Category Archives: Geocaching

Fall Fest

In Oklahoma Geocaching the two big events every year are the Fall Fest hosted by the Tulsa Area Geocachers and the Spring Fling, hosted by the Oklahoma City cachers. Both groups attend each others events plus many people from out of state attend each event.

This year’s Fall Fest is at Western Hills State Park on Gibson lake near Tahlequah. We had not been to an event in a year and a half so SuperPizzaBoy and I attended this years’s yesterday. Usually we camp, but you know it only about 40 minutes from our house and I like hot showers, my own bed, and Sweeties cooking. So we just attended for the day.

We had an OK time. The people are all very friendly and helpful plus lots of families are there. It is an occasion for nerds to be together with their swans, so to speak.

Anyway, pictures

“Headache” cache.

“View of the Ocean” cache right on the shore. See even arts and crafts people can cache.

SPB in front of the “haunted house’ cache. Didn’t know that birdhouses could be haunted.
Yogi and SPB on the trail.

SPB with his never very far away, even in the woods, Nintendo DS.

South Tulsa Running Route #1

Last Wednesday I got a kitchen pass from Sweetie to go running after work. I generally run on Wednesday but this summer we changed it up and we had a lot of fun biking after work. School has started though and it is getting dark so no more biking. Plus the Tulsa Run is in a month.

The Tulsa Run 15K is the run I look forward to all year. I have run 14 of them. This year will be my 15th in a row. A couple times I’ve run the race, skipped the complimentery beer, ran home, changed and raced to the airport to catch a flight. Once to go to a friends 50th birthday party in Houston and the second time to go to my parents 50th Wedding Anniversary celebration in Scottsdale.

Anyway, back to the task at hand. The race is 9.3 miles long. The longest I’ve run lately is 5. So I have to start increasing the mileage at least once a week.

I was going to run on the Arkansas River trail after work. I went to the parking lot where I change and notice I didn’t have the right shoes. 10 years ago I would have just gone ahead with the wrong shoes. I have put about 10,000 miles (no lie) on my feet since then. So now, I go home and get the right shoes.

I didn’t want to drive all the way back to the river so I ran my favorite route in South Tulsa but went a mile further than usual. Its the route I run in the morning. It is pitch dark at 5:15 in the morning so it was kind of neat running it when I could see it!

Tulsa has got some great trails. Most people think all they have is the Arkansas River trails. Not so, there are other trails that are relatively new. I try and tell people about them, and most don’t believe me. I think only about one person in a 100 knows abut them.

Below is where I start, at a community college. See how nice the trail is?

Below is a half mile further south.

This is under an overpass. In the dark, this is pitch dark. For some reason the story about the trolls and the tolls comes to mind here. I’m leery of bike riders shooting through taking the corner wide.
I love this bridge across the creek. Before they put it in I had to hop across rocks in the creek. SuperPizzaBoy and I have a geocache near here. Not many people bother to look for it. Too bad for them. Its on several people’s favorites list.
SPB and I have seen several good size snakes near here. Were they poisonous? You go see and then we’ll both know.

I love fountains and water features.
Another water feature.

Underneath one of the overpasses a geocaching friend has a cache. I had looked for it but it is kind of hard in the dark of the early morning especially in snake country. Plus it is under the overpass. The GPS doesn’t work! That means I have to look!

I found it tonight! Here is a picture.

The cacher’s name is Jeff. His geocaching name is “Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen from Heaven.” Jeff is Captain Crash and his wife is the Beauty Queen. They sign their caches and logs “CCATBQFH.”

Before he got married Jeff was JPENN. He and SuperPizzaBoy are friends. SPB calls Jeff his “Arch Nemesis” and is plotting his revenge.

It is a long story involving a “Fear Factor Cache” that had snakes, tarantula’s, hissing cockroaches (I’m not kidding) that Jeff talked SPB into opening. SPB screamed and ran a quarter mile down a road (again I’m not kidding, SPB had an audience and he played it for all it was worth). So they bonded.

Jeff is president of TAG, the Tulsa Area Geocachers. They meet once a month. They love SPB. With soccer and scouts we don’t make many meetings but SPB gets a warm welcome when we show up, “Hey, its Pizza Boy!”

They get him.

They have no idea how that makes me feel.

TAG is having their Fall Fest in a few weeks at Western Hills State Park. We’ll be there.

To finish up, I come across the tracks shown below. They are pretty sizeable. Is there a Den Mom or somebody out there that knows what made the tracks? They don’t match anything in SPB’s Cub Scout Book.


Geocaching on the Sly

Sometimes when the family has a busy schedule and there are lots of chores to do and you want to go geocaching you have to sneak in one or two as you can.

Last week I was at an industry function near Tulsa. They had a scramble golf tournament. I didn’t play very well. I’m a miserable player on my best day, on an off day, it is kind of ugly. Oh well. I finished. I was all hot, dirty, and sweaty anyway. So fire up the GPS and lets go find a few caches.

I found three including the one below. Very cool. It is at a model airplane airfield in East Tulsa. The club has their own cache off in the woods.

Last Sunday I went on an errand to the ToysR Us in East Tulsa to fetch a WiiFit. We’ve been wanting one bad. The store close to the house at zero. The East Tulsa store has 16.

Picked it up, turned on the GPS. Hey there is a microcache in their parking lot. Found it, check one. Hey there is one at a detention pond on the way home. That is the one below. Off to the right is my GPS on the ground. Check two. Turn off GPS, have to go to another store for batteries.

As an aside, both of these caches use “parallel stick camouflage.” I use it myself. Not very effective.

On the sly is how I find most of them these days. I’m ok with that. I would have to drive a ways to go find a bunch since I’ve found almost all of them in town. Cachers call hunting for mass caches a “cache machine.” They will go find maybe 50 in a day. Too much like work. The most I’ve ever found in a day was 15. A couple years ago the family found 10 in a few hours at Skiatook State Park on one of those sunny warm winter days we get every now and then. Sweetie is good at spotting caches. My brother in law and I found about a dozen or so in a few hours one day in Idaho a couple years ago.

PS: On the WiiFit. On the initial evaluation my Wii Age was -8. That made me pretty happy.

Geocaching – Why I Place Caches

I have a problem with geocaching. The problem is that SuperPizzaBoy and I have found almost all of the ones in Tulsa. Geocaching is lots of fun when you first start, you find out what are the fun caches and then you go get them. Fun caches are the large easy to find ones in the Woods. Tulsa has lots of woods. It is fun for the whole family. You find those it becomes less fun for families.

So the next move is placing caches. That is fun also. What makes placing them fun is what people say about them. If they like it and say so, it can really make my day. I put a lot of thought and effort into mine and when finders appreciate it and say so I love it.

SPB and I put a cache in some woods right off northeast downtown. It is in one of the oldest areas of Tulsa and near where the Creek, Osage, and Cherokee Nations met way before Oklahoma statehood. It is called “Country Club” in honor of the nearby Tulsa Country Club.

I got an email today from a finder named “Stoneposse” that said:

“Downtown for the opening of the BOK Center so we decided to grab a few caches and waymarks.This is what geocaching is suppose to be, a hide somewhere you may never find on your own! This is one of the best caches in quite a while! Interesting history! We could only imagine what it was like while we were there but it was great! The view of Tulsa was a BIG plus! Great cache! TFTC TNLNSL
We saw the Brady Mansion was for sale so we googled it and it has some very interesting history.”

note: “TFTC” means “Thanks for the Cache”, “TNLNSL” means “Took nothing, left nothing, signed log.”

His post made my day. I put a lot f work in the cache and found a “crease” if you will in Tulsa. A piece of woods right off downtown that was apparently long forgotten but used to be part of one f the first subdivisionsIf I like a cache, I always try to say that in my post. So many caches are very ordinary and uninspired.

I have other examples but the basic message is. If somebody does something that makes you happy, let them know it.

AT-6 Crash Site

The family is down in Antlers, OK, queen city of Pushmataha County for the labor day weekend. We eat good. And of course, we do some geocaching. We didn’t find any this trip instead SuperPizzaBoy and I set one. It is where two British airplanes crashed during a training flight in World War II on a remote mountainside in Southeast Oklahoma.

One plane belly landed and the the other nosedived in so hard that the plane lifted a boulder into what the locals have always called “a natural tombstone.” That is quite a story but it doesn’t end there.

54 years later. 1997, in the small town of Rattan, OK, some elementary school children took an interest in the story and sought some more information on what happened. They wrote a letter t the Library of Congress. A staff member there took an interest in helping the kids. The kids decided that a monument was in order.

To make a long story short, three years later, on the 57th anniversary of the crash, a monument was dedicated to the four Brits who died on the mountain. The kids arranged to have a many relatives of those men to be there for the ceremony.

I think it is a great story. The kids did a lot but they couldn’t have done it without the support of their teachers and other adults who helped them.

SuperPizzaBoy and I hid a cache and submitted the request. It hasn’t been approved yet. It will be called “AT-6 Crash Site”.

If you want to go see it for yourself, the cache and the monument are at N 34 deg 22.120 minutes and W 095 deg 38.616 minutes.

Be careful. I wouldn’t go there after dark.

The monument.

The natural tombstone.

The plane.

Boys Night Out – City Center

I’m beginning to think that wives don’t like activities that begin with “G.” For example some react violently to Golf. Others don’t like Gambling. My wife, Sweetie abhors Geocaching. I say the word and the eyes roll. Oh well, I like it. I like it a lot. I’m obsessed with it. I find it to be lots of fun.

I work downtown and I’m always looking for a place to hide a cache. There are not very many geocaches in downtown Tulsa and most of them are mine. Most are small, what are called microcaches. What are fun though are big caches that are easy to find and full of stuff to trade. These however are hard to hide in an urban area.

At lunch last week I was walking around downtown aimlessly and I stumbled upon on a little crease, a hidden place, a great hiding place. I got closer thinking “I could hide a cooler in there.” I got even closer and found out that somebody had already beaten me to it. A homeless person was using it to sleep in. All I had was the cheesey camera on the Treo.

Its hard to tell from the photo but there is a sleeping bag, a back pack and some other stuff in there. Somebody is camping within about 20 feet of where hundreds of people go walking and driving every business day. I’m glad for him, everybody needs a place to stay. I wished that he had better but I guess it is his. Until he leaves, then it will be mine. Especially if Sweetie gets real mad at me.

I found another cache site about 60 feet away. Far enough I think that he wouldn’t be bothered.

The following Tuesday. Sweetie had her monthly book group meeting. My son, SuperPizzaBoy, and I always have a “boys night out” and we do lots of various things. We have been doing it since he was born. We have a whole series of “Boys Night Out” caches for geocaches that we hid during out monthly outings. It has been a long time since we have done one though. We have been playing miniature golf, laser tagging, swimming, shopping, and other things. It has been over a year since our last Boys Night Out cache. Since I discovered a hiding place in a great area, off we went.

First up, we eat. We went to Johnnies for hamburges. We usually go there or Mexacali’s for mexican food.
A part of geocaching is trade trinkets. We usually go to the Dollar Store for that. This time we loaded up at Walgreens. And then to the cache site.
We got to the cache site at dusk. It is right in the middle of downtown which is usually deserted this time of day. There were two guys standing yakking. They were within sight of where we wanted to hide the cache so they had to leave before we could do anything. They yakked and yakked and then yakked some more. All we could hear was “badab badab badab badab badab.” or “blah blah blah.” I don’t know what they were talking about. It must of been important, like talking about their wifes hairstyles or shoes or I don’t know what.
We finally loaded up in the truck and drove around and around. They left! Its like hey guys its a school night.
So anyway, we got out and hid the cache and got the coordinates. To do it right you have to take a bunch of readings and then average them.

It is very well hidden.
Then we went home. I filled out a web page for the cache and submitted it for approval. Geocaching.com has all sorts of guidelines and rules for caching. There are laws also governing the placement of personal objects. They are anti terrorism type laws enacted after 9/11. Geocachers have been prosecuted for placing caches on railroad abutments for example. You can’t place objects in any National Park. The City of Tulsa encourages placing caches in the remote areas of city parks. SPB and I have several. You have to get a permit and we have and it is free. The River Parks Authority requires permits also and we have one near the Bear Sculpture at 71st and Riverside and another on Turkey Mountain. We have 24 caches hidden and have found over 700.
I got notice of approval this morning. If you want to go looking for it, the coordinates are N 36 degrees 9.023 minutes north and W 95 degrees 59.241 minutes west. Its called “Boys Night Out – City Center“. SPB picked the name.
Oh, the homeless camp. I had a better camera and wanted to get a better picture than the one above so just before we left the area I walked over there to take a picture. I didn’t though. The occupant was in his hidey hole and appeared to be fast asleep. I backed up very quickly and quietly, without taking the picture.

Saturday Morning Bike Ride

Last Saturday while Logan was still at Q’s house Sweetie and I went for anothe bike ride. We started out, went about 2 miles and got rained on so we parked under an overpass to see what the weather would do. While we were waiting I checked on a cache that SuperPizzaBoy and I found a couple years ago. Its named Fill the Gap or something like that. It is a candy container with a magnet hidden on a turnpike bridge abutment.

We had given up and a guy come bicycling up and asked if we found it. Turned out that it was his cache. His screen name is BA Joker. Anyway he gave me a hint and I found it. So I checked on it and it still there but it hadn’t been found since June. It is in a niche and hard to find.

The cache is nice but what is really nice about the cache is what is around it. It looks like some critter maybe a coyote or a fox has turned it into their dining room. Their all sorts of well gnawed bones scattered all over the place. They look like birds, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, maybe even a few dogs and cats. So if anybody needs critter bones for witchcraft or some othe purpose, I know where to get them.

It kept sprinkling but at a lower intensity so we went on with our ride. We went another 3 miles and decided to plug and abandon this outing. On the way back we come upon a biker who had taken a spill. It was pretty bad, he broken his thumb and it was bleeding all over the place. He was in sad shape. Just as I was trying to figure what to do for him a truck stopped and the driver got out and loaded the guys bike and drove him off. Lucky biker We were a few miles from our truck and he needed help now.

So we went on. It stopped raining so we kept on going. 18 miles and change. Went home cleaned up. Off to Freshberry’s for our post ride treat and then off to get SPB.

Road Trip Chapter 3 or Back to Work with an aside about Temple Grandin.

Days 4 and 5 on the road trip. The Daves met up with some of the other guys from Tuesday and toured some of our plants. I had been doing the commercial work for the plants for several years and had never been there so it was pretty interesting to me.

We had to wear Nomex lab coats so it looks kind of funny.


At lunch both days I participated in presentations at lunch for the field guys. I got up and told them what I did and how I did it. They were very polite. They kept the yawning down and only a few went to sleep.

We spent the night at a hotel in a town that had the most feed lots and beef packing plants I’ve ever seen. We had dinner with our local managers. We got out late, around 9:30 pm. I went geocaching. I didn’t find any skirt lifters but I did find one cache that I thought was pretty cool.

It was a post office box in the driveway of a fruit stand. I thought it was very creative.


After lunch the last day, we drove the 377 miles back to Tulsa. We stopped at Braum’s at the Blackwell and had the usual. Large chocolate mix with heath bars.

Got home about 10 pm. Great to be back. Gone to long.

As an aside with an autism angle. The national poster person for Autism and Asperger’s syndrome in particular is Temple Grandin. Ms. Grandin, who is an agricultural engineer, has Asperger’s syndrome and has been a great advocate people with autism and has published several books and magazine articles.

In her chosen field of designing packing plants she is also famous. She has some sort of empathy with animals. Her most famous innovation is the inlet ramp from the yard to the killing area. She designed them to be a ramp with a continuous curve that narrows gradually. Somehow the cattle stay calm as they are driven into the wide inlet that goes up at a slight angle and then turns, all the while getting narrower.

I saw a couple of those ramps on this trip. It is very eerie watching the cattle moving very calmly in line to their doom. It is almost enough to turn me into a vegetarian, but not quite.

The whole mysterious thing is like at the crux of Asperger’s Syndrome. Very high intelligence and a different way of looking at things combined with a strange sense of empathy with a total lack of sentimentality. She sensed the cattle were nervous so she determined how to alleviate that while still facilitating their deaths. I cannot quite get my head around it.

Road Trip Chapter 2 or Time to Play!

The convention that me and the two Daves attended lasts two nights. The following morning was the golf tournament. What a deal. Free Golf (or at least free to me). Free beer (I didn’t drink any) and free golf shirts (from Symcrude, not too many takers except us blood sucking natural gas gathering and processing guys).

Lots of prizes. Look at all the signs.

The tournament is a scramble type format. So I feel sorry for the guys who get stuck with me. I am truly a miserable golfer. But they are always good sports and the results take into account my handicap so it is not all downside getting a guy like me. We finished in second place in our flight and we each got $60 in cash. The guys in an oilfield tournament are a lot of fun. The world is their toilet. Women participate but they need to be good sports and avert their eyes when need be. The guys are a mess. I hear lots of really good jokes but they are not really repeatable here. I also hear lots of great new words. I won’t go into that either.

My ball striking was awful but I made a few good pitches and some putts. Not bad for somebody who plays twice a year. I spent half the money at a liquor store buying my favorite beer, Fat Tire. I like it but the Oklahoma powers have forbidden its sale in Oklahoma.

After the tournament we headed back to the hotel. The Dave who is my boss graciously offered the use of the rental car (a Suburban) to use in my next favorite activity. Wow! is a he a good guy or what! So I took him up on it and so I dropped the Dave’s off at the hotel and went out on the town to do a little skirt lifting. My favorite activity.

I love lifting skirts, I have done it all over Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. I ‘ve learned to be careful because some people don’t like it and will call the police. It is not too cool to get caught! I’ve never been caught. I am very clever at it.

Below is a picture of the first skirt I lifted in this town after the golf tournament.


Its that light pole skirt over on top of the concrete cylinder on the left side of the photo. It has a magnetic key container underneath it. Oh, I meant geocaching is my favorite activity. Some of the caches are are called skirt lifters. What did you think I meant?

Actually I lifted only two skirts. I don’t like them too much. They are usually in parking lots and close to peoples cars and I like to do my skirt lifting in more secluded areas. They are considered a lame type cache to hide. But hey you don’t know what they are until you get there so you might as well get it.

For some reason most of the caches I found that day were in trees. The following one was in a park in a really bad area of town. I was in the tree rooting around trying to find it. Some guy with a dog shows up. I still had my golf togs on so I guess he thought I was some sort of forest ranger or something. He asked “Is that tree going to make it?” I said, “Yea I think so, it looks like the ice laid some of the branches down pretty bad, but it will be ok” He said “that’s good, I noticed that it had some damage.” I said, “no, it will be ok I think.” He said “great?” He left. I eventually found the cache.


The following is a picture of cache put out by a Family Dollar Store in a tree near their store. It took me a while to find.


I looked up and there was a Starbucks down the street. That was God’s way of saying “time to quite geocaching.” So I did. I had a venti Pike Place with cream. I have only 98 cents left on my card. Time to reload.