This is made up of stories from my caching and my reviewing. It is a collection of those along with comments and thoughts. Photos, and maps of some adventures and lists of some of the oldest caches.
I am looking to make a list of the geocaching blogs that are out there. If you have one, or know of one (or a few please let me know. These are what I have right now, but if you know of any others please let me know. I have a fwe more to add. I would like to put together a comprehesive list of Blogs related to geocaching. Please do not list dead blogs (blogs with no post in the last three months. You can email me, post them as a facebook comment, or a regular comment.
We left Richfield around 10am Friday morning. We started the route south and had decided to make this a Virtual and Earthcache trip. Wandered through Clear Creek Canyon in southern Utah and left the main road. I actually found a nice place for another Earthcache in the area. So I was happy to take the route.
Cove FortWe stopped for just a moment, but the just a moment never seems to work out right. We ended up taking the tour, and seeing a lot of the fort. It was really interesting, the last time I had visted it was a mess. That would be back in the early 80's and much of the place had fallen apart.
We headed south and grabbed our first Earthcache of the day on the other side of the freeway from Cove Fort.
We then headed south taking a lot of back roads and seeing a lot of interesting locations.
The country was really cool, as we entered the red rock areas of Southern Utah. It was really impressive and cool. For the most part there are a lot of Virtuals in the area. Panguich, Cedar City, and more.
As we past cedar I think I had grabbed 10-12 virtuals and a couple Earthcaches. But when we took the turnoff at the North side of Zion's Park where things got really interesting. There was a lot of snow at the high altitude.
It was really beautiful. There were very few people that were actually there. I think we past three other vehicles. During the summer I am sure it would be crowded. There was enough snow that you could do much hiking, though one couple was heading off down a snow covered trail. There were a few other Earthcaches in the area that we grabbed though we could not get some because the trails are snowy.
We then hopped off and headed on southward. We seemed to stop about every 10 miles. Our Two-three hour trip ended up taking about 6-7 hours, but it was very enjoyable. We saw much of the countryside, found many benchmarks, and virtuals and Earthcaches before we arrived at St. George for teh night and decided to stay the night. In the end we found 10 Virtuals, 5 Earthcaches, and an uncounted number of Benchmarks this day. So there is yet to be Saturday, the bigger day of the journey, and much more interesting.
This week showed a few changes to Geocaching. A great quote in the forums from OpinioNate
After several feature-heavy releases it was time to circle back and fix some bugs. With the help of geocachers providing feedback on User Voice we identified some high-visibility issues and did a little house cleaning. This also gave us time to monitor site performance and plan for future feature enhancements.
The Beta Maps introduced before the winter holidays continue to perform well under load. Soon we'll begin more closely integrating them into the rest of the site, as well as add a few more tools to make them even more useful. Thank you for all the feedback so far!
You will notice a new video page. This has some great vidoes about geocaching and how to do different things: How to cache, cache containers, instructional videos etc.
You may not see the benchmark list from the side of the page. It has been banished. I am not fond of the change, but it was moved to the bottom right hand side of the pages with all the odd links.
If you are into powerpoint try the new presentation on Geocaching. It is really cool and I have tried to find a great place to use it with no luck yet. Perhaps I need to sign up as an instructor at a community class, just to use it once. To download you have to agree to the copyright terms. But check it out if you have powerpoint.
There is a lifting of the number of pocket queries to 1000. You can run more per week, but you can create a number of them for trips, and vacations that you wish to repeat in the future.
This weekend was a fun one for my wife, we elected to take Friday off and head to Southern Utah. Down to St. George to the event was the goal on Saturday, but I had no other plans.
Great group of geocaching jeeps.. sorry about that chevy thing that made it in the picture.
I did have a few that I will throw lists on tomorrow night. I made a list of all the virtuals and earthcaches on the way down and back, we made a trip down to Richfield to stay Thursday night, then over to Cove Fort, and south to St George on Friday. Then Saturday was the event, and through Zions, and north up highway 89 until we hit Richfield to see family. Then we came back on Sunday.
The even in St. George was great. It had a ton of people in attendance at there breakfast. I counted about eighty people in the photos. It was a big crowd and I am sure the Golden Corral was happy for all the money that geocachers brought in for them.
I actually took some of the UNPC coins down to sell. We had to scramble to get up and get over there. So I forgot about them completely.
There were so many that I wanted to visit with that I missed most of them.
I should have grabbed a t-shirt that Tico Jeffrey had made and sold to many of the people that were attending. I did not think of it until it was too late, maybe another time.
I want to give thanks to everyone that was involved. It was one of the best events that I have ever been to.
There are a few events that are larger, one or two of the UTAG events have been near this size, and the Potters Ponds event calls out a group of people that is larger. Some of the events up north in Logan tend to be near this size as well.
However after a long winter and people dying to get outside and actually do something, the timing of this event, the nice weather, hosts, and people who attend make this the best getaway in Utah.
I recomend it to all, and hope that schedules allow me to come down every year.
In the next few days I will post some of my other experiences on the trip south, It was more than I could list in one big pile, so if you want to see what else happened, stay tuned.
Well tonight I am heading on a road trip. Officially it is time away with my wife. We don't know when we are stopping or where, but we are heading south. The only know stop is the event in St George Saturday morning. I do have my big list of Virtuals and Earthcaches to grab, and explore.
I hope to see many of you there. I will post a follow up with pictures when I get a chance.
