Supplemental Entry: Premium Cache Alpha

   I finally got around to rewarding myself with a Premium Membership, and there happened to be one in a small bit of woods right off a major highway.  Just because caches are set to Premium-Only doesn't mean they are going to be fantastic, but this one also has 33 favorite points.
   Oh shit, that's right!  I can give favorite points out now!  I totally forgot to check that out!

   Sorry.  I'm back.

   Anyway, what I would like to note is that I am probably going to be a tad more reserved with the information given out/shown in regards to Premium caches.  The road to 10K will be a long one, so I don't want to go pissing off the more hardcore players.  I'm sure I can present things in such a way so as to not have it show up in any spoiler-searches.
   I'm calling this cache Premium Alpha, and it is a Difficulty 4 and Terrain 2.5 for those of you using the chart on the sidebar to your right.

   The first half of the video is my "hat cam" that I activated when I was about 300ft from my target.  Then it switches to split-view, which I kind of botched, but you get the idea.  If you just want to bypass me larping some S.T.A.L.K.E.R., then advance to about the 4:40 mark.

   The cache owner pretty much tells you were to look in his description (although in the snow most landmarks were not visible) but this is the second time where I just put my hand on a cache while passing by it.
   I'm not transcribing the riddles here, for search reasons, and in fact if I had bothered to use my phone to search for some answers I might have opened it right there.  However, even though I now sit here with Internet-assisted answers, my answer to the Black Riddle is only four letters long, and all the locks appear to be five letters long.  I mean, it has to be fire, right?  Am I missing something?

   Looks like I won't know until I return to the cache.  I'll keep you posted.

Main Journal Entry #006

     I showed this picture to my friend Owen (he is from London) and he asked, "Is this what Christmas in America is like?"
     I don't talk to him anymore.  He doesn't geocache anyway.

     This is a statue called Frustration.  The sculpture represents the hostages from the Iran hostage crisis, and as such it has been used as a clue in a whimsical GPS-based game of hide-and-seek.  Nothing is hidden on it, but you needed information from it to complete a multicache at this park.  It is part of a growing mental catalog I keep of creepy-ass sculptures that seem to dot the area.

     After reading a bit on my phone, it occurred to me that in the course of geocaching, people will lead you around and have you acquire such random information for their puzzles.  That is what I thought the theme would be for Entry #006, but my thoughts and opinions on pointless stuff ended up dominating the final edit.

     The first cache in the video, Dance a Jig, makes excellent use of a virtual jigsaw puzzle, and I thoroughly hated all 52 minutes of putting it together to get the coords.  It did make me feel more accomplished when I found the cache, so maybe really, really minor adversity can build character!  That cache and half a dozen others (including Under The Boardwalk and Vets Park Never Forget) were located in Veterans Park in New Jersey.

     Where I had the most jollies was at Pioneer Day Passageway, and if you are a Mormon, please let me know as I have some questions for you.  Anyway, there is whole separate post for that cache.  A most enjoyable location.  The same goes for Delhaas A Wall.  They are the entries right before this one.

     I just looked in to the whole mule-thing from Shadowy Span.    It turns out that, for some reason, a bunch of private investors spent about $90,000 to "place 300 decorated fiberglass mules along the 165-mile canal corridor next spring, from Wilkes Barre to Bristol, which includes the Delaware Canal State Park." source.  It is called the Miles of Mules.
     Now, this was well over a decade ago, and in fact I know I have seen at least two more in my travels.  Apparently some were moved, some destroyed, some auctioned, etc...
     According to this website which has pictures of known-locations for mules, our pal by the cache is called Salvaged and not, as I had hoped, Cenobite.  Regardless, I think I have a new sub-quest.  I also think I know where one mule is that has not been listed for a decade!

     And here I was thinking geocaching was pretty weird...

PLEASE NOTE:  In an effort to not be a total Spoiler Man, I am no longer linking the cache names with their respective geocache.com listing, nor tagging by name on the YouTube videos.  If I want to find 10k caches, I best not make too many enemies!

Supplemental Entry: Delhaas A Wall

Can't find a cache?  Let out a primal scream.  No one will mind, honestly.

     I was scoping out this little park for placement of a multicache I have been working on.  Turns out the spot is already taken!  In the "Additional Waypoints" of the cache description there is a bunker listed  as a reference point.

     Although the cache had a mere single favorite point, I thought it would be a good area to test out a new camera, so that is what most of the footage is.  It does look nice when I render it in more detail, but I didn't do that here.  The actual geocache is towards the end of this four minute clip, and it is unremarkable.  Sometimes when the GPS doesn't settle down, you just have to spiral out from your best guess and check some obvious places.  If this were a micro, I would have been screwed.  It is certainly a fun area to muck about for a little bit and grab a selfie, and if this cache ever goes dormant or is archived I am coming back to put one in the center of the bunker on the inside.

     If you want to hear a very brief commentary on certain types of items found in caches, jump to 3:41.  Remember, supplemental entries are not going to have all the pizzazz of the main entries, and I haven't fully messed around with this new cam or any sort of rigging for it, but at least it handles motion better than my older one.

Cache Stats

Name: Delhaas a wall (and needs a CITO)
By: Coldgears
Hidden: August 11, 2011
Last Found: December 14, 2014
Difficulty: 1.5
Terrain: 2
Size: Regular
Type: Standard
Favorite Points: 1
Clue: "Move it"

Going to work on a Main Entry soon, then I hope to share my multicache here.  Happy 2015.

Yard Sale Find

   A variety of micro caches here, all for ten bucks at a yard sale.  The black one is a nano, and the screw is hollow; the top comes off and has room for a very small logbook.  Insane!  Gotta do some stuff with these.

Supplemental Entry: Pioneer Day Passageway

     Supplemental Entries are more personal than the main entries.  There are no overlays or maps or voice-overs.  Sometimes I will seek out a specific cache because of the amount of favorite points it has, or I have heard or seen something that leads me to believe it would look good in the Main Entries, and then I try and hit the surrounding caches while I am there.

     There is only one geocache in this video, at 7:00 minutes or so.  Everything before is vibe, and the stuff after is just me going on about whether I like to be alone or have company.  Vloggy stuff, really.  When I look back on this entry, I want to feel the mood I felt while I was there, which was kind of spooked because of that PERSISTENT YET SPORADIC HAMMERING SOUND DEVOID OF RHYTHM and general location and setting.  I'm not far from humanity at all, but I had traveled from the parking lot through the woods to this little tunnel, and I hadn't seen a soul.  Plus, Fall is SPOOOOKY, right?

Only about a mile from the parking (left) to the cache (right)

Long, lonely abandoned railroad tracks.  Oh wait, someone took all the tracks.

Cache Stats

Name: Pioneer Day Passageway
By: JWTZ
Hidden: April 24, 2013
Last Found: October 17, 2014
Difficulty: 3.5
Terrain: 3.5
Size: Small
Type: Standard
Favorite Points: 2
Clue: "Stoned"

     It turns out Pioneer Day is a holiday, and it is on the day the cache was released.  Meh.  The wind was blowing my tripod all over the place and I was testing out a hands-free thingie I made for my GPS, so I couldn't be too bothered by some Utah-based holiday for Mormons.

     Oh yeah, in case you are wondering, when I am at the entrance, after I say, "There are a lot of spots," I hear some quads (or All Terrain Vehicles - ATVs) and that is what I shout before I go and hide from the cool kids.

"ATV!" Run!

     I really do think they could have had more fun placing that, but to each their own.  I am happy to have been brought back to this tranquil area.

Main Journal Entry #005

     Why wouldn't I want to start off this entry with an image of Han Solo in a dubious position over someone's trackable coin while Chewbacca stands behind him in an attempt to dislodge something from one of Han's orifices?  It's absolutely relevant if you watch the video entry.

     I had to combine two attempts at Mercer County Park.  The first time I went in the spring, I was in the process of recording at their war memorial while finding Purple Heart, and some gnarly old veteran came in and started having an emotional moment, so I let him be, but my spirit was sapped so I went home to have a good think.  The lure of the park's 50 caches brought me back in the fall, which turned out to be a really windy day, but dry enough for me to quest for 10 caches.

A gorgeous ride on easy terrain.

     I may have a dash of Phil Filming Himself Riding A Bicycle Syndrome, because it is the only way I know how to indicate travel on video.  This entry also hammers home, and suffers from, the fact that regular caches hidden in the woods are not that interesting.  Fun to find, but shit on film unless the container or puzzle is wicked, or the location has some pizzazz.

The caches in this video are:

• MCP - then and now
• MCPBT 2(a): Toothless Grin
• Mayo Cache-O
• MCPBT 7: Scenic Overlook
• MCPBT 9: Living on the Edge
• Phil's 30th Birthday Cache
• Geobiking 2: Tannenbaum
• Jack's Treasure Box
• Travel Bug Galore

 

     I'm not bothering too much with notes here because everything was pretty standard and vanilla.  I'm not putting down the caches or anything, but maybe I am rushing myself here to get caught up on my timeline so I can publish the blog.  There isn't too much to add when you have already filmed yourself finding a box in the woods.

     I can't stress enough how delightful it was to ride the twisty-but-level trails in this park, and I hope that comes through in the video.  As far as geocaching goes, you can't beat the amount of caches you can find in one day in this one area.

SPACE 2081: A Geocaching Odyssey

     In the first main journal entry, I mentioned that the cache SPACE2081 [4.5/2.5] Broken Arrow was part of a larger series, and that I would explain later.  Now, it is later.

     The SPACE 2081 series is apparently run by several or more people in the Southeastern Pennsylvania area.  In fact SPACE stands for "Southeastern Pennsylvania Association of Caching Enthusiasts," and they have placed 81 space-related (fact or fiction) caches around the way, one for every Difficulty and Terrain Rating combination available from the main geocaching site.  They generally write the combination in the cache title, as seen above.  Take a look at my sidebar and you will see the "star charts."

     Each cache has a code in it, and when all 81 of these codes are in hand, then they can be used to find out the location of the 82nd and final cache.  So far, I have found 4, and I totally forget what the codes were in two of them.  There are no shortcuts here; you need to have the logs signed and you need to have all the clues to get to the final.

http://www.spacecaching.org/

     It has just occurred to me that two things have occurred to me.  The first is that they have not released all 81 caches yet.  This endeavor of theirs appears to have only started in the past year or so, but they seem good on keeping things well-maintained, and the caches and hides themselves are creative and somewhat more thoughtful than other caches around the area.  The second thing I realized is that the last one I found, called SPACE2081 [3.5/5.0] GeoForce Be With You, actually had you stretching out in an iconic pose.  I could see if you were shorter how you might wish you could do a Force Pull here, but I did not have that problem.

     So, as far as getting some nice and creative caches on camera for the journal, SPACE caches seem the way to go.  I'm going to try my best to not include the actual codes required in the video, because Screw You!  While there are obviously location spoilers in this journal, you are still going to have to go out there and get the codes yourself!

I realize I already screwed this up with the Broken Arrow one in the first entry by not blurring out the code, but what can you do?