Thursday, March 2, 2017

Geocaching Day

 Geocaching is a very popular pastime with caches hidden all over the world.  Some are as small as your small finger tip or as large as containers.  They are rated from 1-5 for difficulty & terrain with 1 being the easiest to find.  An 1-1 would be accessible by someone in a wheelchair and a 5-5 would be extremely difficult to find.
  1. Fundamental Placement Guidelines
    1. All local laws and documented land management policies apply.
    2. You assure us that you have the landowner's and/or land manager's permission before you hide any geocache, whether placed on private or public property.
    3. Geocaches are never buried, neither partially nor completely.
    4. Geocache placements do not damage, deface or destroy public or private property.
    5. Wildlife and the natural environment are not harmed in the pursuit of geocaching.
    6. Geocaches are not placed in restricted, prohibited or otherwise inappropriate locations.
    7. Physical elements of different geocaches should be at least 0.10 miles (528 ft or 161 m) apart.
    8. Geocaches are allowed in space, on other planets and in spacecraft.
  2. Other Placement Considerations
    1. Select an appropriate location and container.
    2. Label your geocache.
 There are over 400 geocaches near our campground and we've been out a couple times finding some of them.  The Mahna Mahna line of geocaches has 200 in the group.  Caches have to be placed at least .10 mile from any other cache, so the Mahna Mahna caches would be spread over 20 miles or more.

As a rule these types of caches would be a 1.5-1.5 and very easy to find.  Many cachers seek this type so they can add finds (accomplishments) to their list with some having over 70,000 caches found.  I find these boring and don't seek them out, but these are so close to us that I have been adding them to my finds.  

Most of the Mahna Mahna caches are along side of the desert roads in the area.  The ones we found today were out in the boonies on dirt roads among small ranches in the area.  You would think drivers would take their time, but the reverse is true.  Most of them drove by us at speeds of 50+ mph creating a huge dust cloud as they went by.


 This ranchette had a nice water tower nearby among the cacti and mesquite trees. 


 This was a very easy find since the rocks by the post were out of place.  At least it got me moving in and out of the car numerous times and walking back and forth was great for exercise.  All  in all we found 20 and plan to return to find more of them next time.


This place had the name of Oasis and they had the palm trees to prove it.  They also had numerous play toys on the property and looked like they were enjoying life.  It's always strange to see large boats in the desert but they are very popular.


 The photo below is of a horse riding ring and there were 2 adults and a young girl riding when we went by the first time.  The adults had left and only the girl was riding but I didn't want a closeup of her, but she is there.


After driving on dirt roads all afternoon we wound up on an asphalt highway for the final couple miles home.   A pickup truck flew by us in the other direction and threw a rock hitting our windshield and breaking it.  It isn't a large break and I will wait and see if it spreads before doing anything about it.

That was our day, how was yours?



 

1 comment:

  1. WOW...now that is a very successful day finding 20 geocaches.
    Oh dang...we have broken our windshield several times. Watch that crack carefully.

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