Friends on Podcacher & Christmas Cacher Gifts

Happy Friday geocachers and outdoor enthusiasts.

It seems we're blessed with another sunny & crisp  weekend ahead, so I hope you all have some great plans lined up. If you do, make sure to drop us a line via our new and amazingly awesome Facebook page and let us know what you're planning, or what you got up to - we love to hear and share your stories!

Police Dogs and Mustard Containers
This morning while walking Piggy I was listening to a recent episode of Sonny, Sandy, and Sean on Podcacher. About halfway through ( 30 minute mark of Episode 445) the hosts read some listener feedback, as they frequently do. As it turns out, the listener feedback today was from local geocacher dora_mor, sharing a story about geocaching & law enforcement run-ins from the logs of the Mustard Container Cache in Surrey.


Turns out, the logs are from local caching friends Professor P & Groovy Owl - yup, of WorldCaching fame - and detail their adventures at this geocache that clearly made for an unforgettable night out caching. It's worth a listen to the story!

Christmas is Just Around the Corner...
"Actually, it's down the hall, third door on the left." - Howie Mandell.  Perhaps you've noticed that Christmas shopping season starts earlier each year? Well, perhaps it doesn't, but it sure feels that way! If you've got a Geocacher on your shopping list, or you're putting together your own wish list, we'd love to hear what ideas you have and share them.

Here's a short list of things we at LMGA HQ can think of to help get things started.

Ogio Flight Vest

Almost ever event or caching trip we do, I (Mr. LANMonkey) will be decked out in my signature "geocaching vest." I've had many people ask about it, and frankly, it really is much handier than having a backpack, and carries at least as much as most day packs.  The vest I have is the Ogio Flight Vest. It's kind of hard to find, but check at motorcycling shops, as technically Ogio markets this as a motocross or snowmobiling vest. The variety of pockets is amazing, and it comes with a removable hydration system as well, so it truly is the all-round awesome caching accessory. It runs about $140 US, so it's not cheap, but I've had mine since 2009 and it holds up amazingly well through some pretty extreme conditions.

 FRS Radio Set
Really a core piece of outdoor safety equipment, but these have proved extremely useful not only for geocaching, but for many other functions. In the current days of cellular phones being omnipresent, the FRS radios have fallen out of vogue somewhat, but this is to the advantage of FRS users - there's fewer people clogging up the channels, and the range on the devices has only gotten better. In a perfect situation, you'll have a cell phone & FRS, but it's worth the investment. We use the Motorola MH230TPR which can run around $100, but there's less expensive options available.



If you have other ideas for awesome geocaching gifts of a technical  (or perhaps more "practical") nature, please share them through comments or feedback to our Facebook page or this blog.  Thanks for reading, and remember -

"Cache safely, and cache often!"
The LANMonkeys

2,000 Reasons We Love Travel-Caching

In case you hadn't heard yet, the LANMonkeys have passed geocaching find #2,000 in October. We had a trip planned in late October and were starting to get close to 2,000 finds, so we decided that it would be fun to make our 2,000th a special one. We also thought we'd see how many states/provinces we could find a cache in on one day.

 It started very early in the morning with a quick grab in BC before we crossed the US border on our way to catch a flight out of the Bellingham Airport. That was find #1,998. Once we were across the border we grabbed a cache near to the airport, and then waited for our traveling companions - CatapultJeff & IronMaiden to join us for the flight to Las Vegas.

And then we were in Las Vegas! Our first stop was the virtual cache at the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign, GC729A.

We took our photo, and just as we were about to head off to our next destination, Mrs. LANMonkey dropped to one knee & we had an impromptu "renewing of our vows" as she replaced my wedding band that no longer fit my finger after 19 years of wedded bliss with a brand new one she had purchased a while ago and snuck down for just this moment.

What a special moment! After that, we were off for more travel caching adventures, including a visit to Hoover Dam, and geocache finds in California and Arizona, to give us geocache finds in five different states/provinces in one day! Later that day we reminisced about some of our favourite cache finds over that past year and half, our 2,000 reasons we love geocaching.

Travel-Caching
We sure do enjoy our travel-caching, and it's nice when we can do that together, and even nicer when we can travel-cache with friends. Often though, I do find myself travel-caching when on work trips, and it is a different approach than when caching at home or doing "destination" travel-caching trips.  On episode 96 of the Geo Gear Heads they talked about business trip travel-caching and it's well worth a listen. I found myself nodding my head in agreement with many of the tips and tricks, but even learned a few new ideas on how to make travel-caching light effective - most of what I learned was the advice with specifics around pocket queries.

Additionally, as you've probably already heard, DarrylW4 & TheBadCop are about to hit episode 100 of the Geo Gear Heads, so a big congrats to them both for that milestone.

Caching in the NorthWest
 Speaking of things you've probably heard, I've been making a big deal about my podcast debut on the podcast "Caching in the NorthWest" with TheBadCop and WitzEnd. We had an absolute blast recording the episode about travel caching,  and ended up chatting together for almost another 2 hours after we finished recording. If you're interested in catching their podcast about caches and cachers in the Pacific NorthWest, check them out on their website or via iTunes.

Thanks for stopping by and reading our little geocaching blog once more - we sure hope you enjoy following us and really encourage you to comment or email us with your ideas, input, and advice.

Until next time, remember to cache safely and cache often!
The LANMonkeys.

PRED Trail, Mojave Desert, & other news...

Welcome to another Geocaching Tuesday!  We missed you guys, but we've been pretty busy around LMGA HQ lately.

On the geocaching front, we've uploaded our latest episode, which features a bike-caching adventure where Mrs. LANMonkey & Manta Rayz joined me to complete the PRED series of 40 geocaches along the Pitt River north of Pitt Meadows BC. Check it out, and enjoy the scenery - let me know what you think about bike caching - is it your style?




For a complete change of scenery, we recently returned from a geocaching adventure in the Mojave desert with our caching buddies Catapult Jeff & Iron Maiden. We cached the "Heart of the Mojave Desert" series as well as the back-half of "Route 66" and a number of other caches preceding and ante-ceding those trails. Truly an amazing and fun time with great friends - watch for the next few episodes of LMGA where I'll feature different aspects of that trip.

While we were caching with them, Catapult Jeff & Iron Maiden made their 10,000th cache find - that's CRAZY! I'll be featuring that event in an episode coming very soon so watch for that too!

Right after we got back it was off to the "Caching in Space" event held in Burnaby, BC. A well hosted and fun event that the weather actually cooperated for. Our sincere thanks to our hosts for the evening, KNL Caching, goaliegirl38, and jeepgurl1970. You guys did an awesome job!

Last bit of caching news, is that this Thursday I'll be joining the Caching in the NorthWest podcast as a guest. I'm very excited and honoured to be joining The Bad Cop and WitzEnd for an episode of their podcast. Thanks gents, I'll try not to embarrass you!

So that's all our quick updates for now, but in the meantime we're working hard at LMGA HQ producing tons of new content from our recent travels, events, and fun so watch for it each and every Geocaching Tuesday, and maybe even a few surprise episodes in-between.

Until next time, "cache safely, and cache often!"
The LANMonkeys.