Getting Events Published

I thought I would take the moment to talk about events.  What is expected and what is required for getting it listed.

There is a good portion of people that love events, another group avoid them like the plague.  I have made a few errors lately and would like to point these out here, to help cut down on error is the future.  If you have any questions please email me.  I have no problem helping out.  If you are not in Utah, don't toss anything my way, but check with your local reviewer.  Things should be the same, but some see the same rules differently.

1-No cache hunts.

You cannot set up an event to look for a cache.  Nowadays every event cache has a cache near it, and we understand that you like to go after them.  I would even expect everyone to grab the caches in a park, or along a hike, but you cannot list the caches in the area, or on the hike.  If you want to set up a cache hunt so that you are not hiking alone, do so in the UTAG forums please.

2-Stacking Events.

Do not run events back to back in the same area to get additional smileys.  If the same people will be attending both events the new one will not be listed.   Having a meet and greet and a CITO, please stretch them apart time wise and/or distance.  Some of this is to prevent pirating of event attendees.  If I have to choose between PeanutsParents event in Provo and 2 and Jac0bs Cito in Orem and 2 one will not be listed. 

3-CITO is not a flash mob

CITO has a specific purpose.  Cleaning an area.  Showing up, and spending 15-20 minutes is not really a CITO.  In this case you should point out times you will be cleaning up, if they need to bring trash bags, and how much time it may take.

4-MEGA

Megas are not awarded unless 500 cachers are signed up for your event, or there is a proven history.  You should start well in advance.  Normally caches are listed 3 months out, but if you think it is special or has special needs (camping reservations, or vendors scheduling attendance) let me know and it can be listed up to six months in advance.   If you get enough people in the log books it can be changed later.  It hast to be primarily a caching event.  If you have 30 cachers and 500 others walk in most likely they will not change the event.

5-Sponsors. 

You can have a sponsor on the cache page of your event. It cannot have a link or a .com address.  But Pizzas brought to you by Peters Pizzaria is ok.

Once again if you have a question please contact me.  Most event caches can be worked out, and the problems with them solved.

The hunt...and a weekend :D

Well tonight my hunt was a little different one.

I got a call for two people going to look for my caches and asking if I wanted to go along.  (perhaps they thought I would help them).Jacob down in the trees

So off I went looking for them after placing them the night before.  A ride in the mountains is always worth it so I jumped in with DrJay and Jacob and headed up.  The ride was as nice as the other day and we worked our way up to my caches  The one I placed for Jacob and the other one that is on Timber Mountain. 

It also gave me the opportunity to place one on Pumphouse Mountain.  I had planned that one for a while now, going with friends gave me the chance to actually do it.

Now comes the weekend.  People emailing me or contacting me get to be ignored until Monday.  Lucky for you :D  I am heading down to Fishlake for the weekend with my family, to relax, visit and to place a few caches. Good luck all, and have fun.

Sunset from Timber Mountain

Placing a few, and traffic.

I had thought of placing a few for a little while now.  High in the hills and for Jacob.  He passed 12,000 finds and recently hid his 1800th and i wanted to place one for him.  So tonight I headed up the canyon to get the girls.  They went up with mom to camp for a night, and off we went.

I thought about grabbing some, but all of them up this canyon have been found.  So up up up we went.  Taking an old road and passing some people in a car camping.  I am still trying to figure out how they got up there.

I like the dry mountain forests like this feel like home.  Well my daughter looked at my gps and wanted to go to timber mountain.  It was a rough road. rougher than most i have driven on up here.  Some people apparently had been mudding up here and really tore up the road.

Well I did finally place Timber mountain, and on the way down grabbed my cache for Jacob.  A quite night reviewing nothing new.  A few people wanted caches under bridges, too close to others, commercial caches, and an agenda based one that I sent messages too. All in all a pretty typical day.

 Things are really getting busy.  I was hoping that I would have 100 visitors a month.  Just kind of a few people.  I was just looking that I am up to 160 people in the last month. Between here and my flickr I am over 1500 hits a month.  Thanks everyone for paying attention to my ramblings.  I guess I make sense to someone. (I know I don't make sense to me).

The Musical Highway

An amazingly long and enjoyable day.

The plan.

I had been thinking about this and tossed some ideas out to a few people.  Wondering who might be interested.  I was not sure if i would be able to go, but i really wanted to.  I knew it would be a long one.  200 caches 3 hours away from home.  so we were looking at 8 hours at most (i was guessing i would be really fast in a search. (wrong).
Then finally my plans sorted themselves out about Wednesday night that I would be able to go.  After a trip to the zoo Friday, Saturday was to be free.
I called Jacob, he still wanted to do stuff nearby, but was thinking about it.  He made a few inquiries to the Mortys and Princess Daisies. Thursday night they came over to get a few caches that were located near my home, and we started to talk.  That led to calling Jacob and the decision was made.  We were going to go.  The car was discussed, what to take, when to leave. All vital points that we needed to determine before we left.
Some disagreement on when we were going to meet was discussed and we settled on 7am. Though I did call Jacob later to determine if I had really heard correctly.

Morning

Well I got up and headed out.  Of course I was the last one.  7am is really early for me. After a few convulsions  and seizures at getting up so early I finally got rolling.
We met and were off on the road.  I struggled to stay awake, but all was well. Sadly I had to sit in the back by Jacob, but eh... oh well.

Caches on the way.

We hit our first caches as we traveled ac cross the center of the state in Fillmore.  Cache across the US, one of PeanutsParents, and a Tico Jeffry cache. There was not much time to waste as we hit the bathrooms grabbed some small snacks, and were on our way once again.

As we headed south, we pulled off so Jacob to do some cache maintenance and to hit a few more caches on the way. Grabbing a multi, and a few other caches and back on the freeway heading south.  

We hit town at about 11 and grabbed some gas (so we would not be out in the desert without it). Princess Daisies and I grabbed a cache at the gas station, and we started looking for caches in the area to go find. We hit a few and finally decided to go grab some food.  jacob wanted to meet some girl while we were there, so we ate and talked.  

Then we jumped ship for a few and headed out into the parking lot to grab a cache while Jacob visited.  We hit the store and grabbed some Oreos, and a little junk food. We got there and broke up the lovebirds and off we went to the event.

We were late at this point, but there were caches on the way.  Crap.. how did that happen.  So we started to grab a few on the way. Then finally determined that we would be too late if we did not get rolling.

I worked the magic on the way and 190 caches suddenly magically appeared. >>poof<<.  Then I realized a horrible mistake that I had made.  I was watching them all.  So every cache find was going to send me an email until I finally got home and could turn them off.   Drat i had started with 200 emails in my inbox.

Jacob then pulled out his laptop and created and loaded a  pocket query for the area, so that he would be ready. I had cheated a little, and had made the query before I published it.  I sent a copy to the host, but I did not give it to him before we left.  I made him work for it.

Arrival

We pulled off and into the driveway.  We were not sure we were in the correct place, but I remembered getting an email from one of the event hosts so I pulled out my phone ans sure enough it matched the sign  >woohoo< we were there.

I stopped and talked at the entrance with one of the hosts and eventually went upstairs where everyone was eating and finishing loading the caches to head out on the adventure. Crap.  Mistake #2.  

If I had thought about it I would have waited, so that I could have visited with a few people for a while.  In the end that was probably a good thing.  We chatted with a few people, and people were heading out the door so off we went.

The Musical Highway

We headed off on the journey. I tried to stop and say hi for a minute but the rest of my team was off and in the car by that time, so I figured I better go.  I got out and off we went.  We were the back car in the driveway, so we were first or second to get out on the road.

A breakdown of the caches...
There were a few large ones.
A handful of smaller ones.
Pill bottles
Marker tubes
DNA tubes.

Some were pretty easy to find, others were evil  If you head out the difficulty rating does not always follow how difficult we found it.  The marker tubes drove me nuts.  many were painted, some were in holes in the fence a  number of them were original in how the containers were hid.  All in all it was great.

The day wore on and the train of cars diminished.  Some had to leave at 4pm others 6pm.. The temperature was near 100 and I was surprised that no one had any car trouble.  We would shut the car off at some hides, turn of the AC when we were out of the car.

The day did drag on, after an hour or two I remember thinking.. crap we are only about 1/4 of the way. I thought something like that many times during the day.  We gathered at around the halfway point to talk as a group - we were bunched up looking for one of the unfindable ones, and the cache owner showed up.

The number of cars slowly diminished so that by the end there were 4 cars.. 10 people finished the trail.  At this point I was glad I did not schedule to sit and talk earlier in the day.  The sun was going down on our evening. We snapped a parting shot as a group, and headed off.  We were taking an old train road north, and everyone else was heading back to get the night cache. that we hit earlier in the day.

Return

The return was uneventful.  Jacob placed two at two old rail town/stops that were nothing but dots in the sand. I found a place that I placed my disco inferno cache.  It seemed fitting there was a fire in the distance in some of the hills, and finishing the trail.  We headed up through minersville past all the pig farms. On to beaver and home.  But we did make it on one piece.

We finally crawled home at about 12:30 or a little later. Thanks Wildrills and Ironbuttwings for the fantastic day, and all the cachers for putting up with the four strangers from the north invading your desert country.  I dont want to forget my trip, caching companions, Mortys, Princess Daisies, and Jacob, for making the day and the trip fun and possible.

 

More on the way.

After a weekend of many many caches (over 200 Saturday) I am logging. 

I hate (actually despise) cut and paste, so I am trying to go through and leave notes.  I also forgot to take the 200 caches off my watch list.  I started doing that this afternoon.  Then I had to delete about 800-1000 emails from the cache list without loosing the important ones.

I will find a way to screw it all up.

So I am running slow, and getting around to fixing all these really slow.  But i am up to 1714 logging with lots lots more to go.  So more will be on the way about the trip, but not right now.