Improving the score: 75%

[altivo]

OK, since today is my day to leave work early, I decided to try for three geocaches that were more or less right on my route for home. The first one was in the park, not far from the one I failed to find Monday but did locate on Tuesday. Placed by the same person, in fact. I did not find it. I spent nearly an hour wandering in the right area, as the GPS seemed to keep changing its mind where I should be. When I started to get frostbitten fingers I abandoned that attempt. At the end the gadget was wanting me to go outside the park boundary and into someone's back yard. If that was correct, nothing doing. But I don't think it was right.

The second was very easy, except for the problem of not being obvious about what I was doing, because it was in a WalMart parking lot. ;p I parked my car so as to shield the site from most of the possible observers and furtively grabbed the thing, sitting in the car to sign the log, and then slipping it back into place. I think that worked. This time the GPS was pretty accurate about the location, so the only puzzle was where to look, and previous log comments had made that fairly clear.

The third was right along the road on my normal route to and from work. I'd already worked out the approximate location, and there are many split and hollow trees right there. I was sure it would be in a hollow, but it wasn't. Fortunately, the GPS was right on target this time, telling me that the car was one foot from the cache. Well, I was on the wrong side of the road to be one foot from it, but that was obvious. Sure enough, it was directly across the road, just not in a tree hollow. It was very tiny, about as small as I imagine you could make one. The log was a strip of paper rolled up tightly and inserted into one of those plastic bullet-shaped containers intended to hang from a pet's collar and hold contact information. I almost missed it because it was too obvious even while not being obvious, if you know what I mean. Clever.

I can see how you'd get better from practice. I started out with no idea what to look for, and now I'm starting to have some idea, at least for the tiny ones. So now I'm three for four, and willing to try some more but not today. Gotta go clean barns and by the time I feed everyone it will be dark (and bitter cold.)

Comments

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Heh, it seems you have had a fun day today.
I hope you will find more soon. I wonder how that geocaching with GPS works, I have never tried it before. But I assume there aren't many in Finland. Not in the Kuopio region I am sure. But you never know I guess.

I met my partner's grandmother, and she turned out to be a nice lady indeed.
Great sense of humour too. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm glad your visit is turning out to have some good points. You sounded pretty down about it when we talked before.

Just checked the official geocaching site and it says that there are 7392 geocaches in Finland. That's about one percent of the world total, which isn't bad for a fairly small country. I have the impression, going back many years, that Finns are both interested in the environment and nature and that they like technological things and are good at them, so I'd expect geocaching to be popular there. So I put in the coordinates for Kuopio and at first it said nothing found, I kept extending the boundary of the area searched and at 300 miles out I found two caches. Both were in Afghanistan. Whoops! I had swapped the latitude and longitude.

Re-entering the correct location, I found 179 geocaches within 50 miles of Kuopio, and 56 of them are within a 10 mile radius. In fact, quite a lot of them appear to be right in the center of the city. So, when you get back home, you should be able to find plenty of them to practice on. ;D

Just for comparison, right here I have only 25 caches within a 10 mile radius of home, (But when I extend that out to 50 miles, there are more than 4000. The reason is that the city of Chicago is about that far away, and the forest preserves around the edges of the city are full of caches.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Hmm... Sounds good :P

I will probably wait until spring. Snow might make it a bit difficult.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm finding them in spite of snow. ;p

You've just given me a big "duh" here. I had never made the connection that you and soanos were from the same town. Now I have to get the atlas out to see just where...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Duh, "and farhoug" I mean. Too early in the morning here.

[farhoug.livejournal.com]

Well, I thought there's no furries in Kuopio either... But I guess we have pretty much everything here. =)

[soanos.livejournal.com]

I know we do. I just haven't seen any for a little while :D

Anyway, when are you dropping by? :P

[farhoug.livejournal.com]

Any year now. Gotta cure my hermitism first. ^^;

Did you have other IMs too, or were you just an IRC dweller? =)

[hrrunka]

Hmmm... ;)

Yes, after a while you do start noticing the things folks do to hide caches. I'm up to 160 finds (and a few not-founds) scattered over four continents.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You world traveler, you. :)

I doubt I'll be getting out of Illinois and Wisconsin any time soon. Fortunately there are thousands of caches hidden here, some very cleverly hidden...

[mortonfox.livejournal.com]

I see you're starting at the opposite end of the spectrum of geocache sizes from me. Back when I started geocaching in 2001, most geocaches were regular sized (ammo boxes and tupperware containers) and often deep in the woods. I would do maybe just a few a day because of the long hikes involved, but most of those cache hides were fairly simple. Once I got to each location, I merely had to wander around until I spotted the tell-tale sign of something hidden under rocks, sticks, or bark. It wasn't until later when I started seeing microcaches in the city and out on Long Island. It's amazing how far the game has come. Not all the changes have been for the better but it keeps things interesting.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yep, I started with the ones closest to home. Though this is a rural area, there are lots of small towns and most of the caches seem to be located within the town boundaries, so they are likely to be the micro sized ones I suppose.

Hiding an ammo can in a city park is probably difficult and counterproductive. Hiding a magnetic key case under a park bench, though, is quite easy.

On the other hoof, one of these first four caches seems dubious to me, as the location and nature of the hiding place will undoubtedly suggest gang activity or drug traffic to some observer eventually. I wouldn't want to be the one caught under that suspicion.

Glad to know you're watching me reports though. If you catch me doing or saying something stupid, don't hesitate to say so. (Or if you think I'm missing the obvious, as I've been known to do at times...)

[hrrunka]

When I started, late in 2001, there were fewer than 150 caches in the whole of the British Isles, and my nearest cache was one of the Project Ape ones, Meridian Snake (which was archived years ago, so you'll need a log-in to see it). The ammo box it was in was so large I completely failed to spot it initially...

[saythename.livejournal.com]

You stopped for frostbite!?

Shame on you!

You should be crawling along, found by EMT's who are
looking for the same cache!

XD

Seriously, your into this aren't you? Isn't it fun
stuff?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I always stop for frostbite. I prefer to keep my appendages, thank you.

It will be much more interesting when summer comes, I think. I find it has elements that are interesting, though in fact I probably prefer letterboxing, the low tech predecessor of geocaching. I'm probably more intrigued by benchmarking than by geocaching, in fact. That's because of the historic element. Nothing delights me more than to be hiking in some really secluded place like Isle Royale, say, or the Porcupine Mountains, and suddenly come across a USCGS marker disk that dates to the 1920s or 1930s. It's almost as good as finding a real Indian arrow head or something.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

I'd like you to get to keep all your appendages, too. But I am not sure what benchmarking is. Is it making marks into benches and things?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Uh, no. "Benchmarks" refers to official markers put in place by land surveyors as future reference points. In particular, here in the US where land was all wilderness at first, official government bodies conducted surveys and mapped and subdivided new land into townships and counties. Every so often they would leave a permanent marker, often in the form of an engraved stone or metal pylon, that could be used as a known starting point for future reference. Starting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these markers took the form of embossed metal disks with identifiers, dates, and a precise latitude and longitude. They are usually set into concrete in an effort to make sure they stay put. I have encountered these marks in the middle of wilderness areas, such as national parks or forests, and often they have been there for 60 or 80 years or longer.

Like geocaching, some people like to hunt down these markers. Some of them are in locations with fabulous views or other interesting features, while others are in rather unexpected places. The nearest one to my home is in the sidewalk outside a McDonald's fast food restaurant. Of course it was put there in 1923, when things undoubtedly looked quite different from that location. And that's part of the fun of finding these.

There's a whole website devoted to the subject, covering not only the USGS benchmark disks but lots of other countries and historic landmarks of all sorts. Each one is cataloged with description and coordinates, most have photos as well. Check it out here.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oops, getting sleepy. Wrong link in that last comment. It should be http://www.waymarking.com/

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I sense much geek in you ;) hehe

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Greek too.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Really? That could explain the respect for education and the philosopher streak :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Classical and Biblical Greek devoured with great relish as an undergrad, yep. At the time I found it most interesting to read the New Testament in the original and see how far astray the translators have wandered. But since then it's really the poetry and diarists of Classical times who have fascinated me. Writers like Xenophon, Herodotus, Aristotle, and yes, the great Sappho herself.