RM Jones’ Adventure

It’s getting warmer I’m very happy to say and my mind is turning more to geocaching every day. I have been out a couple of times in the last couple of weeks, as you know from previous post. I was sitting back and watching the weather forecast and my mind slipped back to the first cache my Lovely Wife, Veronika (known as Pulltabs in the Geocaching world), and I (I’m DigMaster) found. It wasn’t the first one we tried to find, that was Glasford and it had been removed by someone so it wasn’t available. The actual first find was the “Samurai Cat” which we found on March 29, 2001.

I wasn’t smart enough to look at the Difficulty and Terrain values so I almost bit off more than we could chew. At the time I was only 60 years old, just a kid yet, and I asked a friend of mine, Dick who must have been about 70 years old, if he would like to go find a Geocache. After I explained what a Geocache was he thought it sounded like fun so off the three of us went.

The Samurai Cat has been archived so I won’t worry about hiding the location in the photos. The three of us started out and headed for “Wildcat Den” state park which must be about 30 miles South of our home. It is a rugged park with some roads and paths winding through it. All in all it is a beautiful place to visit so we were bound to have a fun day even if we didn’t find the Samurai Cat. (more…)

A week ago while out Geocaching we found a Travel Bug named the Tin Star Sheriff. You can read about that in the “Finally A Nice Day For Geocaching“. I would have told you about his visit earlier but my computer was down for a few days. Now that I’m back on line and fully functional I’ll tell you about his visit here in Le Claire, Iowa. For the younger people that may be reading this, I want you to know that this is just a story I made up to try to entertain you. Jesse James hasn’t been seen for a long long time. (more…)

What a day this has turned out to be. I finally got Linux up and running, a couple of days ago and I just couldn’t wait to give it a try. This morning I woke up at 4:00 AM and headed for the computer to do a little surfing and see what I could find of interest. About 10:00 AM my Beautiful and Usually Charming wife made the mistake of telling me it was a beautiful day outside. That’s all it took. I haven’t been Geocaching in a couple of years (and then I forgot to record them). It has been about four years since I logged in any cache as found. Way to long. I have time now and couldn’t wait to get back out. I got online and downloaded the locations of some caches near me, got all our “stuff” together and headed for the nearest cache. The first one we tried was still covered with snow so we just kept on going. I decided to take another try at one I have searched for about four times and never did find, so off we went. It’s called “A Penny Saved” and it is really tough. I still can’t find that one. I guess I’ll have to just sit out there and wait for someone smarter than me to come along so I can follow them (more…)

Geocaching is a great way for people of all ages to have fun and get some exercise at the same time. The first thing most people ask is “What the heck is Geocaching?’. The simple answer is; People all over the world are involved in hiding “Geocaches” and providing their GPS coordinates on the Internet. Other people go to the Internet site to get locations of caches in their area and go out and find them. The official Geocaching Web Site is www.geocaching.com and will supply you with everything you need to know to get started. Here is what they say in their FAQ about “What is Geocaching”; “Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for gps users. Participating in a cache hunt is a good way to take advantage of the wonderful features and capability of a gps unit. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache.” (more…)

I would like to tell you about a fun and profitable time my wife and I had at a Geocaching event. This one was called a “Cache-In”, if I remember right. It was at a large city in Central Iowa and was a bit of a drive for us as we live in extreme Eastern Iowa. I had never been to one before and it sounded like fun. A Geocaching club in that area had made arrangements to clean up a piece of land that was officially a park but had never been developed. It was right next to a shopping mall. The plan was to get a number of people together, clean it up and then later place a Geocache in it. (more…)