They are Here!
The WGA State Park Series now has Pathtags to accompany the series. Each Biome has its respective Pathtag. The 5 Biome Tags will be available for purchase at WGA events. The 6th tag is Only for those who complete the series, the first 50 Teams who finish will receive this tag for completing the series. (One per team)
They will be available at the 7th Annual WGA Chili Feed – Identical Snowflakes 1/16/2016 GC67ZNY
Mr. Piffles, The Geocaching Cat
by rawevil
Like many of you, we spend a fair amount of time on the trails. While on the trails, we see many animals. We’ve come across a lot of gray, red, and black squirrels. Chipmunks cross our path more times than we can count. Field mice have a tendency to make us jump when we disturb their nests searching for a cache. We never knew how large wild turkeys were until we were up close and personal. And yes, turkeys do fly!
It’s always awesome to encounter deer nesting or grazing in the trees. And once you spook them, it’s a flick of that white tail and they are off. On the Eisenbahn Trail, there are a couple of holy cow cows as well. If you have ever been there and seen them you know exactly what we mean. That’s a lot of beef! Lastly, we cannot forget the dogs. We have come to the conclusion that dogs and caching go hand in hand. A lot of cachers have dogs and take them on their geocaching adventures. They are dual purpose. One, they get in their exercise, and two they are a good cover for what you are really doing in the woods on the side of a trail. Very clever.
With that in mind, it got us to thinking about taking one of our fur-real friends on a caching trip with us. Our older fur-real friend doesn’t quite have the energy or particularly care for car rides. However, our newly adopted kitty chaos would be purr-fect! He doesn’t seem to mind riding in the car and he’s full of energy most of the day. On top of that, literally, we found out most recently that he loves trees. What a perfect complement for those terrain 5s that are just a bit too much for some of us to handle as we mature.
Introducing, Mr. Piffles, the geocaching cat, coming to a trail near you! (Now, how do we get him down from that tree??)
Geocaching should be a Walk in the Woods
by Ranger Boy
One of my favorite books about the outdoors, “A Walk in the Woods”, has been made into a movie. I thought this would be a good time to recommend this novel, by Bill Bryson, and explain how it reminds me of Geocaching.
The author decides he wants to hike the entire Appalachian Trail (AT) from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine with his out of shape buddy. There’s an awkward and telling moment early in the book, about hiking the AT, in which he casts about for the exact reasons he’s subjecting himself to a five-month slog through the underbrush that reminded me of why I Geocache. There’s the fitness rationale: Bryson is a mildly overweight, middle-aged writer who’s tired of looking, as he puts it, like ”a cupcake.” There’s the he-man rationale: when faced with impending danger, Bryson would like to feel more like Ian Fleming’s James Bond than someone who is ”jumpier than Don Knotts with pistol drawn.” Finally, there’s the ecological rationale: the Appalachian wilderness is endangered in any number of ways, and the author hopes to instant message his readers an urgent dispatch from the front lines.
It should be noted before Bryson attempted to hike the AT he spent 20 years living in England, and among his first revelations is how deeply the idea of walking anywhere cuts against the grain of Americans. The typical American, he writes, walks a mere 350 yards a day — a staggering figure, even when you consider how few footpaths there are here and how anti-pedestrian our road system can be.
I’ve noticed a trend towards avoidance of walking in Geocaching as well. It seems multi-caches or long hike Traditionals are being ignored in favor of the quick “park and grab” (PNG). If you look at the Lonely Cache page chances are mostly Multis are listed.
I don’t understand this preference. When I first started Geocaching in 2002 I fell in love because I was hiking long stretches of the Kettle Moraine or Ice Age Trail and being taken to some amazing sights. Geocaching gave me an excuse to explore the wonderful parks and public land Wisconsin has to offer. Why in the world would I want to go to the parking lot of one of these great trails, hop out of the car, sign a pill bottle log, hop back in the car, and drive to the next parking lot without ever seeing all the natural beauty that that park had in store for me?
So if you’d like to read about what natural beauty and adventure can be found away from America’s Strip Malls and parking lots read A Walk In The Woods. If you want more from a Geocache experience than a roadside stop, go find a Multi or nice long hike Traditional.
And if you want to learn what my favorite laugh out loud moment of the book was, you’ll just have to read it for yourself. It concerns the part of their journey when an odd lady starts to shadow the author and his friend along the AT. One night she points up at the stars to a constellation and asks them which one it is. I don’t want to repeat the answer on this family friendly website.
