[Jeremy]

I looked at this when Ken first posted it and the issue I have is that it appears you can’t “zoom” the map in on a particular location (i.e. US, Wisconsin). So we’d be showing a world map, but 95% of the people logging in are from Wisconsin so the “stars” would just be all on top of each other anyway.

Maybe someone knows of an alternative that would work better in this regard? Or maybe I’ll find the time to write our own (I know, keep dreaming :))…

[Jeremy]

Very cool. 8)

Are you still giving away the GPS units as prizes? Because that might lure a couple folks from “down here” (south of Hwy 29). 😉

[Jeremy]

Congrats Dick and Gwyn on this impressive feat! It was just a little over a year from your 100th find to this DeLorme completion and nearly 2K cache finds. Wow!

Did you remember to grab all the counties during your travels, or did you leave a few as an excuse to revisit some parts of the state later?

[Jeremy]

@greyhounder wrote:

Apparently there was a tornado in Fort Atkinson. So me and the pets went to the basement. That’s not a transportation issue for three cats and a small terrier. Carrying a 60 pound greyhound down (and later up) stairs is not fun. But I did some laundry and made sure my sump pump was working.

Glad you made it through Bec. Was there really a tornado in Fort Atkinson, or just a reported one?

I rode through one tornado warning with really strong winds and pea sized hail (I did stop along the side of the road for a couple minutes when it got really bad), but pulled off in Jefferson when I heard the sirens blaring there. I saw what appeared to be a funnel cloud with obvious rotation while waiting it out under a picnic shelter during the second tornado warning. Later I heard about the reported tornado in Fort and figured they might be the same?

[Jeremy]

@Lostby7 wrote:

An automatically generated welcome message would not be as personal but would work to make us more inviting at the very least.

I thought about automatically popping a private message into the inbox of all new members. But I wasn’t sure how well an automated “form letter” would be received. Sounds like most people think this would be OK and would not turn people away?

We could make the message appear to be from anyone, even subdivide the state into regions so that the automated welcome messages would come from a local geocacher.

I will propose that the Board do this and come up with a form letter to be used for it…

Another thing we could do is send the latest copy of the email newsletter out to folks when they first join so they are up to date on important WGA happenings.

[Jeremy]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys.

@nohandsgps wrote:

What about Hartman Creek near Waupaca?

It was not on the list because we were at Hartman Creek for the 2004 and 2007 Geo-Campouts. It is a great park but we don’t want to go there too often (though the park officials are really enthusiastic about geocaching and would probably welcome us back in a heartbeat).

@ArcherDragoon wrote:

I may have been mistaken…but I thought I read a while ago that the Board decided on the weekend after Labor Day… Is this a change??? If it is, it is actually better for me!!!

To the best of my knowledge, the only thing announced was that we were going with the second Saturday following Labor Day, which is September 13th this year. Note that we are going to try to hit that date, but if we pick a park where that is simply impossible due to issues (i.e. can’t get a shelter) it still could change.

[Jeremy]

@hogrod wrote:

I guess I could have tried to bike ride to do the maintenance, but it’s around 20miles one way though most of Green County’s hills. I don’t know about any of you but that’s beyond my range of travel on bike. 😉

No problem, I’m fortunate enough to own a bike that loves to travel (20 miles is like a short ride around the block) and has no difficulty handling the biggest hills.

I was also surprised at the amount of damage to the container. I thought Lock n Locks were the best plastic container available, but maybe they get brittle in the winter and someone dropped it? No geocacher admits to breaking the container in the online logs or in the logbook itself though. And it didn’t appear like it was discovered and vandalized by muggles. Anyone else have stories of Lock n Lock failures?

I think I’m going to stick with traditional ammoboxes wherever possible…

[Jeremy]

@hogrod wrote:

I haven’t had a car for the last three months, and now I have no way to get to my cache to do maintenance. I’ve gotten reports that the container is cracked but instead of replacing it I want to archive my cache.

Since I have no way to get to the cache without a car I was wondering if anyone else could help me by going and picking up the geo-junk/broken container. The cache is spelunking Magnolia (GCQRXZ).

PM sent.

I was going to check on my own cache in this park (someone reported that some of the trails have been washed out and closed) tomorrow or next weekend and I can pick up or replace the container at that time…

[Jeremy]

My favorite moment was when Gary sprinted .2 miles across an open field for a cache and then ran almost all the way back… we definitely picked up a lot of time because of that. I was the wheelman so I got to take it easy in the car while watching my three teammates go (zig zag) nuts trying to find the caches… I never broke a sweat. 🙂

Everyone who participated had a good time… I hope next year that they allow more teams and we get more SE Wisconsin cachers to sign up. The contest was almost won by a GONIL team from Illinois which would have been a major embarrassment!

[Jeremy]

Sitting on a park bench waiting for SammyClaws and the 3 Hawks. Tick tock. We are in first right now…

[Jeremy]

@Lostby7 wrote:

…and for those keeping score ZagNuts are from Hershey’s…the chocolate factory in Burlington is Nestle…..I sure hope they don’t hold that against us…is it too late to rename us …perhaps “Goobers”?

In addition to being a Hersey product, a Zagnut bar also contains NO chocolate according to Wikipedia:

Unlike many other candy bars, it contains no chocolate, though it does contain a small amount of cocoa.

Maybe this wasn’t the best name choice for a team competing in a contest being held at a chocolate festival?! 🙄 Has anyone out there actually sampled a Zagnut bar?

Life is like a box of chocolates… full of nuts! Go ZigZagNuts!

[Jeremy]

@HOT TROT wrote:

I stayed at group site D. I seem to have lost (or forgotten) a red handled retractable dog leash and a toilet seat TB. If anyone has seen either of these items, please leave a note. Thanks.

I believe I saw the red handled dog leash sitting on a picnic table Saturday night. It definitely was not there later on Sunday when I packed up after picking up the temp caches. Maybe another group D camper picked it up?

ThePharmGirl does have the travel bug.

[Jeremy]

@CacheARRRS wrote:

To load GPX files on the Garmin Colorado from GSAK, you need a special GSAK macro especially for it. No wonder we couldn’t get it working.

We will work on this for the next WGA event. If you don’t mind, please send us your Colorado unit so we can do some testing to ensure we have the procedure right. Send it to:

WGA Headquarters
3150 S. 80th St.
Milwaukee, WI 53219

Seriously, we will make sure that we have this figured out for next time, as there will probably be more than 2 of them.

Also, we discovered that one of the laptops we used on Saturday was set up to download the temporary cache waypoints without the special geocache waypoint symbol. This was frustrating a number of people and causing others to report that the cache coordinates weren’t downloaded to them (they were, but you had to know how/where to look for them). Sorry for the confusion and it won’t happen again…

[Jeremy]

If you have your own photos from the campout, feel free to upload them to the event photo album on the WGA site. Here is the link:

2008 Geo-Campout Album

It looks like people have also been adding a lot of photos to the event cache page on geocaching.com.

We’ll get a large version of the group photo posted in our own photo album soon. There are so many people crammed into the picture that you really need to have something bigger to distinguish everybody. There are also three (or more?) dogs in the picture plus one or two rabbits… see if you can spot them all! 🙂

[Jeremy]

@LDove wrote:

YES! LB7 – a hard-core cacher going for the CHOCOLATE – yee ha! 😀 Okay one more… Oh and let’s stop for strong caffeinated beverages on the way there so we can run, run, run on our sugar/caffeine high! 😛

With the promise of huge chocolate treats and prizes, I can’t believe marc_54140 isn’t all over this! 🙂

A little bird told me that LDove was trying to assemble a women’s ringer team on the order of the Wisconsin super team that went down to Texas for Geo-Woodstock 06. But if Gary is crossing the gender barrier (sort of like a modern day Jackie Robinson) maybe it is safe for other guys? So I will join Team LDove if no one else wants to… or maybe I should create my own team? 😈

[Author]

Posts