This topic contains 14 replies, has 9 voices, and was last updated by 
-
Posts
-
** ANNOUNCEMENT ** … in hopes of answering the most common questions asked at the event and since then via email …
(1) Actual event attendance (per the Disclaimer forms turned in at check-in), was 192 people, made up of 91 families/teams.
(2) The group picture is now posted on the “Secrets of Stonehaven” event page.
(3) For those asking about the press coverage. The reporter and photographer were from the “Ozaukee Press”, they interview me and my family for 2 hours on Friday, and spent about 2-1/2 hours interviewing and taking photos at the event. The article should be appearing the week of May 9th (they want to give us lots of space, so they’re waiting a week because of Mother’s Day articles). When I have the article (either via online or by scanning it into a PDF file), I will post a link near the top of the “Secrets of Stonehaven” event page. It should be a great article for geocaching! The reporter (Carol) told me she’s interest in getting into geocaching and she has asked to join my family for some finds in the near future (it didn’t hurt that I hid a “Carol’s Cache” in my backyard on Friday and sent her out to find it),
(4) Lost and Found: I have a bike helmet and a pair of sunglasses, contact me if they might be yours (with a description of what they look like). A water bottle was also found, but now I can’t find it either.
(5) Ron’s Funny Setup Story: On Friday night I was hiding some of my temporary caches, at about 7:30pm (while everything was nice and quiet in the park), I went to place the container for “S1HUGS” in the cradling arms of an old rotted tree. As I got the container less than a foot from the spot, a mother-to-be duck flew from the EXACT spot where I was going to place the container. I let out a very manly scream and just about fell on my back side. The duck screamed too, as it flew out of the tree. No eggs yet, but a nice feather nest. The extra funny thing is that in the middle of winter when I picked the spot, I came up with the hint “I can see you coming, at nesting height) …. how true, true. Of course, I relocated the hide to the ground. I’ve posted a photo of the duck (back on the nest) on the event page.
(6) Many “new” cachers have emailed me indicating they didn’t understand why all the hats hanging in the tree, at my final surprise cache (which included the surprise release of a new regular cache). Here’s what’s up with the hats: Last August the WGA had a picnic in Poynette, WI. At the event a hat was left behind. For months afterwards the WGA message board was filled with funny-madeup stories about this mysterious hat, including potential crimes that were committed. To this day I still get a smile when I think of those silly hat stories and I don’t think the owner of the hat was ever found … thus the “inside joke” of the “Hats Growing in the tree”.
THANKS! For all your questions … I hope this answers them and thanks for attending!
[This message has been edited by EnergySaver (edited 05-02-2005).]
For anyone interested in this fact: Someone opened a forum about this event 5 hours prior to this opening…maybe we should stick to one, huh?
** Lost and Found Update **
I still have a bike helmet (seems like a nice one), and sunglasses (no comment)!!!!
I’ve been contacted by the owner of the water bottle w/ carabiner (good thing I found it in my back seat last night).
Ok, Spock, defense shields up! Have secured GPS in secure area! Now for the question…..In your opinion, how did the advance publishing of Stonehaven’s temp finds go?
Just asking.It sure did seem to streamline the registration process. Maybe the same set-up (with the early posting of temp. caches) could be used for the campout. We could preplan our attacks….then when we get there, completely go a different direction.
Thanks to all for honoring our (EnergySaver and EArth Angel) requests by not hunting the caches before the event and staying out of the park until the specified time so we could set up. At 6:30am on Saturday morning I ran into some hardcore fisherman who were fishing about 50 feet from where I needed to plant the cache. I showed them and explained to them what I was doing and why I was doing it and they said not to worry, they would be gone by 8:30am. Tami
Excellent question …
Yes, it went well.
I’m not awaring of anyone that did not honor our requests (including the car pooling … there were only 96 parking spots and we had 92 teams come … yet we managed to keep a couple spots open at all times).The advance release of coordinates to me is 75% of the reason the event was a success. Without doing so we would have tons of unhappy people (even though “TS” brought his great octupus invention), the lines would have been way too long and slow.
I also “Beamed” about 12 people the handouts in paperless fashion to their Palm computers.
Now MY QUESTION … did any of you find the beaming truely handy, as in did you really hunt the caches using your Palm … or was it just a “cool thing”, but you resorted to using the paper copies to get more of a “feel” for the 40 caches?
[This message has been edited by EnergySaver (edited 05-11-2005).]
this was my first “beam” i just did it cuz i thought it was cool. i still like using paper copies to write notes on about the caches because the mind just doesn’t retain info anymore, and the pda is just too much trouble to take out all the time.
I like using the pda. I didn’t have to get anything beamed to me though, because of the prepublishing of the cache information.
The reporter is STILL writing the article … this is going to be interesting to see … however, it means I will not be able to post it online until likely 5/19/05 … but I suspect it will be worth waiting for.
She asked me how many teams found all the caches … I had to copy/paste to excel, do some manipulating and some counting … assuming I didn’t miss-count, we had 32 teams find them all out of 91 teams … I was surprised to learn that so many got them all.
IF any of you found them all but have NOT logged your finds yet, or only logged a single find for the whole event, let me (EnergySaver) know ASAP … so I can update my information to the reporter.
ALSO …
I still have a bike helmet and sunglasses.
There are also about 10 TB’s still showing on the event page, please make sure you don’t have them in your hands.
[This message has been edited by EnergySaver (edited 05-12-2005).]
The National Geodetic Survey, “Height Modernization” has posted a link on their website about our school’s visit to “Stonehaven” and the benchmark class the students participated in.
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/heightmod/Once to the page, click the link saying:
Height Modernization and GPS take off in the ClassroomGreat article….I remember “coaching” one of the groups on two closeby caches to the Welcome Center! Gold and CITO. I stressed the importance of looking at the title of the cache and the waypoint name for clues. Nice group of students! Tami
Very cool. I didn’t realize the school group connection with the event.
I just wanted to say it was a great event! I also liked being able to pre-load my gps’s(i did have 2 thank god, did anyone have any big accuracy problems on the south end of the park?)
Thanks for all the hard work that went into setting this event up, and look forward to attending more.
Can’t wait to see the newspaper story!
Da’Sarge
Team Venom
The Pike Family
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.