May 30, 2010

Be The Ball, Danny

The extreme cleverness and pure genius of my fellow geocachers never ceases to amaze me. A new puzzle cache series, created by the GeoRedheads, went live this weekend in my neck of the woods. The series is dedicated to the greatest film of all time, Caddyshack, and is called the Bushwood Memorial Cache series.


Each cache is hidden near different golf courses throughout the East Bay area. To join the Caddy Tournament, each cacher must find all 18 Bushwood caches, and note the hidden code in each cache. 


Once you complete the Front 9, you earn an invite to the 19th hole from a Caddyshack character. You do the same thing on the back 9, and then use your invitations to find the final 19th hole leaderboard cache.


As if the cache owners didn't go to enough effort creating this fabulous series, they also included convenient links to the surrounding holes and to the front or back 9 puzzle caches, along with a bookmark listing of all 18 caches, on each cache page.


I'm already having a blast just reading each of the different cache descriptions, which all contain photos and memorable quotes from the classic movie. I can't wait to get out there and start finding these, and hopefully, earn my invitation to the 19th hole.





Cache On!

May 22, 2010

Caches Along A Route, Part II

About two years ago, I described the process of creating a list of caches along a particular route. At that time, you had to create the route in Google Earth, save the file, and then upload it into geocaching.com as the first step in creating a pocket query of caches along a route.

Over time, the process has gotten much simpler, and can all be done without leaving the geocaching.com web site. For detailed instructions, visit this link. Or, you can just dive right in by clicking on the "Create a Route" link from your gc.com Profile page. That will take you to the Create/Edit a Route page at http://www.geocaching.com/my/routeedit.aspx. From there, just enter your begin and end points, and the search radius, and click "search". You'll then see a map displaying the entered information, which you can save by clicking, "Save Route Changes".


From there, you can save it for public consumption, or keep it in your private directory of routes. You can also download a GPX file of your route, which you can send to your GPS receiver as a route file. At this point, you also have the option to create a pocket query along your newly created route. This option will generate a new pocket query containing all the caches along your route within the search radius you provided.

And that's all there is to it. Cache On!

May 15, 2010

And In Other News...


Version 7.7.1 of GSAK was released this week. Not a major upgrade, but it does address all of the issues identified in version 7.7.0.

You can now follow, what appear to be, GSAK Forum post updates on Twitter.

In case you missed this little nugget, the cap on the amount of records you can download in a single gc.com pocket query was recently raised from 500 to 1,000 records (see step #8). I'm looking forward to modifying all of my PQ's accordingly.


It's nice to see the frequent content updates on the new geocaching.com blog, "Latitude 47". In their most recent post, they announced a video series project that they'll be releasing in weekly increments which documents some of the great geocaching stories out there. Here's the trailer:



Off to perform some cache maintenance. Cache On!

May 8, 2010

Clever Hides

Tired of LPC's? Can't take another magnetic key holder? Well then, here's a sampling of some cache hides with a little more creativity for your enjoyment:











Good luck signing the log on that last one.

Cache On!

May 3, 2010

Good Time Had By All

Yesterday was the 10 Years! Oakland, CA event in beautiful Redwood Regional Park nestled in the Oakland hills. Our hosts, cloversmom, Gealabhan, scpet and zuckermn, did a fabulous job organizing the event and providing numerous, fun activities; including a geo-poker rally, a geocoin/swag raffle (in which nobody went home empty-handed), and 10 brand-spanking new caches that went live that morning. Not to mention the plethora of good eats that everyone shared and enjoyed. And of course, the company of a wonderful group of cachers, who until yesterday, I only knew through their logs.

With so much going on, I barely had time for any photographs.

The official 10 Years! sign

Banana Slug guarding one of the new caches


Table O' Fun
A great bunch of Cachers
I hope most of you were able to partake in a 10 Years! event over the weekend, but if not, perhaps you celebrated the Geocaching anniversary in some fashion.

Cache On!