Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Something you don't want to find geocaching

In case you haven't heard this story already this happened at the Thomas Creek Bridge cache in Curry County. This is actually a cache that I've looked at attempting because of its high terrain rating.

BODY IDENTIFIED AS MISSING CRESCENT CITY WOMAN
Published: July 24, 2008
By Nicholas Grube
WesCom News Service


Two hikers found Michelle Ashlee Dickson's body Wednesday while they were geocaching near the Thomas Creek Bridge between Brookings and Gold Beach.

Dickson, 23, has been missing since last week and authorities had suspected foul play was involved with her disappearance.


"We confirmed that it is her," Del Norte County Sheriff's Office Commander Bill Steven said. "We are treating it as a homicide."


Oregon State Police is taking the lead on the investigation of the crime scene with assistance from the Curry County Sheriff's Office, Steven said. "They're listing it as a suspicious death investigation."


Steven said the two hikers stumbled upon Dickson's body while geocaching—which is a recreational GPS treasure hunting activity—in the ravine that the Thomas Creek Bridge spans on Wednesday. The Thomas Creek Bridge is the highest bridge in Oregon—345 feet tall—and is located north of Brookings.

Local Search and Rescue crews stayed with the body last night, and are now working with Oregon authorities to help them access the crime scene and recover Dickson's body.


The Del Norte County Sheriff's Office named 27-year-old Josiah M. Miller a suspect earlier in the week, when blood was found inside of his vehicle. Miller, who is originally from Del Norte County and now lives in Arcata, is a friend of Dickson's. He is also the last known person to see her.


He has not been arrested.


A Department of Justice crime lab in Eureka is still processing the blood evidence found inside Miller's truck to see if it belongs to Dickson.


I also found this portion of another story

Authorities found Dickson's car burning at the beach where she had reportedly met Miller. But they were stumped as to her whereabouts. A week later in Oregon, a grandfather, his grandson and a foreign exchange student from France were geo-caching - using a GPS device to hunt for a "treasure" someone else hid, - in the woods under the Thomas Creek Bridge when they found Dickson's body, Steven said.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

A good day for caching

Today I went out and found 5 caches

Squirrel Egg
Again and again
Lifes A Beach
Shepherd's tool
Combo Cache

That puts me at 1471 finds. One more then Lazyboy. For those of you who are fairly new or out of state Lazyboy was an old time geocacher in Oregon. He was somewhat legendary for speaking his mind about gc.com and what he didn't like about it. It even got him banned from the gc.com forums for a long time. In September 2005 he archived all of his caches and hasn't had a find since July 06. Its only a tribute to my slowness that it took me so long to pass him. Now I guess I'll have to look forward to reaching the 1588 finds of Rooster-.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

A new cache

I hid my first new cache in a long time last night

Oregon Trailbreakers

When I first heard of geocaching I immediatly thought of two places that needed caches. Haines Apple Tree and Croxton Memorial Park and both had caches at the time. I'm proud to keep these areas active with caches today.

I haven't been very active at all lately and it shows. I have several containers stored up however and as the summer turns to fall I hope to hide a few more caches.

No one has proposed a cache event lately... I wonder how a BBQ event at my house would go over?

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Another Vegas weekend

I spent this last weekend again in Las Vegas. As always I lost a bunch of money, but had a good time. I had only one geocache find for the weekend.


This weekend was also the last days of the NBA summer league. I was able to watch the Trail Blazers summer league squad win their last two games. I also got to meet blazers GM Kevin Pritchard and radio announcer Brian Wheeler. There were a number of NBA couches and players around that I saw at different times. Here are the pictures I got with KP and Wheels.