Category Archives: Geocaching

Geocaching, USA 2012, Work Life

The long flight to Reno …

March 23, 2012 Scott 2 Comments

Well it has come around again. I have the opportunity to travel to the US to attend a couple of conferences for work – one in Reno and one in Seattle. The only drawback is the long flight in 3 legs.

I decided to take advantage of this by finding a geocache (2031 SA Geocaching Awards) at 7:30 am in Adelaide South Australia before getting on the plane to Reno Nevada to find a geocache (Name that Tune series – Part Eight) at 3:30 pm. That is a cache in the northern and southern hemispheres on the same date and 13275 kilometres apart – you have to love the International Date Line …

The first flight from Adelaide to Sydney was late getting off the ground due to the plane arriving late into Adelaide. Once airborne, the flight was very smooth and soon (1.5 hours) we were in Sydney. Thought I might have time to meet up with a mate, Paul Baker, but due to the late departure it was not going to happen.

Over to the Overseas terminal, through Immigration but a hold up on the security check. They wanted to have a look at what was inside my carry on. Doesn’t everyone carry a couple of GPSr’s, satellite phone, GoPro camera and a whole lot of associated cables. 🙂

Looking out the window at the A380, it is an impressive site, you have to wonder how it actually gets off the ground.

We were soon all loaded and despite being fairly full, I managed an empty seat next to me. The only drawback was that I was over the wing so the view was somewhat diminished.

The flight was smooth all the way. I think this maybe an advantage of being over the wing. You don’t notice the turbulence as much. Even though the plan was to get as much sleep as possible, only managed 3 hours in the 13 hour flight.

Immigration and Customs was a breeze but there was a show at the baggage carousel. Not sure what sparked it but there was security running from everywhere to restrain one person – he was carted off somewhere.

A short walk to Terminal 4 to catch a plane to Reno and through security again – they didnt even want to see what was in my bag 🙂

We all loaded onto the plane on time, not much sitting around this time except when we were about to go. It was discovered that a fuel cap was missing and they were sourcing a new one. Once replaced, they had to get clearance from Dallas to fly the aircraft. We ended up leaving 45 minutes late. The pilot tried to make up time and my GPSr was indicating speed of 850 kph. Not bad considering this was a small plane. The A380 was doing 980 kph on the Pacific leg so this was impressive for a small plane.

It was very spectacular flying over the snow covered mountains with only a bit of buffeting as we were landing in Reno.

Arriving at the Grand Sierra Resort, all I wanted was my room, a shower to freshen up and then head out for a walk but unfortunately my room wasn’t ready. So left the bags with the Bell Hop and went for a walk to find a geocache then off for some culture at Walmart. I had ordered a phone a week ago and it was to be here today but no it wasnt. Plan B was to grab a prepaid phone and use it for a few days then post it onto Jenny once she arrived, so not all is lost.

Headed back to the Grand Sierra Resort to find the room is still not ready (it is now 4:30pm) and I think the Check In girl worked out I wasn’t a happy camper so an alternative room was found.

Time for a shower, some tea and then finally getting to bed around 9:00 pm. I had been up for around 32 hours so was ready to crash …

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Geocaching

Lets go a Wandering …

February 25, 2012 Scott Leave a comment

The plan for today was to head out into the Mallee with a group of geocachers and tackle some more of the Wandering Heroes series.

An event was set up on Geocaching Australia – this is because Geocaching.com wont allow events that are set up to find caches (WTF) – I thought Geocaching.com was all about finding geocaches (I am obviously wrong).

After a flurry of interest on the event page and the Facebook page, the weather forecast came in and it looked like it was going to be in the high 30’s and all of a sudden the numbers interested dropped.

Well a bit of hot weather wasn’t going to stop a couple of hardy geocachers, and we headed up the freeway to Tailem Bend.

As it ended up we had a good breeze and the temperature remained in the low 30’s while those left in the City sweltered.

After 350 kilometres, 11 hours and about 10 litres of drinking water, we made 75 finds and hid 6 as well. Not a bad day out. 🙂

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12 of 12, Family Life, Geocaching

February 12 of 12 …

February 12, 2012 Scott Leave a comment

One would be forgiven to think that it either spring or autumn but we are in the middle of summer. Today was another day of mid 20’s weather but at least it was sunny.

This morning we celebrated the 2nd birthday of my nephew, Angus. He is a cheeky little kid and is going to cause issues for my brother as he grows up. The bouncy castle was the big winner at the party.

This afternoon, it was still sunny but not too warm so perfect to take Molly on a walk at Brown Hill Creek to grab a couple of geocaches.

Brown Hill Creek is one of the creeks that flows out of the Mt Lofty Ranges and through Mitcham ending up at Glenelg. It is also is said to have caused flooding through the suburbs in the past but you would think that the normal drainage of the suburbs would be more of an issue. There is a proposal of putting up a flood control dam in the area and understandably there is a lot of public backlash over the proposal.

Found a couple of caches, one a puzzle cache, More @#$%&, found in an old quarry and I managed to get some battle scars on this one. The second was a traditional, “Dam” Stupid Idea, involved a walk along the Wirraparinga Walking Trail and then some hill climbing to the final location.

$\"Dam\" Stupid Idea.$

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Geocaching

6000 Geocache Finds …

February 10, 2012 Scott Leave a comment

It started out with a simple stop off on the way home to find a newly published cache in the South Parklands, The Poet of Greenbridge. It was a simple walk into the parklands but nothing is ever simple.

I was looking around an obvious spot but couldn’t find it. Then I heard someone yell out “What are you doing” and turned to find Team Waldron (Glenn) and White Dog Gang (Mike) approaching.

We were hunting around again in the obvious spot, this time using the iPhone to take a photo in the opening – ah, there it is. As I extracted another pair walked up, it was Sandalwood Cottage. Looks like we have a flash mob. 🙂

Glenn and Mike had a ladder and asked if I would like to tag along to do a couple of the up high caches around Adelaide. Little did I know that they were looking for someone to do the altitude work (they reckon I have work skills for the task – they are probably right :)).

We tackled a couple of the nearby tree caches in other parts of the Parklands, The Magic Far Away Tree and Classic Songs II: U and UR Hand – Pink. The Far Away Tree was fairly straight forward even with the large numbers of muggles arriving for the nearby Netball.

U and UR Hand – Pink was a little different. There were 2 large trees at GZ and we picked the southern one. Up went the ladder and up I went 6 metres and down came the blinding rain. After a few minutes of getting soaked we decided it must be the other tree.

After a few circles of looking up, I looked on the ground and said “what about this one”. The cache had fallen out of the tree and was on the ground. After signing the log we put it back in the tree but certainly not from where it came from.

After grabbing a few caches around Mile End we headed to Beverley to another newly published cache, Remote 2 Elsema. This was to become cache find number 6000.

After circling the block trying to find an entrance into the area, it was a relatively easy find and the end of an easement. Finally Geocache #6000 was in hand. Thanks Glenn and Mike for joining me on this milestone.

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Geocaching

Urban Caving …

January 28, 2012 Scott Leave a comment

Today a group of geocachers including myself decided to head underground and do some urban caving to find some of the many geocaches that are hidden in the network of drains under the city and surrounding suburbs. The event was called “Tunnelling for smilies” and was an attempt to escape the heat of last week. I guess we weren’t far enough underground as it was both hot and humid.

A big thing with urban caving is keeping an eye on the weather above ground. Any hint of rain and it was to be called off. There was rain forecast today but not until later on in the afternoon. We had a ground crew up top watching the weather radars and we were in radio contact with the surface.

Including kids we probably had a group of around 30. we started out in the city with an easy one to warm up – GC38T1Y Tunnel-Do-Ku. This one only involves a 25 metre walk into a drain.

From here we headed east to GC18AZY The Shadowlands. This started with a pleasant walk from a path in an open drain admiring the artwork of the local youth on the walls – some of it was actually pretty good. Into the tunnel we went for about 200 metres (probably wasn’t that far) and hoisted up a light kid to grab the cache.

Next was GC2H2BE Tangrams – a walk along 3rd Creek and under the Schweppes factory for quite a way with the drain getting smaller as we went and with plenty of cockroaches lining the walls. We had some water in this drain but it wasn’t flowing. I wonder what the factory above is like given the cockroaches below and they were big ones too. The Burtons actually managed to maintain a GPS signal on this one – not sure how that was.

After grabbing a couple of nearby caches, it was onto GC1ZC57 Down the Drain. This was more like up the drain as it was a 1 metre pipe that went up at about 45 degrees. There was some intrepidation to go in due to spider webs, so rather than stand around I took the lead and cleared the way for the others. As we neared the cache a torrent of water came down from above. It was our ground crews idea of a joke to see how many they could get wet. We were hot by then so it wasn’t all that bad – I hope it just was drinking water.

Our last one for the day (well for me at least) was GCTRJ4 Ultraviolet but not before stopping for a hot pancake brunch supplied by Heidi from Team Scoobster (it was well received – Thanks Heidi). Ultraviolet involved heading underground and looking for a clue that could only be read with a UV light. We soon found the clue, found the cache and most of the group called it a day. The day was getting warmer and most of the kids had reached their limit.

I had run out of time due to commitments for fire crew duties at Speedway City but what was left of the group headed back to the city to tackle GC34WMY Wow, it’s dark in here! This one proved to be the biggy of the day with 950 metres underground – oh well another day.

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Family Life, Geocaching

Its Summer time – finally …

January 22, 2012 Scott Leave a comment

We have been waiting for a while but it looks like summer has finally arrived with a week ahead with 35 degree plus temperatures.

We were going to head up to Roonka for a couple of days but Jenny and Rachael weren’t up to it after a day in the sun yesterday playing softball.

As I had planned to hide a geocache on the way to Roonka at Sedan which was to be published tonight, I still needed to head that way.

Jenny and I headed to Sedan, hid the geocache – Mosaic Sedan, checked up on my others hidden there and then it was off to Mannum to Jenny’s parents.

I took the chance to find the new geocaches around town, which included at the lookout, riverfront, oval and cemetery. It is amazing the change in the River Murray now that there is water flowing in it.

Time to bundle some dogs into the car including Jenny’s sisters dog that had been boarding for a week and head home stopping at Pallamana for a couple of other geocaches.

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Geocaching

Riverland geocaching …

January 17, 2012 Scott Leave a comment

After having to work yesterday at the Glossop Fire on my day off, I made use of today as an alternative day off and took the opportunity to spend the day geocaching around Cobdogla, Kingston-on-Murray, Barmera and Waikerie.

Crane2 had spent a week out at Loch Luna and hid a series of seven geocaches that had been published overnight and I had a good chance of being the “First to Find” but I didn’t take into account someone camping up nearby going for the FTF’s during the night. I ended up with a silver find on all of them. It was good chance to see some scenery that I haven’t seen before – will put it on my camping list to do.

There were some good views of the River Murray. It is amazing the difference a year makes. A little over 12 months ago the river levels were way down but after some major floods in the eastern states and now the Murray is looking very healthy.

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Family Life, Geocaching, Holidays, Out and About

Melbourne here we come …

December 28, 2011 Scott Leave a comment

With a few days of leave available for both Jenny and I, we decided to take the kids to Melbourne. They have not been there and both Jenny and I have been there numerous times for work.

After an early morning dental appointment, we hit the road at 10:00 am. Luckily we were pretty well packed last night.

Weather was fine and warm but it was really only me getting out of the air-conditioned car to grab some geocaches along the way.

Lunch was at Keith, bought some almonds at the Victorian Border then a brief stop at the Giant Koala at Dadswell Bridge.

A few more caches then finally made it to Ballarat for the night on sunset.

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12 of 12, Geocaching, Out and About

December 12 of 12 – a caching day …

December 12, 2011 Scott 1 Comment

Quite a busy day this month with a start at the chiropractor to get everything in line as I had some walking to do.

It was then up the Freeway to Callington and then onto Rockleigh & Bondleigh to tackle a couple of hike-in caches on the Lavender Federation Trail. The caches on the radar today were:

ALDWT #2 at Rockleigh

ALDWT #4 at Bondleigh

The first cache took me past the old Preamimma Mine which is an old copper and gold mine which was mined in the late 1800’s. Like the nearby Kanmantoo Mine, there is a bit of interest to rework the area for copper, gold and zinc. However today there was just me, a few grasshoppers and a cache.

The second cache was further north towards Bondleigh, where I parked near a few old ruins and rusting old farm machinery. The walk around to the cache startled a couple of kangaroos but that was all the wildlife I saw. It was then a matter of picking the right crevasse in the rocks and I soon had the cache. The walk back to the car took me through an old stone walled drive to what could be called a hermits shed or at least an old weekender.

As I came up to the back of the shed, I got a bit of a fright as I nearly stepped on a snake all curled up trying to get some heat although today was a little cool and overcast. The cool conditions probably helped as it was very sluggish and gave me a chance to get a couple of metres away.

It looked to be around 1.5 to 2 metres long with a body the size of my wrist. Initially I thought it might be some sort of python but following a bit of research it was more than likely to be an Eastern Tiger Snake. I tried to get a photo but by the time the camera was ready it had slithered back into the stone wall.

Picked up a couple more caches in Kanmantoo, Nairne and Mount Barker. The cache in Nairne called Pumba’s walk has had me beaten a couple of times but I found it today. There were a couple of DNF’s (did not find) and these were both hidden by the same person – I think there is more work required in his hiding methods.

A quick stop at home to pick up Rachael to get her down to the bus depot to pick up her purse that was left on a bus last week. Luckily everything was still in it.

The project for tonight was to get the Xmas lights up and running. We actually pruned out a few of the old ones that have seen the end of their useful life and added a few new ones. All are good to go.

That’s it until next month.

$Pumba\'s Walk - my nemisis no more ...$

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12 of 12, 4WDing, Geocaching, Out and About

November 12 of 12 ……

November 12, 2011 Scott Leave a comment

We were up at the Thomas Hill Hostel sitting around the camplight (camp fires were banned) for the “Come Remember with me” geocaching event and someone said it has turned midnight and shouldn’t I be taking pictures for the 12 of 12.

I didn’t realise it was that time again – this last month has flown but then again I have spent a bit of time all over the country in the last month.

I looked up at the sky and saw the full moon with a jet trail just under it. There was photo number one. 🙂

Not long after it was time to head up into the roof top tent and grab some sleep.

Woke up not long after dawn but couldn’t get a good photo so back to bed for another couple of hours sleep.

Went inside to find the big table full of laptops, GPS’s and mobile internet devices. There must be a lot of nerds here or geocachers or both.

After everyone updating GPS operating systems and loading the geocaches it was time to do the drivebys on the caches within the property. These would normally require a lot of hiking to get.

Didn’t take long to see our first snake but missed getting a photo – it was a 1 metre brown snake.

We headed out on the various tracks which 12 months ago were wet and slippery but today dry and dusty. I was out caching with Honeysucker, Skippy and Semik. Out of the 6 caches we did at this time, I had found them 12 months ago except for one.

Back to Thomas Hill for lunch then headed out to grab a few more very clever caches involving the use of water, air pump and magnets. We were joined by Scoobster and Dazzatron for these ones.

Time to head home then it was out for dinner at Jenny’s brothers to finish this months 12 of 12.