Monday, December 31, 2018

Geocaching Year in Review 2018

As we delve into the cold Winter, time to look back at 2018 to spark the travel bug for 2019!

January - Happy New Year 2018


January - Dequindre Cut

February - Eastern Market

March - 6 Year Cache a Day

March - Armada

April - Belle Isle Annual Event


April - Belle Isle CITO & Detroit Urban Art


May - Lexington Adventure

May - Michigan Shore to Shore Adventure


May - GeoWoodstock GIGA!

June - Grosse Ile Virtual Release Party

July - Happy Birthday USA

July - Cincinnati Geotrail Adventure

July - Midwest GeoBash

August - New England Adventure


September - Lake Michigan Adventure

October - Michigan Color Tour

October - Wixom

October - Southfield


November - Haunted Halmich

December - Detroit

Happy New Year Everyone!

Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Looked for Adventure - Found Love


I hope you had a Merry Christmas!

We had a fabulous surprise from TaGeez’s daughter, B-Rat. She made us geocaching wall art!




It reads, “Looked for Adventure – Found Love”.  The bear represents TaGeez, and I’m the (scrap)cat. TaGeez always said that Geocaching.com was the best dating site!

We’re going to weatherproof it and hang it outside. TaGeez thinks this should be a our new pathtag. I agree that this is probably the most personalized gift I've ever received. <3



Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Merry Christmas Surprise from Cachly

Grabbed my daily smiley and look at the cache detail! 


What a hoot, Cachly! Thank you for the surprise!

Monday, December 24, 2018

YMBAGI... You Cache with the Class Clown


TaGeez and I had fun at the Eliza Howell Park in Detroit. Wind chill factor of 20°! Fun!

Beware the Trackable Gallery


Ho Ho Ho!

Isn't this a great photo? I gave this trackable ornament to my very fun geocaching friend for Christmas this year, and she took this picture of it in her tree. I love how the lights glow through the stained glass and how it (almost) reflects the North star. 

From I.B. Geocaching Supplies - Nova Scotia

And, apparently, quite a few people online loved it, too. I awoke the next morning with a message from my friend. "Did you post a picture of it online?"

Oh no! A mystery to solve!

Overnight, she had received about a dozen (and counting) discovery logs along the lines of "Thank you for sharing this in the Trackable Gallery"! She had uploaded the picture to her newly-activated trackable page with the tracking code visible and people are trolling the gallery for virtual discoveries!

Play > Trackables > Photo Gallery

WOW! I had wondered when you visit people's stats and they've discovered THOUSANDS of TB's how they do this! Personally, unless it's for a special reason, I don't normally do virtual Discover logs - to each his own - no judgement  here. But, if you don't want this, hide the TB number when you upload pics for the geocoins and travel bugs you receive for Christmas this year!

Doing an experiment, it seems the only photos appearing in the TB Gallery are those uploaded using the Upload an Image option on the TB page. I attached a photo to a TB log, and it didn't appear. I suspect a TB image embedded in a TB write-up won't appear here, either.



On the plus side, I'm scrolling through the pictures in the gallery and there's so many cool coins and hitchhikers! Check it out!


Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Tool Tip: Adding Calendar Events from Cachly

As a technology trainer, I’m prone to be curious anytime a new app or feature rolls out. Admittedly, in the past, I wasn’t a super fan of Cachly, having been forced-migrated (kicking and screaming) from Geosphere. However, with some recent feature changes and my latest discovery (below), my hat is fully in the Cachly ring!


Southeastern Michigan is a caching community, and we have events weekly in the suburbs of Detroit. At the beginning of each month, I run a query of events and manually add them to my iPhone’s calendar. This month, however, I noticed something on my Cachly screen when I opened Frito’s New Year’s Eve event.

What's this?

Ok, I obviously missed something at some time. So, curious as a (scrap)cat, I clicked the button.

WOAH! Did that just happen?!? It created an event appointment! It has everything I normally manually type: event name, GC# and event URL! Plus, it even adds coordinates! The only thing it doesn’t update is the time – it defaults to “All Day”. That makes sense since date is a cache attribute when you create the page, but time is not – it’s added to the write-up.

WOW!

First, update the Start and End times. Optional: invite other attendees, set alarms, allow for drive time. And then click Add. Voila!

Update the times and click Add!


Accessing my calendar, I can now see my events.



And, clicking into it, there are my details plus a map!



Sometimes the little things are actually big things. 

Now to add the HNY19, Taco Tuesday, Livonia Traveling Group, Warren Chill Spot, Southeastern Oakland, and I-275 events to Outlook. Time saved leaving me more time to cache.

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Souvenirs are Shiny Ornaments on our Geocaching Tree


WOW! That's a little eye-opening! I'm a cliche!


I had a good laugh when I earned the Trackable Lover souvenir for December. It resembles so many trackable lovers I know!


This is not the only souvenir earned this month. Geocaching.com surprised millions of geocachers in December when it awarded five new country souvenirs including THE UNITED STATES! It makes total sense, though. How many geocachers visit from overseas annually? Admittedly, I'm not a big fan of the actual souvenir, but one more closer to some challenges.




This will not be our last chance to earn souvenirs this year. They announced the Last/New Year souvenirs in December, too.



Earning the souvenirs is easy: 
  • Find a geocache or attend an event on December 31 to earn the Thanks 2018 souvenir
  • Find a geocache or attend an event on January 1 to earn the Hello 2019 souvenir.
Luckily, TaGeez and I will have no problem earning these souvenirs with Frito Bandito's Last Day of a Great 2018 event and gsix5666's HNY19 - 10th Annual New Year's Day M&G. It's in the bag!



Sunday, December 9, 2018

Unintentional TB Rescue


Steve and I went to pickup a cache we're archiving for HNY19 (new one going in). No container but this trackable was sitting out in the open at the base of the tree.

Gives you an idea why so many go missing.