Last Day of 2010

The last day of 2010. It has been a very up and down year. Geocaching wise it was my slowest ever, but it did have some memorable moments. Geocaches in Las Vegas, the Oregon Coast, and even a trip up the Willamette Pass Resort gondola to find caches on Eagle Peak. And of course a bunch of great caches at home. Some of us locals even spent a day introducing kids to geocaching at a local science fair. Some highlights for the year include:

• The Super Science Saturday event (sadly my only "hide" this year)
• Reached the 1900, 2000, and 2100 cache milestones
• Found 29 & 31 caches on February 13 & 14
• Found 32 caches on July 4th (with 11 DNFs)
  

Some of my favorite caches of 2010 include:

• Blazers Rock
• Rip City Rhapsody
• Canyon Creek TB Bed & Breakfast
  
• Welcome to Las Vegas
• Hellooo !!
• Safe House
• What a View
• DARE TO PEAK
• Remembering the past

Hopefully 2011 goes a little better for geocaching, but 2010 had it moments. Thank you to everyone who hid all the caches found... and all the caches to find for next year. See you out on the trail.

Another year down

I think it is safe to say now that I won't be doing any geocaching the rest of the year. I opened my garage door this morning to leave for work and was quite surprised to see snow falling. Unless I want to find night caches in the snow.

So I will end with 221 finds for 2010. By far my worst year ever. It doesn't help that I have had a lack of enthusiasm for the sport. Let alone the whole FDIC takeover thing at work.

I have had a bit of the geocaching bug lately so that might help 2011 be a little bit better. Also now it may be easier to find quality caches for the weekend with the cache favorite system recently put in. If more people will take the time to mark some of their favorites then it will be a good system. That way you could find a cache with a few votes and plan a trip to get it... and get a few others in the area and on the way that maybe don't have votes but you might as well grab. Last year one of my goals was to be more "picky" about the caches I'd seek. What I really ended up doing was not going out to find any. Maybe this will help.

I am a bit dissapointed that my favorite personal hide doesn't have a favorite vote. My top vote getters are Mt. Ashland Outcropping which is a cache Sally and I hid. I adopted it from her, but the outcropping was a place I picked out to hide a cache. Tied with it is Roxy the oldest cache in Southern Oregon which I also adopted. Roxy had a dificulty and terrain of 1-1.5 when I went to find it. I thought that was a little low so I adopted it and changed it.

Look for my final 2010 write up on Friday.

Christmas Caching Video

Merry Christmas

Every year since I started geocaching I have made an effort to find a cache or 2 on Christmas. Its a nice time to go out because things are pretty quiet. Today I lined up 4 caches and found them all. The last was # 2100 for me.

Look but Don't Leap
big trouble IN river city
Fed Up with Power & Phone
Remembering the past

I hope everyone had a good Christmas. Soon I'll be wrapping up 2010 with my list of favorite caches and other bits of useless info.

Geocache Ratings

Geocaching.com has introduced a new ratings system. I'm not sure if only premium members can see it. But the idea is that you have so many votes (1 for every 10 cache finds) and you marke caches as your favorite. The more votes they have the better the cache (in theory anyway) so far the top caches in this area:

Rainie Falls
Oregon DeLorme Challenge
Chief Sam's bluff
Safe House
BIGFOOTS LAIR
Bigfoot Cache Revisited
Waldo Cemetery Cache
Steps of Stone
Pyramid Rock

While I haven't found the last 2 on the list I think its safe to say that all of these caches are good ones. Now those are on my "to do" list and I otherwise might not have known. I encourage you all to rate some of your favorites. I've gone through and put in votes for about 40 caches and will probably do a few more. I think this could be especially useful when you want a "special" cache to mark a milestone.

Oregon loses

A tide of change... and Oregon sticks with the same old people. So sad that a governor can win a majority in just 7 of 36 counties and win the election. Perhaps the national change will be enough to see benefit for Oregon, but I doubt it. I think we have lost today.

Maybe we needed those marijuana distribution centers after all. I need something for the pain... and its really fun to run across booby trapped pot fields while you are geocaching.

RIP Maurice Lucas

Trail Blazer great Maurice Lucas died today at age 58. The "Enforcer" was a big part of the 1977 championship team. I stood just a few feet from him in Las Vegas once and he was still intimidating... I couldn't say a word. He'll be missed. Hope the team can win tomorrow for big Luke.

update

I actually found 2 caches today.

Irrigated Two
HOMERUN!!!

I tried a couple of others but one had smoking muggles and the other had a lady sitting in her car right next to the cache. Not sure what she was doing as she wasn't on her cell phone, or reading, or eating or anything else I could see. I could probably still go after those, but I'm being lazy again.

The next couple of weeks I'll be dog/house sitting for my former boss.

Since my last blog I also found 29 of 30 numbered caches on the bear creek greenway. Starting with Number One I won't link to then all but it was a fun ride. I went with my uncle John making him the latest family member I have drug geocaching. Our only DNF was Number Six.

Back in August I found some caches as well. Including a couple on Eagle Peak that you can take the Willamette Pass ski resort gondola up to. That was fun. Maybe I will create a back-blog for those.

I also have an event planned for the 23rd Super Science Saturday - The After Party. Before the event the Southern Oregon Geocachers will have a booth at a local science event for grade school and middle school kids. We'll teach kids about GPS technology and give them some temporary caches to find. I'll write more about this soon as well.

What happens when the FDIC comes to town

Its been a long time between blogs. I've had like 9 finds though so it hasn't been all bad geocaching wise.

As many of you know I worked for Home Valley Bank the last 8 years and it was taken over by the FDIC on July 23. I didn't lose my job so to say, but I definitely have a much different one. I lost a fair amount of money in the process both in 401k and personal stock I had. Needless to say the last 90 days haven't been fun. The month of June hoping that nothing happens. The Month of July preparing for takeover. And the month of August spent digging through the ashes. Dreams, money and hard work all gone.

I took a couple of weekends off to escape, but sadly always came back to the same reality.

I didn't have a lot of time to look after my caches and had a couple of them archived on me. I almost pulled a LazyBoy and archive them all, but in reality even that would have taken more time then I had to dedicate. The only one I cared about though was my A Cool Stop cache. One of my favorite places. Now it has a new cache dedicated to a "crummy little trickle of water"... I guess at least its not a micro.

I have a few caches in need of repair, but if I do get out to them it will be to pull and archive. Perhaps I should wait until I'm in a better mood for some of them.

4th of July

Yesterday Daveydude and I went north to Roseburg to find a few caches. Little did the founding fathers know that 234 years later the British and Americans would get along and use Military satellites to find Tupperware hidden in the woods.

We started with Galesville Reservoir finding the newest caches there and deciding not to put my little inflatable raft in the water. Then on up the freeway. I found 32 caches, but had 11 DNFs. One cache we left a replacement so that was really a DNF as well. We had so many DNFs early that I almost said lets call it quits. Then we started finding caches and having fun again.

A while back I wrote the Southern Oregon Geocacher's Creed. 7 guidelines that I like to follow. Guideline #6 providing a useful hint might have made the day a little more enjoyable. Many caches had no hints, and unlike locals who might try 2 or 3 times I don't enjoy driving that far for nothing. Many of them may have been missing but with a useful hint we might have decided that a bit faster. I'll write more about this creed later.

These were the finds for the day

Guarding the Road to the Reservoir
Long Fibre
That Dam Cache
View From the Top
Kinkle Hendrickson Reunion 2009
Safe House (this one will make my best of 2010 list)
JUST BECAUSE I WANTED ONE HERE - THAT'S WHY
I Love You Too
Douglas County Numbers Blitz # 2
Jo has to work some
Whats Your Grind?
Cinco De Mayo
Tres De Mayo
Take the Safe Way Home
I needed some CACHE
Tractors R us
NOT A ROUND ONE
Quatro De Mayo
Can Freddy do an Ollie?
Troost Treasure!
Don't Pull Me Over
TYLER'S EAGLE PROJECT
MY FIRST CACHE IS SO LIGHT
I AM SO LONELY
I Love School and Good News #2
Trevor's Watching
Going Green
Physicians Parking Monday through Friday
I Love School and Good News #3
Hobbit Hole
I-5 stroll
Everyday Heroes

House Painted

I got my house painted this last week check it out

Before



After

Backlog of stuff

It has been a while since I blogged. I have a small backlog of cache, event and video

Last weekend was the A Salute to State of Jefferson Cachers event. Rock and Crystal put this one on for the second year in a row. I was able to attend this year, but last year it was on the day of my March of Dimes walk. It was a lot of fun to see everyone.

At the event Turner asked if I had found the cache outside my window yet. It seems someone hid one in the park behind the bank and I didn't even realize. So one day this week when it looked a bit sunny I went out and grabbed it Walk don't Run. This park can be pretty muggle heavy at times. I got lucky on the timing.

Last month I found my 2000th cache. I made a video of it, but never got around to putting the parts together until today. Enjoy

Reno

I got back from Reno yesterday. I didn't find a single cache. The only one I searched for was either missing or very well hidden

Souvenir Penny Cache

This cache was on or near the old Reno arch. It had another DNF the same day.

Besides that I had a lot of fun. Had a good weekend gambling. I entered a Omaha Poker tournament at the Peppermill. 18 players and they paid the top 3. It wasn't a no limit game, but none the less I was so short stacked when it got down to the last 6 players I ended up having to go all in several times. Somehow I managed to not only make it into the top 3 but to take the overall chip lead. After pushing chips back and forth we decided to split the money.

A new look

You may have noticed that I changed my blog template again. I was still happy with the old one, but had to change it so that youtube HD videos would not be chopped off. Future geocaching videos will probably all be in HD so it had to change. I was not happy with the choices available, I finally settled on one of the most simple and changed the colors to something more geocaching appropriate then the default black and white.

Thursday I will be leaving for Reno. I am going with non-geocachers so I don't know if I will be able to get any caches, but I'll try my best to pick up a couple.

March for Babies

This is what its like

Silver Lake

Kind of late on bloging my trip to Silver Lake. We went to have dinner at the Cowboy Dinner Tree for my dad's upcoming b-day. On the way over we found a few caches. Maybe later I'll post some pictures of the place.

These were the finds for the day:

TURNABOUT
ROCKPILE
SOL-MANS DASH2
A Brief Respite
Sand Creek Guard
Silver Creek
The "Desert Rose"
No guards today
What DO cattle guard?

The 2k pillow

Saturday was the Catch Duck-N-Deedy before they leave!!! event. Obviously Duck was there before they go to the coast later this month. It was a pretty good turnout and we had the cafe to ourselves. DrDan also handed me the beloved 2000 Find Pillow. I'm not sure how the pillow got started but it has been around a while. It has the names of all the Southern Oregon cachers to reach 2000 finds. I hope to pass it on soon.

After the event I ran into Beaver Lover, Peanuthead, and Iseek. So I tagged along with them for these finds.

The Deal
Wrapped IV
"Ivy" League Soccer
SPLIT
Wrapped III

#2000

I found my 2000th cache today.

Hellooo !!

It was a nice hike in the Elk Trails system. Nice views all around and a good size cache. What more can you ask for. I hope more of my next 1000 can be like this.

Hope to have the video up soon.

Gearing up for 2000

On Saturday I gave my uncle Duck a call hoping that he could help me get 20 caches to put me at 1999. It didn't take us too long to collect the caches needed. I had planned to find a good cache for number 2k and go for it today, but I had a lot of problems with gc.com this morning so I decided to hope for sunny weather next weekend and go out then. That give me a week to find a good cache. Anyone have sugestions?

These were my finds for Saturday.

Scenic Bayou?
ALF
Cee-Dar River
You've got mail
Venus Fly Trap
I.V.
4 some
Hand Made
No Fire in the Mountains
Read my meter
PWV
Another Door Open
One Shoe
Bundled
WALL*E
Western Express
Bo Peep
Steelhead?
Shari's
U hauled

7 Years

I found my first cache 7 years ago today. Doesn't seem like its been that long....

Albany, Roseburg and an old Highway

Saturday I got a call from my uncle Duck. He wonders if I'd like to join him on a trip to the "Got Cache!" event in Roseburg. And while we're at it why don't we drive up to Albany so he can get the ABC Challenge final. So of course I said "ok"

The drive to Albany included a brief stop for some cache maintainence and a few finds for me including

Just Past Heaven
Deedy Said So
Boat Ramp ?
Pipe Dream
Road Narrows 2

These are all great caches right along Quines Creek just off I-5 at the Heaven on Earth exit. Very nice series of easy caches on a good road.

On we went to Albany where after a bit of walking around we found the ABC final. Then back down the road to Sutherlin where we worked our way down Hwy 99 to Roseburg for the event. Good event... it did seem like out of town cachers outnumbered the locals. After the event we found a couple of caches and called it a day. These were our finds

Winter Ware
Which Way
Where is the whitevette?
BLAYZ BROILED
Desert Thunder
Memories of Old Highway 99 #7
Memories of Old Highway 99 #6
Memories of Old Highway 99 #8
Memories of Old Highway 99 #4
Memories of Old Highway 99 #3
The Slab
A Dutch View

A better Dog

Yesterday was the A Better Dog -- 03/07/10 -- 2:00 event in Cave Junction. It was held at Taylor's Sausage Country Store one of the best places to eat in the whole world.

It was a good turnout, but it didn't seem like anyone stuck around for very long. After the event I went with Duck and Biggieet_al and we found these caches

Meander thru CJ 5 Junction Ave
Meander thru CJ 6 Sherwood
Meander thru CJ 4 Lindilu
Meander thru CJ 2 Burgundy Lane
Meander thru CJ 1 Cottage Park Rd
CJ North
IVFD Station Four
My Daddys worst fears realized

Las Vegas

Just got back from Las Vegas. This trip was with friends and was more about shows then gambling (although I did my fair share)

We drove out to the Hoover Dam and saw Jubilee!, Penn & Teller, and 'O'. Also rode the roller coaster at New York, New York. I didn't attempt the indoor skydiving, but I watched as another in my group did. Plus I found time for two caches.

Welcome to Las Vegas
Welcome To This Fabulous Cache

Backlog - February 14

In my next backlog it is the day after the event. Daveydude and I decided to spend most of the day geocaching in Coos Bay. We found a lot of geocaches in town and revisited a few old ones. A few old Berliner caches were archived, but then revived in their exact same hiding spots as new caches. It was kind of fun to revisit old hiding spots. Another cache on the way home was very near the location of a long archived cache. So it was a day of revisiting old locations. These were our finds for the day:

You can't get there from here!
BERLINERS FERRY PARK # 4
BERLINERS FERRY PARK # 2
BERLINERS FERRY PARK # 1
End of the Road (AKA Village Idiot)
CACHE A MOVIE
Roosevelt Elk
Connecticut Cache
Oregon Coast responds to Pearl Harbor
Home Run? or Foul Ball?
Express Yourself
Who's in charge here?
The King Lies In Slumber #1
Gargamel's Hut
Totem Pole Or Stump?
Muggle-iscious! Round 2
Brussels.........but not sprouts !
Drive-in Theater Motor-Vu
"Can you hear me now?"
RDRCK
Socket it me ??
Smurf Village
Kinney Kache
BERLINER'S MINGUS PARK # 2
BERLINER'S MINGUS PARK # 1
Dr. Bern #5
Bandon Crossings
Rock Me Gently, Rock Me Slowly
Old # 104
At the Cross
Canyon Creek TB Bed & Breakfast

We also looked for City Limits which is about .12 of a mile from my house. Yesterday Dave dropped by for a minute and we found it. I now sit at 1950 finds. Perhaps I'll be able to find a few in Las Vegas next week.

Backlog - February 13

As usually I am a bit behind on my blog. This last weekend Daveydude and I headed to Coos Bay for the "10 Years of Geocaching", Wintertime Fun-1 #4 event. This is the second year I have attended and for many it is a must do event. There were nearly 200 people in attendance. We found a lot of caches on the way over and the weather was great. I found my 1900th cache on this trip. Besides the event these were our finds:

Eat first then you end up with gas
Umpqua Winery & Vineyard Series #15
Suicidal Tendencies
Last of this Dorsey of Gnomes
Kumbaya
Middle Fork View
PARK N PLAY
ENDANGERED BEAR
!!T.G.I.F!!
Supply Stop
Roadkill Cache
Oregon Keychain Exchange
It's A Boat Time
Captanrdr's Big Bank
Winter Lake
Cold hard cache!
Just A Lil' In-Spire-d
IPS on the Pacific
Urban Camo #3 on the Pacific
Seek & you shall find...
Ode To Freddy's Deck REVISITED
Turn around here!
Drive-in Theater Bay
Only you can prevent Forest Fires
March Madness
Pit Stop!
BERLINER'S ANCHORS AWAY!
Blackberry Pie
Metric Eyeopener

Weekend caches

Well the Blazer game might not have been all that great, but I did get a few caches

Treasure by the Loo!
One Degree: N I-5 Rest
Rip City Rhapsody
GD Series #6 : Fire On The Mountain
Blue Star Memorial Highway

The puzzle on Rip City Rhapsody was a fun one, but you'll need the hint to get the right coords.

Next weekend Daveydude has some 60 caches lined up. Hope the weather is nice.

Blazers game

Going up tonight to see the Blazers play the Lakers. Should be a good game. I've loaded up a handful of caches to find on the drive... to break it up a little.

Its been nice weather lately. Too bad I have been stuck at work with no time for geocaching. Next weekend however I am going with Daveydude to Coos Bay for the "10 Years of Geocaching", Wintertime Fun-1 #4 event. That should be a fun time.

March of Dimes time

Time to raise money for 2010. A lot of you donated last year and my team raised over $6000.

You might be asking what the money goes towards. A good portion goes into research. Some of it goes into programs to educate new mothers in ways to improve their odds of having full term pregnacies. And some is used to help support families whose newborns are in intensive care. When my cousin had her son someone from the March of Dimes visited every day.

Normally I don't bring politics into my blog, but I think this is an oppropriate time. There is a growing trend to "let the government deal with it." Letting politicians handle more and more issues with our tax dollars is not a good solution. I believe there are some things that the government just should not have a hand in. If we step up when we can and take care of our own we eliminate the need for the government, and their inefficiency, to step in.

I'm tired

I haven't had much time for geocaching or blogging. Last Wednesday I had a major router issue so I spent a whole night at that. Then the weekend was full of moving into our remodeled space. The new brach is all open... very few problems so that is good. If you have ever been in before you should stop back by just to have a look.

End of the run

I had a find everyday of 2010 going, but in the end I knew it would be hard to manage. I didn't get out of work until it was dark and had no desire to find a cache at that point. Oh well.

I probably won't have any finds this weekend as I have a major project to accomplish at work. Our newly remodeled branch should open this next Monday and I get to move all the PC's and get them hooked up this weekend. Should be a nice looking paycheck this month if nothing else.

Walk around the Rose Garden

After last nights game we stayed the night in Portland. This morning we took a walk around the Rose garden to find the cache Blazers Rock. It was an easy find without many people around. I made a short video to test an editing program I might purchase... its a total spoiler of the cache, but have a look if you like.

Blazers Win!

Took a trip to Portland tonight to watch the Portland Trail Blazers take on the Golden State Warriors. After a poor first quarter the blazers won ever other and won the game 105-89.

Even saw fellow Southern Oregon geocacher Beaver Lover at the game. In fact we sat in the same section... small world.

Found two caches on the way up and will probably look for a couple on the way back tomorrow. Finds for the day included

Back in the Woods
Saginaw Inn

Welcome 2010

I found my first cache of the new year today as the sun came through the clouds

Power Up Baby

Too close to home and too nice of a opportunity to pass up. If I were to decide to try the Days of the Year Challenge I would need to keep finding caches for a few days. I don't think I could keep it up, but I might try it through January. It gets easier after that.

Tomorrow I am going up to Portland for a Blazers game. Hope to find a couple on the way up and back.