300 and the Next Stop on My Itinerary

Well, it looks like my blogs will only be posted once a week. Real life is getting in the way of my fun!! Nonetheless, we're keeping our geocaching streak alive. We have geocached every day for 28 days straight despite all the rain and Indiana weather issues. With caching every day we've hit some milestones. On April 13th, we reached 200 finds and today we discovered our 300th! 

The World's Largest Ball of Paint - right here in Indiana!!

Yes, there's an actual cache at this Guinness World Record Largest Ball of Paint and we added the 22,708th layer. 

Ruth adding paint to the ball

The 22,708th layer of paint in green!

What a cool find! We loved chatting with the creator/owner (Mike Carmichael) of this 34-year-old project. Check it out at Big Ball of Paint.

It's Itinerary Time!

Finally, I wanted to share our next stop on our trip...drum roll, please......

Niagara Falls, NY

We are looking forward to several Earthcaches in this area, along with a few geocaches too. I used to teach Earth/Space Science, so I am very interested in awesome power of nature. We are definitely taking the kids on the Maid of the Mist boat tour that takes people right up to the falls. It's exciting and exhilarating! We will spend a day and a half in the area. Ruth and I visited here last summer for our 20th anniversary, but we are excited to share it with the kiddos.

It's Itinerary Time...Well, At Least the First Stop

I know it's been a while since I last posted, but it's spring in the life of a physics teacher...Academic Super Bowl (which we qualified for state!), track, and lots of family stuff (including a run to the ER for my wife - luckily she's "fine" though). My original plan for the blog is to have one or two posts a week up until we leave for the trip and then try to blog daily while on it. I'm sticking to that!


Another goal was to "up" my numbers (and experience) by getting out and geocaching everyday. Since beginning this mission, I have found at least one cache every day...despite rain, snow, cold, hot, and flooding (yes, that's spring in Indiana)! So far, so good and I'm loving every minute of it!!

It's Itinerary Time!

As I promised in the last post, here's the information on the first destination we will visit on our four-week trip. Drum roll, please.....

Cleveland, Ohio

Yes, I said Cleveland. I know what some of you are thinking. What does Cleveland have to do with geocaching, history, and my proposal? Well, Cleveland is the location of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. And what discusses our history better than rock music!?! There are also two interesting museums: Great Lakes Science Center and Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Both of these have some great exhibits; we'll decide which one is best when the time draws nearer. I will, of course, also be looking for a good cache to place a travel bug in. So, if any of you have any suggestions for Cleveland, OH (whether it be a museum, location, or cache), please post a comment or e-mail me.

Due to my "fame" from the "PodCacher" podcast, I received an e-mail from a fellow cacher (KDotBlueDot) in Canada. He told me about one of his geocaches that he owns that is really cool. As I promised him, I will not divulge the details or secrets. Suffice it to say, his cache, "Yodel-lay-he-what?!" (GC2FJQT), is a great idea for team-building and also quite creative for geocaching. It can be used in education or I can even see it being used in the business world. Since I will eventually be compiling a bunch of ideas to be used in education using a GPSr, these are exactly the kind of things that I am looking for! Check out this video on creative caches! If you have any interesting cache ideas or educational uses for the GPS, please e-mail or comment on this post.


In the meantime, keep on caching... 




Just posted this and began a search in Ohio for geocaches and came across this event that is being held on the day that we arrive there...it's fate!!! Check it out!

I'm Famous...I Knew It Was Only a Matter of Time!

I recently discovered a couple of great podcasts that discuss everything geocaching. One of them, PodCacher Podcast, often talks about accomplishments, stories, and updates about geocachers in their geocacher news. So, I wrote them an e-mail and explained my grant and upcoming journey that my family and I will be taking this summer. They e-mailed me back, congratulated me, and they even shared my news on their most recent podcast! I am honored because this is a very popular podcast among geocachers. Check them out too!! Thanks to those of you that already came to this site to check it out after Sonny & Sandy's post!!

Check out their weekly podcast!

In the near future, watch for a post about some of the locations we are planning to visit this summer. Below is a preview of our path. 

Summer 2011 Trip Map

As soon as I get my patches, I will hide a geocache with some travel bugs with the hope that they will meet us at some of the sites that we will be visiting. This might be a little lofty of a goal, but I thought it would be fun! 

Travel Bug

A Week Full of Geocaching & Our 150th Find

Where we found our 150th find!

I had my spring break a week ago, but my wife and kids had theirs this past week. The weather wasn't as conducive to geocaching on my break as I would have liked (and I didn't really want to go alone), but I did get some in and took my wife and kids on a few more trips.


During one of my times out, I made the mistake of looking for a cache with a difficulty of 4 (the scale only goes up to 5... with a 5 usually requiring special tools like a canoe or mountain climbing equipment)... I also made the mistake of taking my dog Sadie with me. She was very impatient in the woods. She didn't understand why I was spending 30 minutes in one spot. I wasted two days looking for that cache! It was a nano cache in the middle of the woods!!! A nano cache refers to the size of the cache. Nanos are generally about the size of a thimble or smaller... I'm not really sure what "sick person" thinks it would be a fun challenge to stick something as big as my pinky knuckle in a big forest to find (I did have a few choice words for the owner of the cache though). This only enhanced the sense of accomplishment when I did find it.


Because I'm not one who gives up easily, I took the family one more time into the woods to find it the following week when my wife was having spring break (20 years of marriage and we have never had the same spring break...grrr). After about 15 minutes, the rest of the family was about to give up, but then I had an epiphany to look one more time, focusing on the vines that clung to the trees. In about 5 more minutes, with the pressure of the family telling me to quit, I found it!


Feeling really good about myself, I thought it would be a cool idea to go looking for a 4.5 difficulty cache!!! (I was a little cocky, I know) Do you all remember that old commercial for the PGA tour, where there's this guy hitting the ball all over the place, in the water, in the sand, chipping onto the green and totally missing the ball with much sand hitting him in the face, throwing the club across the pond... then sinking a long putt... the final scene is the guy walking towards the camera saying, "I love this game!"... That's how I feel about geocaching sometimes. I'm not addicted to drugs, I don't smoke, and I'm not an alcoholic, but... geocaching has become my "geo-crack." I can't get enough of it!

Saying goodbye to a travel-bug.

So, for the 4.5 difficulty cache... My wife and I took our friends, 3Snipe Hunters, to help find it and a lot of other caches.

Treelogeo and wife posing at our 150th find!

One of the 3Snipe Hunters, Lynette, and Treelogeo's wife, Ruth at an EarthCache

We found a cool cache at a caboose in the middle of the town that was rated a 3 difficulty for my 150th find, and then came the 4.5! We came up to ground zero for the coordinates and we all thought, "there's no place to hide a cache there." After several minutes of searching my wife pointed out a conspicuous hole in a wooden pole. Everyone dismissed the hole thinking that it was too small, and it was too deep for anything to be in it with a reasonable chance of getting to it. I decided to look in it, nonetheless, because we were getting desperate. Whipping out my flashlight, I shined it down into the hole. Straining to get my head to contort the right direction to peer down, I thought I saw something shiny. I immediately thought that it was just a nail, but looking closer, I realized that it was something totally different. I said out loud, "I think I see it..." Everyone converged on me and looked. We all agreed, it was definitely conspicuous, but we had no way to get at it. Jim, one of the 3Snipe Hunters, being a very handy person, suggested that we go to the auto shop to get a particular tool to try and get the shiny object out. I hesitate to tell you what we went to get, just in case there are geocachers that want to give this cache a try, reading this blog. We returned some time later with a plan and a couple of new tools in hand.

A couple new tools for geocaching.

After some fishing around, we finally were able to get the shiny object out... and sure enough, it was a tiny little cache!!! and there was much rejoicing!


We ended up with 18 caches that day with 2 EarthCaches and 2 Waymarks... all-in-all, another great day and week for geocaching.

A Great Day for Geocaching!

On Saturday, my wife and I went out for breakfast and had a full day planned for geocaching. After eating a larger meal than we should have at The Original Pancake House, we rolled ourselves out the door. After a couple of DNFs on some supposedly simple "urban" caches, we found three other simple LPCs (lamp post caches) to brighten our spirits. We then discovered a really cool cache at an historical house in Fishers at 106th & Kincaid. Then we decided to take a little hike at Ritchey Woods where we found a traditional cache and an EarthCache. 

Ruth at the EarthCache in Richey Woods

The new GPSr is working out beautifully...paperless caching is THE way to go AND we have a camera right there too without having to lug around an extra electronic device. I remember the good 'ol  days when we printed off every geocache page and then had to remember which ones we found when we came back home...thus the reason why we didn't log many of them. (probably some where between 20-30 unlogged caches in many states). On top of that, Ruth found out how to upload the caches we found (field notes) directly from the GPSr...WOW, what a time saver. NO MORE FORGOTTEN CACHE FINDS! We ended up with 27 caches for the day. It was a long day, but we definitely didn't push ourselves. There was a lot of driving back and forth picking up kids and friends, along with fellow geocachers 3Snipe Hunters (Jim and Lynette Hobbs). We were thankful for the young monkeys for one particularly difficult to get to cache.

Our monkey friend, McKenna,
helping with a tough one!

Another highlight of the day was seeing lots of beaver activity near Mud Creek. Pretty cool! Of course, this was a cache that had a terrain difficulty rating of 1.5 stars (out of 5). Ruth continued to ask why it wasn't at least a 3 or 4. We soon discovered (ok, not really soon...it was after we found the cache and walking through 450 feet of briars, brambles, thorns, and beaver-felled trees) a much easier route that would rank it at a 1.5. 

Ellen pointing to the work of a beaver.
I wonder if the hole beneath was a home for an angry beaver.
We didn't stick around long enough to find out.

I don't want to give any caches away, but we found (with great help from 3Snipe Hunters) a particularly cool one at an area nursery. All I have to say is AWESOME and geocachers are some pretty creative people!!

We ended the day with a return trip to one of our favorite landmarks (that, of course, we had never logged before). See me in the picture??

No, I'm not the pink one!

A Respectable Geocacher

Someone e-mailed my wife after reading this blog saying that I must be an expert geocacher and the truth is, though I've been geocaching for several years (over 8 years), my number of finds is pretty low on the geocaching website. For as long as I've been doing it, the number should be much, much greater. It doesn't help that we have found several through the years that we have forgotten to log, but for us the thrill of the find is much more important than all of the "smileys" you get from the website. Still, right now I am on a quest to improve these numbers so that I become a more respectable geocacher.


Since I've been searching in my town in Indiana, I've come across a website exclusively for Indiana geocachers: http://www.indianageocaching.com/. It lists different events for geocachers held in Indiana. Surprisingly, the person responsible for the site is a teacher and a Lilly Creativity Fellow like me. You can find his project website at My Geek Odyssey.


I've also noticed that there are more people reading my blog than they are "following". You can "follow" my updates to this blog simply by submitting your e-mail address at the top of the page. This will send you an e-mail alert when I make a new post. The more that follow, the better!! Remember, I'm trying to become a respectable geocacher!! :-)

Final Patch Design

Got the final patch sample today through American Patch & Pin. Thanks to Gary Hunter and his team! I think it turned out well. Had to make a few changes than what I originally planned (the original had too many details for a patch), but it looks awesome! Notice the grommet hole at the top above the word "Meridians"...I'm attaching travel bugs to this and leaving them in the caches that we find during our trip. The plan is to leave two patches at each drop-off, with the first to move the travel bug along keeping one. I prefer that the FTF (Don't know what this means? Click on the link!) that takes the patch is a K-12 student, since my journey is education related. I will be placing at least 30 of these. I'll have different tasks/goals for each of them...things like moving to as many educational sites as possible, coming back to a cache that I'm hiding here in Indiana, visiting every state, going overseas, etc...

Patch Sample - ordered today...no fooling!