Geocaching Zone

GeocachingZone.com mentioned in eCache

I feel quite honoured to get a mention in GeoCarnival #5 at eCache.

The GeoCarnival is a weekly roundup and review of blogs and podcasts that have posted or podcasted about GPS Games.

This is great for me as I was not aware that so many GPS games existed.

Go and check out eCache now for more info.

Related Posts:
No related posts

Found ‘Nice and close to home’ geocache

A successfull morning of geocaching yesterday (for a change). We found GCJWPY.

We set off at about 10am and were hoping to do a couple of geocaches as I thought this one may be quick since it was only 1.8km from our house and we were familiar with the bushwalks in the reserve. However, we missed the path on our first try and came out to go further down the road and bach into the bush by a different route. We ended up about 20 metres from the cache on the wrong side of the creek, but since it was Jamie (3 yrs), Ethan (1 yr) in a stroller and just myself, we had to admit defeat.

So we went back into the bush and walked a more familiar route to the waterfall and bridges. Which was very enjoyable as Jamie loves this bushwalk.

On the way back, we decided to have another go at the cache since we were certain it was on this side of the creek. We ended up at the original spot where we turned back and noticed that the path veered right up the hill and that we had not even seen this the first time we went in.

We followed the path. We had never been down here before so it was pleasant to see this part of the bush. After negotiating some tricky sets of stairs with the stroller, we came to ground zero (which was about 30m off, but bigfatrob had warned of this at geocaching.com).

After about 5-10 minutes, Jamie found the cache in a well hidden spot. After clearing the cobwebs, we reached in and retired to the manhole cover to inspect the treasure. At this point a muggle came jogging along with his dog. I had to quickly ’stash the cache’ in the top of the stroller and then try to re-arrange ourselves so that the muggle (and his dog) could get around our encampment.

Jamie decided to take the golf ball and magnifying glass, and we left a number 5 birthday candle.

Progress out of the bush was pretty slow, as Jamie want to look at everything through his new magnifying glass!

On the way back we found a bridge that went accross the creek into the paddock behind the houses on Eskdale Road. This was pretty handy as we then did not have to negotiate the tricky stairs.

Related Posts:
Found another great Geocache
Geocaching in Tauranga
Searching for hidden ‘treasure’ a growing hobby
Found Moscow on the Harbor Geocache
We found our first geocache

Geocaching in Tauranga

We were down in Tauranga last week. Tauranga is a large city by New Zealand standards and we were there to visit my in-laws. Their house is withing walking distance of several geocaches, so we decided to drag them out for a spot of geocaching to see how they liked it.

We went off to find a multicache, Parkvale Walkabout (Bay of Plenty), as the first cache was only 350 metres from their house. We found the first location without any trouble. We though the cache would be easy to find since the clue was quite obvious. However with five of us looking for it and myself nearly up to my knees in water, we had to give up.

Luckily, due to our knowledge of the area, we guessed where the second cache might be, and managed to find it without too much trouble.

The in-laws had heard about geocaching at the same time that we did - on the Close Up TV program that screens here nightly during the week. Grandalf was explaining all about geocaching and I thought ‘that looks cool’, the inlaws thought ‘who would want to do that?’. But after keying in the co-ords for the 3rd cache, my father-in-law took the GPS and took off at great pace to find the third cache.

When we caught up with him he was busy foraging in the undergrowth at the next location. It looked like the weeds had grown quite a bit recently and this was hampering our search. We were also pestered by muggles who wanted to help us look. I told them we were looking for a film cannister that we had dropped (which was almost the truth).

Admitting defeat we then went off to where we were pretty sure the fourth cache would be - again because the clue was quite descriptive. We bumped into some family friends on the way and still failed to find the cache after nearly an hour with seven of us searching.

Never mind. There’s always next time.

The funny thing is that the in-laws went for a walk a couple of days ago after we came back to Auckland. They passed by the spot of the fourth cache and my father-in-law had to go an have another search just to be sure

Technorati Tags: geocaching, geocache, gps, new+zealand, tauranga

Related Posts:
No related posts

Found another great Geocache

Well, we ticked another geocache off the list yesterday. The cache was Suburban Surprise, and is located in another piece of spectacular bush reserve on Aucklands North Shore.

We never knew that this bush reserve even existed - and trying to find the way in probably constituted to that fact! After a few minutes driving around we found the cul-de-sac with a discreet path between to gardens that led to the ‘lost world’. Well not quite, but if you imagined hard enough it might have been.

I have never seen so many kauri trees growing so close together in one place and can only imagine what this place will look like in a couple of hundred years when they get to be huge (as long as they are not all chopped down by property developers).

We had already tried to find this one last weekend, but paid way to much attention to the clue and were looking in completely the wrong area. I managed to repeat my annoying habit of not paying attention to the geocaches listing and somehow got it into my head that it was called ‘Twin Towers’ - which resulted in us poking around in every hole and cutting ourselves to shreds on the cutty grass around a pair of large kauris that stradle the path near the ‘wrong clue’.

However, this geocache is close to where we do our grocery shopping, so we decided to try and knock it off before getting our weekly supply of food.

We went of further than we did last time, over a bridge that spans a small creek that has spent the last few thousand years cutting a deep and very narrow groove into the bedrock. My son then bounded up a flight of steep steps and yelled from the top that he had ‘found another clue’. After about 5-10 minutes of foraging we found the geocache and sat down to examine the contents.

This geocache is a hybrid geocache/letterbox. We didn’t know what letterboxing was, but are now keen to get into it.

After signing the log, we left a ‘Welsh National Anthem’ fridge magnet and took a flashing light wristband.

Technorati Tags: geocache, geocaching, gps, kauri

Related Posts:
GeocachingZone.com mentioned in eCache
Geocaching in Tauranga
Searching for hidden ‘treasure’ a growing hobby
Found Moscow on the Harbor Geocache
Found ‘Nice and close to home’ geocache