Becky, Jared and Sarah
Posts tagged Geocaching
Pasco Fun So Far
Aug 7th
We’ve done a ton of stuff in Washington so far and wanted to write it all down before we forget.
Geocaching
Of course, the first thing I need to talk about is the geocaches we’ve found. Becky’s mom had read about some of our geocaching adventures on our blog and was curious as to exactly what it was and where you found them and everything. So we took her to a few caches close to where they live (and by close, we’re talking 30 minutes away closer to town around the Wal-Mart). We found a cache in the middle of a sage brush field, and we found one in more sage brush by a Lowe’s, and found a skirt-lifter behind a grocery store. So she got a pretty good idea of the different kinds of finds there are out there. She thought it was pretty fun.
We returned home and told Becky’s dad about the caches we found and he wanted to try finding some. I told him there was one that we could only get with four-wheelers. I told him the area the cache was hidden, and he said he was going to take us on a trip there anyway. So the next day we went out on a four-wheeler trip to find this very remote cache (Green Island GC19WCE). It took us a few minutes to find it, but sure enough, it was there. We all signed the log and continued on our trip.
The last notable cache we came across was a micro (almost a nano). We spent a decent amount of time finding this one. The day before, we found a cache in a cement barrier close to the entrance of a freeway. When we got to the cache location, we found the same cement barriers there so I automatically thought it was in there. So we looked around and couldn’t find anything. Then I took a second look at the GPS and we were about 20 feet away from it. So I moved 20 feet and was at this tree. We looked all over the tree and couldn’t find it. Then we looked all over the cement barricades again. Then went back to the tree. As I was walking around the tree, I was looking down at the GPS, looked up, and spotted it. Here’s how small this bad boy was.
Family Fun Times
As you already know, we went four-wheeling. We did some crazy stuff on them. After we found the geocache, we played in the mud by the river. Katie got stuck in the mud so we took our shoes off and helped get it un-stuck.
Then we continued on and found a nice hill to try the four wheel drive system on the machines. We went up some pretty steep hills. Becky said one time I was only on two wheels for a few seconds!
Then I actually got to do something productive (besides playing) out here. Somehow I found out Amy’s computer had died. So I offered to take a look at it. Somehow, Windows had corrupted itself and pretty much had to be reinstalled since it wasn’t offering any options to try and repair the system files. She had taken it or had someone look at it before and they said they couldn’t do anything for her. Fortunately, they gave her an external enclosure. I took the hard drive out of her laptop, put it in the enclosure, and used my Mac to read all her files. I was able to recover everything she wanted: documents, pictures, music, movies, that sort of thing. Fortunately #2, she had the operating system recovery CD. So I put the hard drive back into her computer and reinstalled the OS. Then I installed all the software and updates and put all the files back on her computer. She was so surprised and delighted at what I had done that she offered to take us to lunch, so we went to Mongolian Grill!
Then you already should know about my ER visit. So that’s all the good times for now (at least that we have pictures of!)
Getting All Better
Aug 6th
After spending 3 hours in the ER, I was handed a prescription for two antibiotics and told that if the swelling goes outside this purple line (they drew around my current swelling) then I should come back for some IV antibiotics. (Yeah, 3 hours for that…) So we leave the hospital around 12:45. At this point, I’m really frustrated that I waited that long when they could have had me out of there in no time that I want to do something fun. So I remembered this geocache by the Timpanogos Regional Medical Center back home and thought that someone might have left a geocache by this hospital. Turns out they did! (Geocaching App for the iPhone strikes again!)
So we went across the street, Becky got out and found it (since I had a gimp foot at the time). Someone placed it when they were at the hospital when their baby was born, so it was a camo taped baby bottle. We signed the log, returned it, and went in search of a pharmacy that was open. We were seeing if there were some around Pasco, and I told Bex to go to one around there. We get there, and it’s not a 24 hour pharmacy. So then I looked up a 24 hour pharmacy and it’s in Kennewick. So to make a long story short, due to very recent construction around that area, the iPhone wasn’t up to date on its directions and we took a few wrong turns. But eventually we found it! I took my first dose right there in the store and we made it back home around 2:30 AM. Exhausted, we went to bed and were out pretty fast.
The next morning, I woke up around 10 AM. Nicia actually woke me up by calling Becky’s phone. Then I realized what time it was and thought I’d better get up and take my medicines. But fortunately, my foot wasn’t in agonizing pain! It was only dully sore. So thankfully, I’m on the mend and should be perfectly fine. You can see how bad my foot got on the previous post, but as of this afternoon, this is how my foot is looking.
The Drive to Washington
Aug 1st
Today, we made a trip to Washington where Becky grew up. The trip usually takes 10 hours. We have made this trek a few times before so it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary trip wise. What was different is that my Mom’s family is joining us for some of it! YAY! So in the morning, we did some geocaching around their house while we waited for them to finish up packing. We only found one of the two we tried… sad day. Then we hit the road and started going. Hailey was in the car with us and Becky and her listened to Harry Potter all the way until Boise. About 50 miles south of Mountain Home, I got a call from the car behind us… my mom “somehow” chipped her front tooth. So they made arrangements to see a dentist in the Boise area who Clyde has hook ups with. So we gave them Hailey back, had lunch, and went on with our journey… and never heard from them again. SCARY!! Hope they made it up here all right.
Fortunately for me, Becky drove from Boise to Baker City. We decided to switch in Baker City. With me driving, I decided I wanted to find a geocache and drop off a travel bug there. So we went and tried finding a travel bug hotel. After finding the area described in the hint, we couldn’t find the cache. So then we searched again for nearby caches and found one close by that would be big enough to hold a travel bug. We found one by someone’s house out in the middle of Baker City. It was a pretty cool cache. It had some DVD’s for trade. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a DVD with us to trade, but there was a couple Disney movies (and a couple cheap movies). It was a pretty interesting cache. So now on the geocache map page, we’ve added a new “Northwestern” area cache map. We’re going to be adding a few caches as we find some more around Washington. We’re also going to hit up Idaho on the way home so we can add another state to our map on geocaching.com. Anyway, we’ll add more post as we do more stuff in Washington.
Andrew’s First Geocache
Jul 29th
When you see this, think “I found a cache, I found a cache, I found a cache hey hey hey hey!” like on Little Rascals when they find a dollar. Oh yeah baby.
Anyway, onto Andrew’s first cache. Unfortunately, we don’t have any pictures from our trip. We went on Sunday and showed him the ropes. I figured out how to get caches onto Andrew’s GPS, so I set up his computer and GPS so he can just add caches from the geocaching website. The first cache I wanted to show him was a black magnetic nano. I took him to one and told him to find it. He was looking for a while, and then all the sudden out of nowhere this kid skateboarded over to us and asked us what we were up to. I told him we were geocaching. He thought I said we were looking for geodes. I tried explaining what a geocache was, but it didn’t make it through. Needless to say, this kid seemed stoned out of his mind… He was climbing all over stuff and asking what it looked like and all this other stuff. Anyway, I told Andrew that we’d come back later. As we were leaving, he was asking where we were going. We didn’t answer him. When we were about 100 feet away, he starts yelling “YOU’LL NEVER FIND YOURSELF! YOU’LL NEVER FIND YOURSELF!” Riiiigggghhhhtttt……. Anyway, then we went to a few other caches. Andrew found a hanging micro in a bush by the old Provo courthouse. We also found a magnetic key holder with a cache hidden behind a soda machine. Then we went back to the black nano and the kid was gone. Then we went to Provo’s infamous Harmon Park cache. This cache is either super stealth or just a joke. But the hider claims its still there, and he is a pretty respected cacher around the inner circles of caching around Provo, so people trust him when he says its still there. Anyway, we couldn’t find it either. So hopefully (for me at least) Andrew and I will go caching more together.
This Last Weeks Geocaching
Jul 23rd
So I’ve been trying to geocache with any little bit of free time I have during daylight hours… and a few night time hours. (which means I haven’t been geocaching much) But Tuesday was our day off so we decided to hit up a few. We haven’t taken many pictures simply because we forgot. We were just so excited to find a cache and get on to the next one that we forgot to take pictures. But I do have three pictures to show off.
Good Merit Cache
The reason this is called the Good Merit Cache is because of the Boy Scouts (or Cub Scouts, I think it was in this case). This cache is located by the BSA headquarters which is just a block away from our work. It was a pretty easy find since it was such a large cache, but did take a little bit of poking around. We actually found this a while ago, shortly after my last post, but didn’t want to write a whole post just about this one.
Y Campus Webcam Cache
Webcam caches are rare and hard to come by. I think geocaching.com has discontinued any new webcam caches, or at least put them somewhere else or at least that’s what I’ve heard. Nicia had to help us out with this cache. To get credit for the cache, you need to stand in front of the webcam (as illustrated above) and have someone on a computer take a picture (or save the picture) of you. In this picture, I’m on the phone with Nicia telling her how to save the picture on her computer. Thanks for the help, Nic!
Pioneer Park Cache
This was one of the caches we actually found with our day off. Becky sure is getting this geocaching thing down, most of the time she’s better than me at it. I’m here looking all over the sign for it and she just walks up and uncovers the cache! Like, NO EFFORT! So here she is, proudly displaying her find!
Updated Map
If you haven’t noticed, at the top of the web page there are some page names. One of them says “geocaches.” This geocaches page are maps of our finds. I update Google Earth on my computer with the coordinates and placemark the find. Then I export it as a kml file and upload it to that page. Anyway, I decided to break our finds up into two maps, one for our California trip and one for our Utah caches. I split them up so each view would have more detail in it, instead of showing a zoomed out view of all our caches. Also, since we’re not planning on going to California soon, the California caches will stay pretty static, while the Utah cache map will be more dynamic and a zoomed in view will greater highlight the progress we’re making in Utah Valley. We’re planning a trip to Washington soon, and plan on doing some caches there (and maybe even on the way there and back). But that will create a third map of Washington caches, so be on the look out for that!
