Included in those seven finds was my 100th geocache. It may sound like a lot, but dedicated geocachers can find that many in a month. We enjoy geocaching, but we prefer to play the game when the mood strikes. Some people feel compelled to try and find a cache whenever they pass near one. With the massive number of caches that exist out there, we’d never get anywhere on time!

Anyways, 100 geocaches found is still a milestone! I still think that a GPS is an excellent purchase because of it’s versatility. It’s great for finding the nearest restaurant, not getting lost on road trips, saving gas by finding the shortest route home, and even to play this little game called geocaching, which takes you to all sorts of little niches out there you would otherwise never see.

Now, someone has graciously decided to move our bug back across the Atlantic to… Chile. It makes for an interesting path in Google Earth:

Our travel bug has now made it’s way over 25,000 miles!

Total mileage traveled so far: 11,287.6

I wasn’t really expecting much, but we were both pleasantly surprised. You get about an hour tour that gives you some history of the Erie Canal and the area, especially the background of the businesses that were the reason the tunnel you’re touring exists. Then you get a guided walk through the cave, where your guide will point out manmade and geological elements along the way, and the tour ends with a short down and back boat ride at the end. If the day is hot, this is a great way to beat the heat, as the temperature holds around 55 degrees.

Since it’s been about two months since we’ve been able to do any geocaching, we exited the tour and took a quick walk back to the entrance to log “Remains of and Old Factory“, although the cache’s container had been stolen, so it was really the remains of Remains.

We swung back down to Amherst for dinner at Saigon Bangkok, to which Amanda had never been. Excellent Thai/Vietnamese food. Then we made our way back up to Isle View Park for a walk, and to drop off Tesko the travel bug, who we picked up in Delaware since his goal was to visit Niagara Falls. I also got a second shot at my favorite geographic photo subject – the power towers.

After that, it was off to Cold Stone Creamery for some Delicious Dirt and some All Lovin’, No Oven (in waffle bowls, of course). Perfect way to end the day!

On our way home, we stopped at the Hamburg Town Beach to see the lake. It’s quite frozen. Here’s a couple of shots:

And my favorite shot of the day…

Before we got home, we snagged two quick caches close to our house. One of which happened to be right next to Starbucks. My first time ever caching with a grande mocha!

I bought Amanda a couple travel bugs for Christmas 2005, and since we went to Disney World the next month we decided to make one of them a Disney Bug. We bought a keychain, attached the tag to it, and dropped it into our cache when we returned home.

It promptly disappeared, as often happens with travel bugs. An “offline cacher” (someone who geocaches, but doesn’t log their finds online) either picked it up, or someone “muggled” the cache (a non-geocacher found the cache and took it’s contents), or someone simply forgot to log it. For two months, there was no trace of our Disney Bug. Then, miraculously, one day a cacher logged it, saying he found it in a cache near Cleveland! It was saved and sent on it’s way.

By July, our Disney Bug made it’s way back to Orlando, and a caching family took photos of it (and them) in all four Disney parks.

Since then, not much has happened with the bug. It had been meandering it’s way back up the east coast, waiting for a determined cacher to pick it up and move it further west so it could go to Disneyland. Yesterday, though, we got quite a shock. It’s always interesting to get a notification email saying your travel bug has moved, and then see where it is at the moment. Amanda and I both did a double take yesterday when we saw it’s new location:

Our travel bug was in South Africa?!? How? Why? We read the note that the cacher wrote, “Will take a pic in front of the Castle in Cape Town South Africa.” Ah! They decided to take a little bit of liberty with our instructions to take a photo of it in front of each of the Disney castles and get a photo in front of a real castle. The photo hasn’t yet been uploaded, but we’re certainly looking forward to seeing it!

Geocaching.com will automatically create a map in Google Earth of where your bug has been. This one is pretty wild, because you can’t even fit the starting and ending points on the map at the same time.

We weren’t originally intending for our bug to go overseas, at least not until it had hit the U.S. parks first, but since it’s now halfway around the world, maybe it’ll get a chance to go to Paris, or Hong Kong, or even Tokyo. One thing is for sure – it’s certainly travelling further away from home than either of us ever have. If we win the lottery, I think it would be fun to try and catch up with it. Can’t decide where to go on vacation? Follow the bug! I bet you’d see some interesting places!

Many geocachers regard the activity as a sport that blends components of travel, exercise, nature, technology and common sense.

For the game, a geocacher uses a GPS receiver to find a cache, which is some sort of container that is hidden. A basic cache container can be an ammo box, water bottle, Tupperware container or bucket.

The coordinates for each cache are listed online, along with information about the terrain and difficulty. Sometimes clues or hints are included, too.

Inside the cache is a logbook for the geocacher to sign and various items, from key chains and toys to CDs and books. A geocacher who takes an item from the cache leaves something else behind and records the exchange in the logbook. The rule is “take something, leave something.” After locating caches, geocachers visit the website to record their finds.

Buffalo has a pretty high concentration of caches. There are over 400 caches hidden within 10 miles of Buffalo. Take a look at the geocache overlay in Google Earth:

That’s not even all of them. The overlay randomly selects 150 when there are more than that to display.

Think about this way… almost anywhere you go in Buffalo, you’re less than a mile away from a geocache. I don’t think I found any spot in the city where there aren’t any caches within two miles. That’s pretty amazing.

All that aside, Christmas was really great this year. Amanda got me a new Garmin eTrex Legend Cx GPS as an “upgrade” to my existing one. This one adds auto-routing, a color screen, and expandable memory over my old eTrex Legend. Of course, now with two GPSes in the house, we’ll both have one to go Geocaching with. Maybe that will improve our find ratio. My goal is to cross 100 in 2007!

I got a lot of other great gifts as well, from the very useful to the very fun, all of which are greatly appreciated. Thanks to all of my extended family for your generosity!

To them and to all of you – have a happy new year! I’m looking forward to another year of Bloggercons and events at the Terminal. Tomorrow also marks the one year anniversary of Punaro.com – The Blog Version being launched. What a year it has been!

Frankly, I’m in a lull lately. There just hasn’t been much going on and that’s both good and bad. Good because it’s a chance for a much-needed rest after a busy summer, but bad because I don’t feel I’m accomplishing much. Between the red-hot Sabres and the kickoff of the fall television season, I’ve been spending a considerable amount of time in front of the big screen. Not for lack of work to do around the house to get ready for winter, but this weather has just been miserable and it’s depriving me of enjoying the fall, which is usually my favorite season.

Between the weather and Amanda travelling to Delaware with the GPS, there hasn’t been any opportunity to do any fall geocaching, and a lot of the area’s caches have been disabled until the owners can get out there and check on them. Unfortunately, trees are often used as a hiding place for caches, so many caches were lost in the storm. We picked up a couple ammo boxes at the Fair during the summer that we haven’t even begun to think about where to place, and the extra-soggy ground may not give us the chance to place any new caches before winter.

The Terminal’s season came to an uneventful close (literally) when Doors Open essentially got cancelled from the storm. We’ll be heading there this weekend to clean house and pick up merchandise we’ll need for the holiday shopping season.

Speaking of which, I haven’t started on that at all yet. By this point, I usually have at least some ideas, if not already some purchases. Unfortunately for me, I have neither. Going to have to start thinking about that very shortly!

Back to the Sabres for a minute… I have to say, I’m loving this season. I’ve watched most of the games and attended one, and this is totally my type of spectator sport. I’m not a big fan of individual star players, and that’s what makes watching the Sabres great. They’re a fantastic ensemble team, and they’re all getting it done. If I did have to lean towards a favorite player, I’d have to say I’ve been a fan of Max Afinogenov since he’s been on the team. The changes in the NHL have constructed a stage for him to shine on. I hope he stays with the Sabres for years to come.

I haven’t felt the desire to get into any of the popular topics of the day recently in depth, but here’s a quick hit-list:

• Bashar Issa – give me a call! After you’re done with the Statler and your new skyscraper, I’ve got your next project for you.
• Rush Limbaugh – just because you’re a self-doping dope who’s taken a few too many pills yourself doesn’t make you an expert on all things medical. Obviously.
• Eliot Spitzer – the best you can do is withdraw your endorsement of Hevesi? If you weren’t so busy picking out colors for the Governor’s Mansion, you might kick the whole investigation thing into gear a little quicker. Ah, but that’s the Attorney General’s job, not the Governor’s.
• Should we keep 911 in Hamburg, as the lawn signs are popping up around the town in support of doing so? I’m still not convinced that we should, although my father’s view is that the county’s system is so bad, that’s why towns started taking control of their 911 services themselves in the first place. He’s a volunteer firefighter himself, and that’s the best argument I’ve heard so far.
• WNYMedia.net – anytime you’re ready to drop that ISP that goes down 10 times a month, talk to the guys over at LunarPages. They’re excellent, cheap, and very reliable.

Have a good weekend!

On our way home we managed to find five out of eight geocaches, so the trip wasn’t a waste! Two we gave up on due to poor GPS coverage and/or hiking conditions, and one Ranger Station Micro we simply could not locate. There’s a high concentration of geocaches down in that area, so we may need to take another trip down in the fall to try again.

Monday we drove down to the Grove City outlet mall in PA so Amanda could augment her wardrobe. Proving that you can geocache pretty much everywhere you go, we even managed to find “Serenity at the Mall” as we left.

I’m still catching up on what’s going on the in blogosphere, but it’s good to see that the paving project has finally begun at the Central Terminal. We’ll also be having a cleanup there this Sunday from 10-2 to prepare for the Train Show on Sunday 9/10. There’s also a tour of the Terminal on Saturday at 9:30am as part of Buffalo Old Home Week.

And of course, don’t forget about Bloggercon V: Oktoberfest!

Anyways, at last year’s picnic, we made a beeline towards the nearest cache, which turned out to be a futile effort because we were not bees, and therefore could not easily avoid the various ravines that were in our way. This year, we decided to bring our bicycles with us to allow us more mobility around Mendon Ponds park, where this picnic is held every year.

So, during the post-lunch lull, we unstrapped the bikes from the car, mounted the GPS to the handlebar mount on my bike, and went off in search of our first cache. After about a half mile ride, we pulled off the road and parked the bikes about 300′ away from the cache. We trudged through a wooded area, fighting poor GPS reception, but were able to locate Mendon Ponds Deer after catching a glimpse of it from a different approach angle.

It was only a short ride from there to the Mendon Liar’s Cache, where of course we started from the wrong trailhead. That added a bit of extra distance, both laterally and vertically, as we decided to cut across the hill instead of backtracking and starting over. Luckily, Amanda spotted this one while I was wandering around aimlessly trying to get a fix on the position. Deep woods caching in the middle of summer can be quite the feat for a little GPS. Luckily, though, my Treo wasn’t having much trouble getting a signal, which is good since when we’re Treocaching (see also paperless caching) we have no details about the cache we’re looking for unless I can pull it up on my Treo.

Having scored two on our picnicaching/bicyclaching adventure, we decided to head back towards the picnic, as volleyball was likely to have started and it’s one of the two or three times a year that I still play (see also ACL reconstruction surgery). We made a quick run at the first leg of the two part multi J&R’s Outdoor Store Cache, but the coordinates for the final were quite a distance away. Those were saved for another day.

It was, of course, a perfect day for a picnic, and for picnicaching. We had a great time chatting, eating, and of course, playing volleyball. With the two caches we found, my total is now up to 60!

You never know what you might see on these little adventures…

The Buffalo Light

The Buffalo Fire Boat (Edward M. Cotter)

We hit a nice two-part multi that started us at a waterfall, made us do a little math in the rain, and then dropped us off at a winery, where we promptly engaged in a tasting and bought a couple bottles to bring back with us. Placing a cache at your place of business can be a good way to attract some people who may otherwise never come there. If anyone out there is interested in having a cache placed at their business, drop a comment here and we’ll be glad to hide one for you.

The GPS is almost always on when we’re driving or walking, and according to it’s odometer we logged 1150.64 miles. Geocaching, we had seven finds and three DNFs. This trip also brought my total finds over 50. That’s like, some kind of milestone or something.

We decided to take another shot at Made ya look by the infamous local cache hider WILKEYJR, who’s hides tend to be on the difficult side. Since it was a beautiful day, it seemed to make sense to try and hunt down a cache on the lake.

We took a little detour and got a bunch of photos of the Aquarama/Marine Star which I’ll post when I retrieve my camera from my in-laws’ house.

Back to the cache, though, we hunted for around an hour and still were unable to find the first leg so we gave up and decided to head over to Cazenovia Park. Made fairly quick work of two caches, including one by WILKEYJR which countered some of the frustration of not finding the first one. We were going to try for a third cache in the Caz Park golf course, but the course was packed with golfers. Someone kept chanting “ICE CREAM! ICE CREAM!” until I was forced to stop at Custard-Lite in OP on the way to her parents’ house for dinner. All in all, a nice day for geocaching, even though we’ve got a second multi-DNF on our list now.

For the uninitiated, Geocaching is an activity where an object of some type is hidden at a specific location. That location’s lattitue and longitude are published on a website, along with a the approximate size, difficulty to locate, difficulty of the terrain you’ll travel to get there, and whatever other information the cache’s owner decides to provide you to help you find it. There’s almost always a log inside for you to sign in conjunction with logging the cache online, and often items to trade as well. To find a cache you plug the coordinates into your GPS and off you go!

Now… it sounds easy enough, right? How hard can it be to find an object when you have exact coordinates and a GPS which can in some cases get you within 5 feet of those coordinates? Well, that’s where the creativity of the cache placer comes in. We’ve found caches in the removable panel of a park bench. Several have been strapped to or hidden in trees. Some are in plain sight, but you don’t realize it because often you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. One in particular we’ve tried to find on three separate occasions with no luck.

Amanda likes to say geocaching makes hiking more fun by having a purpose. Some caches require multi-mile hikes to get there. There are a few that only mountain climbers or scuba divers will ever be able to log. But fear not if you’re interested in trying it for yourself. To give you an idea of how prolific this sport is becoming, there are approximately 150 caches within 10 miles of our house. You can see from my stat counter below… I’ve logged 36. And that includes a few we found in the Outer Banks last year, and one I found while in San Antonio on business in December. You won’t run out of caches to find!

If you don’t already have a GPS, the prices have dropped so that they’re affordable for most people. You can get a basic GPS for under $200. I use mine not only for geocaching, but for driving and biking as well. You’ll be amazed by all the places you pass by every day and never realize they’re there.