Category Archives: Geocaching

Deep Woods Geocaching

One day the week before Christmas I used my lunch hour to find a geocache in one of our city parks in west Tulsa. The cache is called “Corbin’s Deep Woods Cache.” How could anybody resist a cache with a name like that? I couldn’t. There is nothing better to get your head on straight when you are all frazzled than taking a walk in the woods. “Deep Woods” sounds so much better.

The first part of the trail was great. It was more of a sidewalk than a trail but it is headed the right direction.

I turned off the concrete onto this. It had the barest hints of a trail. Generally when lunchtime caching its not a good idea to wear anything knit. It’ll get ruined. I go lunchtime caching two or three times a month. My coworkers make fun of the leaves in my hair, seeds stuck to the back of my shirt, mud on my shoes, and other tell tale signs of my hobby. I’ve thought about putting some overalls in my truck to wear. That’d be ok in the winter. It would be too hot in the summer.

My coworkers put up with a lot. On business trips I’m always asking for somebody else to drive so I can take photographs and I get up early and go to bed late to go caching. Plus if we go to the People’s Republic of Kansas it takes me several liquor store stops to get all the Fat Tire beer I need. I haven’t quite figured it out but the State of Oklahoma won’t allow it to be sold within its borders. Just one reason why Oklahoma has just a touch higher moral tone than the rest of the world. We may have one of the highest unwed teenage pregnancy rates in the country, but just think how much higher it would be if we allowed Fat Tire to be sold in Oklahoma?

Oops, sorry, I’m off topic.

Anyways I found the cache. The coordinates were good, and the cache as there! Score one for lunch.

There was another cache, named “Chance’s Forest Cache” several hundred feet further on. I bushwhacked through the woods until I found a trail and followed it.

I didn’t find the cache but I found this jacket. I find the presence of the jacket very puzzling. (Sorry, I’ve been living with a seventh grader too long.) I didn’t find the cache. I saw lots of beer cans and a camp fire with a totally smashed television set. It seems like a lot of trouble to haul a big television set so far into the woods to demolish it.

I didn’t find my cache but I got my walk in the woods, and leaves and burrs on my clothes.

What do you do to get your head on straight? I mean that you can share with us.

Geocaching Secret Mission

I went off on a secret mission the other day. Somebody planted a “members only” geocache just a little bit out of downtown. “Members Only” means that only those who pay the $30 per year to get premium access to www.geocaching.com can get the coordinates.

So I am not going to give you any hints. I took off from the office at lunch and entered the Secret Vortex.

The secret vortex keeps people from following me to the cache.

I checked the reading for the cache and off I went.

This is where I stopped and a took a picture. First, I took the picture because this is the location of one of my own geocaches. They are putting a fence up around the cache. Sigh. Second, a homeless guy was bugging me. He was going to Orlando he told me. I said “To see your sister?” He said “Yeah man, how did you know?” Sigh. “No dude I am not here handing out money I’m just going for a walk.” “OK, thanks anyway.” He says his name is Jerry. He said he remembers me and that he used to be a cowboy also. What?! (I was wearing a brimmed hat.) I told him that I hardly even know what a horse or cow look like. And what is it about these homeless guys and their sisters.

I finally escaped my buddy. Hey, how about a clue to where I was going. Here is one.

Hey, what’s that across a street. Is that where the Republican Party has buried all optimism and hope in Oklahoma?

Nope its a time capsule.

Do you remember a couple years ago when they dug up a 1950’s era Plymouth Belvedere here at the County Courthouse here in Tulsa. Well there was another car, a Plymouth Prowler, buried in 1998 to be dug up in 2048. Not too many people in Tulsa know about this time capsule.

I plan on being there. If Sweetie will let me out of the nursing home.

By this time I was getting pretty close to the cache. I was attacked by a chicken hawk protecting the cache.

I fought him off (mainly because I was too heavy for him to haul off) and kept on going. You have to be tough to be a premium geocacher. You also have to have $30 a year.

A little bit further on I took the all time blog meme photograph.

I mean this has water, trees, sky, a fountain, reflections. It’s my masterpiece. And it is here for you. Merry Christmas. You are welcome. Sorry mommybloggers, I have nothing for you. Grab your torches and go.

The cache kids saw me and started waving. Kids give everything away. You ever notice that.

The cache is close to Era. Not too close.

You kind of wonder what the story is, it couldn’t have been good.

Then finally

As I was walking by the post commander came out. He turned out to be a fellow geocacher. “BurplexOK” (I am “YogiABB”) We didn’t know each other before but we had mutual acquaintances. Don’t worry, the cache is not his, although he has found it.

Well, we parted and I headed back to work. You know I had a lot of social interaction for a secret mission.

Gecaching at Lake Bixhoma

At work I get every other Friday off. Usually Sweetie and I drop SuperPizzaBoy off at school and then go have breakfast and run and play. Yesterday Sweetie had a board retreat all morning. So I decided to go to Lake Bixhoma near Bixby, OK and do some geocaching.

Lake Bixhoma is one of the Tulsa area’s best kept secrets. I hardly ever see anybody else there. Friday morning I had it all to myself.

First though I took a little hike along this cliff. According to the geologists it is the remnant of a 300 million year old reef. In other words it is almost as old as I am. It has alternating layers of shale and sandstone. I like to look for fossils sometimes I find a brachiopod but not today. You don’t need a permit to look for them.

I took a few pictures of what may be fossils. I don’t know. I don’t hold myself out as knowing anything about them.

Poison Ivy anyone?

The first two caches were pretty easy. Both of them were by a road.

The third was a little less than a half mile from the end of the road close to the shore line. I thought, dumb me for thinking, surely that is a fisherman’s path alongside the lake. Surely.

Nope, it was bushwhacking all the way.

I found some funky trees.

And some funky stuff growing on the rocks.

And finally found the cache.

At this point I looked at the cache description and it said that there was a trail to the cache location. Hmm, I don’t see any trail. So being the real smart outdoorsman that I am I thought I would go straight up the hill from where I was and intercept the trail. So off I went.

Does this look like a trail to you? I didn’t find any &(^&&(*& trail. (Excuse the language.) At least up above the lake there were less rocks and thorns. (Actually I didn’t mind walking up there a bit, with or without a trail, I was like a pig in you know what.)

I got a nice view of the lake from up there.

And finally found my truck.

I found three caches total yesterday for a total of seven in the park that I’ve found over the years.

Anyways, I had some time before Sweetie and I were hooking up so I headed off to Washington Irving park to find a couple more.

I invited Mr. Irving along but he declined. You know he never goes anywhere anymore.

One of them I found reminded me a Christmas ornament.

And so that was that!

Wordless Wednesday -27 Lives

From a disposable camera, photograph taken at twilight during a hunt for a geocache named “36 Lives”

Wordless Wednesday

2010 Eufaula Me to Fall Fest!

The Yogi’s found this friendly little critter at the Tulsa Area Geocacher’s (“TAG”) annual Fall Fest at Lake Eufaula State Park here in Oklahoma. The critter was actually a cache.

About 160 or so geocachers from all over descended on the park for a weekend of socializing and finding caches. The main event is “hide and seek” where the cachers hide temporary caches and find other cacher’s temporary caches. It makes for a lot of finding caches. I think there were well over a 100 placed during the event. We didn’t hide one this year but we spent some time finding them.

The top right hand cache is actually a camo duct tape wallet. No, you weren’t supposed to keep it.

Here is one where having a walking stick came in handy

Yes, its a fake snake but I never stick my hand underneath a board anyway.

SuperPizzaBoy found a swing.

But just like lots of other things in life. Its not considered officially done until you have the tee shirt.

There were tons and tons of people who helped put this event on. I don’t know all of them but I appreciate their hard work. The event went very smoothly and everybody had a great time.

Have you ever tried geocaching?

Don’t know what it is? Here is Geocaching 101

Interstitial Geocaching

What?

From Merriam-Webster.com

in·ter·stice noun in-ˈtər-stəs

plural in·ter·stic·es-stə-ˌsēz, -stə-səz

Definition of INTERSTICE

1a : a space that intervenes between things; especially : one between closely spaced things b : a gap or break in something generally continuous 2: a short space of time between events

Most of my Geocaching these days is interstitial. What I mean is that instead of spending an afternoon caching I work it into my routine. I try to fit my hobby into other stuff that I’m doing. Running, running errands, going to the park with the family. Sweetie knows what I’m doing and is actually pretty tolerant of it. As long as it doesn’t take too long.

Soccer Mom Stare Wall

Monday night I encountered a Soccer Mom Stare Wall. I was in a suburb north of Tulsa to find a few geocaches in a city park. Now usually parks are pretty deserted at 6 pm on a weekday. Not this one, every kid in town was there for soccer practice with their moms. You remember soccer moms? Yep, they are the ones who put Bill Clinton in office. Don’t blame me, blame the soccer moms. Oops, lost a few followers there! Oh well. Sorry, time to move on.

As luck would have it one of the caches was located within about 50 yards of a field where the smallest soccer players I’ve ever seen were practicing. They were all girls, little girls. The dad coach was calling them “ladies.” Like, “Ladies, we need to get going here.” So, I walked way around the field, the ladies, the lady’s coach, and the lady’s Moms, sitting on their collapsible chairs. I then climbed up the berm surrounding the field and down the other side to the zero point on my GPSr so I could start looking for the cache.

So it took me a while to find it. While I was looking for it I could hear voices getting closer. But I didn’t look until I had found the cache and signed the log. What I saw, out of the corner of my eye, was about three of the Mom’s who walked across the field to stand a good distance away and stare at me. I knew they were staring at me before I saw them. I could feel the protective Soccer Mom Stare Wall.

Didn’t bother me though for two reasons. One, I wasn’t doing anything wrong or bothering anybody. Two, those Moms were doing what Mom’s do. They were making sure their kids were safe. I’m ok with Mom’s looking out for their kids.

So without ever looking at them directly I walked back the way I came way around the ladies, the lady’s coach, and the lady’s Moms.

What would the world be like without Soccer Moms? Not so nice I’m afraid.

Geocaching – with a few thoughts on Homeless People

Recently, I went into such woods here in Tulsa in search of geocache. I parked at a lumber store and found a trail along a flood control creek. I knew that I would have to walk about a quarter mile up the paved trail before I had to get off of it.

When I get close and my GPS tells me that I got to start looking to go “off trail” I start looking for a little “crease” in the woods. For what park administrators call a “social trail” which they hate. People are supposed to stay on the designated trails. Here in Tulsa on the Riverparks, you have to get a permit to hide a geocache and you agree if your cache results in a “social trail” you are in trouble. Oh, sorry, I’m off topic, this evening I found my crease in the woods:

I know, its kind of hard to see, its easier to see from the other side once you go through it.

You have to keep in mind, that when people hide geocaches they rarely just blindly blunder through the woods. Almost all caches are hidden with 25 feet of a trail. They key is finding the trail. They are often social trails.

Once I got through the crease its a matter of following the trail.

I know that it is hard to see but there is definitely a trail there.

And about 20 feet off the trail I found the cache. Actually I stubbed my toe on it so I heard it before I saw it.

Nearby was an old homeless person’s camp.

I’ve blundered into lots of homeless people’s camps over the years while pursuing my geocaching hobby. Many have been abandoned like this one, others you could tell are current, and more than once I have found them complete with the resident(s).

Sometimes they will have a tent but it seems lots of them sleep in the open. Lots of plastic gallon water jugs. I don’t see too many fire rings. I think fires attract too much attention. All in all, it looks to me like a miserable way to live.

Geocachers and homeless people have a lot in common. We both spend lots of time walking around looking at what is going on. Cachers are looking for places to hide caches. Homeless folks look for places to hide themselves and their belongings. In urban areas both groups gravitate to the “squalor zones” away from the nice, neat, and tidy buildings. Those usually have security cameras and guards.

There are homeless people all over Tulsa but I think the biggest concentration for various reasons is in the downtown area. I mean you have the Day Center for the Homeless, the Salvation Army Shelter and a bunch of other organizations that specialize in serving the homeless. (Sometimes, forgive me, I think some regard the homeless as a commodity, but that is another subject.)

Here is a geocaching.com map of downtown Tulsa.

This map is from my own account. So the smiley faces are caches hidden by others that I have found. The stars are caches that I have hidden myself. You can see that I have several downtown. Now what you don’t see are caches that I’ve had to abandon downtown because they are repeatedly vandalized. Also if you look at the star at the bottom of the photo you will see that it has a grey background instead of white. That is because I have temporarily suspended it. In fact I am going to delete it. Why? Because it is a nice little secluded area that I found that was perfect for a cache but has now been taken over that a homeless person as living quarters.

What the photo doesn’t show is that I have hidden over twice as many other caches downtown that I have had to abandon, almost all due to homeless people.

Nobody is more observant than homeless people. They live hand to mouth and they live in nature and they see everything. I have found all sorts of nooks and crannies downtown in my wanderings looking for spots to hide tuppwerware and I have found places big enough to hide a small car in but they are all previously occupied. I have found people sleeping soundly in a safe little nook maybe 25 feet from the busiest intersection downtown.

So do you run into homeless people regularly? Do they scare you? What do you think of them?

Geocaching through “a Few Weeds”

A friend of mine, Shannon, sent me a message saying that her house backs up to a park here in Tulsa and that she ran into a couple guys who were in her backyard. She asked them what they were doing and they told her that they were geocaching. I told her that I needed to go find it. She mentioned that their back yard was a little messy with a few weeds.

Well I went to find the cache today, and boy was she right. There are a few weeds!!

First we left the park boundary and entered her back yard,

Then the trail got narrower and darker

Then there was no trail

Uh, you know I the feeling that her house was right up against the park. Anyway we came to this. We were glad we brought our machetes. We hacked through the jungle for several hours.

And finally the cache appeared

Yahoo! number 1016, but you know something Shannon, I agree with you, you have a few weeds.

Knocking About with SuperPizzaBoy

SuperPizzaBoy and I went geocaching in the suburbs. We went to a park in Owasso to look for four caches.

The first one was in a brushy area. Previous finders and the owner of the cache had talked about a huge black snake that had been found laying right on top of the container. I’m not just terrified of snakes but I like to find them before they find me. So I was trying to check all the nooks and crannies for both snakes and containers. I finally found the container. Do you see it? Never did see the snake.

The next cache was tough. I finally cheated and stuck and my camera with the flash activated into a small hole in dead tree took a picture. There it was, big as life. Hard to retrieve, even harder to put back. Some of these cachers are evil! I don’t know what I’d a done if there was a snake or other critter looking back.

Here is an action shot of SPB, and what I thought was the container adjacent to a disk golf coure. Cache wasn’t there, I looked high and low and all over the place. Finally logged a shameful DNF (“Did Not Find”). I felt better though when a subsequent cacher also reported a DNF and the cache owner had to replace the cache. It’ll be there when we go back.

Speaking of Disk Golf, SPB tried that out the next day. Tulsa has lots and lots of disk golf courses. I see them while running on the river and while geocaching. So we bought a couple of disks and off we went to Haikey Creek Park.

Look at that form! He and I both threw them back handed like you would playing frisbee in the back yard. Almost all disk golfers I see throw them like a baseball and can really make those disks fly incredible distances. I’m going to have to learn that. But hey we are newbies. You know being a newbie is incredibly liberating. I tell our new college hires at work that if they don’t understand something just say so. That is how you learn!!

Its like “OK son, I’m going to get a shot of you putting her in the basket,” and he throws a bean ball. He thought it was hilarious.

Here, lets try it again, I’ll get off to the side.

We quit after 7 holes. It was fun, but it was hot. Time to go get refreshed. I’m going to learn some more about this disk golf thing. I like regular golf but I just cannot see telling the family sayonara for five hours or so on the weekend. I’d do it if I thought son was interested and we could do it together. He may be eventually but not now. Disk golf is free, the equipment is reasonably priced and hey and its an outside activity. We’ll be doing it some more I think.

On our way to get some sodas I just had to find a geocache right close to the park. It is a P&G (“Park and Grab”, no hike necessary)