Adventures in Geocaching

Showing posts with label Geocaching. Show all posts

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Spiders and Madness

After our 45th day of triple digit temperatures, we are finally getting a little relief from the heat. Hopefully my caching adventures can start picking up again more than they have for the past few weeks.

However, I did manage to get out of the house and do almost all of a new cache series around our county a couple of weeks ago. I use a super secret program on my desktop computer to keep me informed of new caches to help me get a jump on FTFs. I'll write about this secret little program in a later post, but now back to the topic.

One night a few weeks back, this program alerted me to about a dozen new caches that had just been approved around 10:30 p.m. By this time, the temperature had finally dropped into the mid-90's and it was a fairly moonlit night. I'm normally not a huge fan of night caching except for specially designed night caches because I typically have a hard enough time spotting cache hides in daylight much less at night. But this didn't stop me that night! I calmly walked into our bedroom where my wife was already getting ready to sleep and mentioned, "I know it is 10:30 at night, but the news tonight was boring and it looks like Leno is going to be another re-run. Can I go out caching?" Surprisingly, her answer was yes!

I grabbed my GPS, a couple of flashlights, a printed Google map of the new caches spread all over the county, and headed out! I left my home about 10:45 and spent the next several hours driving a loop around the entire county finding caches every 10 miles or so along the way. All in all, I drove a little over 84 miles through Woodway, Waco, Hewitt, Moody, McGregor, Crawford (yes, President Bush's Crawford), Speegleville, and back to Waco again. I ended up finding 11 of the 12 caches I was searching for in the Guardrail Madness series and came away with 10 FTFs. Unfortunately, I entered in the wrong coordinates for the 12th cache and spent about 45 minutes trying to get to one particular area that I just couldn't quite get to.

GRIM001 - Of Salads and Sagegrass (Traditional Cache)
GRIM003 - The Far Crossing (Traditional Cache)
GRIM004 - Crossroads (Traditional Cache)
GRIM005 - Domage (Traditional Cache)
GRIM006 - The Fishermen (Traditional Cache)
GRIM007 - The Homecoming (Traditional Cache)
GRIM008 - Where is Nowhere? (Traditional Cache)
GRIM009 - Down on the Corner (Traditional Cache)
GRIM010 - Down South (Traditional Cache)
GRIM011 - Past the Glare (Traditional Cache)
GRIM012 - A Stone's Throw (Traditional Cache)

But the story doesn't stop there! While searching miles and miles of country road guardrails, I was quickly reminded of one of the other reasons I typically do not like night caching - too many "others" out caching with me. I don't know how far north, east or west these things live, but around central Texas these things can be found out in the country abundantly. These "things" that I am referring to are the GIANT yellow and black spiders known as the Black and Yellow Argiope. Unbeknownst to me, these giant spiders love to hang out at night between the posts of guard rails like the ones I spent all night searching for. One location had more of them then all the other spots put together. I probably saw at least a dozen of the smaller (1-2 inch) spiders and probably half a dozen of the larger (3-5 inch) spiders every few feet around one cache.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

101, 101, 101, 101, 101, 101, 103?

Geocaching in Texas during summer is always a hot experience. For the past 6 days in a row, we've been hitting an afternoon high of 101°. Last night, a local weathermen came on the air and said the words we've all been waiting to hear, "It won't be 101° again tomorrow." Unfortunately, he soon followed that statement with, "Instead, I predict that the afternoon high will reach 103°."

With temperatures like these, it is almost too hot for even the local park-n-grabs. Unless things cool even slightly, my geocaching activities are on hold. Until we get back down into the upper 90°s, consider me "out of the kitchen" because I can't stand the heat!

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Cheap Signature Cards - Update

My 250 free geocaching signature cards from VistaPrint have arrived! The cards I ordered look exactly like they did on the online preview and arrived much faster than I anticipated. The edges are clean, the text is clear, and the overall quality is really great. I still wish I had more customizations and designs to choose from at no charge, but I can't complain about free. Thanks VistaPrint!

Friday, July 21, 2006

My Stats

This week, Mike and Barb at http://www.jestcaching.com/ wrote about a really exciting new program for all of the stats junkies out there! This is from their post titled "Review of CacheStats."

I stumbled across a program called CacheStats written by abcdmCachers. As many of you know I am a bit of statistics freak. This program is really cool. If you are a premium member you can do a pocket query on your finds. Once you import the unzipped GPX file it displays a bunch of interesting stats.

I, of course, immediately downloaded and tried out this program myself. As you can see below, it works great! I did discover that it won't take a GSAK .gpx export of your finds. It relies solely on the MyFinds pocket query to get its data. I was able to quickly mark my FTF's and even declare a couple of "favorite" caches. The example below is a slightly condensed view of the results that is displayed in an iframe because of limitations with Blogger.com's handling of HTML tables.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Caching in the BBQ Capital of Texas

Each year, in the heat of the summer, my in-laws flock from all around the country to the small Texas town of Lockhart to visit the rest of their central-Texas family. On our trip to Lockhart this year, I thought I would honor that yearly tradition with a couple of new geocaches and by finding the ones already there.

Last year, Lockhart had only one geocache located in Lockhart State Park about 10 miles outside of town, but none actually in the town itself. However, over the past several months, a few Lockhart-area geocachers have hidden 14 geocaches inside the town itself and a few in nearby communities. Of these, I was able to successfully find 13. I'm fairly certain that the last one, Lockhart Series #2, is actually missing since there weren't very many potential hiding places and they were all empty.

Since Lockhart is just a couple of hours from home, I thought this would also be a great place for a couple of hides. The small town of Lockhart, TX is typically known for only one thing - BBQ. In fact, it is home to three of the Texas Monthly magazine's Top 50 BBQ Restaurants and has been called the "Barbeque Capital of Texas." However, Lockhart is also the birthplace of the fictional character Americus from the Natalie Portman movie "Where the Heart Is." Although the movie was set somewhere in Oklahoma, it was actually filmed throughout Central Texas in Lockhart, Austin, and at Baylor University in Waco.

The movie starts with a pregnant Novalee Nation (Natalie Portman) being abandoned by her boyfriend at a small-town Wal-Mart. After accidentally being locked in the Wal-Mart overnight, she decides to camp out in the store for the next few months until she finally gives birth one night in the store to her daughter, Americus. When she is discovered, the media frenzy that followed dubbed Americus, "The Wal-Mart Baby." My new cache, Birthplace of Americus, is located very near this famous movie set location.

Yes, Sonny, it IS a Wal-Mart LPC!!! But, it is there for movie history reasons only. :)

The second cache hide, Plum Creek Reunion, is located near the Plum Creek Inn where my family reunions are held each year. This particular spot in Lockhart is also a great location to watch the single engine planes take-off and land at the Lockhart airport just a field away. The airport isn't a commercial airport at all, just a landing strip in the middle of a field for crop-dusters, flight students, and other small aircraft. There was even an old bi-plane there while we were at the site during this year's reunion!

Friday, July 14, 2006

Geocaching Stats Bar Changes

For anyone who uses the Geocaching.com stats bars on a webpage, forum signature or anywhere else, you will need to update your signature code. Groundspeak moved all images to a new server and the web is littered with thousands of broken stats bar images.

EDIT: Nevermind most of this post. Raine, a Groundlackey, just fixed the server so that either the old WWW or the new IMG server name will work. However, if you want to update your page to the new server anyway, you may continue reading the rest of this post.

Luckily, it is a quick and easy fix. All you have to do is change the "www" to "img" in the IMG tag of your HTML code. That typically is the tag that looks like "<img src= . . . ." However, be sure NOT to change the tag that looks like "<a href= . . ." or the link back to your profile will be broken.

For example, find the line that looks like this:
<img src="http://www.geocaching.com/stats/img.aspx?txt=&uid=4322750f-a3d6-4ee9-8ba6-c71b8da22675">

and change it to look like this (use your own UID code of course):
<img src="http://img.geocaching.com/stats/img.aspx?txt=&uid=4322750f-a3d6-4ee9-8ba6-c71b8da22675">

Also, if you've never created your own stats bar for a webpage before, you can generate one with the correct code changes at http://www.geocaching.com/my/statbar.aspx.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Cheap Signature Cards

Several geocachers that I've met have created personalized business cards to use as signature items or "found-it" cards that are left in caches. Most of the ones that I've seen are homemade from color printers and tear-out cards, but some like the promotional ones from PodCacher.com are professionally printed.

If you've considered having some professionally printed cards, but didn't like the high cost associated with that, you might want to check out a company called Vistaprint. For the cost of postage (about $5) Vistaprint will send you 250 color business cards. The catch? Their choices of stock designs are fairly plain, and there's an advertising line on the back of each card declaring free business cards at Vistaprint.com. You are also forced to click through several pages of expensive add-ons that they encourage you to buy before being allowed to check-out of their online store with a set of free cards. I finally choose a design and ordered them with the cheapest shipping option, so I'll let you know how they turn out (in about a month or so).

Below are some examples of their business card templates and how they might look as a geocaching signature card.

Friday, June 30, 2006

Stats and Rankings

Stats! Huh-yeah.
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing.
Uh-huh!

Many geocachers that I've met in person or online are absolutely obsessed with stats. You may even be one of them. If so, this post is for you!

Part of any great sport or game is the element of competition. Geocaching is no different! Well, almost no different. Geocaching is a little different because there are so many unregulated variables that make a true comparison virtually impossible. There are at least 5 different cache listing services - each with their own rules or guidelines. There are also so many different views of what makes a "good" hide or a "true" find.

Does a group hunt count for individual finds?
Does a find count if you've had to call or ask for help?
Are harder hides worth more than easier ones?
Should a foreign cache logged at a local event be allowed?
Can a find still be logged on disabled caches?

Personally, I think this short paragraph from a May 2005 article by Chuck Williams in LowCountry Weekly called "An Insider's Look at the Geocaching Controversy" sums this up the best.

In geocaching, everyone who seeks a geocache is a winner, whether they find the actual geocache container or not. The real thrills are the search and the locations, not the random key chains, Mickey D toys and other trinkets that fill a geocache container. The real nugget that the geocacher seeks is the logbook to sign and prove that s/he has really been there and found that. The scorecard is a personal one.

For me, the real thrill of geocaching is the hunt without all of the stats involved. But with that in mind, there are still several sites on the Internet dedicated solely to tracking stats and ranking geocachers based on their total number of hides, finds, and hide-to-find ratio. Even I'll confess to browsing these from time to time to see where I fit in the grand scheme of geocaching. These are two of the main national Geocacher Ranking sites.

KeenPeople.com Stats - This site allows geocachers to register themselves and record their own statistics from any listing service which are then used for the overall or state-wide rankings. Geocachers are allowed to enter how many of each type of cache they have found and hidden. Cachers can also record many other details like how many other Geocachers they've met, how many travel bugs they have found or released, how many times they have CITO'd a cache site, how many times they were FTF, or how many states they've cached.
Grand High Pobah - This site automatically grabs geocaching statistics from a select number of "high profile" Geocaching.com geocaches from each country and state. It only tracks the number of hides and finds from each cacher, but since it does it automatically, the stats are much more accurate and up-to-date than the other ranking sites. Unfortunately, this site only displays cachers with over 200 finds and cachers must have found one of the "high profile" geocaches in their state in order to appear in the rankings.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

GPS Visualizer Tutorial

"GPS Visualizer is a free, easy-to-use online utility that creates maps and profiles from GPS data (tracks and waypoints), street addresses, or simple coordinates. Use it to see where you've been, plan where you're going, or visualize geographic data."

Out of all the geocaching-related mapping programs including the various Google Earth overlays, this simple online utility has by-far the most WOW factor. This short tutorial is designed to quickly help you take a simple GPX track file downloaded from your GPS to a fully interactive and color-coded map on Google Earth.

Begin by downloading your own GPX track file from your GPSr or by using my sample file, here.
Visit the GPS Visualizer Map page, http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/map.
Change the first drop down box called "Output format:" to Google Earth and allow the page to switch you to the specialized Google Earth form.
Change "Altitude mode:" to your preferred style. For my flight path example, I selected "Extruded."
Change "Colorize by:" to your preferred style. For my flight path example, I selected "Speed." All other options on this page are completely optional and do not need to be changed from the defaults.
In the right-hand column, click Browse and find your saved GPX track file.
Click "Create KML file" button and view your results!

Note: If you have an older computer and can not use Google Earth, you may still follow the general steps above except on Step 3, you may choose Google Maps or another image format. However, your result will be 2-dimensional instead of 3-D.

Monday, May 29, 2006

How to Go Geocaching

http://www.wikihow.com/ is the newest site from the company that brought the world eHow.com. "wikiHow is a collaborative writing project aiming to build the world's largest how-to manual. Our mission is to provide free and useful instructions to help people solve the problems of everyday life."

wikiHow.com also contains one of the best over-all "How to Go Geocaching" guides that I've seen to date. But the best part is that since it is a wiki, it can get even better!

Monday, May 22, 2006

Leave No Trace

In keeping with last week's theme of environmental awareness, I thought I should also mention another great non-profit organization called Leave No Trace. The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and inspiring responsible outdoor recreation through education, research and partnerships.

There are 7 principles of the Leave No Trace program:
(information obtained from http://www.scouting.org/boyscouts/resources/21-105)

Plan Ahead and Prepare

Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces

Dispose of Waste Properly

Leave What You Find

Minimize Campfire Impacts

Respect Wildlife

Be Considerate of Other Visitors

An excellent article edited by Ken Braband was published online in April 2002 on the Wisconsin Geocaching Association website about this topic and how it relates to Geocachers simply entitled "Leave No Trace."

Friday, May 19, 2006

Tread Lightly: Responsible Geocaching

After digging through the Groundspeak forums for more information about Tread Lightly, I came across a fairly short thread in which Jeremy Irish posted a link to a Tread Lightly guide that he helped author entitled "Responsible Geocaching". This article is in the same format as the other published Tread Lightly guides for responsible hiking, camping and boating which can all be found on the main treadlightly.org website. The organization has also formatted this guide into a really well designed PDF brochure that I highly recommend viewing.

Tread Lightly: Responsible Geocaching [HTML]
Tread Lightly: Responsible Geocaching Brochure [PDF]

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Geocachers Encouraged to Tread Lightly

Article by Treadlightly.org

Marrying high-tech gadgets with rugged outdoor travel, geocaching has become one of the hottest new forms of recreation. But some are warning that its popularity will take a toll on the nation’s public land if not done responsibly.

In geocaching, participants use global positioning systems (GPS) to direct them to hidden treasures or “caches.” Caches are usually low-priced trinkets and are most often placed in backcountry settings. There are at least 250,000 caches hidden throughout the world on any given day.

“Unwanted tire tracks, damaged vegetation and disrupted wildlife can be harsh consequences of irresponsible geocaching,” said Patti Klein, National Stewardship Coordinator for the Bureau of Land Management. “We encourage geocachers to check with their local land manager for regulations and practice minimum impact behavior at all times.”

"Tread Lightly!," a nonprofit organization that educates people to recreate responsibly, recently released tips to help geocachers minimize their impact on the outdoors.

TIPS FOR RESPONSIBLE GEOCACHING

Check with local land managers to determine regulations before placing or searching for a cache. The National Park Service, for example, has strict geocaching regulations.

Keep vehicles on designated roads and trails.

Use the “track back” feature on your GPS unit rather than flagging and marking trails.

In addition to your GPS receiver, always carry extra batteries, a map, compass and know how to use them.

Practice the “lift, look, replace” technique. If you lift a rock to look under it, replace it exactly as you found it.

Following a trip, wash your gear to reduce the spread of invasive species.

Traditional geocaching is not appropriate in areas designated as Wilderness.

CACHE PLACERS

Avoid sensitive areas including cultural sites, wetlands, caves and steep slopes.

Avoid burying a cache in the ground.

It is the cache owner's responsibility to maintain the cache and the surrounding area. If the cache area becomes impacted, confer with the landowner on how you will mitigate the impacts, and seek their advice as to whether to relocate the cache.

Never place food items in a cache.

CACHE SEEKERS

Use maps to find a route that will minimize impact.

If you notice a path has started to wear in the vicinity of a cache, notify the cache owner via email.

When allowed to hike off designated trails, spread out in open country. One exception is in deserts, where hikers should travel in single file and try to walk on hardened surfaces such as slickrock, gravel or in sand washes.

After you’ve finished searching for a cache, the area should look as though you were never there or better than when you arrived.

"It is important for the worldwide geocaching community to tread lightly on the environment in order to maintain the natural beauty of our outdoor resources,” said Bryan Roth, Co-Founder and Vice President of geocaching.com, the web’s dominant geocaching site.

Geocaching.com also created a program called “Cache In, Trash Out” to help the sport make a positive impression on public land. Further information can be found on their website.

Additional tips for responsible geocaching are available on Tread Lightly!’s website at www.treadlightly.org or by calling 1-800-966-9900.

Tread Lightly!(R) is a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower generations to enjoy the outdoors responsibly. Tread Lightly!’s strategic educational message, along with its training and restoration initiatives are designed to instill an ethic of responsibility in outdoor enthusiasts and the industries that serve them. The program is long-term in scope with a goal to balance the needs of the people who enjoy outdoor recreation with the needs of the environment.

CAPTION: JILL SCOTT, A GEOCACHER FROM OGDEN, UTAH, STUDIES HER GPS UNIT TO FIND A HIDDEN CACHE. GEOCACHERS ARE ASKED TO FOLLOW GUIDELINES TO HELP THEM MINIMIZE IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT AS THEY HIDE AND SEEK.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Good Presentations

I couldn't just leave my previous post to stand alone without providing at least a few examples of good presentations. There are other presentations out there that have a similar purpose without all the “shady” content. I highly recommend looking at these. The first one by the Wisconsin Geocaching organization is probably the best I've seen! If you know of other good presentations, please post links to them in the comments. I'd love to see what else is out there.

Muddy Cachers

Well if I feel tomorrow
Like I feel today
I'm gonna pack my GPS
And make my getaway
Lord I'm troubled,
I'm all worried in mind
And I'm never bein' so horrified,
And I just can't keep from cryin'

-- Muddy Cachers
(original lyrics by Muddy Waters)

I just got done listening to the greatest and really only podcast about geocaching and heard a recommendation for a PowerPoint presentation used to help educate Police and or other law enforcement officers about geocaching. The presentation in question showed photos of geocachers sneaking behind bleachers, climbing over guardrails out onto bridge girders, and finding containers near concrete bridge supports. It also had several photos of ammunition boxes with the military markings still visible and even a huge buried cache! The presentation began by showing excerpts from news articles of geocachers falling to their death, being arrested for hanging buckets from a major overpass, and having cache containers blown up by bomb squads outside of police stations.
I know ALL of this has happened and is public knowledge, but why on earth would you choose this stuff when giving a presentation to police officers about geocaching?

If you want law enforcement officers to learn about geocaching as a family-friendly, outdoor-loving, eco-friendly and police-friendly sport, show them the good stuff!!! Show them the pictures of Brandon's kids, or some informational articles on jestcaching, or some of the great stories about kid's geocaching birthday parties on the PodCacher site, or even photos of a bunch of city-slickers about to kayak down a river in central Texas. Tell them about Cache-In, Trash-Out or about the Geocachers Creed.
Inform them about the sport, but do it the right way - "Safe, Legal, Ethical." Tell them what we do and how we do it, but make sure the examples you give show geocaching in a positive way. Make any presentation about geocaching seem like something they should try themselves and not something they should be on the look-out for.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

$12 Billion Dollar Hobby

I just came across this site http://www.lostgear.com/ and love their opening tag. Check it out!

GeoCaching is the only activity that requires $12 Billion dollars worth of equipment to participate.
That's right, one relatively cheap GPS unit, and $12 Billion U.S. dollars worth of satellite systems, and you're ready to play. Luckily the US government has already footed the bill for the satellite system, and put it out there. So all you need is the GPS, some walking shoes, and a sense of adventure. We'll wait right here while you gather these things together...

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

PodCacher.com Geocoin

All I can say is, WOW! I just got Sonny and Sandy's PodCacher.com geocoin in the mail last night and it looks incredible. I'm not a big geocoin collector and only have 3 or 4 other coins, but this is definitely the prize of my limited collection. The front you can see here, but the back has a treasure chest on an island in front of sparkling (literally sparkling) blue water and a sun that glows in the dark. It really is a great looking coin! Thanks Sonny and Sandy!!!

Monday, April 03, 2006

Tiki Man

This evening, I had the opportunity to search for one of the areas most mysterious legend caches, The Woods of the Tiki Man. Since the weather was so nice, my wife and I decided to take the girls out for a Subway picnic at the City of Woodway's Carleen Bright Arboretum. The arboretum is the home to two caches including this "mysterious" cache. I had already found the first several months ago, but I decided to put this one off until later. Well, tonight was finally the right night for this hunt. This is his story.

Long before Carleen came along, this area was Tiki Man's. He romped in the woods, hid under the bridge waiting for billy goats, like his cousin the Troll, and just caused mayhem for any hikers who dared venture into his woods. One day, the tax man came by. Tiki Man had spent way to much time chasing goats, and not enough time earning money. So the tax man took his land and sold it for pennies on the dollar to Carleen, a woman of wealth with no taste for Tiki's OR goats. Soon both were banished from the land. The goats were sold, but Tiki Man went running into the woods vowing never to come out again.

I found the cache location very quickly and the hint made it pretty easy since there was an old tree stump just a few feet from the small trail. Inside the stump was a small wooden tiki man idol that looked a lot like the hidden immunity idol from last season's Survivor. Tucked into the back of the tiki man's head was the film canister with the log book. Overall, it was a fun find in a great location!

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Reader Rewards

I am proud to announce the public availability of the first ever M-T-P signature item, the M-T-P Geonickel!!! The nickels are 1.5" wooden nickels printed in full color on both sides and are currently being manufactured by Mark at http://www.geonickels.com/ from my own designs. If you listen to the PodCacher podcast, this is the same company where Sonny and Sandy got their PodCacher.com wooden nickels.

Order and trade information will be posted soon!

Friday, March 24, 2006

Misadventures in Geocaching

Have you ever had one of those days where everything that could go wrong, does - almost as if your every action were scripted by some satirical deviant who planned the whole thing just for his own amusement? Earlier this week, I had one of those days. These are my ~~adventures~~ misadventures in geocaching from that day.

For the past several weeks, my geocaching activities have been suspended due to the birth of my second daughter. After almost a month-long absence from geocaching, I finally decided to head out and grab two brand new caches that were just hidden in our area on my way to work.

Early Tuesday morning, two new caches popped up on my screen and both were less than 10 miles from my home. Even better, they were mostly on the way to my office with only a slight detour through the town of Hewitt. I rushed to get ready in the morning, rushed out the door, and drove to the first cache site, Chapel's End, as quickly as I could while still obeying the speed limits! I pulled up to the stop, got out of my car, and practically ran over to the URP listed in the cache hint!! I opened up the bison tube, extracted the tiny logbook, got ready to sign my giant *FTF* above my name, and then I saw it - "Giggledodge 3/21/06 FTF." ARGH!!!

That was how it all began. With this first failed FTF attempt, I knew right then and there what sort of day I was going to have. Reluctantly, I decided to go ahead and go find the second new cache just over a mile away, Twenty-Seven Feet. Wearing my dress shoes, khaki pants, and a nice dress shirt, I arrived at the second location to find the cache container near a roadside water tank in a small tree. Unfortunately, the tree was surrounded by thorny briars and I got several big red scrapes all up and down my hands and arm why retrieving and replacing this cache. If that weren't bad enough already, I open the log and read "Giggledodge 3/21/06 FTF." ARGH, ARGH!!!!!!

But as you can probably guess from the image, the misadventures don't stop there.

Hewitt is one of those little Texas towns that has a reputation for being a speed trap and has an overabundance of police officers with nothing else to do, and I am unfortunately one of those people who will sometimes forget to do certain yearly activities whenever my life gets a little hectic. This time, while preparing for the birth of my daughter, I apparently forgot three very important tasks:

Mount my newest vehicle registration sticker,
Get my vehicle's inspection sticker renewed, and
Put a copy of my vehicle's most recent proof of insurance in my glove box.

Normally, in most cities and highways across Texas, all three of these are things that police officers usually check if and only if you get pulled over for something else like speeding - NOT IN HEWITT! One of Hewitt's local police officers happened to drive by in the opposite direction as I was just about to cross out of their city limits, when all of the sudden I saw him turn around in the middle of the road and begin to follow me.

I immediately ran through a mental checklist of all the things I could have been doing wrong: Was I speeding? No. Did I run a stop sign? No. Was I following too close to another car? No. Was I swerving or driving erratically? No, none of the above. The officer just happened to notice as we passed that I still had the "5" vehicle inspection sticker instead of the "6" sticker and he didn't have anything else more important to do. Lucky me, I had actually paid for my 2006 vehicle registration; I just hadn't put the sticker on yet. For this, I just got a warning, but I wasn't so lucky for the other two issues. ARGH, ARGH, ARGH!!!!!!!!!

In summary, on my first morning out caching since the birth of my child, I missed two FTFs, got an armful of bloody scrapes, two citations, a written warning, and ended up being late to work by the time it was all said and done. It was... in every possible way... a really bad day!

	Plan Ahead and Prepare
	Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces
	Dispose of Waste Properly
	Leave What You Find
	Minimize Campfire Impacts
	Respect Wildlife
	Be Considerate of Other Visitors