Tag Archives: geocaching

Caching Barefoot

(With apologies to Wil …)

Last night I attended the Geocky Summer Blast at 37d58.917,-084d37.944 (On a related note, I’m working on a WordPress plugin that will automatically convert coordinates, in reasonable formats, to a series of links, to a GPX file, a LOC file, and a map of the location. Stay tuned.)

There were perhaps 25 geocachers in attendance. Good food, a great time with friends, and 5 on-site event-only geocaches which were actually pretty challenging. One of them even attacked me. I am not making this up.

A zillion thanks to “Maxine & Me” and to Debbie, of course. And to the General, too, I suppose, grudgingly. 😉

I haven’t done much geocaching in about a month, and I think that, maybe, if I get certain “must do” projects done today, I’ll go caching this afternoon. And maybe I’ll actually get out to Wilmore to do some much needed maintenance on Burning Bush, stage two of which is reported either missing or washed away or damaged in some way.

Geo::Waypoint and Geo::Gpx

I’m finally writing real, useful code again. Well, useful to me anyway.

I have Geo::Waypoint, and I’m about halfway to having Geo::Gpx working. A Geo::Gpx is a collection of Geo::Waypoints. The eventual goal is to be able to generate GPX files from stuff in a database, so that I can keep useful waypoints in a database, and generate GPX files for loading on my Palm and/or on my GPS as needed.

This is partially for a concept web site that I’m working on, and partially because I think that they are useful modules, and I have needed, for some time, to be working on something that makes me think, so that I don’t get dumber and dumber as I do brain-numbingly tedious tasks at work, and then come home and do nothing.

I’ll start releaseing actual files soon. I’m not sure if I’ll put them on CPAN, but I probably will, once I have an API that might be useful to someone other than myself.

There will also be Geo::Cache, which ISA Geo::Waypoint, but with more geocache-specific fields. I think that this is inline with the intent of the GPX and LOC files, but I need to see if there’s an actual standard for this, or just GeoCaching.com’s conventions.

Another geocaching trip

I’m going to take another geocaching trip … um … I mean training trip, to Atlanta. I’ll be teaching for a week at the Big Nerd Ranch south of Atlanta. There’s still time to sign up, if you hurry. Along the way there (I’m driving again) and while there, I hope to find a geocache or two.

Please sign up for the training class. It will be LOTS of fun, and it’s like a week-long vacation on a ranch. Sort of. And I really need the money.

Thanks. 🙂

St. Louis – Day 2

Today had fewer frustrations than yesterday, although I once again got done with the course material rather earlier than I had anticipated. That’s the irritating thing about having students that already know a lot of the material. But one of the students has a lot of really good questions, and clearly really wants to get a lot of good stuff out of the time, so I actually stayed on until the end of the scheduled time working on those questions.

I just went out and found two geocaches, which was my goal for the evening. However, I might end up going back out again this evening. I haven’t decided for sure yet. The week seems to be going by pretty quickly.

I released two more Travel Bugs into the wild. I’m still really peeved that my Coliseum cache was stolen from Shilito Park last week, and even more peeved that I lost a travel bug in the process. But I suppose that it was to be expected, putting a cache that close to a playground, that someone would be attracted to it. Still burns me up, though. Darned kids.

St. Louis – Day 0 – The journey

Yesterday I drove to St. Louis, from Lexington. This time I squeezed the 5 hour trip into 11 hours. 🙂 I made a number of stops along the way, but only about 4 of them were GeoCaching stops.

I drove most of the way with the top down, but arount Marengo the wind picked up and I had to put the doors back on just to keep my glasses from blowing off. The wind was from the south, and really strong and gusty. My glasses blew off once, and I caught them!

Then, about 20 miles east of St. Louis, it got rather chilly and cloudy, and I stopped to put the rest of the roof on. I think I got a bit of a farmer’s ran out of it. At least I’m a little burned. But it was a lot of fun. I don’t think anything important blew away. Although I did notice a few things flick out of the back, in the rear-view, I don’t seem to be missing anything.

I stopped at the Huber Winery near Starlight, IN. I have to say that I’m not particularly impressed. They have a huge operation, and grow all their own grapes. But the people that work there don’t know anything about the products, everything was tasted at the wrong temperature, and none of them were particularly good. I did get a bottle of port, in the hopes that, at a better temperature, it will be better, but I suspect that this was a mistake.

I stopped two places in Louisville to look for caches. Found two. Couldn’t find another one without making myself *really* obvious, so I’ll leave it for another time. At the second stop, Mysterious Norseman, there was a rugby game going, and I almost stopped to watch, but then decided I should keep going.

I stopped at a graveyard near (I think) Marengo, but was not able to find the cache there.

And I stoped at the Ooloitic Limestone Cache, on some highway exit, where I clambered up cliffs to find a BITW cache (Box In The Woods), and get rather scratched up with thorns. My right wrist looks like I tried to end it all up there.

I found Creve Coeur much more easily this time. I suppose that pretty soon I’ll be able to come here without even having to consult a map for the last 10 miles. I certainly hope that this training opportunity develops into a regular thing, although being away from home for a week is a bit of a trial.

Right now, I need to get some breakfast and get across the street to the training facility so that I can set up.

Heading to St. Louis again

On Sunday I’m heading for St. Louis again, for another week of Apache training, and, I hope, geocaching. Last time I was in St. Louis I found a grand total of 1 geocache, due to schedule and exhaustion. So hopefully I’ll do a little better this time.

On a related note, I put out a cache on the 15th of March, and it’s already been stolen. I lost two travel bugs in it, too. I’m really irritated about this. Darned kids.

Caching to StLouis

I didn’t exactly have the untrammeled success yesterday that I had hoped for. I think I found a total of 7 caches on the drive over to St. Louis, in about 10 hours of driving and caching. Every cache took way longer than I thought it would.

But I had a lot of fun, and arrived dirty and exhausted.

I’ve got a few pictures, including several of a monastery. I kinda wish I had taken the time to go in, but by then I was starting to think that it would be very late before I got to St. Louis. Of course, I forgot that it is in a different time zone.

And I forgot to drop off any of the travel bugs that I was going to leave in Illinois. Bah.

Caching towards St Louis

On Sunday I’ll be heading out towards St. Louis, where I’ll be teaching a week-long Apache training class.

It’s my goal, on the way out there, and while there, to cross the 200 mark on geocaches found. I’m at 122 right now, so this is a significant goal, I think.

I’ve picked out several small towns on the way out there, and made 100-cache radius searches around them, so that on the way out, I can stop frequently along the way and search. It’s about a 5 hour drive, and I expect it will take me at least twice that long.

I set up a bunch of Pocket Queries to give me the caches to load onto my Palm and GPSr, but they didn’t show up. I just figured out this morning that it’s because they come as zip file attachments, and my MTA drops zip files, due to the latest rash of viruses arriving as zip file attacments. Duh. So hopefully over the next few days I’ll get all the files that I need for the trip.

I’m driving, and I’ll be taking two laptops with me so that I’ll have all the necessary hardware and software to do this trip. I need Windows for some of my stuff, and Linux for the training class itself. So this evening I’ll be taking *everything* out of Rocinante, including the seats, so that I have room for all the junk I need to take.

I’m actually really looking forward to this trip. 🙂

Geocaching anniversary.

Slightly more than a year ago, I bought a GPSr. This has turned out to be the best luxury purchase that I have made, ever. I didn’t need it. I didn’t know what I was going to use it for. And I couldn’t afford it. But I got it, because I wanted something to play with.

Then, on March 15th, prompted by a friend (who has only just now started geocaching!) I tried out geocaching, finding my first cache in Shillito Park. The cache is now gone, although I will be replacing it for the anniversary of my first find.

Geocaching has been a God-send in a number of ways. It gives me something to do when life is depressing. It gives me an excuse to get out and go hiking, as well as specific targets to hike to. It has given Sarah and I something to do together that we both enjoy and look forward to. And it has both brought me new friends, and reunited me with friends from past years.