New look to Geocaching.com

Groundspeak updated the Geocaching website today, giving it a new look. It's seems ok to me, but I'm really mourning the photo gallery on the frontpage. It was my favorite thing to check out. I think that it motivated a lot of people to try and take interesting photos, in an effort to get on the frontpage. It also brought out a fun, human, adventurous feel for new and old cachers alike. :-(

On a good note, Groundspeak put out a cute video in preparation for the update. Thanks for the laugh!

"Click, Clack, Clatter, Clackety"

This was a cool experience, I may post a bit more detail about it when I can, and I'll post more pictures when I'm up to it. Click, Clack, Clatter, Clackety:

"I've wanted to do this cache for a while, but it's a bit off the beaten tracks and I haven't been able to bike the loop trail anymore like I used to. So I've put it off for a while.

We've been staying in a hotel for over a week, after our recent house fire. I've looked around to see if there was a cache within (reasonable) walking distance for me to go to, and this was the closest one. I finally decided to get out and do it tonight.

I didn't have a gps, so I looked at the maps and hoped they were accurate. I'm fortunate that they were spot on! I was able to make an easy find. :-)

I intended just to get out for a quick walk, but I ended up taking a while, it was such a beautiful evening. There was a storm on the edge of town, that I was worried would curtail my walk (I saw lightening when I was leaving the hotel), but it quickly faded away. The air was warm, despite the storm, although the wind picked up pretty hard towards the end of my walk.

I walked all the way down to the start of the art deco foot bridge across the Wenatchee River, and back. I saw a lot of neat things along the way: two wild kitties, a hawk, red wing blackbirds, lots of people going by on bikes and skateboards - one lady stopped and had a nice little chat with me, (heard) a marmot - who was upset at me for being too close to his area by the Wenatchee River, lots of pretty variations of the color green, flowering dogwoods, wild roses, a sea of grasses waving in the wind like waves of the ocean, beautiful cloud formations, and a gorgeous sunset.

Thank you for dragging me out of my hotel room for a little while. 8-D"

Late night date/caching adventure

My log for the cache, Kirkland Signature:

My husband and I snuck out of the house for a quick date, after putting the kiddos to bed. We got a couple yummy blizzards (remakes of a past mistake from the Dairy Queen 25 anniversary buy one get one for 25 cents), and wanted to find somewhere close by to park and eat them, with a nice view. All41 drove to this parking lot, because he knew there was a pretty view from there during the day. I laughed a bit, and told him it was nighttime, and that the view might not be as great. We got to the parking lot, and parked in one spot, but there was a bright sign in the way of a view. We moved, parked again, but there was a bush in the way. I will not tell you how many times we moved to try and get an uncluttered view of Wenatchee, but lets just say that there was one other vehicle in the parking lot, with a guy sitting in it watching, and he probably thought we were totally crazy. I just started laughing and laughing, and couldn't stop, which only spurred on my poor husband to try harder to find a good spot. We basically stopped trying after a while, and just sat and enjoyed our lovely dessert. :P

When we were through, I mentioned that there was a cache here that I hadn't been to, and that we had to do it right then. We have an iphone, so we used it to try and get to the correct spot, but unfortunately, it wouldn't narrow down, and showed our accuracy as being 100' or more. I took out the flashlight and fortunately, we found it within minutes. I felt a bit exposed, because there were still people working in the opposite corner of the parking lot, and I felt conspicious with my flashlight. The last time we went to a cache in this spot, years ago, a policeman stopped and questioned us. Fortunately, he knew about caching, so all was well. But since this time was at night as well, I was having flashbacks of having a police car show up. But all was quiet this night. 8D Patudle's police log, My police log.

Thanks for adding to our silly, little, adventurous date. :D

Geocaching History and Lost & Found Events

Ten years ago, on May 2, 2000, selective availability was turned off. The next day, Dave Ulmer placed the first cache, The Original Stash by the side of a road in the woods near Beavercreek, OR. Then he posted the coordinates for the cache to an usenet group. The cache was found within 2 days. At that time it was called a "stash", a "GPS Stash Hunt", but after a little while, they decided to call it a Geocache because of the possible negative connotations towards the word "stash".

Unfortunately, within a few months, the container was damaged by roadside mowing crews. A cacher found the remains, and wanting to preserve the history, placed another cache within 100', safely up the hill. The Un-Original Stash is still active today.

In 2003, an effort was underway to create a memorial plaque and tribute cache at the site of the original cache. Here is a Geocaching forum thread discussing this: MEMORIAL AT THE ORIGINAL GEOCACHE SITE. The dedication was attended by several geocaching enthusiasts, including Dave Ulmer. The ORIGINAL STASH TRIBUTE PLAQUE © cache is also still active today. It is one of the most sought after cache finds around the world, over 3,000 finds as of this post. I'm sure that number will jump up around Geowoodstock time, when thousands of geocachers will be visiting the NW.

Here is a youtube video with Dave Ulmer showing and discussing his first hide, and then a video of them placing the plaque:





Here is the original Geocaching website, created by Mike Teague.

After becoming interested in Geocaching, Jeremy Irish created a new site in September 2000, with input from Mike Teague. Soon, Jeremy realized that the site would become larger than he could handle all by himself, and so he partnered with two co-workers, Bryan Roth and Elias Alvord. When Groundspeak first started, there were less than 100 caches worldwide. Now, almost 10 years later, there are over 1 million.

Here are some links that have more interesting information:

Geocaching History

A bookmark list of the first 100 caches

Today's Cacher article about Dave Ulmer

Early Gecaching Timeline



This year is full of events celebrating the 10 anniversary of Geocaching. The first Events are occuring around the world this weekend, all with some form of the name, "10 Years! (location)". Each Event celebrating this anniversary will be getting a special cache type icon. Here is my Event, which is being held tomorrow night: 10 Years! Wenatchee Valley, WA.

There are many new items being sold by Shop Groundspeak and other stores. Shop Groundspeak has geocoins, stickers (pictured at the top of this post), t-shirts, etc. with the 10 year logo. I wanted to post pictures of everything, but there's too many things, just go to the link provided.

Here's a pic of the geocoins from Shop Groundspeak:



Here is another version from Geoswag.com:



For the first time, the annual Mega Event, Geowoodstock, will be hosted by Washington State. This is great timing for the 10 year anniversary, so the theme around this event and others that weekend, is this anniversary. Groundspeak has decided to open up the grounds around their building, so that cachers can come and meet the lackeys and sign the Groundspeak Headquarters logbook. This Event will be held the day after Geowoodstock, and is called Lost & Found Celebration. This will help geocachers to complete "The (Geocaching) Trifecta", which is finding the top three desired northwest caches - Groundspeak Headquarters, ORIGINAL STASH TRIBUTE PLAQUE ©, and Mission 9: Tunnel of Light.

There is a link on the Geocaching homepage that discusses all of these "Lost & Found" Events: Lost and Found Tour.

Known Events (at this posting) revolving around Geowoodstock/Lost & Found in the summer:

July 1 –

On the Road to Geowoodstock VIII ~ Waterville Hwy2

On the Road to GeoWoodstock: Everett

July 2 –

COWWS Friday Meet & Greet and Luau

Going APE!

July 3 –

Geowoodstock VIII

C.I.T.O.@ GW VIII

Midnight Geocoin Madness II ~ MGM 2

July 4 -

Lost & Found Celebration

10 Years! Wenatchee Valley, WA

Well, I'm pretty excited. For a while now (probably a couple years, sadly enough), we've wanted to get some sort of an official logbook going for Cache-cadian Events (and any other Events that are Cache-cadian-like). We've fudged for a few years, using sheets of paper to log in at Events instead.

Well, now that the 10 year anniversary of selective availability and the first Geocache is coming up, I felt like we needed to finally get on the ball. I'm hosting a 10! Years Event, in a little over a week, 10 Years! Wenatchee Valley, WA, and wanted to mark the occasion with something special.

Well, I guess it might be a bit corny, but I decided to get something like a treasure chest, something you wouldn't be able to have outside due to weatherproofing, but would be cool to bring to Events (like the treasure chest at Groundspeak Headquarters). This is not a traveling cache! :-p It's just a place to put our Event logbook, and maybe Trackables that people want to bring and trade during the Event. Then, if there's any Trackables left at the end of the Event, the organizer has it in one spot and can be responsible for placing them in a cache after the Event.

Patudles, Water Lily and I went to Ross a few days ago, and spent a while trying to decide between all the different kinds of chests they had there. They were all very nice, most of them made out of wood (or fake wood, I'm sure). Each container had good points and bad points, so I took way too long to decide. We finally decided on one that unfortunately looks a bit more like a clothes trunk than a treasure chest. But it has a handle, is roomy, and best of all - it's covered with a map. Can't get much more Geocaching then that. :-)

I also made an order with Shop Groundspeak, for a bunch of doorprizes and some Geocaching 10 Year Anniversary T-Shirts for my parents and 'Tudles. I figured that this would be a fun time to have doorprizes. All the Cache-cadian stuff will be covered by the WSGA yearly allowance they give to chapters for Events.

My Groundspeak order only took two days to get here, and so I have a bunch of goodies, although wouldn't you know that they would come out with a bunch of things (like the 10! Year Geocoin) right after I received my new order. Lol.

The container is made of pleather, I suppose:





Here's my signal wuz here! trackable, posing with the container:



All my doorprizes, and logbook:

Top 30

Ok, ok...I have no life. :-p

I used to post heavily in the Geocaching Forums, but as I have gotten sicker, it's harder for me to formulate my words and thoughts, so I mostly lurk. But lately, I've been posting more.

The motivation? To rise above Sparky-Watts, who stopped posting four whole years ago yet still remained one of the top posters all this time, to become the thirtieth top poster in the Geocaching Forums!

Yaaaaay!!! Oooooh!!! Aaaaah!!!

Hrmph. Not gonna keep the title for very long, GATOULIS is quickly catching up to me. That boy can post. Lol. :-D

Cache-cadian Rep

Well...I'm now the Cache-cadian Rep for this year. Don't know how that happened, lol! Anyway, I was asked by/and or had conversations with several people about the subject, and they brought out that no one was coming forward to do it. So I said I was concerned about doing it because of my illness, but that I would do it if no one else stepped up. I guess that was good enough, and I was promptly nominated. :-p I ran unopposed, and that was that!

Here's what I wrote in my bio on my profile on the WSGA site about this subject:

"My MIL and I have been quite active in our local caching community since we started caching in 2002. We co-hosted the first Geocaching Event in our area, GCG2NC, on June 1, 2003. It was such a cool experience, meeting other cachers in a larger setting. That was one of the first experiences that showed us what a social thing that Geocaching could be. In the years after that, Patudles and I became sort of unofficial representatives for our area, and co-hosted the majority of Events for the next several years, until our group became big enough to have other cachers in the area start helping. It has been so fun to see our small community grow into such a large, vibrant one! Thanks to everyone for all the time and effort that you've put into making our area shine!

So when I was asked to be the Cache-cadian Representative, it wasn't too far of a stretch to say yes. I was hesitant, because of my illness, and other Geocaching duties that I'm involved in, but I'm glad to help out in any way that I can. Thank you so much to everyone that has supported and encouraged me. (hugs)

If you are a part of our Cache-cadian area (roughly North Central Washington - Based in Wenatchee, and includes Chelan, Douglas, Okanogan, and parts of Kittitas and Grant Counties (Central WA North of I-90)), and would like to hold an Event or just help in any way that you can, please contact me! I would love to hear from you."

-----------------------------

I look forward to a great year for our area! I hope that I can attend all the meetings (except the campout, I'm sure), and that with all our great cachers, we can do a lot in this coming year.

During our most recent Event, I'll Be Home For Cachemas!, I had some interesting conversations with several different people. It seems that there is a need to hold another technology Event in our area. We had one a few years ago, and I would like to do one again. I'm thinking about maybe February or March, when people are really bored and there isn't much caching going on. We can learn about GSAK, Pocket Queries, and anything else people need help with. I just need to gather a few people who know what they're doing, make sure we can access the internet (I know my dad has internet, although I don't know if he'll be back from Arizona by then). I would also like a screen that we can hook a laptop up to so we can have a proper class, then perhaps some break-out groups.

I've had a couple people say that they would like to do an Event. I believe that The Navigatorz are still planning on doing a CITO? We can do another CITO as well. It works out if we do one on Make a Difference Day, in October, and one during Earth Day, in April. I think that g-people is a cacher who said they would like to do an Event, but I need to check up on that to make sure. My memory isn't the best, if I don't write it down soon enough. :-D

Well, there's some things already in the workds for this new year, I'm looking forward to it! Thanks again, everybody. :-)