500 Views

Well, Geocaching Colorado has hit 500 views.  That isn't a huge amount for a website, but is still nice, especially considering that I haven't been posting much recently.  I hoping to add some new content soon.  If you have any suggestions or requests, please let me know in the comment section below.

Geocaching In Rocky Mountain National Park

When thinking of beautiful views in Colorado, it is easy to think of Rocky Mountain National Park.  Home of Long's Peak and one of the highest paved roads in the continental United States, Rocky Mountain National Park offers some of the best views in the state.

When thinking of the unspoiled miles of the park, geocaching is a great way to get out and see more of the park than just what everyone sees as they drive by.  To reduce items left behind in the park, the majority of caches that are in the park are either Earth Caches or Virtual Caches, making it possible to find caches without items left in the woods.

My wife and I had a chance to do some hiking in the park and decided to find a couple geocaches along the trail.  We found two Earth caches and one virtual cache.  The picture at right is the lake featured in one of the Earth geocaches.  It was a nice little hike and it is always nice to add a couple caches to the list.  I even got a chance to fly fish a little and caught a beautiful little Cutthroat Trout.  You can read more about that part of the trip on my other blog, here.

Geocaching While Bike Riding

Last night I got a chance to go on a bike ride with my wife and kids in Arvada.  The kids enjoy riding along parks and greenbelts, after all, it's a change of scenery compared to just riding around the street in front of our house.  Since we would be out and about anyway I figured we would try for some geocaches while we were at it.

I decided to upload a couple caches to my GPSr before the trip so that we could watch for them as I used the GPS to track our distance.  We only ended up really going by one of the caches that I though we would, but we still took the time to stop and look for it.  The kids always have to have a part in the caching, one kid found the cache and another had to put it away.

All in all, it was a fun trip, we got some exercise and got to find a new cache.  Unfortunately we forgot to bring a camera, so I will have to bring it the next time.  I think this blog needs some more pictures.  Let me know what you think about caching on bike trips and about geocaching photos.

Getting Back To Geocaching

As I mentioned in my last post, I haven't had been doing a lot of geocaching recently.  It always seems to go in spurts, I'll find a bunch of them over a couple weeks, then life will get in the way for a while and I won't find anything new.

A couple nights ago I had a chance to do a quick night trip.  I only went after two and I was skunked on one of those.  Still, even though the one that I did find was a very simple, easy cache, it was nice to actually go looking and find one after not finding any for awhile.  I have a couple more in the same area that I will have to go after, schedule permitting.  I will say that having the Groundspeak app on my phone makes it convenient to find a couple caches here and there when I don't have time (or forget) to bring my GPSr with caches in it.

Do you have tips on how to be more active with geocaching when you are strapped for time?  Let me know what you do in the comment section below.

Printable Geocaching Logs

Well, it has been a while since I have posted here, I have been wanting to post weekly or more, but I haven't been hitting that goal recently.  Unfortunately I haven't had a lot of time to go Geocaching recently.  Since I don't have any caches to post about, I figured I would post a resource for printable Geocaching logs.  I know that when I hid my caches, I didn't want to wait for logs ordered from an online source (not that there is anything wrong with getting them that way).

The best site that I have found has to be Techblazer.  There you can print off logs in several different dimensions, with various info and in color or black and white.  That is where I found mine, I would definitely suggest you start there if you are looking for printable logs.

Of course you can go directly though Groundspeak and get the official log books.  Click the link here, to see what they have to offer.

Either way, logs are easy to get your hands on, so find a container and print off a log to start hiding your own geocaches.  Do you know of any other great resources?  Let's hear what you use in the comment section below.

What is geocaching?

Geocaching Definitions

Hiding Geocaches

Geocacher Of The Month Award

Groundspeak has decided to start recognizing a "Geocacher of the month."  They are looking for nominations for cachers that "stands out by inspiring other geocachers with their innovation, creative hides and/or logs, respect for the environment, and geocaching etiquette."  I can think of a couple people that I would consider nominating.  Is there anyone that stands out in your mind?

Here is the link to the post on the Lattitude 47 blog, check it out and send your nominations!
Geocacher Of The Month

Thoughts On Travel Bugs

In my post about Introducing Some To Geocaching I mentioned that we found a travel bug in with the cache.  The frustrating thing was that the cache was supposed to be a travel bug hotel, the inventory indicated about six bugs when we went looking for it.

Now I wouldn't have taken all of them, though I do like to log them as "discovered" when there is more than one in a cache.  The missing bugs got me thinking though, wow many times have I, or you, gone to a cache expecting to find a travel bug, only to find out that someone either removed it without logging it or placed it in the cache online, while secretly keeping the travel bug? 

I enjoy finding travel bugs and I can understand the desire to keep one (with the original owners permission of course), but it is frustrating to think that I have checked a cache that was supposed have a travel bug and come up empty almost as often as actually finding them.  I have even found some bugs that were logged into a different cache in another state. 

If you find and move a travel bug or geocoin, make sure that you log it.  If you hold on to it for more than two weeks or so, send the owner an email letting them know that you will be moving the item along soon, then follow through.

Do you have any interesting travel bug stories?  Let us here them in the comment section below.

What is geocaching?
Geocaching Definitions
Hiding Geocaches