Yet another event?

It seems there's some pressure (insert mysterious eyes) for another event in Las Cruces sometime soon. I had been discussing with a few people about scheduling one for January. I had almost forgotten about it, until I saw I <3 Events, an Albuquerque event scheduled for February. It just hit me. A February event is already in the planning processes. It's even listed up at geocaching.com. I think it's time to finally start making the plans for an event down here.

I've hosted four events in the past (along with one CITO):

• Pillage the Village... Inn was a "simple" restaurant meet and greet (okay, didn't quite turn out that way). I also included a little "quiz" for a contest to win coins and ammo cans. For my first event, I think it went very well.
  

• The Pride of Geocaching was held at a park at NMSU. It turned out great. The campus was empty (summer vacation), leaving the area ready to hide some caches.

• F is for Friends Having Fun was part of my on-going ABC's of Geocaching series (which I will finish one day). It was held on a BLM facility on A Mountain, and was a noon pot luck. I also ended up hiding nine caches specifically for the event.
  

• Another Aardvark Adventure Around the A was held at the same location as the last one, but was a slightly less organized potluck. It was more of a breakfast get together, with only a few caches. It still worked out great.

I'm thinking this time, it might be fun to try something a bit different. I'm not quite sure what I want to do yet, though. I've gotten suggestions that it should be later in the day so those from out of town can come. I also had a suggestion of having it not quite an all day thing, but a few hours with plenty of time to mingle and cache. I could also just have it a pure meet and greet without any new caches. I like the idea of having games, though. This is going to take some thinking. It'll be a fun event, and it'll be different. I'm going to try for the latter, only if the former holds true. Then again, I might not even throw this event- someone else was interested in hosting one. Eh, something will be worked out.

Invasion of Roswell

I don't believe any aliens invaded Roswell, but I did! My dad and I visited last week for the Roswell That Ends Well event. It was a very fun event that had a slight twist on it. Most events tend to focus on finding caches. There are often games involved with finding the most, poker runs (where cards are placed at various caches- so you have to find more caches to get more cards, typically), etc. This event, however, focused more on the hiding aspect of geocaching. There were no prizes for those only finding caches. In that sense, finding the caches were the prizes. There were prizes for the best cache hide, however. There were some very good hides. Some were tricky, while others were simply hilarious and/or creative (but not necessarily difficult). The creativity of these hides really made the day fun. It was also pleasant not to worry about any contests. Sure, getting prizes at events is fun, but sometimes competition can make things stressful ("If we had only gone to that cache, we would have had another card..."). It can also be fun, though. This was a welcome change, though. I think hiders should be rewarded for their efforts.

Overall, the trip was very fun. It was a mixture of finding new caches (placed for the event) and existing caches. Altogether, my dad and I found 34 caches (18 on Saturday, 16 on Sunday as we drove home). We didn't see any aliens on this trip, however; I'm not sure if that's a good thing or something to be disappointed at.

Got GPS?

I don't. Anymore. I managed to lose my GPS while attempting to find Big Windy Canyon. After a bit of hiking, I started feeling not so great. My nose was runny. I was moving at an incredibly slow rate. It was slow enough of a pace that I had doubts about getting up there and back before nightfall. It just wasn't a good hiking day. I did the sensible thing and turned around. Before I did that, I decided to climb up to the nearby hill for a scenic break. I could get lunch, call up a friend to hangout with after I got done, and just relax. It was relaxing. No, this isn't where I lost my GPS unit- I just really enjoyed the break.

I continued my hike down. I checked on my GPS unit once in a while. Soon, my friend calls me back. I tell her I found a good-ish path down avoiding a lot of the vegetation, and am actually making good time down (considering how long it took me to get to that point). I whipped out my GPS unit. 0.28 miles from the last cache I found (which was on my way back to the trail). I continued hiking.

About 10 minutes later, I wanted to get another reading, since I knew I was going at a nice pace. "I'll just turn on me GPS unit and--- Ah! I don't have my GPS unit!" I had no idea what happened to it. I followed my path back as best I could. For one part, that wasn't too bad- small canyon with only a few places to walk. I saw nothing. Then I get up out of the canyon. Oh. I have NO idea how I came down from the hill through this area about 2-3 acres that's full of boulders and dense vegetation in spots. I looked around in the smaller canyon for about an hour, but my nose was bothering me too much.

The next day, I hike out there again. I spend 4 hours looking around. It's not an easy thing, considering I'm not sure of the path I took. I can't do a thorough grid search because of the vegetation. The only way to find it is to walk around, going through areas that are more likely to have been used by me to walk through the day before. Oh, and my GPS unit is gray and black.

This will make geocaching a bit difficult until I can get a new one, but Christmas is coming soon. I wonder what will be at the top of my list?

Calendar of Events

This is a calendar I update regularly with Google Calendar showing the events in New Mexico, since the main Geocaching event calendar makes it difficult to find the New Mexico caches. This also really helps in my personal planning because I can see that in two weeks on my calendar is an event. Sorry it's so small, but the layout of this blog doesn't allow much space. If you use Google Calendar, you can click the +GoogleCalendar button at the bottom to add it to your own calendar to watch- and it'll show up bigger. It will automatically update when I make changes to the calendar.



Alternatively, you can click here for a full-screen version of this calendar.

42nd Cache Hide

At the beginning of September, I hid my 42nd cache. When I realized what number cache hide it'd be, I thought I should do something special. What better than to have a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy themed cache? Originally, my plan was to have every question in the puzzle be 42 (hence, the "Part A"). I also had thought about getting the coordinates to match up with 42 as much as I could. Those didn't fully work out like I had wanted, so I settled for asking questions you'd need the book in order to answer. You might be able to find the answers by searching online. Actually, that'd probably be easier than looking through the book. I hope I rated the difficulty/terrain of the cache right.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a great book series (most of my questions only come from the first two, I believe). I've read slightly more than 3 of the five. I might have actually gotten most of the way through the 4th, but stopped reading for some reason. The other series in the puzzle (question 12) is also good, but a bit more off (and with an ending in the first book that almost ruined everything leading up to that point). Either series would be good to take if you find yourself stuck in a car for a few hours en route to a caching event.

Someone's watching me

As if dropping myself off into a cache isn't strange enough, to allow for people to "discover" me, now someone is watching me. I guess that's what happens when you make yourself a travel bug. So far, no one has tried to "grab" me or stuff me into a cache. Even though I'm a small person, I don't know how many caches I'd fit into.