Tracker Jim’s Geocaching Outpost

Northeast Geocaching has an article up on ticks and Lyme disease.

LymeNet Guide to Lyme Disease

Lyme disease is called the “Great Imitator” because it can mimic many other diseases, which makes diagnosis difficult. A rash can appear several days after infection, or not at all. It can last a few hours or up to several weeks. The rash can be very small or very large (up to twelve inches across). A “bullseye” rash is the hallmark of LD. It is a round ring with central clearing. Unfortunately, this is not the only rash associated with Lyme.

If you’re out of doors a lot in New England, read the whole thing.

So, you think you know what poison ivy looks like, eh?

This annoying plant, often referred to as “PI” by geocachers, is sneaky, tenacious and has a number of different guises. There are only two rules I’ve learned about Poison Ivy which seem to be universal:

1. The leaves are grouped into triplets
2. The leaves never have a sawtooth border

Poison Ivy is often noted for other attributes, sich as:

• The leaves can be red, especially in the spring and in the fall (but not always)
• The leaves can be small or large
• The leaves can be shiny, but not always
• The leaves can be smooth-edged, but not always (they sometimes sport notches, but not sawteeth)
• The curve of the leaves can be convex as they come to a gradual point, or they can be concave and come to a sharper point

You may think you know what poison ivy looks like, but it may be possible that you are missing some poison ivy plants, or even mistaking another plant for poison ivy.

Since it loves to grow on the borders of trails (among other places), geocachers will have plenty of opportunity to come across poison ivy, which means plenty of opportunity to identify and study its habits. The more familiar you get, the less likely you will be to find out, hours after a geocaching trip, that you should have been more careful.

Poison ivy rashes can be an annoyance, or they can be truly debilitating.

For anyone who’d like to see pictures of poison ivy in many of its guises, check out Poison Ivy

Another great resource is the Poison Ivy Fast Facts Page which is part of this poison plants information center.

Be careful out there!

FOund an odd comment in the Cleveland Advocate.

Strangely enough, some of these geocaches have themes where the treasures share some common element. Barbara Streisand seems to be one of the more popular themes to be found.

In over 50 caches, I’ve never encountered one with a Streisand theme.

Maybe it’s a Cleveland thing.

Green Bay Press-Gazette - Game’s prize cache sparks bomb scare in De Pere park

The package, discovered about 10 a.m. by a public works employee cutting grass, was a metal ammo can with the word “explosives” on the side, said Brown County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy John Gossage.

However, the ammo can did not contain a bomb or ammunition, but rather small toys and trinkets left as prizes for a treasure hunt called geo-caching in which searchers use Global Positioning Satellite coordinates to find caches left by other players.

[…]

The X-rays had a tough time overcoming the metal in the ammo can — essentially a metal shoebox — so technicians used a robot-mounted shotgun to blast the lid off.

I’ve started a thread about this in the Groundspeak Forums.

I’m baffled as to why someone would mark their container “explosives.” — There should definitely be some sort of contact information on the cache. Many caches have the geocaching website listed.

For my own caches, I clearly mark them as what they are, but also I try to reduce the chances that they will be found by authorities, sparking panic. There is no guarantee, however, that a geocacher will rehide your cache as it was found.

The Columbus Online Community - Columbus Telegram

“When you’re out on the weekends and when there’s a lot of people around, you have to be careful to hide the stash so that no one who doesn’t know what you’re doing comes over and takes it,” Vyhnalek said.

Bitten by the geocaching bug, we retreat to the car for another clue for a different stash, this one located more than a half-mile away.

It’s true. Part of the fun for us, and especially for the kids, is the secrecy aspect of geocaching.

They like the idea that they’re supposed to keep what we’re doing secret from the “muggles” and that we have to sneak around a little bit. They’re always surprised when they find someone else who knows abotu geocaching. Definitely, having alert kids helps in making sure the coast is clear when you’re hiding and/or seeking.

An article in The Wave Magazine touches on one of the most important reasons many people like geocaching — it gets you to new places in your area you might never have seen otherwise.

“The idea is to get you out to places that are in your own backyard,” says Ron Dorsey, a geocacher from Scotts Valley. Indeed, geocachers we spoke with were most excited about discovering a cool new place while out hiking with a GPS unit.

On a recent Sunday, it is Dorsey who finds the cache hidden beneath a low-hanging tree in San Jose’s Almaden Quicksilver County Park. The ammo box is battered, sealed, nondescript – exactly the type of “suspicious package” that would get airport security all wound up. But Dorsey thinks nothing of it as he pops open the lid and begins rummaging through sandwich bags filled with little trinkets. A green plastic army figure, a rag doll and a stuffed hippo are just some of the items left inside.

Geocaching came up in a conference call with journalists regarding the Where 2.0 (location services technology) conference:

Where 2.0 preview

GPS in cell phones is also gaining some traction, O’Reilly said, pointing out interest in geocaching, which are treasure hunts played with GPS devices that are used to locate the coordinates of “prize” caches all over the world.

Geocaching could be poised to explode when nearly every mobile phone carries the essential equipment of the sport. Ubiquitous GPS ownership will balloon geocaching participation.

It is anyone’s guess how this will change the sport. Cache saturation levels in areas? Running into more cachers on the trail? Perhaps a variation on geocaching involving telephone communication will be born.

There’s a nice article in “Maine Today” entitled Geocaching: A high-tech treasure hunt for kids of all ages

Geocaching is a great activity for kids because it offers a chance to enjoy a local hiking trail, get some exercise, learn practical map skills — and have fun with the family. And the stories my children have shared about our adventures finding hidden treasures have been priceless.

The author also talks about her difficulty in finding a suitible GPSr unit.

I settled on a $170 Garmin eTrex with additional memory and a USB connection to download area maps (sold separately). […] As it turns out, the $100 unit, without the map storage memory, would have worked for us.

Most geocachers know what CITO means: Cache In, Trash Out. It’s the geocaching philosophy of trying to carry out some trash with you to help clean up the sites you visit.

This weekend near a cache where I encountered some trash I was unable to CITO because I didn’t have a means for safe disposal. The material in question was broken glass.

For CITO, it’s not a bad idea to carry a few shopping bags with twist ties so you are prepared to CITO when the time comes. But you need a bit extra to prepare for broken glass.

I don’t recommend that you handle broken glass, because it is dangerous. But if you are determined to do so, here is what you ought to keep in your car to be prepared for glass cleanup:

1. leather gardening gloves
2. a cardboard box (like a corrugated mailer) deep enough to hold a beer bottle
3. duct or shipping tape
4. a small whisk broom or camp shovel
5. Some sort of marker, like a Sharpie or Marks-a-lot

The gloves and duct tape and camp shovel are generally useful to have in a trunk readiness kit. The cardboard box is easier to store if it’s the flat kind that has yet to be folded out into full box mode.

The procedure (proceed at your own risk):

Fold the box into a box, if necessary. Wear the gloves for hand protection. If the glass is on a hard surface, use the broom to sweep any glass pieces into the box. If it is on dirt, use the camp shovel to scoop up the glass (you may need to take some of the surrounding dirt as well) and you’ll need to be thorough in removing any small shards.

Once all the glass is inside the box, close all flaps and seal them with your tape. Mark the box with the words: “BROKEN GLASS.” Instead of carrying the marker, you can mark the box in advance. But marking it at the time of use makes it more versatile.

The glass is will now be much safer for carrying.

Your best course of action when you see anything on the trail which is a hazard is to contact the land manager and notify them that some cleanup is necessary at the site. It pays to think about these situations in advance so that you can be prepared.

Newsweek has set its sites on geocaching in this recent Tip Sheet article:

The Tip Sheet - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com

When you start looking at every article about geocaching, you notice that the phrase “high tech treasure hunt” shows up in an unusually large number of articles. This would seem to be the journalist’s preferred way to describe geocaching to te uninitiated.

The story briefly introduces geocaching, but also offers a couple of tidbits, including this info on group caching events:

Events/packages: Many geocachers search on their own, but you can also join group events. On June 10 and 11, Aussie geocachers will meet in New South Wales for the 24-hour Gold Rush Weekend. And then there’s Germany’s Delusion of Darkness (July 8-10), where cachers will hunt at night. In the United States, the Santa Maria Harbour Resort (
santamariafl.com) in Florida has designed a vacation package that includes one to four days of geocaching via kayak along the Great Calusa Blueway Paddling Trail.