I can see for miles and miles...

Anyone who has gone caching with me in any different town has probably seen me looking for street names and having to turn around when I notice them too late. Well some of that may soon change as I got my new glasses today. I finally got tired of blury road signs and decided to go to an eye doctor... it is amazing how much I couldn't see. Maybe they'll even help me spot those tricky micros.

Mmmmm Pizza

Yesterday was Pizza XLII and I thought we had a pretty good turnout for the first event of the year. Before the event Sally and I found a few caches

Valley Low, (Cathedral Hill)
Top Of The Hill Cache(A flat top)
Pop-Up, For The Pizza Event

A new event is already planned for February, Pizza XLIII (Company is coming).

I-5 caches

Over the weekend I went up to Portland to watch the blazers lose again. They are 1-2 in games I've attended this season. I use to remember every game I went to and could tell you how many they won or lost, but I've lost track over the years mainly because I've seen them play Sacramento so many times that I can't remember which game was which. My goal is to eventually see the blazers play every NBA team. So far of the 29 other teams I've seen 14.

On the way back I picked up 2 I-5 caches

I-5 Duck-In Cache South
ROAD TRIP!!!

The last one was a rare FTF for me. It just happens to be a SallyC cache she hid after coming down I-5 the weekend before and it was still unfound. Then I see today that I just beat Cheminer Will to it.

Later in the afternoon I went to a poker game and won $41 since I've lost the last couple of times it was nice to walk out with some money.

A New Coin Quest...

I've been working on the idea for a while. I needed a good FTF prize for the cache blazerfan & SallyC's Revenge. Obviously it needed to be something pretty nice. So I resurected and old idea I had for making geocoins in the ancient roman style and this was what I came up with



For those curious I made the coin using a product called Art Clay Silver. The clay is made of silver particles, organic stuff, and water. When its fired the clay burns away leaving 99.9% pure silver. I used 2 rubber stamps to press the coin but had to carve the lettering in as only the tree stood out from the stamp design. After it was fired I shined it up a bit and then I used an ultra nasty product call Liver of Sulfur to tarnish it. Then I polished it up and I think it looks pretty good.

First caches of 2007

Yesterday I went out and got my first caches of the new year

Nothing Going On
STUMP HOLE

Also I set up the first event of the new year Pizza XLII

While I'm not off to a great start part of my new Years resolutions are to keep up my blog a bit better and hide at least one cache a month.

Last Day of 2006

Well it is the last day of 2006. It has been a good year for caching, but its time to put the year behind us and start with the next. Some highlights from this year include

• Hid 9 caches
• Reached the 900 and 1000 cache milestones
  
• Completed the Oregon DeLorme Challenge
• Found a cache in every county in Oregon
• Set a new record of most consecutive days with a find (7)

Some of my favorite caches of 2006 include:

• District 3 Firehouse Cache Dash
• Another Hole in the Wall
• One Hell (gate) Of A Cache
• The Other Clark
• Clatskanie Park Travel Bug and Game Exchange
• Cow Creek Final
• O'Brien Creek Cache
• Mr Wizard
• Alone, But Not Lonely
• Homefront
• French's Lookout
• Lava Tube
• "Under the Wide & Starry sky" R.L.S.
• THE LIVING END CACHE.
• Spectacular Toketee – MGD clips by 100

And of course the best cache of all was the Oregon DeLorme Challenge. Now I've tried to talk others into completing this cache and I've heard a range of excuses from high gas prices, having to buy a map (which you don't if you ask the right people), and that the cache has no real "connection" to them and something like CCIO where you must find a cache in each county has more meaning. To that last group I'll say that you can find a cache in each county but you'll miss a lot of great places. Exploring is the name of the game and this cache will make you explore all corners of Oregon. In my opinion it was worth every penny spent.

Thank you to all who have read this blog and hid some of the great caches we found this year. Hope to see you out on the trail in 2007. Have a Happy New Year!

Caches

Found my last caches of 2006 with SallyC today

LOVE and JOY Nearby
This One Is For Sally C
Davey Dude Done Dood It!
All keyed up and nowhere to go
Get out of Dodge

Its that time of the year...

Despite the rain today I decided to go find a couple of Christmas caches.

The Stonecutters
Steelhead Crossing

Both pretty nice caches on this rainy Christmas day.

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas

House hunting

Well I've been looking for a house to buy for a little over a month. I've seen a few in my price range... most need some work... not sure what I want. I made an offer on a small house... very small... they countered my offer and I think I'm going to turn it down. After a lot of thought I think I need a bit more space then that... even if I may never see a price that low again. Sally didn't like the neighborhood anyway.

No geocaching for me recently... should have gone out Saturday as it was really nice. Oh well, the rain might let up again one of these days.

New look

I hope most people have notice the new look of this blog. After changing the look last December I thought it should be an annual affair.

I haven't been doing much caching, but I have been looking at houses to buy. I've looked at about 6 or so different places in my price range. One thing I've learned is that in my price range you don't get much. I looked at a place today for a second time... I like the location... I like the yard (though I don't know about the yard work) but it needs new flooring... kitchen updates... bathroom updates... new windows. Not only does that sound like a lot of money but also a lot of work.

James Kim

If you've been watching the news latley you've seen the story of the Kim family who were stuck along Bear Camp road on their way to the coast. Sadly James was found dead today. Being so close to home I thought I should write a bit about it.

As geocachers I imagine many of us have found ourselves on mountain roads in areas unknown to us. Sometimes determination to get where we want to go gets in the way of common sense. I hope this tragedy can be a lesson for all of us weekend adventurers. Reversing any one of several mistakes would have led to a much happier ending. Paying attention to warning signs, turning around at the first sign of snow in the road, staying with the car, and keeping on a marked path.

The cache One Lane Rd appears to be close to where I imagine they made their wrong turn. Many of the caches near it including some of mine are probably inaccesable most winters.

4 years

Well November 30th was technically my 4th geobirthday, but I usually celebrate on March 26 because that is when I found my first cache. In the months between when I signed up and when I found my first cache I just watched the website and looked forward to the day I might work normal hours and be able to find caches. I didn't even own a GPS... in fact I didn't have one until I found my 5th cache. I think I tell this story about twice a year so look for it again on 03/26/07

Today since it was sunny and I had some time I went to look for a cache by SallyC

Red Hot!

No problem finding it as I have many caches in this park and know the trails. Sadly I had one of my cache containers in this park stolen recently, but the logbook was left behind. So I picked it up today and am waiting to archive it until it is logged by IVHS76 who was obviously out caching just before I got there today.

Caches

On Saturday SallyC and I went out and picked up a few caches. Most of them were hidden a couple of months ago by Iseek and Eyeseek2 for their pizza event. It was a nice day to get out and work off some of the weight I gained Thusday. Finds for the day included

Country Aire
Are You Ready To Rock?
What's My Line?
Caballo Blanco
Aaron's Outdoor Adventure Cache (A Rare FTF)
WARNING
Between Two
River View
Lying In Wait
Stuck Up
ODS Snoogans`5: Limpyng Along
Just A Cache
Guarding the windmill

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope everyone had a good thanksgiving. I know I ate too much. I've had a cold all week which didn't help, but I was pretty much recovered so I could enjoy turkey. If I had felt better I would have walked off some turkey by searching for a cache... plenty of unfound caches around for me.

Last Saturday SallyC and I went out and hid a few caches. We also found the cache Peavine which is out by itself and rarely visited.

Still nothing

Not sure how many of my loyal readers are still around. It has been a very slow around here... and this has never exactly been a well writen or overly entertaining blog. But if you are still reading thank you.

One of the things I've discovered in the past few weeks is PodCacher. It is like a radio show for geocachers, but published on the internet. Its fun to listen to, but I've found the episodes a little long for my liking. I've only listened to a handful of shows, but its something to do if you can't be out caching.

Rain and lack of daylight have kept me from going out. I might decide to grab a cache at lunch time one of these days if the rain lets up a bit. Beyond my normal hours I've also put in some weekend time... so that hasn't helped.

November

Well not much geocaching has been going on. Saturday I went to the Trail Blazers home opener... they won the game in the last seconds. I didn't even attempt to find a cache anyplace along the way. I did stop just north of Beaverton and bought an older console radio I saw on Craigslist. I'm going to fix it up a bit with a new turntable and such but it doesn't need any cosmetic help as it has been well taken care of.

New Challenge

Yesterday my 50th cache hide was approved. It was several weeks in planning and took a special exception from our local approver, but here it is

blazerfan & SallyC's Revenge

The cache requires you to have 2 finds in each National Forest in Oregon. Ok, actually Klamath National Forest extends into Oregon as well... but I excluded it because there aren't many caches in that section. I hope it is a unique enough challenge to get a few people out and about toward finding it. I realize the cache is about the same as other challenges and requires you to "start over" as it were, but yet I think it will require cachers to see a bit more of the "wild" parts of Oregon. I'm still deciding on a FTF prize.

In an effort to get more Oregon cachers working on the DeLorme challenge I posted about it in the PDX and EVC forums. EVC has had no response... their forum seems pretty dead right now much like the sogeo forum. The PDX forum however... I don't even know what to say besides that I'm disapointed. Most of the responses seemed kind of negative. Maybe I'm just being overly sensitive on the issue. My hope is that in the silent majority of cachers reading these forums that I've sparked the interest of a couple of them. I think people should have as many excuses as posable to get out and see the state... not that any excuse should even be needed.

Cache 77, The Final

Well Saturday SallyC and I headed to the coast to get the final for the Oregon Delorme Challenge. After a bit of searching Sally found it and we found a few more around town and had some Fish & Chips to celebrate. It was definately a big undertaking, despite my having about a third of the map sections done before we actually decided to try completing this cache I actually revisited every section this year.

We also found a cache in every county, but our cache in Umatilla County didn't qualify for Counting Counties in Oregon. With how careful we were I'm still wondering how we missed that one. Time constraints kept us from searching out multiple caches for each county and map section... once we found one we moved on. Oh well, its just a game.

76 caches

Yesterday SallyC and I completed all the sections for the Oregon DeLorme Challenge. Now all that remains is finding the final cache and signing the logbook. We started the challenge back in February or so by picking up some of the closer sections that Sally didn't have. I had about 26 when we started. We pretty much completed it in 4 parts

Mar 31-Apr 2 we cached around Bend (8 sections)
May 19-22 completed every section west of I-5 (17 sections)
Sep 16-27 drove all over eastern Oregon (21 sections)
Oct 7 found our last sections toward Diamond Lake (4 sections)

Its been fun... sometimes we might have pushed ourselves a bit too much trying to fit everything in, but I know I saw many different parts of Oregon. Now that it is nearly over I'm not sure what we'll do next.

Recent events

Saturday was 3rd. Annual Pizza By The Riverside hosted by Iseek and Eyeseek2. Great event with a turnout of over 50 people. Many local cachers were missing so that number could have been even higher. It was by far our biggest local event ever.