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Mister Greenthumb and Sunshine will be staying in the group camp area since we are tent campers. We haven’t camped at Governor Dodge since our kids were younger 25 years ago. Now the go camping with their kids. We got back into camping last year through geocaching. We checked out this park in September and had planned on coming here this year so the WGA Campout fits our plans great.
If you go to look for ammo boxes make sure you go to Fleet Farm, not Farm & Fleet. I went to the one on Appleton Avenue in Germantown. They had three sizes starting at $3 and going up to $7 or $8 for the largest.
No matter what time of the year sometimes you’ve got it and sometimes you don’t. I was back home today with two “winter friendly” finds hides in less than an hour 8 miles from home. I spotted both from more than 20′ away. In summer these would be a little harder. So you can’t say one time of the year is better than another. My biggest gripe is still those with large quantities of find and little or no hides. If no one hides them you can’t find them no matter what the weather or time of the year. Ammo boxes are on sale right now at Fleet Farm for $3 and I have a large box of pill bottles in my office if anyone wants some. For small caches start eating more peanut butter sandwiches.
I really don’t think deciding which caches to search for and finding them in winter is that big a deal. I started caching last January and got spoiled with the great winter weather. This winter has a lot more dnfs, but with a years experience now we have still managed to find 150 caches since December 1st. Newer geocachers will have to go through a learning curve before they can hunt successfully no matter what time of the year. I would rather be outdoors with a 5 or 6 find day on a sunny winter day than stay inside. We spent 5 hours on snowmobiles in Marinette County during the snowstorm on 2/17 and only found 2 caches, but had a great experience. To me winter friendly means I can go outside and have a great time.
Thanks for bringing up the subject of kids in geocaching. We should all remember that any sustained activity relies on building interest with younger people to successfully keep it going. My grandchildren got me into geocaching and bought me my first GPSR. We still geocache often together and when we go I try to have as many regular size caches as possible to find. They have a giant bucket of trading items and enjoy going through a cache container for treasure. By the way their ages are 11, 8 and 6. They also like puzzle caches and from what I see there are puzzle caches for every skill level. I’m not very good at them, but I have found several and had a good time doing them. I have a series of “Puzzle for Kid’s” caches that involve finding a park playground and find the required elements to get the coordinates for the final. I plan on a few more of these this spring. I hid 50 caches last year that include every type except foe an earth cache which I am working on now. I plan on hiding a series of ammo box caches this spring geared towards families with kids ( they will also be appreciated by Uncle Fun and 3 Hawks so they can hear the clunk of their winter tools hitting the container under the snow). I could go on and on but I’ll close by saying rather than criticize someones caches, what about geocachers with over 1000 finds who have never hidden a cache. I know it’s not required, but it would be nice if everyone contributed in some way.
When picking out caches to search for in winter we use a combnation of a wf attribute and whether it was found at any time in the last month. I usually load about a third more into the GPSR than what we want to find for the day. Being outdoors in winter more than makes up for a few dnfs.
The hunt is the game. We went 5 for 8 today which is ok for the snow conditions here. The last find of the day was the best micro we ever found – Waukesha Parks 6. I smiled all the way back to the suv thinking about this one, or maybe it was because now it was pizza time.
@Trekkin’ and Birdin’ wrote:
Mr. Greenthumb, Thanks for the report! Hey, there’s an idea for a seasonal forum—-cache hunting conditions by regions! I suppose people could take it upon themselves to add such logs to a sticky in each regional forum. Sort of like—-“2/28-LaCrosse Area” subject lines, so that folks wanting to head that way could see what conditions are like. I’ll go do that right now for my area and invite others to do the same.
Weather reports haven’t been very accurate lately. I go more by what it looks like out the window when I wake up. Reports by active cachers are a better indicator of where to go to cache. We enjoy winter caching and “not winter friendly” isn’t in our vocabulary. I went 3 for 3 on dnfs yesterday and still had a nice hike on a sunny day. A dnf is a little easier to take when you’re searching in snow and a find is much more rewarding.
Since everyone seems to want to get out of town and the weekend looks good I’ll give you my caching conditions report for the Sussex area. We went 8 for 8 Saturday in Menomonee Falls and had little trouble walking around. We did need chipping and extraction tools for a couple of the finds. Ron Beatty has 7 new hides there. In Sussex/ Merton there is 5-6″ of snow on top of 2-3″ of hard packed snow/ice. The 1-3″ of new snow forecast for Thursday shouldn’t change things much with the warm forecast for the weekend. I hope this helps someone make some grabs in this area. If you look up my hides in the area the WF attributes were updated in January and are still good. I have about 20 findable hides under these conditions in the area. We were in Oconto County during the big snowstorm on the 17th and were only able to make 2 finds by snowmobile. I hid one up there on the 16th and it hasn’t been found yet so caching must still be limited up there. That’s what I know. If anyone could give the conditions right now in Appleton We would appreciate it. We’re heading up there on Sunday.
When I saw early that I’ll probably never finish first in any month I got a little discouraged. But I decided that I’m in the game for the long haul. I set a goal for myself back in January to finish in the top ten for the year and I’m hanging in there. We travel around a little and I’m sure I’ll run across LC’s throughout the year. I have one on the list that hasn’t been found since July (Give Me Liberty or Give Me Cache) and it is there. If someone doesn’t find it soon I’m going to go hang it on a string on a tree in plain sight. Besides the maintenance on the caches the posts have been great entertainment this winter.
In Southeastern WI, especially Waukesha County where I live I was expecting the number to grow as there is a heavy concentration of caches and a small amount of us regular winter cachers. If the number soared I was actually thinking of changing my name to “Sagasu Seen”. The point of the game is not to win, it is to improve and verify the condition of existing caches. The competition just adds to the fun. After a few months of playing I’m wondering if Sagasu will realize that he might be better off going out and buying his own prizes and start looking for only new caches – LOL. The game is a great addition to improving Wisconsin geocaching and what will work best to keep it going should be the formula. I’ll play no matter what the rules, win or lose, it’s just a lot of fun.
With all the snow around here now bushwhacking will be a challenge if you don’t know your way around. We went to downtown Milwaukee last weekend to cache. There are over 50 hides in the area. Mostly micros, but a few smalls and some interesting virtuals. Lots of small parks with interesting features. The caches were only a side item to our trip as Sunshine wanted it to be a date day. We spent a while at the Milwaukee Art Museum on Lake Michigan, did our caching and the ate at the Milwaukee Ale House. Parking was a small problem in a few spots, but we did manage to find free parking on the streets near all of the caches. With the snow this might be a good winter trip now. We’re looking for less snow so we’ll be going to Green Bay and then White Potato Lake next week. I have a couple of new hides to place near the lake we’re going to look for some of the island caches in the area while the lakes are still frozen.
Geocaching got us back into camping last year after a 20 year hiatus. We camped at Hartman Creek in September and had forty degree nights and rain. In October we went to High Cliff and again rain and upper thirties at night. All of this was tent camping and cooking outside. We’ve since bought zero degree sleeping bags and a really great kitchen tent. We’re ready for most anything now and can’t wait for the WGA Campout.
I really enjoy Earthcahes, but I think they may eventually be dissallowed like Virtuals if they become insignificant and over abundant. Lets place really interesting ones that everyone can enjoy. I’ve taken the 3E’s (my grandchildren) to several and they really enjoyed them.
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