From the Bash to the Stock Part 1

Day One

As far back as this time last year I began planning a theoretical trip down to GeoWoodstock. When I realized the Geobash was only a week before I suddenly started looking at a roadtrip down to the Woodstock from there. It wasn't until maybe a month or so before the Geobash that I took the idea seriously and dropped the hammer, buying the hotels, one in Erie, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati, Louisville and Toledo. I was able to successfully recruit my sister to join me (she is not a Geocacher and doesn't really care for it). I figured if it's reccommended you have a partner while caching even close to home, having a partner in a foreign country on a weeklong roadtrip would be a good idea too.

So the day before the Geobash I convinced Jen that we should go down that night, rather than in the morning as we had originally planned. This was so I could grab a nightcache that was there and hopefully get to the pre-event camp fire that was being held. We got over the border fine and made are was to the Allegheny State Park. We stopped in Salamanca for some Subway and gas before we went down the winding (and dark) roads of ASP.

Once there we went out to grab the night cache which Jen actually enjoyed. After that we settled into the Geomobile and dozed until sunrise. And by dozed, I mean freezing my ass off trying to sleep. So finally sunrise comes and we are starving. We venture off when we see a person setting stuff up at the event site.

The man turns out to be one of the organizers and we chat a bit until he mentions there is a food truck open. My sister and I can barely contain our excitement when we order a pair of breakfast burritos (which were amazing) and then set off to grab a couple of close by caches. One of which is at a covered bridge which are always neat to see.

By the time we get back others have started to arrive and we head over to get signed in.  We take a look at the shops before caching grabbing my first Wherigo at the ASP Zoo cache. After a successful bunch of caches we have lunch and go to the group photo before heading to Salamanca for the Flash mob event.

With the events over we head to one of the oldest caches in Pennsylvania, Cache In The Marsh (GC211E), which is on state game lands. While I went for the cache Jen waited in the car. Unfortunately for me, although the map showed only 1000m to the cache, it did not show me the large marsh and winding trail. I get to the spot and remember that this is a projection cache and get my projection app working. Bang! A gun shot goes off in the distance. Yup, that projection looks good now! I find the cache and go back to the car (Jen probably thought I got shot or something).

After that we head to the hotel for some rest and chow to end day one.

Day Two
Today was going to be our first  major driving day. After grabbing a few caches around our hotel we head down to the first webcam cache of the trip, The Boro Web-Cam (GCN8GZ). I was of course worried as to how I was going to take the photo (with roaming and what not) luckily there was an open network nearby (library or something) and I was able to grab a picture:

 After that we grabbed a few more before heading for another oldie, the Stone Wall Stash (GCFF). We managed to find the cache with some work (mostly getting over a stone wall, go figure). We continued making stops at other caches like the Springfield Falls cache and Earth Cache, (GC45A8 &GC3CCBH) and an interesting stop at an simple parking grab where we watch a bunch of skydivers come down.

Finally we get to Pittsburgh (don't ask about the 20 minute detour we had to take!) and check into our room. After a little charging for the iGPS we head out. My #1 objective for Pittsburgh was to ride one of the incline railways and it was a success. We took the Monongahela Railway down to the city where we got out second Wherigo cache of the trip, Just Visiting (GC283K9). While down there we grabbed the Jailhouse Rock cache which is a neat puzzle dedicated to Elvis (GC22HPF).  Not wanting to push our luck (and rock climb up) we went back the incline. While Jen went to put some more change in the meter I went off to grab a nearby cache and met two wonderfully nice newbie cachers.

Yup we found it!

After that me and Jen grabbed a bite to eat and packed it in for the night.
 
Day 3
Day 3 started off with a bang. I sat my sister at a Dunkin' Donuts (free wi-fi) and headed down to get Uneven Pavement (GCB7D3), my 2nd webcam of the trip.

Possibly the worst picture ever. Thanks Jen! (That's me in the centre)

We then grabbed a series of caches in Schenely Park (including some challenges). Finally we decided to grab one more cache in the area before heading downtown. A virtual a tiny bit out of the way but it has almost 30 Favourites, Walk The Block (GCB22C). As we drive up my sister gets too close to the metal curb and POP! A broken piece of metal pierces the tire. And the spare is broken. The Geomobile ain't goin' anywhere.

After a couple kilometres worth of walking, some (roaming) calls, $200 dollars and a TON of luck we were back up and running by 5 PM. Unfortunately that makes the rest of the day a geocaching bust. On the bright side we could still attend our night festivities. We head over to the famous Primati's for a bite to eat before catching a Pirates game which was certainly a highlight of the trip.

After that we spent the night at our hotel before moving on to Columbus!

End of Part 1

Sun setting on Pittsburgh

Official Geocaching App iPhone Review

The Geocaching App for the iPhone is one of the easiest ways to go Geocaching now. It's added hundreds and hundreds of people to the game. But is it worth the price?

1. Accuracy

Since January I have found over 700 caches using the Geocaching App and have rarely had issues with accuracy. In fact it probably is more accurate than your standard GPSr when considering how long it can take a GPSr to get a signal.

2. Mobility

The Geocaching App benefits from being on the iPhone because it has a data plan which allows you to download caches on the fly. This has worked for me several times  (including just last week) when I stumbled upon a cool spot while driving or I'm stopped with friends or family during a roadtrip and want to see if there is a cache nearby.

Having a Premium account is even better since you get the Pocket Query functionality. This lets you save your data (and money) and save the caches and required maps to your phone, with this I was able to cache in both the Bahamas and US with ease. No looking up a ton of maps to add to your GPSr.

3. Maps

The maps for the Geocaching App are great. You have the choice between the Terra maps, Street Maps and Google Satellite maps. A downside is that you cannot download the Google maps to your iPhone.

 4. Logging

A great feature of the App is logging your caches. As long as you are a fast iPhone typer, submitting logs while out in the field is simple and you can even submit photos!

5. Trackables

One of my favourite features is the trackables, simply type in the tracking number and you get the goal, recent logs and the ability to discover or pick up a trackable. Really useful in the field.

Overall the Official Geocaching iPhone App is a great buy, especially when tied to a premium membership. Well worth the $10 A great buy.

I'm Back Update

What a crazy few months since my last post. With school and work, I haven't been able to post as much as I would like. Thankfully summer classes are over so I have some spare time. What am I going to cover?

1. Review of Geocaching app for the iPhone (finally!)
2. Review of my Geocaching roadtrip from the ASP Geobash in New York to the GeoWoodstock mega event in Indiana!
3. Review of the Central Ontario Geocacher's Spring Fling Mega Event!
4. Caching in the Bahamas!
5. Geocaching News!

Openmaps: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Apparently Google started charging for the use of its maps now, Groundspeak has elected to move over to Openmaps, currently powered by Leaflet and tiles provided by Mapquest. What are the benefits and disadvantages to cachers?

The New Maps

The picture above shows my favourite part of this transition: Clickable caches from long distances. In the above picture I can see all of southern Ontario and still pick out caches and see the cache information. It still even gives you a choice box when you've selected multiple caches. It also still keeps the basic features of the old maps with selectable cache types, pocket queries (which seem faster to me) and the advantages of openmaps (trails and other user added features).

The bad is the load times, which seems to fluctuate and are at time not even noticeable. Reportedly Groundspeak is going to host the maps on its own server which should knock out the load times. The ugly is also shown in the first picture. Gaps in the satellite imagery which might not even be gaps as it could be loading times as well.

Overall I would call this a great improvement over the old maps. I miss the look, but still the ease of viewing caches is just amazing.

Holiday Edition 2011

The end of the year is upon us. Santa was great and brought me some geocaching supplies including an iPhone (for which I bought all the available Geocaching apps, reviews incoming), snowshoes, and headlamps. Sharon12 also received a Magellan Explorist GC from Santa. So I'll try to get her opinion on that. Have a happy New Year every one!

Challenges.

Challenges have taken the Geocaching world by storm, whether that's in a good way or bad way is up to you. But they're here and let's take a look at what they offer us. First let me deal with some of the reasons people hate them.

•  They aren't challenging

Okay, this is Groundspeaks fault. If they had just named them Virtuals and then Photo Caches, Action Caches, etc. This wouldn't be an issue. Naming them Challenges obviously brings up images of "Geocaching Challenges that relate to getting a certain number and/or type of geocaches."

• I can't believe they count towards you finds! That really waters down actually caches.

Really? Oh and how are things like the E.T. power trail any better? This goes into the "they aren't challenging" argument as well. Not all geocaches are challenging, are they? What about people who already have Locationless challenges on their account, should those be taken away? How is one challenge worth less then finding 1000 micros in a row?

• This has nothing to do with caching, get rid of it!

First off it obviously does have something to do with caching as many are GPS based. Locationless caches were once a part of caching and now those have been returned via worldwide challenges. Challenges also replace virtuals which were (and still are) a part of geocaching.

• Well Locationless and Virtuals were archived for a reason!

Yup, Jeremy Irish actually discusses this in a Latitude 47 post that the reason Virtuals were retired is that it became too hard for reviewers to manage. This has been solved with a rating system. It has nothing to do with them not being fun.

• Geocaching is using a GPS to find a container, that's it.

Yes but my problem with that argument is that I could care less. If I can get equally fun games like Virtuals and Webcams and Locationless caches on Geocaching.com, then why the heck not?

• Kiss a Frog? Challenges are stupid

Okay someone could easily say the same thing about LPCs. But the great thing is that Groundspeak isn't afraid of getting rid of downvoted challenges and the fact that you can only post one per day and only from premium members. No virtual power trails here!

Let's get into the things I don't like now

1. The new log system, right now some idiot named Comatose is spamming the Kiss a Frog one with messages. Hey idiot, being an ass is still being an ass. Anyway, they look more akin to a forum which is not what people want, getting rid of the dates is a horrible idea too. My question is why didn't Groundspeak give this a trial run? Let Premium Members sign up for a beta and then get their feedback! 
2. Photo caches should be: "Take a photo with yourself or GPS in front of this object." Not: "Take a photo of you doing something near said object" THAT'S WHAT ACTION CACHES ARE! 
3. Searching isn't working properly. Fix it.
4. There currently isn't a minimum distance between challenges. This could lead to the Waymark problem where I'm logging a challenge for being on the Empire State Building, another one for  throwing a coin off of it and another one for throwing a paper airplane off of it. 

I think the worst part of this "fiasco" is that it really shows what spoiled brats geocachers are! You'd think there would be some measure of maturity for something that is (as of this second) only TWENTY FOUR HOURS OLD! But no, people are as I said above, spamming the logs, setting up facebook pages against it, disabling their actual geocaches, leaving for other geocaching websites! Are you kidding me? Honestly when PS3 players were having their credit cards stolen and online not working it wasn't this bad! It goes to what I've thought for a long time, many geocachers want to TELL YOU how you can play. To them I say "Don't let the door hit your whiny ass on the way out!".

"I've always loved a good challenge" - Lana Turner

Finally Done...

My 100 Days In A Row of Geocaching is done. I ended my streak yesterday with 101 days caching from May 5th to August 14th. I chose not to go on simply because it isn't really necessary. Beyond 100 days I would have to go for the 365 challenge, the problems with that are:

• Cache density in my area isn't high enough. 
• I will have to make it through the winter months, and my experience from Valentine's Day earlier this year (trudging through a huge snowstorm to get a cache) was not fun.

Instead I want to focus on making caches. I have 7 cache ideas that I need to put in motion. My time geocaching will be spent on filling up my calendar and finding more on specific days. I want to start a vlog and I'll also try to post more here.

For some reason, July/August have been pretty quiet, geocaching event wise. (Odd because it's peak summer months) Walking Woody's Event is this weekend and there is another event in south Haldimand near the end of the month. September will be much busier with GAGAFAP and then hopefully a triple event on the 10th-11th weekend, that's not mentioning my job and starting school!

I should also mention that I'm waymarking. Yup I know, hypocrite. But it's mostly for some geocaching challenges that require waymarking (example1 and example2), so I've just started taking pictures of everything with my cell phone and if it has a waymark I log it, if not I'll try and make one quickly. I'm almost to 200 visits and have close to 50 waymarks.

I'm actually kind of excited to see what the upcoming challenges feature turns out to be, I'm going to try and post one on the first day.