Free 2017 Canadian Discovery Park Passes!

Scrolling through my recent posts I realized I told everyone about the free Canadian National Park Discovery passes but you!  Celebrating 150 years of Confederation, these passes give unlimited opportunities to enjoy National Parks, National Marine Conservation Areas and National Historic Sites across the country!

It's not too late to sign up still - takes 6 weeks to receive! And then you can visit the amazing Point Pelee this summer, too!

Amazing sandy beaches, wetlands for kayaking, wildlife plus nature center just 40 minutes outside of Detroit!

Dream Big Trackable - Free!

I admit - I'm in the winter doldrums. It's a wet Winter in Michigan. My Love and geocaching Yang to my Yin has broken his leg, and our newest buddy was off having fun in Chicago. So there hasn't been much to write about... until today!

ShelleyJean messaged about the latest free trackable promotion:

The Dream Big Catch-M trackable. You have just 13 more days to enter for one of 1,400 free trackables.

Geocachers are invited to join the Dream Big movement. With a CATCH-M trackable, a magical character from the book, share your “big geocaching smiles” on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter using the hashtags #GeocachersDreamBIG #contest. From February to October 2017, three photos that best capture smiley geocaching adventures will be selected each month to win an autographed 1st Edition of Dream Big. Those winners will also be entered to win the Grand Prize of $1,000 cash and three additional autographed 1st Editions of Dream Big. The Grand Prize winner will be announced on World Smile Day, October 6, 2017.

Heck! I want a trackable, but I wouldn't mind a copy of the book, too. Good luck, everyone!

Pssst! Shoes Off!

Free Urban Adventures Trackable

If you have not seen it yet, Urban Adventures has teamed with Geocaching.com for another free trackable. Enter to win one of 1,5000 free mini-luggage tags. Drawing for trackable winners is in 6+ days. 

Even if you don't win one of the trackables, you may win one of the 25 geotours in their Instagram contest. Share secret spots that only locals know about. Submit your best photo on Instagram using  #localsknowgeocaching

It's ELEMENTal - We Love Free Trackables!

Woot! Nothing like coming home to another free trackable from Geocaching.com! This one courtesy of Element14.com, an engineering we site. TaGeez and I received an email notice a couple of week's ago and were one of the lucky recipients.

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Become a Circuit Design Engineer and help create a Connected World!

By connecting engineers, makers, educators and inventors to powerful ideas and the latest technologies, the element14 Community helps you to create solutions to everyday problems. We help you to make the extraordinary from the ordinary.

Now it is your turn! We have a project and you can help us to get it going!

We need your help to make connections between geocaches using the circuit board trackables, with them you will create virtual paths that bridge between geocaches and join together Scientific and Engineering landmarks of interest as shown on our "Atlas of Scientific Achievements". These paths showing the journey of the trackables will become a virtual circuit connecting the world!

• Step 1: Find one of 1,500 element14 trackable circuit boards. 
• Step 2: Use the element14 "Atlas of Scientific Achievements" to find a geocache near a landmark. If you know of scientific landmarks that we don't have on our map, please add them. Either way, start or continue the circuit and put the trackable in a geocache. 
• Step 3: Take a selfie with the trackable to show your hard work and claim credit!  Upload and share it on element14's Facebook, @element14, Google+ or the element14 Community. Use the hashtag  #ConnectedWorld

NCEES Surveyors Trackable has arrived!

Look what arrived in the mail!

My free NCEES Surveyors Trackable from Groundspeak and the National Association of Professional Surveryors in celebration of National Surveyors Week.

I first heard about it on Facebook from afishoutawater -- our group, the Southeastern Michigan Geocaching group, is really great about sharing good news.  Yesterday while opening my mail I discovered I was one of the lucky 2,500 American cachers to win one!  Mine is called Mapping the World - NCEES Surveyor Trackable  As promised, I will send it out into the world within two weeks, so lucky finders can participate in the contest:

Take a photo of yourself and the NCEES Surveyor Trackable at a National Geodetic Survey (NGS) marker and share it on Facebook or Twitter using the hashtag #PSnoboundaries on or before June 1, 2015. NCEES will review the photos and select one lucky winner to receive a trip for two to the 2015 Geocaching Block Party in Seattle! Visit geocaching.com/mark to learn about locating NGS survey markers. 

But first TaGeez and I need to find a NGS marker for a chance at a lovely trip....

Google Earth and Tracking Trackables

It's been an exciting week for Google Earth!  They're offering the license key for Google Earth Pro (normally $399) for free!

Get Google Earth Pro for Free! Formerly $399!

I will confess here that I have a love/hate relationship with Google Earth.  It was thanks to Google Earth that I bought my first iPad.  We were vacationing in Traverse City and my nephew pulled up satellite images of Grand Traverse lighthouse!  First time I've ever seen anything like that.  We spent the evening scanning other Michigan landmarks. It was thrilling every time I opened the app to see the globe and then watch as we swooped to our current location!

Grand Traverse Bay Lighthouse

And then Google Earth seemed to drop the ball when it came to it's iPhone app.  The app would take up more and more room and offered less and less features.  Someone also said the desktop version would no longer pin the coordinates you were entering but the closest building or address.  Annoying. So it was with great excitement when I downloaded the Pro version on my desktop for free - already playing with it!

Google Earth Pro - Detroit Ren Cen in the lower right

And I LOVE Google street view.  My sister-in-law asked the name of the restaurant in Mexicantown next to "that great mural".  Well, there's murals everywhere down there - a very colorful neighborhood.  I told her to "street view" it and see if it was the right one. It can be a powerful tool for planning trips and routing cache runs. 

One of my all-time favorite caches involves Google Earth (Views from Orbit GC27MAW). You can see an airplane in the Google map of the historic and ever-popular cache, Beverly GC28 (rumor has it people have searched for the plane!) And there's even funny websites dedicated to the wackiest scenes captured on Google Earth.

Beverly GC28

Why all the ruminating about Google Earth?  I was listening to the latest GeoGearheads show. Someone had emailed asking how to map out a trackable's history.  

I had the same answer as debaere - above the logs, click on the View Map link.  It takes you to this map, which diagrams, in order, each visit.  As an added bonus, if you scroll down you will see all the logs (including GC codes, mileage, and state information).

DarrylW4 had a different answer.  In the Trackable Options box (upper right corner), click on View in Google Earth.  It navigated me to the Google Earth app on my iPhone (and downloaded a .kml file to open in Google Earth in my desktop) to generate this map.  Pretty cool, eh?   

It's a slightly different perspective. Weird that I pride myself in knowing Geocaching.com so well and never noticed that link before.  

Next up is to take a test-run of Geotribes, whose tagline is "interactive maps & statistics for geocaching travelbugs, geocoins and all your trackable items...".  Debaere said it has some pretty nifty features so that's good enough for me.