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Glorkar – can you tell me what county you found it in? I will see if I have it listed in my database.
Well, I guess we’ll get a definitive answer when we actually recover one! LOL
I’m not sure. We’ve yet to find any of these still around. We’ve looked for a few, but the locations now put them under a buch of bay gunk on private property. At least the land owners were willing to let us wander around in our quest.
One description I have states that “stations were usually marked by heavy stone posts until about 1900 when concrete mouments replaced them. Stone posts (Marble, sandstone, and limestone) 2-3 feet in length and for sub-surface marks the same type of posts, bottles, earthenware jugs and crocks were commonly used. In some instances bolts and nails cemented in drill holes, simple drill holes cross cuts or any conceivable mark in any combination with these station markings were often employed”.
Doesn’t say much. Maybe the GC.com benchmark forums would be able to assist. There are tons of real good BM hunters there that know all types of info.
When is the last day for orders? We’d like to place one, but payday isn’t for a bit yet.
If you want to bike, take a ride to Winona MN (not too much further away – 30 – 45 minutes). They have a very nice trail around Long Lake and is all park with nice views, memorials, visitor center, playgrounds, decks, and such. We parked at various locations and walked a lot of it. Caches are nicely done. Some in high muggle area, but still easy to grab.
We weren’t too impressed with the few caches we did in LaCrosse (towards Onalaska) that were on the trail. If we were on the bike trail, we had to hike up towards the road to get the cache. If we were on the road, we had to hike down to the bike trail to get the cache. There wasn’t a lot of easy access to get up or down (some places to get to the cache required pretty bad bushwack so we skipped them). The coords for the caches seemed right on though. So that helped! Of course, if it wasn’t so hot and humid and we weren’t so tired when we were there, our perspective might be different.Other caches within the parks, were nice enough though. And the few going into Trempeleau and along the river road towards Minnesota were neat! Don’t know about the caches in downtown LaCrosse or area to the east or south.
We have the standard 2D Maglite with the focusing beam for night caching, and several red and white LED flashlights to use to poke around tree roots and the like and for use at the observatory. We’re using a new demo that comes with red, blue, green, white LEDs as well as UV. It’s pretty darned tough, not metal, compact, and has a swivel head so it can be used while clipped on a hat or belt. Which is important as metal flashlights in the mouth is not a good thing especially in winter!
We were thinking of bringing a solar telescope and regular scope to show off the sun and moon if there was interest. Certainly would require no work on the part of the committee as we’d take care of it all.
@glorkar wrote:
I honestly haven’t gotten out of my area much to do any benchmarking, but your post on the forum here is what made me think of posting the pic 🙂 I’ll get there one of these days. Did that one get it’s PID for the NGS yet?
I know it still wouldn’t be an all inclusive list, but it couldn’t have been too difficult to integrate it in the first place. You would think it’d be as simple as using the latest, most up to date database the NGS has. I’m thinking a lot of people are too lazy or just don’t know about the other sites that list them. If they were right there next to the cache listings, more people might hunt them, in theory keeping them in better shape for longer.
PQs would be nice. I don’t even have that option for caches! My hardware is so old I just plug in each coord set individually.
Well, when you come to GB, give a holler! We’d love to meet ya. (No we’re not the serial killer types LOL).
I’m still leary of having the BMs listed next to the caches. Most cachers don’t seem to give a hoot whether they ID the correct mark or not – its just another pretty icon to add to the stats. I think a lot of cachers also stay away from BMing simply because they can’t count them in their find totals (THANK GOD for that!).
Perhaps if there would be some mechanism in place to monitor and remove bogus logs (epsecially those without pixs confirming the recovery), I might be more open to the above suggestion.As for plugging in the coords into the GPSr… We found that 99% of the time we go off the description, not the coords anyway. THe coords put us in the ballpark, but th detective work is alot more fun. Kind of why we prefer BMing.
You stole the GEOCAC benchmark pix for the post! I like it!!! Did you get to Green Bay to see the one we placed for Wisconsin? I like your idea as well!
I would love the database to updated, but alas, don’t think it ever will. Way to much work. And it won’t be a complete snapshot as there are still many BM out there that are not entered into the NGS database. I’d just be happy to be able to have benchmark PQs. As it is, I have to download each county, convert that file in another program, and then import to GSAK to use. Hopefully, when this laptop dies for good and I get a non-vVsta type program – I can once again send the GSAK files to my PDA. Then I can actually have all the datasheets to use in the field when we go on a hunt.
Right now with limited laptop use (It overheats and shurs off too quickly), we haven’t done any BM hunting. Which sucks!
Welcome to benchmarking. As I’ve said, most tend to stumble upon a mark as they look for a cache, when the log the cache, they hit the nearest benchmark link, find what’s closest and then submit their find report.
There is BM near Waukesha that keeps getting logged found (As its right near a cache). The problem is that people are finding the azimuth mark, not the station. I’ve posted notes on the BM page to no avail.
As you really get into the recovery, you’ll find this more and more frequently. You’ll also know which names to trust and which ones you just roll your eyes at (most of them sadly), then take a deep breath and move on.
It’s kind of sad really. I was talking to a surveyor, who told me he saw one of our recovery reports on GC.com. He was thrilled as he had a known, usable station for a surveying project he was doing in the area. So there are professionals out there who do look at the reports on GC.com. Repeated bogus recoveries don’t do any of us any favors.
I would definitely mark it not found as the beacon was moved to a new tower. It is NOT in its exact spot at the exact elevation at which is was first measured. I would write a note to the effect.
As for the USPS – take all their logs with a big grain of salt. Most of them did a p*ss poor job. Mind you, NOT all were were terrible, but recovering stations was done to ‘volunteer’ hours in, and accuracy wasn’t something to worry about. THey tend to have a better handle on the waterway stations though (channel markers etc).
I haven’t compared signed logs vs online logs unless the online log seems hokey or rasies a red flag for some reason. I tend to trust cachers that they did find the cache when they log it online. Besides, I have far better things to do with my time than ensure all logs are signed by those who claim to have found it.
I’m thinking the center of the cross serves the same purpose as the dot – the place to put the surveying tool as it should be the center of the station.
Nicely done!! How’d ya do submitting the recovery report? Dot all your I’s and crossed youe T’s? And written it up in the correct format? Yeah, I’m sure ya did!
We stopped submitting the reports. Probably should have kept at it as we made some nice recoveries like yours posted above.
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