Lynden, WA & First Event

Happy Geocaching Tuesday!

In the latest instalment of LANMonkey's Geocaching Adventures we visit Lynden Washington with Manta Rayz. We explored Berthusen Park where we found a number of caches and really enjoyed the amazing beauty of that park. Then we travelled through rural Lynden picking up a few caches here and there, and then grabbed a couple of the urban ones. It was on a Sunday afternoon after church, and we could not believe how QUIET Lynden was on a Sunday in March - lots of parking for those park & grabs!

We'd really encourage anyone in the Vancouver area who hasn't visited there yet to make sure you get accross the border (with your passports!) and have fun. The border guards all seemed familiar with Geocaching and gave us no grief at all; easy trip, fun trip!

This past weekend, Mrs. LANMonkey, Manta Rayz, Piggy & I attended our first event - "In Memory of Scooby." The event was held in Fleetwood Park in Surrey and was a lot of fun. As this was our first event, we met lots of you geocaching folks, and had a great time. As it was billed as a "dog friendly" event, that made it just that much more fun!  It was a well planned and executed event, and it was great to put some faces to a number of cachers who we've heard of one way or another before.

So, as always, cache safely & cache often!
Team LANMonkey

Little Treasures at Little Oak - The Interview with the CO

In March Mrs. LANMonkey & I finally found the geocache "Little Treasures at Little Oak" (GC3R8ER), and that made our 700^th cumulative find.  We did not complete this challenging and popular cache on our first or second attempt, nor without a little help.

Reading through the logs, we knew that others had gotten hints from the staff, so we made sure we visited during their business hours. Once at ground-zero we resumed our searching, and Mrs. LANMonkey asked if we should check for a hint with the fellow inside. Once she had done so, it confirmed for us that we were searching in the correct spot, we just needed to be more creative in how we searched… and we made the find. Immediately there-after the fellow came out to share in our post-find joy, and we discovered that he was, in fact, the Cache Owner (CO).

We had a great conversation, and I thought it would be nice for the caching community to learn a little bit more about the CO and his cache, which is one of the top five most favourite caches in the Langley area.

LM:        How did you first get interested in geocaching?

CO:         I was on vacation on the Shuswap with my family a couple years back. There was a booklet with the "99 Things to do in the Shuswap" and Geocaching was one of them.   I had heard about it in bits and pieces prior to that. I downloaded the iPhone app and within minutes my boys and I were off on an adventure. We were hooked instantly.

LM:        What prompted the idea to make the "Little Treasures at Little Oak" geocache?

CO:         I'm a fan of the "clever urban hide". The kind that has hundreds of people pass each day without a clue that it exists. When we chose this location for our new office I knew instantly that a cache would be part of it.

LM:        Could you share with us some of the most interesting or amusing stories you have of people visiting looking for that cache?

CO:         There are so many! The ones that are trying so hard to conceal what they are doing ... the ones that look forever and refuse even the most subtle hint.  It has been a ton of fun for everyone here at the office to watch people look for the "treasure."  I love the moment that the cache has been discovered after a good search … there usually is an audible expression of joy!

LM:        Have you ever had to explain this cache to "muggles" and if so, what kinds of responses have you gotten?

CO:         I thought we would be doing more of that. The cachers get a lot of strange looks as muggles pass by. Once again that is part of the fun for us in the office. A few times I thought it was a muggle getting curious only to find out it is a fellow cacher who has previously found the cache willing to lend a hint or two

LM:        What advice would you share for anyone considering hiding a cache at their business or residence?

CO:         We didn't do it for any other reason than to have a bit of fun. I really appreciate the effort that others have gone to just to give my boys a thrill when we are out caching.  We really just wanted to return the favour. I never thought it would result in so many great conversations with fellow cachers. I think the message this says about our business is that we love being part of the community and that we don't take ourselves too seriously.

Check out Episode 012 of “LANMonkey’sGeocaching Adventures” on YouTube for more footage and facts about the cache “Little Treasures at Little Oak” and as always; cache safely and cache often!

Thanks for reading,

Team LANMonkey

Happy Easter!

Team LANMonkey wishes all our readers and followers a very blessed & Happy Easter - we hope that you were able to get at least a little time for the "ultimate Easter egg hunt" - Geocaching! But most importantly time with your loved ones and time to celebrate "the reason for the season."

As a special Easter gift, we'll be publishing two episodes of our YouTube series this Tuesday - the Kelowna Airport TB Hotel & Fort Langley/Cache #700.

Thanks for all your interest & support - cache safely & cache often!

Top Caches in Any Area

Now that we've been bit by the geocaching bug, we of course want to "go caching" whenever we visit somewhere - whether it be a different country, province, state, or city than we call home, we want to check out the caches available.

Initially, we did this by simply puling up the Geocaching.com map, toggling the side panel, and typing in the name of the region we were planning to travel to in the "Search by Address or Coordinates" box. Then we'd manually inspect the caches nearby where we'd be staying, and try and see what is accessable, available, and interesting.  subsequent to that, we'd load them onto our GPSr one-by-one.This was a tedious process, and it wasn't always super effective... for the most part it's worked out, but it is very time consuming.

More recently, we've been learning how to take advantage of Pocket Queries to give us much more refined lists of the caches we should try and find while visiting.

Not only does creating pocket queries (reminder: this is a Geocaching.com functionality that may not be available on other geocaching related sites) allow enormous granularity and flexibility in the types of caches and containers, but other important criteria can be set including:

• difficulty (greater than or equal to, equal to, or less than or equal to 1 - 5)
• terrain (greater than or equal to, equal to, or less than or equal to 1 - 5)
• date of placement
• inclusion/exclusion of any of the geocache attributes

Once your pocket query is configured in the simple & effective interface, you can have it emailed or download it directly from the site in either gpx or loc format, for quick upload into your GPS or tools such as GSAK.

This has become a much better way for us to plan our caching trips to different destinations, including the ability to sort those caches by order of "most favourite" so that we can make sure we visit the "top caches in any area."

We've been able to use exactly that mechanism to identify the most "favourited" caches, so stay tuned to our YouTube channel for an upcoming series of videos on the top caches for some different geocaching destinations.

If you have tips or tricks for how to plan your geocaching away from home, please share them with us!

Thanks for stopping by, and remember:
Cache safely, and cache often!

It's Not About the Numbers...

Recently, a log entry on one of our caches in the Vancouver area piqued my interest, and resulted in a story I wanted to share with all of you who read our blog.

In the caching community, I've learned we have an expression that "it's not about the numbers" implying to me, that a major part of the fun of the geocaching hobby/sport is the relationships you forge, the experiences you have, and the stories you learn.

In that spirit, I wanted to share a story that was shared with me recently by a visiting geocacher.

"We were looking for the cache when this gentleman came along and asked if we had found it. Apparently he had been here looking for it so he could bring people here to find it. He said he comes and looks for the caches ahead of time so he can bring people here using geocaching as a therapy. We had not found the cache at that time but kept looking. The cache container had been pushed way back and we need something to get it out of it's hiding spot. We found a handle from a bucket but it was to big to fit in beside the container so the gentleman said he had a coat hanger in his car a went and grabbed it. We had the cache in hand shortly after that and signed the log. I went to pass the log to the man but he said he never signs the log as he takes people numerous time to find the caches so I have no idea who he is or even what his name is. but we are always happy to meet up with fellow cachers. ... I think this would be a fine story to tell about a wonderful man doing great things for other less fortunate people."

As far as I know, we aren't sure who the man is, or where he works/volunteers, but the cache itself is proximate to both Children & Women's hospital and G.F. Strong.  I thought this was a really neat story about someone using our recreational fun of geocaching for more than just a little fresh air and exercise.

It is really refreshing to hear a little more than the usual (although always appreciated) "Thanks for the cache."  So thanks to Harleymama for sharing this story, and allowing me to blog about it, and thanks to the mysterious stranger for the work he does and for inspiring us all to "keep on caching."

Cache safely, and cache often!
LANMonkey

Ogden Point Victoria - Video Blog Episode 001

Hey Geocachers!

Thought I'd let you know that on a recent trip to Victoria I filmed my first video blog.
Is that what we should call it? I'm open for suggestions on that.

LANMonkey Video Blog - Ogden Point Victoria

I was on a mission to find GC23RBJ "Jaiden's Cache" in order to place a specific TB in that cache. It was my first time using GeoSense on the BB as well, and everything went pretty smoothly. So please watch the video, and let me know what you think...

Do you have any cache or cache type suggestions that I should record? Caching technologies you'd like to see used?  Any types of content you'd like to see? Interviews with cachers from BC?

"The Willow Series - Bonus"

The weather this winter has not been kind to cache contents that are not extraordinarily protected. On that note, I was out performing some cache maintenance today and found that, as per the reports, the log scroll for "The Willow Series - Bonus" cache of ours was more pulp than log. 

I brought it home and was able to dry it out, and will bring it back soon, but in the meantime, the handy  hint sheet for finding the final wasn't holding up well either, so I've taken a different approach.  

In the cache itself you'll find a WELL laminated card with a short URL & QR code that will take you to a Wikipedia site that will walk you through how to perform the cipher we've used.

As for the extra content that we had in the cache to help you all out, I've posted it below in this blog entry where it will be completely weather & muggle proof. ;-)

"Welcome to "The Willow Series - Bonus" by team LANMonkey. To solve the puzzle you will need to have the ciphered text found in cache#2 (GC3YVWE), and combine the clues found in caches #1 (GC3WREV), #2 (GC3YVWE), & #3 (GC3YVTT).  Using the right side of your brain, think about what those clues have in common, and you will arrive at a 15 character phrase.
That phrase, without spaces, is the running key.  You will need to use the tabula recta as your tableau.
Once you've decrypted the ciphered text, you will need to perform one more decryption, which is a simple a=1 Caesar substitution cipher. 
If you get stuck, contact the COs."