip code there are two postings. One is for a funny mailbox. The other is for my personal blog. Maybe we should run out to see just how funny that mailbox really is.

Personally we liked the old system of virtuals and locationless geocaches. Yes they probably were not regulated as well as they should have been on Geocaching.com, but it was a one stop place to download coordinates of cool places to visit. The locationless category made an awareness of your surroundings as you drove to other geocaches in the hopes that you would spot something that you could log. We have heard the arguement that locationless caches were too easy and were being used by people to rack up their numbers. If done right the locationless caches took the same amount of time to complete as regular gecocaches because of the required pictures and a well written log including a good description and the history of the object in question.

As avid geocachers and loyal fans of Groundspeak we will keep our eyes on the Waymarking site in hopes that Groundspeak will turn it into something of value, but at this time it is not high on our list of websites to visit.

Geocache hides by state

I was curious as to how many geocaches have been hidden in each state. I did a state by state look up of geocaches. These could include events, virtuals, locationless and even archived caches, but it should give a realitive idea of geocaches in each state. The results are sorted alphabetically.

Alabama 1973
Alaska 739
Arizona 3819
Arkansas 1246
California 24266
Colorado 2655
Connecticut 1188
Delaware 278
District of Columbia 66
Florida 7473
Georgia 2842
Hawaii 440
Idaho 3360
Illinios 3517
Indiana 4289
Iowa 1486
Kansas 1478
Kentucky 2195
Louisiana 875
Maine 943
Maryland 1700
Massachusetts 2235
Michigan 4076
Minnesota 2808
Mississippi 891
Missouri 1743
Montana 1025
Nebraska 1250
Nevada 2300
New Hampshire 847
New Jersey 1985
New Mexico 1407
New York 5120
North Carolina 4077
North Dakota 229
Ohio 3835
Oklahoma 1723
Oregon 5862
Pennsylvania 5122
Rhode Island 305
South Carolina 1164
South Dakota 478
Tennessee 4602
Texas 10603
Utah 4737
Vermont 529
Virginia 2860
Washington 6682
West Virginia 662
Wisconsin 3457
Wyoming 726

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night

We would like to extend a Happy Holiday wish to all of our friends.

AND

If you are out doing some urban geocaching over the holiday and see this guy



RUN AWAY!!

Redirect

Hi All -

While looking to see if my post for the new URL was picked up by Technorati I saw a similar post by Blogforret. His post detailed how to automatically redirect readers to the new URL. So if you wonder why the page refreshed, that is why. Please let me know if you have any problems with the new home for this blog.

New Home

Hi Folks -

I wasn't sure whether I would like blogging or would be able to find enough things to write about so I took the easy and free route and started out using Blogger. Well I am enjoying this so much or should I say am obssessed (much like geocaching) with this hobby that I decided to move this blog to it's own server and domain name. I thank all of you for your support. I would also like to thank Sonny at Squible for his help in moving the blog. I am hoping that the new home will help me to make this blog better including a place to put up an MP3 for a podcache.

Thanx everybody!
Mike and Barb

Geocaching Software

M-T-P has posted a software reveiw for several geocaching software packages. They include Geocaching Swiss Army Knife (GSAK), CacheMate, CacheMaps, Google Earth and GPX to Google Map Creator. I have played with Google Earth, but have never used the others. I think I will give GPX to Google Map Creator a try. If you would like to read about these packages go to Adventures in Geocaching

Birthday Present

Yesterday was my birthday. And guess what my daughter bought me? Yep - you got it - SmartWool socks. Has she been reading my blog?? :-)

Puzzle Caches

Most geocachers either love puzzle geocaches or hate them. We fall into the category of puzzle cache lovers. We don't always figure them out. We also have a stack of ones we have solved and have not logged yet as they are fair distance from home.

The Wilkens have hidden a new one in their Smith's series. The series is one that only a handful of Connecticut geocachers solve. We have no idea how many people attempt them. The newest in the series is called Smith's Bounty. There are four puzzles that you have to solve online. Each of the four points you to a container in the woods that have additional clues. That is about all we can say for sure at this time as we have yet to solve any of the online puzzles. We have no idea what The Wilkens have in store for us. After spending the best part of the day working on the online puzzles we don't expect to be using our snowshoes to find the final. We can say that we have had fun geocaching without turning on the trusty Garmin Vista, leaving the house or logging any smileys.

Geocaching Quick Links

While searching for geocaching blogs on Technorati something caught my eye on the del.icio.us links on the right of the page.

It is tagged Geocaching.com Quick Links. It is a great tool to link you to a variety of pages on Geocaching.com. The links include searching for waypoints, travel bugs, users profiles/emails/hides/finds, pocket queries, bookmarks, forums, and several mapping links. This URL now resides in our favorite list and is what we use when we are going to do most anything that involves geocaching. It provides one click navigation to virtually anything you want to do on the Geocaching Website.

We highly recommend that you give it a try!
Mike and Barb

A sense of freedom!

We have used our snowshoes while geocaching for about a year now and always enjoyed it. I always felt free while snowshoeing. Last weekend we hunted some geocaches on snowshoes. The snow was perfect! About ten inches of newly fallen virgin powder. After finding the second cache I had a revelation. Hiking on bare ground you constantly have to look at the trail so that you don't trip over a rock or a tree root. This is not the case while snowshoeing with a fair amount of snow as the snowshoes compress the snow over these obstacles. This allows you to look around and enjoy nature even more than usual. I wonder if that is why I feel so free on snowshoes?

What to buy that special geocacher for the holidays

We all know the best gifts are something you wouldn't buy for yourself. You are probably thinking that the best gift would be a new Garmin 60CS GPS or a pair of Tubbs snowshoes. Nope - buy that special person one or several pairs of socks. Thats right folks - socks! I say this because two years ago I picked up a business colleague at the airport and she asked me what was the best thing I got for Xmas. I told her socks.

A really good pair of hiking socks can cost between $15 and $20. You can even buy Gore-Tex socks for as much $40. Who buys these for themselves? Not many. That makes them a good gift. I recommend Smartwool. They wick any sweat away, are warm and also have a cushioned sole. I recommend that you go to Eastern Mountain Sports as the staff there is very helpful, knowledgeable and recommend what meets the needs of the person.

Keeping your feet dry

In snow it is essential that you wear gaiters to keep your feet dry while out geocaching. This is true whether you are hiking or snowshoeing as the gaiters will stop snow from getting into your boots. The gaiters will also help to keep the bottom or your pants dry in deep snow. They are probably available at most good sporting goods stores. We bought ours last year at Eastern Mountain Sports when we purchased our snowshoes.

And now for a real tip. I always thought Barb was crazy, but have given in to her eccentric idea and now call it genius. I learned this while at an geocaching event a few months ago. It was raining and my feet were soaked. I had a spare pair of socks, but was stuck with wet boots. Barb smiled and said "why don't you try my plastic bag trick"? So I took off my boots and socks, put on the dry socks and then gave in and put plastic bags over my socks before putting on my wet boots. I was shocked, but my feet were dry despite the wet boots for the rest of the day. Now I always put plastic bags over my socks before putting on boots if there is any chance my feet will get wet. We use the plastic bags from grocery stores. They keep your feet dry and we are helping the environment by keeping them out of landfills.

Review of Tubbs Adventure Series Snowshoes

We got about 7 or 8 inches of snow today. So tomorrow will be snowshoe day. The first of the year! Last year for Barb's birthday I got her snowshoes, which meant that I had to get some too. We chose the Tubbs Adventure series.

They are modertely priced in the $150 to $210 range depending on the size. The size is determined by how much you weigh. This is becacuse to "float" on the snow you have to have a snowshoe big enough to displace your weight. If you are at the top of a weight range you should purchase the larger shoe. The Tubbs Adventure snowshoes are not anything like the snowshoes your grandfather would have used. These have anodized aircraft-grade aluminum frames, a plastic like decking, aluminum crampons and articulated bindings. The articulated bindings are useful for going up and down hills. It is almost like walking up or down a set of stairs. They also aid in ridding snow from building up on the decking. You can buy snowshoes for less money, but we suggest spending at least this much on snowshoes to make it great experience. There are other higher priced models that you can buy that have faster securing binding systems, are a little lighter and more rugged. The Tubbs Adventure series is meant to be used for easy to moderate terrain. They also have a special womens model that has a slightly different profile. When wearing these snowshoes it is not much different than regular hiking.

We found quite a few geocaches while wearing them last year and look forward to many more finds this winter. We bought ours at EMS, our favorite store. The staff is extremely good at answering questions and suggesting the best equipment to meet your needs. We highly recommend these snowshoes for everybody!

Mike and Barb

Lame Micros

This is for you if you ever been out geocaching and had a hard time finding a micro.



Quite some time ago we saw this cartoon and loved it. Now that we have a blog we figured we would like to share it with others. After a long search we found a copy of it on Today's Cacher. We then emailed Pyewacket and she graciously gave us permission to post it on our blog.

Thanx Tee
Mike and Barb

Travel Bugs Statistics

Last night we attended the monthly geocaching get together called Central CT Cachers' Night Out. It was fun to see many new faces and meet up with old friends. The night's festivities included the announcment of two milestones, Zingerhead reaching the 1000 find milestone and Feathers logging his 2000th Travel Bug Dog Tag. Zingerhead was given a plaque for his accomplishment. Feathers had a Travel Bug called Feathers launched in is honor.

Now how about some statistics? You are all probably wondering why this blog has so many statistics on it. Well I am an engineer and engineers like numbers. Before the telling you about the TB stats I would like to share an engineering joke with you so that you can understand what drives an engineer:

An engineer was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess." He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week." The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want." Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess that I'll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?" The engineer said, "Look I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girl friend, but a talking frog......that's cool."

Okay now for the stats. MaxB on the River from Michigan has logged 3,761 Travel Bugs, Jeeps and assorted coins. Feathers from Massachusetts sits in second place with 2,430. Now thats a lot of Travel Bugs!! If you would like to see the top 25 Travel Bug finders you can visit Robley's Cache Stats.

If you are up to some more engineering jokes you can visit our new Jest Joking Around Blog

Podcaching

While searching through blogs on Geocaching we found a cool new twist to geocaching. It is called Podcaching. Basically this consists of downloading a Podcast with directions to the geocache. We listened to a couple of these that are done by Podcacher. It is a bit like Letterboxing except instead of reading instructions to find the cache you can listen to them on an IPod or a portable CD player. We are thinking about using this technique for a future cache. Our thought is to find a historic location and give geocachers a tour of the area much like when you visit a museum and rent the audio tour.

Podcacher also has a regular Podcast on geocaching. We also listened to a couple of these and were amazed at how professional the broadcast was. It was like listening to a real radio station. The quality of the audio was great and was combined with music clips making it even more entertaining. The discussions combined some of Sonny and Sandy's geocaching experiences, tips on geocaching, a reference to Walden Run (a New England legend) and even a phone call to Professor Geogeek on how Global Positioning works. All in all we thought this was a fun experience and expect to listen to their Podcasts on a regular basis. We highly recommend all of you do the same!

Cool Map Site

I found a cool mapping site while looking at Podcacher's blog site. Although Frappr doesn't directly relate to geocaching it does have some interesting mapping capabilities. Frappr allows you save your favorite places or to invite others to show their location. Your favorite places can be restaurants, stores, clubs or your favorite geocache locations. I would like to invite all my friends and readers of this blog to go to The Jestcaching Frappr Link and create a thumb tack of your location so I can see where all of you reside.

Back from London

Although the intent of this blog is not to tell stories about our caching adventures, I decided to let everyone know that I am back from London and will be posting some more valuable content soon.

Now about the trip: Got there early Monday morning and the best way to beat jet lag is to stay awake as long as you can to try and get your body convinced that it is in the new time zone. What better way to do this than to go geocaching. So with the trusty Garmin Vista in hand I set off. First it was a tube ride to the St Paul's area. Last year I had done most of the caches in this area, but needed to return as I had three travel bugs that wanted to go to Europe and there are very few geocaches large enough in the London area for trading TB's. So I returned to Last Delivery to drop off Felix #5, Percy and Mother Time. While there I got to meet Nick the Gardener. He said that the cache gets a lot of traffic. I told him that it was one of the few geocaches in the area that was big enough for Travel Bugs. I then showed him the three I was bringing over from The States and told him what their missions were. When I said that Mother Time wanted to see Big Ben he gave me a quick history of the clock. He said that in reality Big Ben is named after the bell in the clock tower.

After that it was off to find some caches. Not a real successful day of finds, but got to see lots of history. One of the geocaches I found was St Etheldreda's church that was built around 1250 AD. Then went around the corner for a good English Bitter at the oldest pub in London. I can't give any more details than that as it is a Virtual Cache location. The next spot was a DNF due to heavy muggle activity at St Alphage Gardens. This is the spot where the first bomb fell in WWII. Next it was a tour of Hyde Park where I found 3 out of 6. While in the area I checked out the famous Wellington Arch. The last cache found was Green Park 3. Green Park is where Buckingham Palace is located.

Thanks to all the Londoners that placed these geocaches to give me some history lessons and to help ward off jet lag.