We've Been (and Are) Honored!

I returned to the office this morning (following a couple days working from home) to a package from MiGO. Drie and I were honored at their Winter Social with the "MiGO Silver Geocoin Award." The award package contained a couple of silver MiGO Geocoins and a certificate which read:

"The Board of Directors of the Michigan Geocaching Organization Would like to honor
Darryl and Drie – DarrylW4 and Firefly03
With the silver coin award for 2013.
Congratulations, and Thank You.

Today we would like to honor two podcasters. These cachers are not just known in Michigan, but all around the world as the hosts of, or involved in, several podcasts – Cache-A-Maniacs, Cachers of the Round Table, Geocaching Podcast, and GeoGearHeads. The original Cache-A-Maniacs series was launched in 2007. After 260 episodes, the show was retired in 2011 with having 'a candid, uncut, and irregular interview' with 250 members of the Geocaching community. Cachers of the Round Table featured 36 episodes running from 2007 through July 2011. Their new venture, GeoGearHeads, has produced 58 episodes to this date. The Platinum Level Earth Cache Masters are also known for hosting first class events such as Cachercon 2010 and the Coffee, Coins, and Sigs events. Speaking of coins – they have over 1000 geocoins adventuring throughout the wild. All this and they still made time to find over 5100 caches. The Board of Directors is honored to award Darryl and Drie (DarrylW4 and Firefly03) the Silver Coin Award for furthering the sport of geocaching, acting as goodwill ambassadors through their podcasts, geocaching blogs, and events."

Thank you to the MiGO Board. We are honored to have even been considered for such an award for our geocaching efforts! We also look forward to activating the Silver GeocoinThese special silver geocoins are numbered but not trackable but we will be adding it to our collection of coins special to us which we carry to events for discovery. Catch us at one of those events for a look through those coins and an opportunity to discover those which are trackable.

Repurposing Old Electronics for Events

This weekend I setup an older iPad with as cheap, easy digital signage for Firefly03 to use at a local craft show. These are simply images copied to the iPad's Camera Roll then displayed through the iPad's "Picture Frame" mode. It's pretty cheap all the way around, especially if you already have the hardware. This technique could work very well for all sorts of Geocaching events. At our Cachercon event a couple years ago we setup a PC (connected through the hotel's WiFi) to mine tweets about the event and display them for the attendees as they checked in. Many event photographers will use a wireless card for their cameras to send images to a laptop projecting images from the day's activities while they're still shooting. This type of digital signage can be entertaining and informative. There are so many great ways to use these devices to supplement a caching event.

For those interested in attempting the slide show option on an iPad as I did, here's all you'll need to do:

1. Create images at either 1024 x 768 px for the iPad/iPad 2/iPad mini, or at 2048 x 1536 px for the iPad 3rd or 4th Generation. Make sure they're all the same orientation as you'll not want to be rotating the tablet during the show. For mine I chose tall to better fit the subject.
2. Transfer the images into Albums on the iPad. This can be done in a variety of ways, most commonly using iTunes. For mine I used DropBox as it made the process pretty simple and didn't require syncing (which in this case the iPad wasn't syncing to my account). For that I simply copied the images to the Camera Roll, then added them to a new Album on the iPad.
3. Configure "Picture Frame" as a way to limit user interference. Go to the "Settings" app and select "Picture Frame" from the top level menus on the left. Select the "Dissolve" transition for digital signage ("Origami" might look cool if you're showing just photos). Set the "Show Each Photo For" to at least 5 seconds if you'll have text on the slides, but you might need longer delays between image changes. Turn off "Zoom in on Faces" as this might interfere with the images you create as signs. "Shuffle" can be nice but means the order of the slides will change. Finally select which ablums will be included in the "Picture Frame" show.
4. Go to the lock screen and tap the slide show icon. This locks out the slide show options and doesn't exit with a tap of the home button. I'd also suggest setting a passcode as that will prevent guests from exiting the and playing with the iPad.

How have you repurposed old or existing electronics for Geocaching Events?

Only Once Every 1,461 Days

Recently many Geocachers have taken on the challenge of filling in their caching calendars. We started paying attention to our caching calendar about halfway through the year and have done well grabbing a geocache on the few calendar days on which we'd had none (though the four winter months, especially January, are the tough ones with fewer days we'd found caches). While this has forced us to get out for a cache or two when we'd otherwise wouldn't, it has been a little like work and not necessarily for all cachers. Whether you're up for it or not, take notice that this year will be the only chance to find a cache on February 29th till 2016. The 29th of February falls on a Wednesday this year but there are about a hundred events already scheduled. As you're looking forward to the year ahead, maybe take a moment to mark on your calendar or add it to the smartphone, and make plans to attend an event and grab a cache on this unique day.

The Free Event That Costs Hundreds

The original concept of Coffee, Coins, & Sigs was to be an event costing us nothing to host. We were working with a local coffee shop to host at most a couple dozen cachers and they'd sell some drinks. Unfortunately the "will attend" logs for that first event rapidly grew too large for the local coffee shops and we had to move at the last minute to a rented facility and supply the refreshments ourselves. We spent something like $500 on that first event and did receive something in the neighborhood of $100 in donations. Since then we've been able to plan for the bigger crowds and get in about the $200 or lower mark. Usually we've been able to find a partner in a park service wiling to donate  the room meaning we only need to supply the refreshments (this last time only cost about $140). We even once found a facility with a coffee bar to rent the room freeing us from the management of the refreshments. Unfortunately there can be a cost to hosting successful event concepts so it's worth thinking about when you're planning that next great event idea.

Caching & Commerce

One of the best things about Geocaching is its low cost. That is, it's low cost once you've bought the GPSR, paid for the internet access, maybe a year's subscription to Geocaching.com, the gallons of gas you'll burn, the extra wear on the vehicle, perhaps the public transit, the geocoins, pathtags, containers, batteries, and, well, yes -- there are many expenses to Geocaching. It does get us out and visiting new locations we might not have visited before and we like that it does. We're a small group using the world as our game board but we're not the only ones using it. We rely on the support from land owners to allow the community access. Many times that's simply driven by a desire to have more visitors, other times it's used to draw us in for a visit. We've seen and heard many stories of small community supporting Geocaching as they've seen an economic value from the visiting Geocachers. Whether you stop into a local gas station for a water or stay the night at a hotel, mention that you're in the area visiting for Geocaching. It's a small thing but you might be surprised how far it can go to support our favorite past time. Especially when there's a cache on their property the business owner is happy to know they're getting a return on that little effort and inconvenience. It's another way we as Geocachers can give back to the communities we visit. Perhaps their employees might remember it when they're about to dial up the local law enforcement on that strange person lifting the lamp skirt at 1:00AM.

Tagging Cachemobiles

I was just out walking around the morning of Geowoodstock VIII, wasting some time before Firefly03 got up, and spotted a Jeep Wrangler in the hotel parking lot with a plastic praying mantis on the hood. Well I figured that it had to be a Geocacher since that's just a little too funny for most "normal" people to try. So I wandered around to the back to discover a travel bug tag. Of course they're cachers! That deserved a coin for sure. So I came back with a stack of our personal 2006 mini-coins (yup, we still had a couple dozen left in reserve) and left one of Firefly03's coins in the grubby little paws of that bug before grabbing the tracking number off the back. That tripped off the mission to tag any car I spotted in the parking lot with any identifiable geocacher markings. In all there were nine cars with a total of ten trackable magnets or stickers, then another four with other markings from decals to flags. Most of those got a DarrylW4 2006 mini-coin with a note written on the activation sticker "See you on the farm" (as in Remlinger Farms where the event is being held). My hope was that many of them would come look for me during Geowoodstock for some cool encounters. Once I returned to the room to log the ten numbers and build my list of cachers to watch out for myself, I discovered that a few of them were cachers I'd wanted to connect with that day anyhow. This will be interesting.

Well it ended up a much busier day than I'd expected. We arrived early and I headed straight for the first tent, a vendor with whom I wanted to connect before the event opened to get some time with their new device. By the time it opened I was headed a little further down the vendor tents stopping several times talking with listeners of the podcasts and/or followers of my Twitter stream. Three hours later I'd only made it about half-way through the vendors but picked up TheBadCop and LittleCopper. By that point it was time for lunch and the crowds at the booth were pretty intense. As of then, none of those I tagged in the parking lot had appeared (but I'd finally connected with several of the others I'd wanted to run into for a minute or two along the way.) By the time I'd made it to the panel discussion on Social Media by LookoutLisa of Cache Advance, with Sonny of Podcacher, TheBadCop, Eric from Groundspeak, and I, there hadn't been enough available vendor time to get much more than a cursory look through their booths. I had though spent time at the Podcacher tent and met with many more listeners, Twitter followers, and finally at least two of the folks I tagged. More came out of the woodwork though at the CITO following Geowoodstock VIII, and at the Geocoin event after that. Most of the time that last event was underway I had been out with TheBadCop again recording an interview for his show "Caching in the Northwest" about how a Midwest USA cacher found the Pacific Northwest's caching. Still I made short trips into the hotel ballroom and people passed us doing several of the caches in the area. I lost count of the people who thanked me for the coins on their cars, but I'd guess it was at least a third. We really had fun with it and I hope to do it again at the next mega-event we attend.

Time to Move On

I was reminded this weekend that there are sometimes good reasons to call off the hunt for a cache early. The first reason was for these very cute baby birds we spotted about 15 feet from ground zero, so we steered clear of them (aside from taking their picture of course). It's not worth risking harm to the natives (aside from ticks and mosquitoes perhaps -- I really dislike them) if we can avoid it. In this cause the cache was just the other side of ground zero and we found it with much more searching. The other reason we were remixes ofthis weekend was for personal safety. With rain all week, but of the grass was holding water on Saturday, but the mud was pretty terrible. Naturally we went through the mud for a few finds, but the near the end we had a reminded of why we need to pay attention. Drie slid but didn't fall down a hill using the mud as the lubricant under her feet. We found the cache and despite some more stumbles among the group, all made it back in good condition. It certainly wasn't worth the risk of someone really hurting themselves to have one more smiley, and a micro in the woods at that. Both served as reminders that sometimes it's just best to move on to the next find.

There are of course many more reasons, many I haven't experiences in my limiting caching. Please post some of those here so we have more suggestions for what to watch out for beyond these two.

-- Posted From My iPhone

What We'll Do For a Smiley

Sometimes the amount of effort we'll go through just to claim a find astounds me. What's best are the smiling faces surrounding those finds. We had the chance do caching with Drie's family (her parents, brother, sister-in-law, and their two children) which has become the default activity when we visit these non-cachers. We hit the trail in a local state park to find a couple caches with the kids and they couldn't get enough. We spilled out to a couple of micros on the way back and they really enjoyed the hunt for those as well. They especially enjoyed hunting for the last one which was more difficult than we expected and nearly gave up on the hunt (but arent those some of the most rewarding finds for any of us?). Sadly they weren't with us for what was the most challenging terrain of the weekend, a cache at the river down about a 12 foot incline. With little room for more than one person I slipped (literally) my way down to the rock outcropping and collected the cache. The tough part was getting myself back up. I'd passed Drie the iPhone, PN-40, and sunglasses before I slid down and she uses my iPhone to get video as I scrabbled out. All that for a terrain 4 cache, and I would say it was worth the effort. The only harm was a little mud on my jeans and hands. For that I get a smiley at Geocaching.com, some silly iPhone video, the photo above, and the memory of a simple but very challenging find. This is why we cache.

-- Posted From My iPhone

Update: Here's a link to a clip from that video.

Slow December

With the month of December coming to a close I was dismayed to see how few caches we did. I suspect this has been our slowest month in years with only five finds (one event and four over the three-day Christmas weekend). Between the chaos of the holidays and me getting sick, it's really prevented much caching. I guess the silver lining though is that it wraps out the year with a total of only 1,105 finds which should be a little easier to break next year than say 1,200. Now we'll start the year with a clean slate and an event to kick off the geocaching right.

No Really, It's NOT About the Numbers (Part 2)

We completed the Huron-Clinton Metroparks Geocaching Adventure 2009 series yesterday following only about three hours of caching. That provided us four finds from the series, and only one outside for a total of five finds for the day. Despite the short day, we were still pretty beat. It was a terrific adventure, and could have been completed in a single day with an early start and late finish. My favorite thing was visiting each of the parks and seeing what has changed (or stayed the same) at each since my last visit. Now we need a series like this from one of the other area park systems. :-)

No Really, It's NOT About the Numbers

Sometimes it's really not about the numbers, but in completing a task. The Huron-Clinton Metroparks Geocaching Adventure 2009 published this week opening up thirteen new geocaches, one in each of their parks. Only eleven of the caches are used toward the challenge with the other two being "bonus" caches. The variety of hides placed by many different Cachers each provide two words or phases which are used to complete the crossword puzzle. Yesterday's mission was to hit as many of those eleven park caches as we could and hopefully complete the series in a single weekend. It's quite the task considering that many of the parks are about an hour drive from the next closest park. We did very well on our attempt having completed seven of the parks in roughly eleven hours with a few extra caches in some of the parks. Yesterday's efforts found;

• MGA9-Metro Beach-Birdwatching (GC1PGWT)
• MGA9 - Wolcott Mill - Stone Quarry (GC1P1ZC)
• MGA9 - Stony Creek - The Osprey Project (GC1PG9B)
• MGA9-Indian Springs–Farm Trail (GC1PGA7)
• MGA9-Kensington-The Ole Barn (GC1PP0B) FTF!
• MGA9-Huron Meadows-Missing Coordinates (GC1QBHB)
• MGA09-Hudson Mills-Leapfrog@TheMills (GC1QN52)
  

All were good caches and varied in hides (Tradional, Multi, Unknown, and a Letterbox). Three of the hides will stick with me for sometime though.

The MGA9-Indian Springs–Farm Trail cache itself was a simple hide. What made it memorable was the bonus cache hidden for this park. Upon finding the MGA9 cache you were given instructions on finding the bonus cache. That took us into the park's new Environmental Discovery Center, a building we'd never been able to visit during its hours of operation. Today, thanks to this hider, we journeyed into the EDC and under its pond in what they call the "Pond Dome" (see the photo above). Another jewel we'd not have found without Geocaching.

Our first to find on MGA9-Kensington-The Ole Barn was completely unexpected and made possible only through an error in the formula posted originally to the cache page. Even then the math was a little more complicated than usual and keeping the order of operations straight made a difference of about a hundred feet and finding the cache or not. Two of us ran the numbers and came up with the two different answers. The first we attempted didn't follow the correct order of operations and had us poking through grass and weeds. We ran into TreePlanter after our find on this one and they'd made the same error in the math so we gave them the clue. They found the cache according to their logs so we're happy to have helped and saved them the headaches we'd gone through when working from the wrong puzzle (Bill of TeamLegend4 ending up in the mud). Again, this one took us to a new part of the park we'd not had the chance to explore.

The last find of the day was memorable for its container. I can't say much about MGA09-Hudson Mills-Leapfrog@TheMills without giving it away. It was a very cute, very bright hide.

Now we only have four park caches to finish:

• MGA9-Lower Huron-Catsville (GC1PQZ6)
  
• MGA9 - Willow - Anderdon (GC1PKYP)
• MGA9-Oakwoods-The Treaty of St. Mary's (GC1P51R)
• MGA9-Lake Erie-Winter Harvest (GC1QAPG)

Three of those four parks connect so it won't be as crazy as yesterday's run. Once done we'll have the satisfaction of having completed the challenge and visited nearly all of the Huron-Clinton Metroparks. It's very gratifying. So, back on the road to wrap this mission up. Wish us luck!

Some Virtual Caching

Early this morning I received a direct message from our Caching buddies TeamLegend4 looking to find at least 10 Virtual Geocaches today and asking if we'd like to join them. Of course we did want to join them, and how lucky we were to have decided to NOT do anything productive this weekend (we needed some downtime for fun and caching). A little over an hour later we met at their home and made our way to Detroit's Downriver area which is Virtual Cache heavy. This trip reminded me this much I enjoy that class of caches. These caches gave us a new view of that community, especially being that we're from the opposite end of town. They ended up finding their 10, plus an additional 4. Some were ones we had done while in the area early on a caching afternoon. We ended up with only 9. What a great way to spend a day.

-- Posted From My iPhone

Tracks in the Snow

Like so many parts of North America, we in Metro Detroit have been slammed with an unusual amount of snow over the last week. Its been cold (1°F this morning) and the forecast continues to change at least once per day, usually more. As of this morning's drive to work they're calling for warmer temperatures Wednesday and Thursday including some rain. At this point we have to much snow and temperatures far to cold to make it fun for Caching on Christmas Day (a recent tradition). But getting all that rain will lead to some substantial puddles and mud. So what will our tracks be like in the coming days? Will we have mud, snow, or should we call it and stay inside for the holiday? It looks like this will be coming down to the wire.

Getting Better

Well both Firefly03 and I came down with colds. This was a particularly nasty round which had us out of commission for more than a week. Unfortunately this interfered not only with work, but the production of Cache-A-Maniacs Episode 100, and the WWFM IV fell right in the middle of our cold spell. The good news is that I'm back at work now and the head is clearing, the brain unfogging, almost a week after the events. I'm back at the keyboard writing up the script for CAM100 and prepping to record tomorrow. With any luck I'll still have the show up for this weekend, but it doesn't seem likely (if nothing else, I have at least four hours of paperwork to wrap up before going into the office on Monday). At least we were both feeling well enough to make the WWFM IV - East Side Michigan (GC1GPXX) hosted by our caching friends Celtic Cache Trio. Even if it might have made the cold worse (which is very possible since I ended up going through three or four different colds over the seven calendar days I was in bed sleeping an average of some twenty hours daily) it was worth it to meet with many of our caching friends and grab photos of another one of these fun events (especially since I had committed to being the official Photographer for the group photo). I'm looking forward to being able to get out shooting and caching, but now and for the near future I need to focus on getting caught-up on the podcasts. In the meantime I'll be daydreaming of the friends, scenery, and enjoyment Geocaching provides.

Caching While Shooting

My buddy and I went out on a little shooting expedition Sunday. Not the kind with firearms, but rather Nikons with professional lenses. I had a new zoom lens to try (24-70 f/2.8) and he with his newly acquired (but previously owned) D700 body. While standing on the platform of the Lapeer Depot, I had the urge to pop open CacheBuddy on the iPhone and see if there were caches nearby. Sure enough there were, and I had parked about 50 feet from one. So before I even pulled out the camera I pulled out the cache bag. Just through CacheBuddy and Google Maps on the phone, I'd casually found one and went about my shooting.

We made a quick stop at the local fast food joint for some hot beverages (it was just colder in Lapeer than we expected) and headed out for a Virtual Cache I'd spotted downtown, this time using a combination of the Geocaching app, Google Maps, and CacheBuddy. I found that I preferred looking for the caches in the area through Geocaching app (it had the distance in the list), but then switched CacheBuddy to look-up the cache descriptions. We successfully found that virtual, I sent the owner the required information through the Geocaching.com e-mail form, then logged the cache right from the phone. In all it was much too difficult, but very handy considering that I skipped the GPS completely that day and ran only off the iPhone.

We ended up providing much amusement for the locals at that virtual cache though. The photo above was taken with the vendors and patrons of the farmers market looking on and giggling. So Photographers are more amusing than Geocachers. That's probably the reason that we use the photography as a cover so often!

Casual Geocaching?

With Drie (Firefly03) visiting friends and family for a long weekend, I decided to do some "casual Geocaching" and photography Saturday. The original plan had been to go shooting (photos) with a buddy, but that fell through when his plumbing project took a horrible turn and he needed to stay to fix it. As a sat that morning getting the GSPRs (both the Oregon 300 and the GPSMap 60CSx) ready and the cameras packed, the phone bleeped off new cache publications within about seven miles. So I loaded up with the GPSRs through the Garmin Communicator plug-in and "Send to GPS" button on the cache page (I had both units connected via USB and switched via the pop-up -- very fast way to load the new caches) and took off. The first attempt was a bust as both unit pointed to the curb of the loading area and I had no clue what I was looking for. The next attempt was across the street though -- an older cache I'd been wanting to hit to clear it from the PQ. That was a breeze. The next FTF in that same series was successful as well, and now that I knew what to look for, the rest should be easier too. On to the third attempt, but of a different series and hider. This was in a park with a few people engaging in practice for various sports. The first time was within view of the baseball and basketball facilities, and the basketball facilities were being used by a group of teens more interested in what others around them were up to than their game. As I was really the only other one there, they seemed intent to pay attention to what I was doing. So I busted there and on the other in that park, perhaps to come back a little later when more people could offer better cover. The next was a cache in that first series again, and a breeze to locate. The final attempt though I happened to pull into the closed business just as the building's owner was pulling in to show the building to someone. Argh! I chatted for a while and grabbed the business card to pass onto my boss, but being that its a restaurant and we're looking for an office...
Finally about 2:00PM I hit the road toward Port Huron where I'd planned to do some shooting. I kept the Oregon on the dashboard, zoomed out to show any new caches I might hit (we'd cleared out all the caches with easy access from the freeway last summer). Fortunately there were some so I jumped off a couple times to couple caches. I busted after spending about half-an-hour in search of a multi though in a park with six new hides. By the time I'd given up on that it was late enough that I had to abandon the search and head out to Port Huron. First stop was Marysville, and there happened to be cache on the dock of the first location I'd planned to shoot today. I loaded up the cameras and arrived at the location of the cache to find a couple amorous teens sitting on the cache. No worries -- I'll shoot some photos till they wander off. More than half-an-hour and they continued their activities without sign of moving or halting. Having run out of things to shoot, I ventured up to Desmond Landing, then to the Lightship Huron. Neither one of those had caches of course, but they both have good opportunities for photos. Oddly, both had wedding parties and their Photographers shooting there. The opportunities for interesting photos otherwise were low, so I packed up and drove a little further north to find all the beach parks overflowing in Fort Gratiot. Far enough -- I'll head home and work on the photos I shot and log the caches. But there are a couple more caches to hit on the route home! So all told I'd found nine caches and shot about 8GB of photos. Not much on either account, but it was after all a casual, easy going day for both.

Young Green Heron In Flight

Here's a photo from an afternoon of caching. This green heron had been walking along the Rouge River as we were searching a bridge for the final stage of a multi-cache. He apparently didn't approve of us attempting to shoot some photos of him, so he flew up into the trees.

Still Busy...

Yesterday (Saturday, July 26, 2008) was the big switch over project at the office. I'm happy to report that it went more smoothly than we'd expected, though not without its share of issues. Fortunately I was out of there after a short 10hr day (the number of hours logged for the week was about 77) and had the chance to meet-up with some Cachers for dinner followed by a couple local cache finds. I'd love to say the project wrapped up that Saturday evening, but alas we discovered some more issues that I'll be adding to the list to start on Monday. While the milestone has been reached (moving the data from the old system to the new system and replacing some servers and workstations), there's still the chore of fixing these new issues that slipped through or didn't rank high enough to be addressed earlier. I'm sure with the company now running on the upgraded system I'll be getting many more reports, and many help desk calls. At least the major stress is over even if the long days are not. I'm hoping that this will all calm down and I'll have my time back in September as the weather improves for caching. Now I'm thinking about some weekend trips to the west side of the state too. Hmm...where to go...

Urban Exploration

Château de Mesen History by Tom Kirsch

I caught an article in Photojojo today (technically yesterday I guess since its after midnight) about Tom Kirsch's Opacity web site. In his free time he's Urban Explorer and Photographer who has been able to travel internationally to capture buildings in the twilight of their existence. Its a fascinating and depressing hobby that I'd love to try were I to have much more free time, and a little more daring. Its one of the aspects of Virtual Caches which helped to draw me into Geocaching. There are even some physical caches which brought us to places with foundations from long lost homes or factories. Perhaps they don't present the stunning subject that a rotting church would, but these are lost stories within a short drive of my home. On a rare occasion I'm able to locate information about them through a Google search or description on the cache page, but in most cases they remain a mystery. Perhaps with the prohibition of new Virtual Caches, I might decide yet to try a little Urban Exploration. Is anyone game to try with me?

Testing The Water

Finally we got out for some caching again this weekend!

It really started Saturday morning when four new caches were published about a half-hour drive from the apartment. I had just wrapped up a bunch of the errands for the morning and started on some of the chores when the phone bleeped new cache publishes. Well, I really didn't have anything going on aside from an interview at 3:00PM – about six hours away – and going on an FTF hunt would be research for next weekend's recording of the Cachers of the Round Table, right? According to the morning's weather report we were to be getting some storms rolling through, but they didn't expect those till closer to noon. So by the time I got there I should have about two hours to find a pair of traditionals and two more multi-caches, and there were several more caches in that park and some neighboring parks. I decided then to load up both the GPSMap 60CSx and the Colorado 400t (even going solo now I'm using both units so I have one for finding the cache then the second for the paperless functionality). The best way to accomplish that (and I had decided at that point there wouldn't be much of a point in going for the FTF since I was at least half-an-hour from the first fine) was to build a small Pocket Query centered on one of the new caches, set to run that day and delete itself. Then I ran down to the car and retrieved the Nüvi 200 to load up while the PQ ran and downloaded. By the time I returned the PQ had arrived and I loaded the 60CSx through MacCaching, directly copied the GPX file onto the 400t, and used the Garmin POI Loader to transfer the caches onto the Nüvi. So I packed up the units and loaded them, and myself, into the car and made my way out to Clinton Township. When I arrived at the park the lot was empty. Quickly the hope of an FTF returned and I quickly made my way to the closest newly published cache. After getting FTFs on the two new traditional and one of the two new multi-caches, I started to hear the thunder in the distance. I headed right back to the car, stopping for one cache near the car, and made it safely back to car before the rain set in (though I didn't finish loading up the car till the first drops hit). Thus ended my Saturday morning of geocaching, but the first attempt we'd had at getting out for more than a month.

The real fun though was on Sunday. When I woke Drie to get ready for the weekly family brunch, I mentioned that I wanted to blow off the Sunday chores and go out caching again. Of course she was game, so I dropped our buddies TeamLegend4 an e-mail to see if they were interested. Just before we walked out the door they e-mailed back and we were on for an afternoon of caching in Clinton Township. So we called them as we left the brunch and planned to meet at the same park just more than an hour from then and made way for home. We ran a new PQ, loaded up the units, grabbed the camera and water testing gear (for a few earthcaches), and headed back to Budd Park. TeamLegend4 arrived before us due to some unexpected construction delays, so they had the chance to hit the three new caches I'd hit the day before. As they were headed to the final stage of the multi, we were pulling in and prepping to cache. As they logged the final, we chatted and they shared that our hopes for the FTF on that final multi which hadn't been logged yet were very slim as there was another name in the logs from today (Sunday), but we had hopes of running into another cacher while on the trail. Sure enough we ran into Tek Trekkers at the final of GSS - Take a Walk (GC1E34B). Of course we chatted for a bit, and helped them find another cache in the park they'd been fighting with on previous visits to the park. We headed off for an earthcache followed by a couple more hides within the connecting Canal Park. This earthcache was pretty common for most of the earthcaches we've hit around Michigan which required a water sample to test the pH level. This however, required that we take a sample and wait fifteen minutes then provide a description of the sample (the above photo was taken as we waited). This gave us the opportunity to chat and play with our cameras before moving on to the physical caches in the park. After one DNF, we hit another cache where the a previous Cacher has not sealed the container well, so the contents (including the logbook) were soaked and starting to mold. I slipped in a piece of paper with my log on it, then attempted to log that we found it, and it needs maintenance through the WAP GC interface. Ugh! The WAP is down. So on the walk back I kept retrying the logs without much luck. Meanwhile, Bill used a phone-a-friend on the cache we'd just DNFed, and through a pretty good description of the location we determined that the cache was in fact not there. Oh well. Time for some munchies (and restroom) before our next batch of caches. But due to the insane construction on Groesbeck, we ate Burger King (BTW -- don't bother with the Apple Fries) and used their facilities before hitting the trail again.

Clinton Township has been a supporter of Geocaching for several years, hiding a new Parks Brochure Cache each year. The FTF prize is to have your photo on the cover of the next township parks brochure.

George George Memorial Park had been a golf course before being donated by the George family. The family donated the land and constructed the park in honor of their grandfather. The 30 acre park features two fountains, gardens, covered public pavilion, a playground, and walking trails.

Our next stop was another earthcache at a USGS Gage Station along Moravian Road. We had a good bit of luck actually here as the bridge was closed and Clinton Township has just opened the new George George Memorial Park (the new park is truly unbelievable). So we dropped the cars in the park's parking lot and walked over to the bridge. This earthcache required less work as the last had, but we spent nearly as much time enjoying the location. Then it was time to work our way back into the park for three more physical, another earthcache, and a virtual cache. The entire walk from the cars to the first cache we could only marvel at the beauty of this incredible park. We walked past a fountain that looked to have been built for the kids to play (though the signs prohibited entry into the fountains and water) with the cement sloping easily from walkway to fountain, and a little river passing behind the wall. Once we located the first cache in the bridal garden we signed the log as we took in the views. We still had four more caches to hit though, so down the trail we strode toward another physical cache. Another easy find, though we had some trouble due to the muggle traffic. So we had another earthcache to do which required two samples for pH testing. So we hit the first location, collected that sample, the required photos and moved on to the next traditional cache. Another quick find and we were off for the second water sample. A short walk along the riverbank, then an easy climb down next to a culvert and we had out second sample. Just one more cache (a virtual) and we will have completed all the caches in this park. We first needed a quick break at the restrooms where we enjoyed the air conditioning and drinking fountains. What an amazing park. After collecting the required information for the virtual, we grabbed the pH testing gear from the car and sat at the larger fountain out front to test both samples. For kicks, we collected a sample from the fountain as well, the whole time enjoying the cool mist blowing from the fountain. Being that it still wasn't 5:00PM and there were three more caches to find in Mill Race Park, we packed up and drove around to the entrance of the park. Alas we discovered no parking, and no real entrance at the coordinates. After further examination of the cache description we realized that it had been written before the George George Park's opening, and that we were to use the parking there and walk over the closed bridge to collect these finds. While Mill Race Park was a township park, it hadn't been maintained and consisted of mostly wild growth over a single path wandering through the woods. At the end of this path, the furthest cache in the park and the location of the old Franklin settlement, all signs long vanished. The only sign we found of human activity being a couple of discarded tractor tires aside from the overgrown dirt road and a few "No Hunting" signs near the entrance (though we found what we thought to be the original parking lot with a light near the road). We made quick work of the caches in this park and got out quickly as we were loosing light. A quick check as we exited and we didn't find find any ticks or other hitchhikers, so we headed out to the cars. We were exhausted from that short mile hike though and ready to head out for a shower and dinner. We parted ways and headed for the respective homes. Shortly after that Drie found a tick on her leg which prompted a call to TL4 notifying them of the presence of the nasty creatures. That didn't stop us from finally catching a virtual cache we kept missing along 16 Mile Rd. That made a total of fifteen caches from Noon to about 6:30PM without a single drive-up cache – a very pleasant total for an afternoon of caching. The real problem though was to come as we got to the e-mails and logging. Drie spent her time that evening collecting the information and e-mailing the cache owners of all the earth and virtual caches. My job was to take care of all the logging on Geocaching.com. Thanks to the problems with the WAP interface, that turned out to be a much nastier problem than I'd expected. One of the caches had been logged nine times, another four. Once I straighten out that mess, there were eight caches that didn't have any logs at all. After more than an hour-and-a-half we were finally finished and ready for a good night's rest. It was a much needed break from the heavy schedule we've been under the last several months.

The problem now being that we're anxious to play hooky again and go caching more often. But Friday we have an interview to record after work, Saturday we're recording episode 13 of Cachers of the Round Table, and Sunday we have the usual family brunch followed by another interview (though this time its hopefully a video interview in person). The following weekend is even more busy with a major project at the office taking both Saturday and Sunday. So when might we be able to get out for some more caching?