Category: Opencaching.us

4.5lb Walleye Geocache revisited

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walleye1

Not revisited in the physical sense!! It’s been a little over 2 years (June 8th was the anniversary) since Chris Wereley, AKA Stormgren-X, along with a non-Geocacher partner, took an 8 day canoe trip to find this remote cache, 4.5lb Walleye, in the wilderness of Northern Ontario. At the time in 2013, it was the world’s oldest thefindunfound cache, having sat untouched in the wilderness for 12 years and 7 days; it has not been found since, nor has anyone announced their attention to be the next do so on the cache page. We thought this was such an amazing story that we did not one, not two, but three blog posts on the subject (two of them were while the whole Geocaching world was watching his progress on a SPOT tracking device, the third being an interview with him). We do have a couple of updates to this story. First of all, you may notice from the very last sentence in the interview blog post that Stormgren-X placed a cache at the abandoned settlement of Ghost River, about 30 miles upstream from the 4.5lb Walleye cache. After about a year of not seeing it published, we wondered “OK, where is it”? We at OCNA thought maybe one of the Geocaching.com Ontario reviewers rejected it under their “vacation cache” rules, so we emailed Chris and offered to publish it on our site. Nope, he just had a little accident, and lost all the Waypoints in his GPS!

The lost 29 page journal of Stormgren-X:

Ghost River, site of an unlisted cache
Ghost River, site of an unlisted cache

More accurately, the existent, but nearly impossible to find, 29 page journal of Stormgren-X. Also in our interview blog post, we mentioned Chris gave us permission to host this journal, a .pdf that contains over a dozen pictures and over a dozen videos from the trip, on our site. He originally posted it on the the Wikisend file sharing website, which only hosts your (large) content for a few weeks. Apparently our SEO skills need a little work here at OCNA, because this thing is nowhere to be found on a Google search for any of the keywords relating to this canoe route, or the 4.5lb Walleye cache itself. In our defense, it is a .pdf, and not a “webpage” in the classic sense. We’ll keep working on that, but in the meantime, here is the nearly secret URL to Stormgren-X’s journal: https://www.opencaching.us/AlbanyRiver-4.5lbWalleye.pdf  Warning: We did say its a 29 page .pdf; may take a while to load, depending on your internet connection. 🙂

Guest Post: Sag Harbor Historic and Cultural District Geocache Hunt

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The John Jermaine Memorial Library in Sag Harbor, New York recently listed their 6 cache series, The “Sag Harbor Historic and Cultural District Geocache Hunt” on our website, and Garmin’s Opencaching.com. Sag Harbor is on the eastern end of Long Island, and is located partially in both the towns of Easthampton and Southhampton. Yes, they are two of “The Hamptons”, as made famous on TV, and in film. This Geocaching program is partially funded by a grant from The Town of Southhampton. There is a rubber stamp in each cache, and passports are available at the library. If you bring back a completely stamped passport, you will receive a certificate of completion. To see the whole series, you can look the profile the cache owner, JJMLibrary, or see them here on our map of caches. On June 11th, 2015, The Library blogged about the series on their blog, and we have received permission to reblog it here as a guest post.

The long-awaited Sag Harbor Historic and Cultural District Geocache Hunt announced in the May-June issue of our newsletter is now fully operational. Those of you who have stopped by the library hoping to get started on the hunt, can now pick up your “passports” (log sheets) at the library and begin searching. For those of you who don’t know what geocaching is, we’ve included an explanation below.

Important Note

opencaching.usopencaching.com
The library’s geocaches are registered on two websites: http://opencaching.us and http://opencaching.com. (They are different…one is .us one is .com). You must create a free account at one or both of these sites in order to download the coordinates of the geocaches and play our game. Due to some technical issues, our caches are NOT listed on the most popular geocaching website, geocaching.com. But both of the sites we use are good. If you are using a Garmin GPS device to search for geocaches, you will be better served by the opencaching.com. If you are using a smartphone, opencaching.us supports the greatest number of apps.

Geocaching, and the John Jermain Geocache Hunt Explained

Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices [e.g., smartphones]. Participants use an app on their phones to navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location. Our hunt adds an additional twist.

While looking for a way to honor Sag Harbor’s contributions to Southampton Town history during the Town’s 375th anniversary year, a few geocachers on the library staff decided to combine our love of geocaching with a bit of culture and history, and a touch of the Camino de Santiago (Wickipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_de_Santiago).

Here’s what we came up with: six geocaches are hidden around Sag Harbor. Each one relates to a member organization of the Sag Harbor Cultural District, all of which have cultural or historic significance for Sag Harbor and Southampton. (We’re not telling which organizations. It’s part of your job to figure that out.) To join in the hunt, stop into the library and pick up a free “passport.” (This is the part that’s inspired by the Camino de Santiago.) Then go hunt for the geocaches. Each cache contains a unique rubber stamp. Use the stamp on your passport…then go find another cache. When you’ve found all six caches, bring your passport back to the library and you will receive a certificate of completion (another idea borrowed from the Camino).

As mentioned above, all of the geocaches are registered on two geocaching websites: http://opencaching.us and http://opencaching.com. These sites are treasure-troves of information on how geocaching works. You’ll need to register at one of the websites in order to get access to the information about our geocaches that is stored there, but both registration, and the app for your smartphone that will lead you to the caches, are free. You’ll find a list of geocaching apps that work with various types of smartphones below. If you don’t own a smartphone but want to play, the library has a dedicated GPS navigation device that it will loan to library card holders.

Confused? Help is also available from Eric Cohen or Mireille Stürmann at the library. Call 631-725-0049 or send an email to jjlib@johnjermain.org.

Geocaching Apps for Your Smartphone

Android

  • c:geo (free and highly recommended)
  • GeoCaching Buddy (fee)
  • Columbus

iPhone

  • GeoCaches (recommended)
  • Geocaching Buddy (fee)

Windows Phone

  • Me Caching Geo
  • OpenBasic

This program is partially funded by a Town of Southampton 375th Anniversary grant.

Town of Southampton, NY 1640-2015, 375th Anniversary

GeoGearHeads 178: OpenCaching NA II

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customLogo.gifOCNA Admins DudleyGrunt and NativTXN were recently on the GeoGearHeads Podcast episode 178, talking OCNA, in an episode titled OpenCaching NA II. They were last on that podcast on Episode 125. If you count by 10’s on your fingers, you can figure out that was just over a year ago, hence this episode being titled OpenCaching NA II. Anytime our Admins are on a Geoaching Podcast, we run it here on the blog as well. Listen to them give an overview of our site, with an emphasis on our recently released Challenge Caches. GeoGearHeads is a near weekly feature with The Bad Cop and DarrylW4 discussing topics of interest to Geocachers, Location-based Gamers, and Technology Enthusiasts. They record the shows live through Google+ Hangout On Air Thursday nights at 9:10PM Eastern/6:10PM Pacific (The upcoming shows are listed on the Google+ GeoGearHeads page). You can subscribe to the audio version through iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher, watch the shows on YouTube, and check them out on FaceBook, Google+, and Twitter.


Guest Post: Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve

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Today, we have another guest post from The LANMonkey’s. It’s an interesting post about The Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve, in Chilliwack, British Columbia. There are a couple of good tie in’s to this post. As you may know, Mr. LANMonkey is co-host of The Caching in the NW Podcast. With his podcasting experience, he recently created an MP3 (Podcache) cache on our site, Walk in the Park with LANMonkey, in Langley, British Columbia, about 10 miles West of the Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve. What is an MP3 cache? Think of it as a letterbox type cache, where you go to the parking coordinates, and follow instructions to find the cache. But rather than written instructions, you download an MP3 file. Be sure to check it out! Additionally, we would like to announce that OCNA Admin DudleyGrunt (possibly with OCNA Admin NativTXN) will be a guest on The Caching in the NW podcast on July 2nd!

Have you ever considered whether herons nest on the ground or in trees?
 
This past weekend our geocaching adventures took us to the “Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve” in Chilliwack, BC. As it turns out, they nest in trees!

This location is quite easy to access, ample parking, and a nice selection of geocaches for the family on very well maintained walking trails. 

You can use the multi-cache “The Tower” as your reference point on the Geocaching website to navigate your way there, but it’s just a few minutes off of the Trans-Canada highway.

It’s important to know a few things before you go:

  • The trails are open dawn to dusk all year
  • The interpretive centre is open 10am to 4pm daily with free admission
  • Some trails do NOT allow dogs 🙁

 

Only a few of the 130+ nests here

In addition, it’s helpful to know that “parts of the Heron Colony Loop Trail and Discovery Trail are closedin the spring to allow lots of room for the herons to forage and nest undisturbed.” This doesn’t seem to impact the trails along which the geocaches are placed, so that’s great news for geocachers.

All of that said, the experience this time of year while the herons are nesting is absolutely amazing. To see these giant water-striding birds glide gracefully into their tree-top nests at the peaks of huge cottonwood trees is stunning. 

Heron in it’s tree-top nest

Our visit took us on one of two possible looping trails to pick up geocaches, but by taking the “westward” loop from the interpretive centre we were able to observe the 130+ heron nests from a distance that was safe for the herons and that our geo-hound Piggy was allowed on.

Spending some time afterward in the centre chatting with one of the staff we learned that this reserve is the largest heronry (group of heron nests) in the Pacific Northwest and that the number of returning herons (on average) has been quite steady the last several years.

Visiting the Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve is not only great way to not only spend the day out geocaching, but also to learn more about these amazing indigenous birds in their natural habitat.

Resident eagles guarding their food source
Geese with a gosling nearby


Who is LANMonkey?

The LANMonkeys are geocaching adventurers from beautiful British Columbia who’ve been having fun exploring and geocaching since Aug 2012. They love to share the great places they visit on their caching adventures on YouTube as LANMonkey’s Geocaching Adventures, and Mr. LANMonkey co-hosts the weekly geocaching podcast – Caching in the Northwest along with The Bad Cop and Witz End.

Follow their adventures on  Twitter, Facebook  and Instagram.

OCNA after GW event at the Original Washington Monument

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360px-Washington_Monument,_Washington_CountyGoing to GeoWoodstock XIII in Boonsboro, Maryland? Please join us at 7:00 PM on Saturday, May 23rd for a 45 minute exclusive to OCNA After GW event in Washington Monument State Park, a couple miles outside of downtown Boonsboro, and about 5 miles from the site of GW. It is designed to NOT interfere with 2 other evening post GW events in the area. These are the 6:00-7:00 PM After GeoWoodstock CITO – Doubs Woods Park event in a Hagerstown City Park, and the 8:00-10:00 PM Midnight Madness – Geocoin Event – GWXIII on the grounds of GeoWoodstock. Of course you’d have to leave the CITO early to make our event by it’s starting time, or at the stroke of 7:00 PM to make an appearance at ours.

WP_000565We are running a little low on OCNA promotional items, as we plan on having many new ones made up for our 5th anniversary in August, 2015. But we should have enough to go around (including some of the retired 1st edition Pathtags shown here), assuming a crazy amount of people don’t show up. Keep in mind there is a $2 parking fee to attend this for Maryland residents, and $3 for non-residents. This is collected in an unattended locked metal box on the honor system, so we’d highly advise bringing exact change. Here’s a link to the Event Page on our site again, and you can always check the event page out pinned near the bottom of the main page of our site under “Upcoming Events”, where it will remain until after it happens. Hope to see you there!

 

OCNA Admin DudleyGrunt on The Geocaching Podcast 5/6/15

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gcpcoverartOCNA’s longest tenured Admin, DudleyGrunt, is an official fill in host on The Geocaching Podcast, and fulfilled those duties for the first time on Wednesday, May 6th, 2015 on episode 401. In addition to discussing our site’s new Challenge caches with host HeadHardHat and fellow co-host Taz427, they also discuss two Terracaching.com Cyber caches which support very worthy causes. Those being DG’s own 2015 Walk to Defeat ALS Cyber Cache (which supports defeating ALS, and more specifically, the team Ben’s Buddies in honor of DG’s Father) and St. Baldrick’s 2015 Cyber Cache (which supports childhood Cancer research, and more specifically, Team OConnellz). You can listen to (and watch) the video version of the whole show below. There is the usual pre-show banter, but the actual show starts at the 6:40 mark.