Water logged

I have an idea of hosting a 5-star terrain event cache. The event would be held in such a place (think famous NW Iowa lake) that special equipment would be required to get there (think watercraft). As incentive for geocachers to attend, I would offer special prizes -- Groundspeak's trackable 2008 Volunteer Geocoin for the first, say, six or eight geocachers who show up at the coordinates at the designated time, which would probably be mid-morning the Saturday before Memorial Day. There would also be a special FTF prize -- a Groundspeak Lackeys 2007 trackable geocoin. What do you think? Would anyone show up?

More about mobility

On a few occassions in the past I have blogged about reveiwing geocaches while "on the road" at exotic locations such as Cozumel, The Bahamas and Dyersville. I did the reviewing by packing along my notebook computer, a Dell Inspiron and finding a wifi hotspot. Sometimes I used my wife's notebook, because she has nationwide broadband coverage. While this has worked fine for the most part, my computer is not the most convenient thing to lug around. It has a large screen and, as notebooks go, is not the most trim PC you could own. Well today I tried something new. For the first time I reviewed (and approved) a geocache using a mobile phone. Recently my wife upgraded her cell phone to get one with more bells and whistles so her old phone -- a Cingular 8125 -- was going unused. Even though I don't use it for phone service, I decided to charge up her old phone to see if I could use it to access the Internet via our home wifi. I logged into geocaching.com and reviewed a new cache called Drake Bulldogs Madness (GC1A395). Now I have a pocket-sized way to access the Internet, provided I'm in a free wifi hotspot. I'm looking forward to trying this out "on the road" sometime because it means I may not be lugging around my computer or relying on borrowing time on my wife's computer. Besides, it's fun to be geeky with gadgets.

How to know if your new cache is 528 ft from others

After I couldn’t immediately approve his cache last week, a geocacher asked how he’s supposed to know if there are multicache waypoints that are too close to the new cache he just placed and submitted.

There are two ways to find out. First, you could find all the nearby multis within two miles and keep a record of the coordinates for each waypoint. The reason I say two miles is because that’s the maximum distance that waypoints of multicaches and puzzle caches are supposed to be from the original listed coordinates on the cache page. If there are a lot of geocaches in the same area as your new cache, and if a lot of those are multis or mystery caches, there’s a good chance that your geocache is closer than 528 ft. from one of the waypoints. And if those waypoints are actual physical caches, then they need to be at least 528 ft. away from your cache.

A second and easier method is to record the coordinates of your proposed new cache location and submit them on a new cache page. But be sure to write a reviewer note stating that the cache is not yet in place and that you just want to see if this location is available. That way I can easily check it against the Geocaching.com database and let you know if that spot is OK. If it’s not, I can suggest which direction you may want to move it, or if it might be better to choose a new location all together.

Family strata

This evening as I was reviewing new geocaches, I was pleasantly surprised to see a photo of a rock that I immediately recognized. (OK, I can hear you snickering out there. Yes, it's true. I recognized a rock.) It's called the Gwynne Rock and it's located on the Iowa State campus. It's actually a boulder, and it is featured in a new geocache placed by called LCC 50th--Hitaga Sand Prairie Big Rock (GC19KX7) , a cache by Linn County Conservation and jimmygps. I have several "connections" with this rock. First of all, I'm an ISU alum and I walked and rode past that rock hundreds of times. Secondly, the rock is named after the late Dr. Charles Gwynne, a former professor of geology at ISU and my great uncle. Thirdly, several years after my graduation from ISU, I lived in Marion for seven years and one of my favorite places to go hiking, biking and cross-country skiing was Squaw Creek Park, where the rock was discovered before being moved to the Iowa State campus. Read more about Dr. Gywnne and the rock here.

What do Iowans think about ... that word?

Today an Iowa geocacher submitted a geocache with the word "sucks" in it. I was born and raised in Iowa, and I was taught that this word is not used by polite people in public settings. I asked the geocacher to change the name of his cache, which he did. (Thank you.)

Then I got to thinking about it and I checked to see how many other geocaches are out there with that word in their names. Turns out there are quite a few. So in the interests of fairness, I wrote to the geocacher and told him he could change the name back if he wanted to. I added this note: "But I hope you don't."

Iowans, what do you think? Is "sucks" an offensive word we want to keep out of our geocache names, or does it not bother you at all? I'd really like to know.

Mystery at Gray's Lake

Over the years, I've seen several geocaches placed near Gray's Lake in Des Moines. In reading the logs for those caches, it seems as though strange things like to happen in that area. Caches disappear. Geocachers trip across the homesteads of homeless people. And now another unusual situation -- a geocache and a waymark that both lead to a hidden compartment behind a door in a tree. I first heard about it when Team Signal posted about it in their blog. You can read about in this story from the Des Moines Register.
Creative weirdness abounds.

Ever heard of Crabtown?

I hadn't, but now I have because there's a geocache there (GC195FC). It's one of several submitted in the area by plumberbutt. If you're a FTF hound who feels compelled to rush out tonight, be careful out there in the snow.

Stats very interesting

What do New Hampshire and Iowa have in common? If you answered “first in the nation” status, you are correct. But I’m not talking about the presidential campaign process. Instead, I’m referring to the world-wide rankings of geocaching regions.

One of my fellow reviewers who goes by the user name Riviouveur and who reviews caches for France, likes to collect geocache statistics. He graciously consented to let me publish some of the data he collected from the www.geocaching.com site.

One stat that I find especially interesting is that, for the period from May 30, 2007 to January 27, 2008, of all the states in the U.S., only New Hampshire had a greater percentage increase in its number of geocaches (42.8%) than Iowa (42.2%). During those eight months, Iowa went from having 2,943 geocaches to 4,184 – an increase of 1,241 caches. That equates to approximately 155 new caches per month since last May.

According to Riviouver’s calculations, Iowa now has 28.7 caches per 1,000 square kilometers, which equates to roughly .011 per geocaches per square mile (if my math is correct). That puts us 51st out of 143 regions (countries and states) worldwide in terms of cache density. So Iowa is not a cache-barren land. In fact, we’re closer to the top of the list than the bottom.

In terms of population, we currently have 140.4 caches per 100,000 population, which ranks us 28th on the list of 143 worldwide regions. That means Iowans like to hide geocaches more than average.

Another factoid, the numbers included in the spreadsheet are ACTIVE cache figures. Reviewers have actually reviewed more caches than those numbers indicate. The numbers that appear here are the net of total caches submitted minus those that have been archived and minus those that were not approved for listing.

Some additional trivia from Riviouver:
- Five US states hit 10,000 active caches in the last two months.
- The numbers are growing substantially faster outside the U.S. than within the U.S.

Away for a bit

Just a heads-up that I'll be taking a break from reviewing for one week beginning this Saturday. During my absence, the Iowa review queue will once again be managed by my very capable fellow reviewer, Electric Mouse.

I wanted to let those of you who read this blog know in case you or someone you know sends me an email about a cache and you don't hear from me for a few days.

Ken

Technology and nature on the road

A footnote to my posting about last week's trip to Grandma's house...
When we ran into bad driving conditions along Hwy 20 in eastern Iowa, I checked my GPS for nearest lodging and found a couple of them seven miles ahead. I punched the button for more details and got the phone number for the Super 8. We called ahead to see if they had any rooms available and we reserved two of them, telling the manager we would be there in a few minutes. We were also able to check the road conditions and the current weather radar while driving because my wife has a Verizon broadband card and account (for her work) on her laptop computer. Once at the hotel, I used her computer to go online and review geocaches. It's all pretty heady stuff when you consider how far connectivity has come in just the past few years.

Just so you don't think I'm a total geek, I "unplugged" for awhile this afternoon to take some photos of the winter scenes brought to us by the recent sticky snowfall. Here are a few selected pictures from today.

Over the river and through the woods...

...to Grandmother's house we go. Or at least we tried to go today. We're on our way to Grandma's for Christmas but because of the blowing snow and icy roads, we're spending the night in a hotel in Dysersville, Ia. Not what we had in mind when we left home this morning, but all in all, not a bad place to be considering what it was like out there on the highways today. We'll continue our travels during the daylight hours tomorrow and, hopefully, make it the rest of the way to western Iowa. And yes, I did check to see if there are any geocaches around here. It turns out there is one less than .1 mile from our hotel. But it's kinda chilly out there right now -- something like 5 degrees with a wind chill well below zero, so I think I'll stay right where I am and watch Sunday Night Football with my family. Merry Christmas to you and yours. I hope everyone you care about is safe and warm tonight.

Elf dance

It's that time of year

Wrist camera - GoProCamera

A couple of months ago I saw an ad in Sea Kayaker magazine for a small waterproof camera call the GoPro Digital Hero 3. It looked like it would be great for all sorts of outdoor activities, so I did some online research including checking out the company's Web site. I ended up purchasing the Digital Hero 3 and so far I have used it for kayaking, scuba diving and yesterday for geocaching in the snow (see video below). It's a great little camera that shoots both still photos and digital video. Recently I sent some video footage that I shot on our latest scuba dive trip to GoProCamera. This morning I discovered that they are featuring my footage on their home page. How cool is that?

Edit: Jan. 4: It looks like GoProCamera has replaced my video with someone else's, but you can still view mine here.

The best geocache creator? Here's my nomination

I don't know of any other geocacher who creates more ingenious and fun geocaches. Quite simply, he is the best geocache creator I know of. So this is a challenge to all my readers: Look at Iowa Tom's geocaches and see if you can nominate another geocacher who has a better portfolio of caches.

Winter is here

Sometimes I think I can tell what the weather is like without venturing outside, looking out the window or looking at a radar image. All I have to do is check the review queue to see how many new geocaches have been submitted. So far today, for example, there were only four new caches submitted (only one of which could be approved so far, pending a couple of issues that need to be fixed for the others). The reason for this relatively low number is most likely the snow storm that's sweeping the upper Midwest. Pretty easy to understand that people don't want to place caches during inclement weather. Most people, anyway. I think we all know at least a couple of geocachers who don't let a little thing like Mother Nature slow them down.

Away for the week

I'll be away from computers and cell phones for the next week, so that means no work (which I won't miss) and no geocache reviewing (which I will miss). Filling in with reviewing responsibilities for Iowa will be Electric Mouse, who is one of the volunteer reviewers for Illinois. Some of you may remember that Electric Mouse used to be the reviewer for the Dakotas and Nebraska. Have a great Thanksgiving week everyone!

51 caches approved -- TODAY

This is probably my record for number of cache approvals in a a day -- 51 -- and it's not yet 1 p.m. But I knew there were going to be a ton of them today because of several event caches that were held yesterday. Organizers of those events (WWFM - Ice Cream Style, November Des Moines Geo Breakfast, and WWFM @ Green Square Park) had submitted lots of geocaches over the past couple of weeks for me to pre-review and then disable until after their event. While this does require me to, in effect, review each one of them twice, it seems to be a good way for event organizers to put out a bunch of caches for an event and give me time to review them ahead of time to make sure they are likely to be approvable at their selected locations.

Nike+ My newest outdoor gadget

This doesn't have much to do with geocaching other than the fact that it's another cool outdoor gadget (which I know all you geocachers can appreciate). Have you heard of Nike+? It's a system that consists of a sensor/transmitter that fits into the sole of your running shoe, a receiver that connects with your iPod Nanno, and the software that runs the system. Then when you run, a voice gives you feedback about how fast you're going, how far and for how long you've gone. The iPod records your running data, which then uploads to the Nike+ web site when you plug it into your computer and the web site plots a graph of your run. And all this while you listen to your favorite running songs! After trying it today for the first time, I have to say it's pretty darn cool! Here's my graph from today's run. (By the way, my wife is laughing at my extreme geekiness as I write this.)

Geocache series in the Upper Mississippi River Refuge

For some time now, geocaches have not been permitted to be placed in the Upper Mississippi River Wildlife Refuge (at the request of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service). This weekend as I was checking the location of two recently submitted geocaches to see if they were inside boundaries of the Refuge, I went to the UMR Wildlife Refuge web site to check the maps that show the boundaries, and I discovered that Fish & Wildlife staff have create their own series of virtural geocaches there. You can check out this fun and informative series here. To make this series available to geocachers who may not be aware of it, I wrote to the F&WL staff today to see if they're interested in having their series listed as a multicache, with the final physical cache located at their office in Winona. I received a reply from Cindy Samples this evening, so we'll be discussing how she can set up the series as a multicache. Meanwhile, you can get a head start on this series by checking out the Upper Mississippi web site.

fire hydrants

Over the past couple of days I reviewed three different caches (submitted by two different geocachers) that were magnetic key holders stuck to fire hydrants. My initial thought was that this is not a good idea because hydrants are part of the local fire departments' emergency equipment. To see if Groundspeak has an official position on this, I posted a note in the reviewers' forum and asked, and the response from Groundspeak confirmed my suspicion that fire hydrant caches are not allowed. This is not to say that you won't find some out there. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if I have approved some myself without knowing they were on fire hydrants. But, as the guidelines clearly state:

There is no precedent for placing caches. This means that the past listing of a similar cache in and of itself is not a valid justification for the listing of a new cache.

Other reviewers cited examples of geocachers who tried to unscrew caps from hydrants in their zeal to find a hidden cache. And it is, of course, illegal to tamper with fire hydrants, just as it is to tamper with U.S. Postal Service mail boxes.