IGO NEWSLETTER 2008

ISSUE #07


In This Issue...

We have a lot more milestones, a neat video submitted from JeePSer, a podcast submitted by bumanfam Dad, the July Cache of the Month, information about IGO's upcoming HIKE-N-SEEK Event, a featured column from Blue Grass Tom, and more!

Upcoming Events
(DSM Area) Breakfast in the Boonies09/13/2008East side of town
Hike -n- Seek 200809/26/2008 - 09/28/2008Swan Lake State Park
GeoCaching 101 at Wickiup10/04/2008Wickiup Hill Outdoor Leaning Center (10260 Morris Hills Rd, Toddville, IA 52341)
Southeast Iowa October Cache Fest10/11/2008Lake Wapello State Park
Geocache the Bluffs - Part Deux10/17/2008Western Historic Trails Center, 3434 Richard Downing AV, Council Bluffsk
Upcoming Mega-Events Near Iowa
Midwest GeoBash 200808/07/2008 - 08/10/2008Kendallville, Indiana
Cacher Milestones
  • Sir Cache Alot - 1100 on Jun 8, 2008
  • ssbaker - 600 on Jul 11, 2008
  • UNI_MAE - 50 on Jul 12, 2008
  • Lego Guy - 1100 on Jul 12, 2008
  • TrapperDan p- 700 on Jul 13, 2008
  • SuperGoober - 1300 on Jul 13, 2008
  • c_dog - 3000 on Jul 13, 2008
  • BeeMario - 50 on Jul 14, 2008
  • AnimalLover99 - 50 on Jul 14, 2008
  • bucknuts - 1800 on Jul 14, 2008
  • lagrac - 2800 on Jul 16, 2008
  • Soccer Boy Logan - 200 on Jul 16, 2008
  • Madkaw - 600 on Jul 18, 2008
  • Blue Grass Tom - 3000 on Jul 20, 2008
  • The 3 Elves - 500 on Jul 21, 2008
  • BF_Gates - 100 on Jul 21, 2008
  • fattuesday - 200 on Jul 23, 2008
  • phiscocks - 400 on Jul 23, 2008
  • 39chevy - 200 on Jul 23, 2008
  • AuntM - 100 on Jul 24, 2008
  • familyplow - 50 on Jul 24, 2008
  • the milkman - 500 on Jul 25, 2008
  • ttmgeohunters - 50 on Jul 25, 2008
  • digger9 - 1000 on Jul 26, 2008
  • pfdf123 - 300 on Jul 26, 2008
  • catsnfish - 500 on Jul 27, 2008
  • Summitt Dweller - 2500 on Jul 27, 2008
  • jdrush - 1100 on Jul 27, 2008
  • xshooter - 700 on Jul 27, 2008
  • mustangcats - 200 on Jul 27, 2008
  • Shadow Cachers - 3400 on Jul 28, 2008
  • SEAM - 200 on Jul 28, 2008
  • scottk - 300 on Jul 29, 2008
  • Parabola - 1800 on Jul 30, 2008
  • Just Ducky - 200 on Jul 30, 2008
  • train4347 - 200 on Jul 31, 2008
  • TAEholden - 300 on Aug 1, 2008
  • LinuxOnTheBrain - 50 on Aug 2, 2008
  • Team Gamsci - 1800 on Aug 2, 2008
  • Sybilnme - 400 on Aug 2, 2008
  • bucknuts - 1900 on Aug 2, 2008
  • Shadow Cachers - 3500 on Aug 3, 2008
  • Lego Guy - 1200 on Aug 3, 2008
  • JeePSer - 1100 on Aug 3, 2008
  • 67yardbird - 300 on Aug 3, 2008
  • Mon'Rose' - 1300 on Aug 3, 2008
  • 3amt - 1400 on Aug 3, 2008
  • LyleVB - 2200 on Aug 3, 2008
  • h_kummrow - 100 on Aug 3, 2008
  • lasermom - 1300 on Aug 4, 2008
  • joestephkids - 900 on Aug 4, 2008
  • bumanfam - 500 on Aug 5, 2008
  • wildernessmama - 1400 on Aug 6, 2008
HIKE-N-SEEK 2008

5th Annual IGO Hike -n- Seek
GC1EPGE
Iowa Geocachers Organization

By The NVG

The tradition continues at Swan Lake State Park on September 26-28, 2008. Swan Lake is located 2 miles south of Carroll, Iowa in Carroll County.

The event will be HQ'd at Swan Lake State Park's East Shelterhouse.

Swan Lake Website

This year's competition will commence at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday and run through 10:00 a.m. Sunday. There will be 100 or so caches for you to find. There will be individual and team categories this year. The competitions for both will cover the same caches and be run simultaneously. You can only participate in one category.

You don't have to compete to hunt caches. Most of the caches will be permanent. There will be an information gathering scavenger hunt in Manning and we are working a similar one in Carroll. This informational scavenger hunt will be part of the competition and will only be available until 5:00 p.m. on Saturday.

We are working on prizes and sponsorship with local Chambers and other organizations.

The caches will hidden county wide. And there will be plenty of HIKING this year. So, consider yourselves warned. Sure, you can sleep if you DON'T want to find them all.

Camping will be available at Swan Lake and there are many hotels and motels in Carroll. More housing information will be posted later [on the event page].

Schedule

Friday

7:00 p.m. Crackerbarrel at East Shelterhouse

Saturday

8:00 a.m. Registration Begins at East Shelterhouse
9:30 a.m. Rule Briefing
10:00 a.m. Both Individual and Team Competitions Begin
6:00 p.m. Group Cook-out at East Shelterhouse

Sunday

10:00 a.m. End of competition
12:00 p.m. Lunch and award presentation

CACHE OF THE MONTH

Written, Organized, and Directed by Parabola

This month was another tight race, in fact we had a tie. I was able to reach one of the winners but unable to contact the other.

This month's winners are:

Captain Crunch (GC1DRM6)
by LinuxOnTheBrain

and

Pulpit Rock (GC123MN)
by fitzgeo and John


I was able to get a hold of LinuxOnTheBrain and got to chat a bit about his cache and I've got to say WOW. He was pretty excited about winner the COTM and this was his first cache he has made. I wonder what he'll think up next, or might be scared too. :)

This is what he had to say to all the IGO'ers out there:

Wow, I'm absolutely stunned by the attention my cache has gotten and I'm honored to be nominated for the I.G.O. Cache of the Month! Here's some things about the Captain Crunch cache that might be interesting to readers but not too revealing.

-Cache features an audio tone-controlled lock that operates only when the right frequency tone is played.
-Completely custom designed electronics control pack, door release gearbox & latch mechanism, and a divided security enclosure.
-Enclosure features LED indicator lights for the operator.
-Tone detector circuit has a ~200Hz discrimination and the LM567 tone detector chip can be obtained as a free sample from National Electronics.
-Hacked Radio Shack voice record/playback module provides instructional message for the cache operator.
-Cache is only powered when being operated thus maximizing battery life.
-Made from almost all recycled materials including but not limited to: old wooden trunk, broken r/c jeep, broken cordless telephone, waterbed frame mounts, screen door spring, lots of garage 'junk box' bits of steel etc.
-Design and construction spanned 5 months. (I savor my fun projects)
-Placed behind a local business where it blends really well because of the nature of the business and it and provides some security. Also, permission was given after just a single-sentence description of geocaching...they thought it sounded great and really wanted to be a part of it!


I contacted John Draper "Captain Crunch" himself to let him know about the cache and to say 'thanks'. He actually responded the same evening from the HOPE conference in NY, he thought the cache was great! Common story...he'd heard of geocaching but had never done it so I had the great privilege of setting up a GC account for him, 'Crunchman', and plugging in some approximate home coordinates in Mountain View, CA. And added my Captain Crunch cache to his watchlist of course! :)


A complete construction guide is available by request, just contact me through the GC site. It includes detailed blueprints, material lists, pictures and step-by-step instructions.

LinixOnTheBrain

Pulpit Rock I was unable to get much info on the cache and did some research on the cache page. It looks to be a straight forward cache. A nice hike up lime stone stairs and some weathered rocks with an amazing view from the top. Sounds like a really neat place to visit. The cache is hidden near the viewing platform at the top of the trail. Looks like a fun one to visit. I really wish I could have gotten some more info on this one. There are some pretty neat picture's of the area on the cache page.

Thanks again for all the took the time to nominate and vote on your favorite caches. These look really cool and I'm personally planning a trip with a friend of mine to try and find these very soon.

Head on over to the forums and nominate your favorite caches for August and don't forget to wear sunscreen!!!
Nominate a cache

--Parabola
Cacher Profile

What is your Geocaching name?
bumanfam

Number of Finds/Hides:
466 / 53

How did you get your username?
Our handle is pretty simple: it’s our last name followed by –fam, for family. It rhymes with human-fam. We’ve been using this online identity for about nine years in several fashions. We refer to the individual members as bumanfam Dad, bumanfam Mom, and bumanfam Kids #1, #2, and #3, though we share one online GC.com username.

How long have you been caching and how did you get started??
bumanfam Dad first heard of Geocaching in about 2001 or so from a neighbor and friend (in California) who belonged to a Jeep club. The discussion was on GPS, and the Jeeper told of another club member who used his GPS to find buckets of toys in the deserts when they went Jeeping. bumanfam Dad thought that was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard of! Fast-forward to April 2006, now in Iowa (thankfully!). Looking for nearby campgrounds for some easy weekend trips for the upcoming summer, he stumbled on a Cherokee County Parks website and saw a reference to a “geocache placement permit.” Curious, he clicked the link, and read up on Geocaching. bumanfam Mom came home from her afternoon errands and bumanfam Dad suggested she read about this new game while he went out for the evening on sales calls. When he returned some six hours later, bumanfam Mom was still at the computer, had placed an order for some stickers and other supplies from the Groundspeak store, and demanded that he buy a GPSr immediately, because we’d found a new family activity!

Our Magellan eXplorist 210 came a few days later, and we spent a Saturday in the yard, hiding and finding a pill bottle to learn how to use the unit (yep, we started with micros!). Our first find came on Sunday, still in our dress clothes, and at dusk, just a couple of miles from our home in a grove by a closed school. We weren’t really prepared, but we found it by the light of bumanfam Dad’s cell phone video camera light! Our first find was "School's Out".

Less than a month later, we were headed to Orange City for the Tulip Festival parade and decided to leave early and pick up a couple of caches on the way. We’d packed a backpack by now, loaded up on swag, and took a big jug of Kool-Aid. When we got to O.C., we were having fun and decided to watch the later parade instead of the early one, and cache until then. We soon found ourselves in South Dakota, and having far too much fun to go watch some parade! We ended up spending the whole day Geocaching. What struck us as amazing, was that during the whole day, there was not one complaint from any of the kids and no frustrations for the parents! It was our best family day ever, and a big reason we’re still at it (though the days aren’t always so perfect!).

What's your favorite cache/why?
Our favorite cache, probably, is Cabannés Ghost in Bellevue, NE. The location was absolutely stunning at the time of year we were there, we saw lots of deer, and the cache itself is a cool container. What really made it fun was the cache listing – a legend of the area’s history and the ghosts now in the area. It made for a fun walk in the woods, with the kids looking for ghosts! Another of our favorites is The Dark is Rising, our first night cache. We love to find challenging caches. Puzzles, though we haven’t done too many, are a favorite of bumanfam Dad’s, and in particular, those that are solved on-site, as in how to retrieve or open the cache.

What's your least Favorite/why?
Our least favorite type of cache is the virtuals. Yeah, we know, lots of people want them back, and there are lots of things to learn from micro caches, but we just don’t get too excited about them. Now, that’s not to say we won’t pick up a smiley, we think that even the worst caches are still good enough for a smiley!

What do you like about geocoins?
We’re not really into the geocoins as far a collecting them, but we love to check them out in caches or at events, and collect the icons! We do own a few that have some special significance to us – a CITO coin (for the first event we hosted), a Podcacher coin, and several IGO 2007 coins (of course!). We have a few TBs out there and enjoy seeing where they go.

Which do you like more, finding geocaches or hiding geocaches?
We love to hide caches at least as much as finding them. We have some pretty lame caches out there, but we also have some that take a bit more thought. One in particular, GEOSCAMS, we had a bunch of fun building and placing. We stole the idea (fair and square), but added a few of our own touches. It proved to be rather frustrating for the local cachers who went out to find it after our WWFM event in November. They eventually figured it out, and we look forward to spring and other cachers’ attempts! If money were no object, where would you geocache?
We love the question about money being no object, what cache we’d like to find. Well, let’s just say that there are about a half-million of them! Our furthest distance to find a specific cache so far, though, took us 1315.72 miles away to find the Podcacher Treasure Cache. Now, that wasn’t the only reason for our trip to California, but we weren’t about to go out there and not find it! Our furthest cache is only about another 16.5 miles. On the same trip, we were also able to sneak across the border and pick up some caches in Mexico.

How and what do you do to prepare for a full day of geocaching?
When we go out for a day of caching, we try to pack it all. The swag bag is full, the TOTT are loaded up, GSAK is updated with all the newest info and that in turn is transferred to MS Streets and Trips on the laptop. The caching mobile is set up with the laptop, the GPS mouse, and the GPSr. We grab a 5 gallon jug and fill it with Kool-Aid (that way we can avoid drink stops), some snacks (to appease the kids), and a tank of gas! We also always grab lots of extra batteries for the GPSr, the camera, the headlamps, and the FRS radios.

Any last words?
Probably the biggest involvement in caching for us (mostly bumanfam Dad) has been with the online community associated with the Podcacher Podcast. Now, if you don’t know what the Podcacher Podcast is, first, shame on you, and second, check it out! bumanfam Dad used to work in the entertainment industry and has met many celebrities, but by far the most exciting brush with fame is our lunch we had with Sonny and Sandy, the hosts of the podcast. If you’ve ever been in the shows forums, you’ve certainly seen some posts by bumanfam – no one has posted more!

We love events, and look forward to many more. This summer we’re planning to put together an event in the Sioux City area, with some camping involved. Hopefully, we’ll see many of you there!
Video of the Month



JeePSer takes us to Ireland on an adventure to make their 1000th find! Congratulations!

Thank You for sending your video to the IGO Newsletter.


Featured Column

"Let's Go 'Eventing!'"
By Blue Grass Tom

Well, things are drying out across the parts of Iowa hit by flooding earlier in the year, and the corn looks great in some places. And, how about those bugs!? Wow! If they had an event in the Beijing Olympics for bug density, we’d win the gold medal for sure! And, not only is the corn tall, so are the weeds. I went to do a cache last week that is on an old rail bed, and I couldn’t even see the trail! The weeds were at least 6 feet high.

The cacher living closest to that spot, bikefarmer, informs me by email that as soon as the park guys get their new “flail” machine, they plan to tackle the trail. I hope they shoot a video!

On to our main topic – event caching! Maybe you think I should say “cache event” instead, but let me explain. In past columns, I talked about the concentrated cache journeys that many people are taking to keep active at their hobby while still keeping their gas bill at a reasonable amount for the weekend.

For the past year or so, I’ve been searching the maps for high concentrations of caches, and then planning, or having Navigator Larry plan, a sort of circular route through the area for maximum caching efficiency. And, from time to time I would fit in a cache event. Of course, I would get some finds here and there around the event site, but nothing major. Now, I’ve found myself drifting toward a cache event, late on a Friday afternoon and combining attending an event with that circular or looping route.

Most recently, there was the Doc29 event for Digger9’s 1000th find, held in Hiawatha, just north of Cedar Rapids. I picked up a few here and there as I left the Quad-Cities, and then I headed into a tour of Plumberbutt Country leading into some jimmygps caches. I hit the Pizza Ranch in Hiawatha, and then got to almost be in a tornado before bunking down for the night near Waterloo. On the way home, I grabbed some new Digger9’s, heading to do my son’s Boo-yah Moon in Iowa City for a milestone cache, but the water wouldn’t allow me to get there. However, I found a nice trio of Lego Boy caches below Iowa City on Highway 6 on the way home. I got some good numbers and an event in and was home by Saturday evening.

Last weekend, I decided I needed some road time to relax, and headed out west for a breakfast event sponsored by Red Head Bassett and Fishpounder at Café Milo in Ames. I grabbed a handful along I-80, and then met up in Ankeny, just below Ames, with a friend for dinner. Coming out of the Okoboji Grill, I flipped on the GPSr for the heck of it, and voila! Can you say, “Cache just 334 feet away.” I then headed to Ames for the hotel and found 3 more circling that place.

The next morning I popped out 5 more and pulled into the breakfast spot at 9am. I got to meet some new people, including those double-d people. Sitting with Summit Dweller, I met KCMose (Steve) and Rainbow Cache (Randy), both from Olathe, Kansas. Hearing that they were planning a Tour de Ames in a fashion not unlike the ol’ BGT, – maximum numbers for the time spent – I was able to beg on as a fourth chair. I think I netted 42 with them, 5 earlier in the day, and a couple more later after we had split up for the day! Concentrated caching, camaraderie and an event - good times!

On the way home, I got to try another Merlyn cache called Colo Bogs, which is actually harder to get to than it is to find. They should make an SUV paint color called “mud,” so I wouldn’t have to wash mine so often. I had seen Nevada the day before and now again, and then drove through Toledo and did some Tama caches. I cleaned up what I thought were some final caches in Marengo, only to find the next day that a Monopoly series was breaking out there!

Some other notable things I’m seeing in event caches are various “game” offshoots based on geocaching and cachers, like the 3-day event in West Bend, Wisconsin, in mid-August. It’s really too much to explain so just enter this code (GC1AW6D) to find the description, which includes a lot of stuff!

And, then, of course, there are offshoots that attain a life of their own, like Parabola’s “The Grudge,” “The Grudge Revisited,” and now coming soon to a pond near you – “Parabola’s Island of Misfit Ideas” complete with cardboard boat race. I actually had some really good materials, honest, and read up on how to do this construction – allow 1 cubic foot of space for each 62 pounds of passenger weight (hey, no wisecracks!) – but not enough time, which means I get to watch other people sink…..and I get to find some more caches along the way there and home! Keep on cachin’ in ’08!

Mini-podcast

We have a podcast this month thanks to the efforts of bumanfam Dad as he recounts his MOGA 2008 experience, and if you're a listener of Podcacher, you may have already heard this audio. Just click the 'play' button below!



Please submit your short podcasts (0:10 - 2:00) to newsletter@iowageocachers.org and can talk about pretty much anything. This portion is totally reliant on reader submissions so please feel free to record yourselves talking and send it to us! :)

IGO Member Submitted Photos

Photobucket
Please submit your stories, ideas, photos, and more!

We would love to receive any personal caching stories you would like to share. If you hid or found a geocache that you would like to highlight, please share your experience. If anybody would like to submit an article(s) for the IGO Newsletter please feel free! The next time you go on a trip, vacation, event, etc keep a journal or take notes and then feel free to send your geocaching experience to the IGO Newsletter to share with others.

If you have a great idea you'd like to see added to the IGO Newsletter please do not hesitate to contact us at newsletter@iowageocachers.org or through our profile on geocaching.com. If you have something "off the wall" that you're unsure if it may or may not be suitable for the IGO Newsletter please feel free to contact us and we'll be happy to discuss.

If you have photos to share with IGO members please send them to photos@iowageocachers.org.

All user/member submissions will be subject to approval before being published in the IGO Newsletter.
Thanks for reading. Looking forward to the next IGO Newsletter!