Category Archives: Geocaching

Multitasking – Geocaching with some Hill Training

Son Logan rocking the hat and Star Wars shirt.

Part of geocaching is that if you place a cache then you are responsible for it and if it goes missing you have to replace it. I have such a cache called “Little Haikey Creek” located in south Tulsa right in the middle of a giant freeway exchange. I’ve had it for years and hardly anybody ever looks for it because it is a long walk from the nearest parking areas.

So off we went on the Mingo trail that winds through the freeway interchange.

The highest part of the freeway exchange goes right by the Mingo Trail and the resulting hill is popular with runners who want to do hill repeats. Hill repeats are where you keep going up and down hills, repeatedly. It is kind of like hitting your head with a hammer repeatedly, except hill repeats are good for you. Supposedly, anyway Logan and I decided to run up and down the hill just for the fun of it. Really we just walked. But I’m calling it a run. What do you know? You weren’t there.

So anyway we got to ground zero (that is geocacher lingo, for the place where the cache is supposed to be) and placed a new one. Somewhere in the woods above. Then we headed back.

We passed a homeless guys place. This kind of puzzled me. Most homeless guys camp near where they can get food and water. This place is a long hike for either. Oh well.

On the way back, we ran up the hill again!! Just for the heck of it.

There he goes down the hill. I like how he is holding his hat like a cowboy holds his cowboy hat. Logan is a native Okie you know.

And then a cyclist came by and went up the hill by diagonal. No way that Alan Bates could do that.

Anyways a good time was had by all. The cache was replaced, we got some fresh air and exercise and a lot of fun. Logan still hates geocaching but he is starting to run/walk with me a little bit and I’m loving that.

What have you been up to lately?

Lunchtime Geocaching – Walking in the Woods looking for Tupperware

A bare hint of a trail at West Highlands Park

Fall has definitely come to Tulsa and we are in a period of gorgeous days with sunshine and blue skies. And with the brush, bugs, and snakes gone I am back in the woods finding the larger geocaches. Once or twice a week I take off at lunch to go find one or two. Early in the week I went to west Tulsa’s West Highlands Park to find one hidden deep in the woods in an undeveloped area of the park. Previous finders had reported a lot of difficult bushwhacking. I’m lazy and I had my work clothes on and wasn’t interested in getting all tangled up in the brush, thorns, and mud so I spent a considerable amount of time looking for a trail headed to the cache. It wasn’t a regular park maintained trail. It is what land managers call a “social trail” and you are liable to find anything on such a thing. It is best to keep an eye on what is going on because it is possible to walk into something you don’t really want to walk into. Check out geocaching.com to learn more about geocaching or my link at the end of this post.

Sure enough about 100 feet into the woods I find a collection and porno mags and some whiskey bottles. Sometimes I wish I had a trash bag with me (and a really really good pair of gloves!). I’ve brought along trash bags and it works out well. You pick this crap up and and drop it into a trash bin at the park parking lot. I hate it when people leave trash in public areas.

A few hundred feet further and I came upon an old squatter’s camp that was no longer active. They had left a bright green Dollar store shopping cart. That puzzled me because you would basically have to carry that thing through the woods to their camp. I mean if you have that much energy why don’t you get a job, earn some money, and get an apartment?

Soon after, I left all signs of squatters and came upon signs of nature. Some busy little beaver got after this tree.

I found the cache, as a courtesy to the Cache Owner and the people looking for it I am not showing where I found it. If you want to go look for it, it is named “TAG CITO 2014 Commemorative Cache – West Highlands.” It was a fun one to find.

At lunch on Friday I drove out west to Keystone Dam to look for a couple of caches.

I wasn’t really familiar with the area and ended up on this old road on the south side of the Arkansas River downriver from the dam. A road like this demands to be driven to the very end and I did. So then I looped back and got to business at hand.

I saw an eagle take off from the top of these trees near the “Ground Zero” of the Bomb Squad Cache.

The first one I went after was close to the dam and was named Blue Blazes after the trail that goes by it. This is on Army Corps of Engineers managed land and there was no signs of squatters or porn parties. Just me, the trail, and the woods.

Then I went to the other side of the dam and took a short hike along the north bank of the river and found the Bomb Squad Cache so named because the cache owner originally placed the cache too close to a post office and the police bomb squad came in and looked at it. They didn’t go stupid though. They left a note asking him to move it somewhere else and he did deep in the woods, and I’m glad he did.

Anyways I love walking in the woods this time of year on a bright sunshiny days. What about you, have you ever been geocaching?

Geocaching 101

(Bad) Judgement Day on Turkey Mountain

Last Tuesday night I went over to Turkey Mountain and did a little (darned little) trail running and geocaching. I started out on the Red Trail to go find some caches. I passed a couple that was walking along really slowly looking at their GPSr and I asked if they were geocaching. The guy put the GPSr behind his back and said, “What’s that.” Newbies, why are they so embarrassed? Cuz they should be is the answer.

It took a while for my GPSr to lock on so I kind of wibble wobbled as you might see from the Garmin Connect map at the end of this post but it finally synched with the satellites (thank you my fellow American taxpayers for those satellites I’ll add here.) My first cache was difficult. It required a double backward flip off this fallen tree and a clean landing. Believe it or not I did it and so claimed the cache. Proof, you say? Well I told you that I did it didn’t I?

Then the next one not too far away. All I had to do was stick my hand somewhere I didn’t want to. Nothing bit me, this time.

And I climbed out of the Red Tail area via the Fro Flo trail. I love going the wrong way is all I can say. I went uphill on the Fro Flo guys. Gasps from the Turkey Mountain free riders.

There are several videos on Youtube of the Fro Flo by riders using their Go Pro cameras. This one had some good views of the jumps.

I’m trying to figure out what this is for.

This one looks fun. Would you ride your bike up this ramp and then down the length of the log. Yeah, well me neither.

So anyway I got back to the parking lot and started up the blue trail to the top of Lipbuster and looked for a cache (and didn’t find it) near the water tanks and then I noticed another cache on my GPSr about a quarter mile away. I thought, maybe I could bushwhack it over there.

Not a good idea. One thing led to another. Thorns, tall grass, thickets, scratches, blood, insects. No snakes though. That I could see anyway. Fortunately I had used deet before my run so no ticks or chiggers.

I finally found a clearing. Where I could make some headway.

And then out in the middle of nowhere I found Little Miss Blue Eyes. Kind of cute don’t you think. Kind of spooky is what I think. Eventually I found a trail and made it to the cache site and found it and then I kind of took a wrong turn.

You see there were some new trails up there and I didn’t know how they ran so I just went with it and took quite a tour of the southwestern side of the mountain before I made it back to the Snake Trail. By then it was pitch dark and I didn’t do a whole lot of running.

I passed a cop car with its lights on. I think they were looking for the old fat guy going up the wrong way on Fro Flo.

Here is my route. Slow and sloppy was the mode.

Continue reading →

Running and Geocaching along the Turnpike

Yesterday evening I didn’t make it out to Turkey Mountain after work to run with the TATUR group. I was on the wrong side of town you see because it is almost tax time and I had to go pick up the return and see how much extra damage I was having to pay over and above what we’ve already paid.

You see I just get totally confused on who to vote for because well you know Obama likes to give my money to his friends, the poor people and almost all Republicans like to give my money to their friends, the rick people. Now Hillary, she’s different, she doesn’t have any friends so she’ll just keep my money. Stuff like that makes life a lot simpler is what I say. Besides if she gets elected she’ll have to buy a new email server. I think a President who can set up their own server is pretty cool. What do you think.

Well, I’m sorry I hadn’t even begun my post and I’m already off topic, way off topic. So since I couldn’t make it in time to run Turkey Mountain I went to Tulsa’s Hunter Park and started off trying to find a few caches there and then since it is connected to the Creek Turnpike trail I took off on that trying to find a few. I think I looked for about a half dozen or so and found about two.

I am not very good about finding micro caches and some of these hides are pretty darn clever. I have come to terms with myself about not finding many of the clever hides. The point is getting out and about and trying.

So I had a pretty good run. If you click on the thingy above and get it going you can see how I was searching in places and then moving on. At the end I forgot tot turn off my watch so that is what the last mile or so is fast.

Do you have fitbit? One of those little devices that tracks your steps. This is my fitbit reading for yesterday. I got in about 15,000 steps which is over seven miles. You can see that I have a pretty sedentary job and then I go walking at lunch and then how I got moving once I got out caching and then how slow I was when I got home and plopped myself down in front of the television.

What about you? What was your big adventure yesterday (or whenever?)

Friday Lunchtime Geocaching

It was Friday so at lunch I headed out to east Tulsa to replace a geocache that somebody said they couldn’t find. No wonder they couldn’t find it. The tree that it was hidden in has disappeared. All that’s left is a pile of saw dust. So, scratch that. So what the hey I’ll go find one. So off I went. I miscalculated where to park and had to take a long walk around to find a bridge across a creek.

I got across the bridge and some young lady comes jogging and passes me and keeps looking behind her and I could tell that I was bothering her but there was nothing I could do about it. So I finally got close to the cache and tucked into the woods to find it. I was wearing my cowboy boots. They have never been dirty. Well they got plenty dirty. I ended up in a creek and when I tried to pull myself out of the creek I grabbed what turned out to be thorns and I let go and my boots slid into the creek and the thorns grabbed onto my nice shirt. Well I got the thorns loose from my shirt but my trousers and boots were all muddy.

So anyway I got out and found the cache and all. And of course I had to take pictures of the blessed event and all that. You know because us geocachers are all very manly, well except for the women, who are all kind of womanly, but we all like our boo boos to be noticed, right? So here is the picture of my manly boo boos.

So I made it out of the woods and back on the trail and just as I pop out of the woods guess who comes jogging by. You got it, the young woman who was worried about me. Now, she is really worried about me and speeds on ahead, turning around and looking at me more and more. So I start doing my old man shuffle. You know because I am now 60 years and four days old and I’m entitled to shuffle a little now and then. Somehow the shuffle doesn’t reassure her. I kept thinking, how does somebody so young and skinny run so danged slow. Maybe I should be the one who should be nervous, right?

And to make it worse, she stops at the bridge and pulls out her cell phone and is talking on it and then heads across the bridge. The same bridge that I need to go across. Keep in mind, this is in east Tulsa, which is not the best neighborhood in this fair city. So I do my old man shuffle across the bridge following her, thinking, just run girl and get away from me. Fortunately, she heads one way on the other side of the bridge, the opposite way that I needed to go to get back to my car so I can get back to work.

So feeling totally bummed that I made her feel nervous I make it back to the car and decided to not to go home to change my boots and slacks. Fridays are pretty slow due to our work schedule. So I went back to work with muddy boots and pants and nobody seemed to even notice.

So tell me, have you had any boo boos lately? Have you made anybody nervous lately? We want to know

Geocache Maintenance on Turkey Mountain

My Kia Soul parked on Turkey Mountain where the new Outlet Mall is going.

My friend Trail Zombie told me the other day that he thought my Rock City geocache on Turkey Mountain had gone missing. About the same time I got an email from a pesky out of state Geocaching Dot Com Administrator basically telling me to go check the cache.

Okay, Okay I get it, I will!! Having a teenager in the house I knew hot to act. So off I went last Saturday. I dropped the kid off at his Improv class and sped to the nearest Dollar General Store and got me some new containers and notebooks. I got several because, well, you know, well it turns out that several of my caches were gone missing. But hey, I’ve been busy.

I took along my new SJCAM SJ4000. It is a Go Pro clone for cheapskates like me. The video is pretty darn boring but it gives you and idea of the trails on Turkey Mountain.

And this video shows me getting closer to Rock City. Named for the big rocks there. We Okies re pretty darned creative with our place names don’t you think?

Anyway I took a little different route back with smoother flatter trails.

And I love this big old tree. I think that it is outside the boundaries of the proposed outlet mall. At least I hope it is.

I was fully nerded out with cell phone, camera, video camera, and a GPS enabled watch. Why you ask? Well you wouldn’t take a Ferrari out with instrumentation would you? Anyway the above shows you the route.

After I left Turkey Mountain I motored downtown, checked on one cache, replaced another, and then went over close to Saint Francis Hospital, replaced one near there (not on hospital property), and then over to a big freeway exchange in south Tulsa where I had yet another one that had gone missing.

And I still picked the kid up on time.

A busy fun time.

Running and Geocaching

I’ve been kind of quiet on the geocaching scene for a long time. Saturday I joined the monthly confab of the Tulsa Area Geocachers for the first time in years. It was nice seeing some familiar faces and meeting new people. It got me kind of revved up for geocaching again.

A few hours later I dropped Logan off at Clark Youth Theater for rehearsal. Let me diverge a little bit for some bragging. Logan auditioned for and got a small part in Clark’s Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Heather and I are thrilled. OK, back to business. Oh yes, so dropped the kid off and then drove over to Riverside Drive. There were several relatively new geocaches that I hadn’t found yet, plus I wanted to get a run in so I combined them.

So I headed south, running with my GPSr and then stopping to look. They were very challenging and I found them. I’m not showing the any of the caches or the locations where they were hid because it would kind of spoil the fun for others.

My favorite was one called Jingle. It is by M5. He is notorious for very sneaky, very challenging, and creative hides. At first I was a little disappointed as “This is too lame, too easy.” Yeah, well shame on me. I had the container in my hands but the problem was that I had to solve a puzzle to get to the log to sign it. The geocacher’s credo is that if you don’t sign the log then you don’t get credit for the cache. I sat down on a nearby bench and messed it for a long time. I had two basic methods. Figeting with it, and fooling with it. I alternatively fidgeted and fooled with it until it just kind of came apart in my hands. I signed the log and then I had to put it together again which was almost as hard. Tell you what though. Anytime you find an M5 cache is a good day.

If you clink on the link above and hit the little arrow down at the bottom you can see that my northbound return trip to the car went a lot faster than my southbound trip.

Anyways it was combination running and geocaching trip

Muggles!!

Many of my readers know that I’m into geocaching and I’ve found over 1300 of them and have hid about 27 or so. The bane of geocachers are muggles. These are not non-Wizards. These are non-geocachers who stumble upon a cache and then take it. I don’t think they mean anything by it, they just don’t know about it. Some muggles instinctually know what it is and go ahead and sign the paper log and put the cache back like they found it.

So anyway if you hide a cache you also assume the responsibility for maintaining it which includes replacing or repairing it when it gets muggled or perhaps deleting the cache if it is a constant problem.

I have two caches within walking distance of my home. I have been derelict in my duty maintaining one of them. “Strike a Pose” has had three “Did Not Find” logs (“DNF’s”) in the last several months and I should have known that something was up. The cache is hard to get to, but once in the general area a person should find it pretty quickly.

So I had a container from a previous cache and I stopped at Walgreen’s and got a small notebook for people to log their finds.

And I drove to the vacant lot close to the cache. It is in the middle of south Tulsa and is surrounded by apartment buildings, an Alzheimer’s care center (Where Heather says I’m headed to in the near future), gas stations, two strip malls, a car lube joint, and a McDonald’s and a country club. In other words a patch of woods that only geocachers and homeless people would be interested in.

I tried to get into the way I did two years ago when I placed it but it was pretty much impenetrable because of thorns. Lots of thorns.

So I backtracked and found another way in. As you can see the woods have been badly damaged by ice storms and such.

My original hiding spot was gone also so I had to find another nearby and get new coordinates. You can see my new hidey hole. I put a big ole rock (ole is a word in Oklahoma) and so it should be hid pretty well from muggles.

And of course I had to stop and take an instagram shot. Are you on Instagram, are we following each other? If not check the sidebar. You follow me, I’ll follow you. Deal? I’ll tell what I have found out on Instagram, there are lots and lots of talented photographers out there is what I have found out.

So anyway, I got on Geocaching dot com and logged my maintenance and updated the coordinates.

What are you waiting for, got off your duff and go find it. Don’t live in Tulsa. Well we have an airport and roads headed here from all directions, and bus service if you know. You are on the do not fly list for some reason.

So that is the lesson in Muggles for today.

Don’t Be A Muggle, Geocache: A digitial twist on outdoor fun

Geocaching on a Sunday Afternoon

The weather was warm and sunny on Sunday, the Dallas Cowboys are not playing until Monday night, Logan had a friend over, the lawn didn’t need mowing so I loaded up and ventured to Tulsa’s Oxley Nature Center to hike their North Loop trail and see if I could find a geocache or two.

I’ve hiked the trail several times over the years. I have never ever met anybody else. So I guess that it makes it my trail. Sunday was perfect, if a bit warm. What I loved was the that the wind was blowing quite hard but in the woods, on the ground, noting was stirring but the you could see and hear the tree tops going back and forth. I don’t know about you but that is about the sweetest music I could ever hear.

I was in heaven out in the woods. It is how I recharge my batteries.

The October light was awesome. The trees haven’t changed color but they are thinking about it. Everything is getting a little more pale.

I found only one cache but you know, looking for caches is all the fun. I love geocachers, “OkieBeans”, “Barrel O’Monkeys” only bloggers get more creative with their handles. I looked for three caches. I found two actually but could only log one. The other one I could see it but I certainly wasn’t going to try and get it when I’m out their by myself.

I rested a little bit, wondering why I didn’t bring any water on such a hot day. I didn’t figure that out but I did enjoy sitting on my personal bench on my personal trail. Oh, by the way, feel free to come out and hike my trails, nobody else seems to be.

You can see my various wanderings on my hike above. I parked my car and gathered up my stuff and headed down the trail and then realized that I didn’t spray myself with DEET. I thought all heck with it and then I remembered how miserable I am both with the chiggers and other creepy crawlers so then I went back. You can also see where I stop and try and find the geocaches and other times when I lose the trail and have to go figure out which way to go. Plus I stop for photography breaks and have been known just to stop and look around at what is going on around me.

Anyway, a great Sunday afternoon that the Cowboys didn’t get a chance to ruin.

Linking with Our World Tuesday

Turkey Mountain Geocache Madness

You know how Harry Potter has a messenger owl? You thought that was make believe? Shows what you know. I have a Messenger Mutt. Messenger Mutts are for people like me who are too cheap to buy an owl. My Messenger Mutt was given to us. Her name is Abby. Isn’t she a cutie? She is not as cool as an owl and she barks a lot but like I say I got her cheap.

Well the Messenger Mutt had news for me, bad news, about a combination Geocache and Letterbox that son and I have on Turkey Mountain here in Tulsa. A cache called “Boys Night Out – Firefly Swamp.” This is a geocache that has been on Turkey Mountain since Logan and I put it there in 2007. Apparently somebody took the cache container and left the cache contents in the hiding place. This is very strange since usually thieves (aka “Muggles”) take the whole thing. Well dang it I said to myself, “Why would somebody do something like that.” I had a few other choice thoughts but some of my readers are on the genteel side and might take offense at my choice of words. So i told the Messenger Mutt to disable the cache and I’d fix it.

So Wednesday night after work I headed out to Turkey Mountain to replace the cache. First I went to Target to get a new container. Turkey Mountain is an urban wilderness and part of that is that there is a Target handy. The only thing handier than Target for geocachers is Walmart. Neither one of them is a discount store though. They sell cheap stuff cheap. Why is that a discount store? Hey just saying.

And speaking of cheap I found me a plastic box for $3.97!!! WTG Target!

So, I paid for my new cache container and headed out to Turkey Mountain. I changed into my running duds in the parking lot. Nuff said about that.

And then opened up the back hatch and built me a cache. Everybody has camo duct tape in their car for building geocache containers right?

The finished product. I’m thinking of getting into fine handcrafted Amish furniture. Whaddya think? You want to buy a sideboard from me? You see my Swiss Army Knife, no geocacher is ever without one. See the corkscrew? No Gas Supply person with a gas company is ever out one of those either. But that is another story.

So with my running duds on and a geocache container tucked under my arm like a true ~~trail runner~~ nerd down the Yellow Trail I went.

Remember, if you get lost just go the direction that the yellow arrow points.

To ground zero, the cache site. Sure enough the ammo box is gone and all the contents are in a plastic bag.

And looking at the log book the turkey who took it was nice enough to write a note. Thanks yourself dude or dudette. Don’t let the screen door hit ya where good Lord split ya is my response. It is kind of hard for me to get mad at this. And they did leave the contents undisturbed which is important for the letterboxers among us.

So I packed up everything nice and tidy. Everything that I couldn’t fit in the new box or was just miscellaneous trash I put in the plastic bag and hid it underneath the cache so I could pick it up later and dispose on my way out. People put weird stuff in caches. One guy put a used brillo pad in a cache I owned in town. When I asked how stupid that was he took offense. He said he thought it would be funny.

Still a nice hide, so off I went on the rest of my run.

Along the rocks and through the rocks.

Through the woods.

Underneath the beautiful Oklahoma Sky. I looped back to the cache and picked up the trash I stowed their earlier and headed back to the parking lot.

I hope that it lasts another seven years.

YogisDen.us

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