Friday, May 6, 2011 Lethbridge
7:00 am Morning Musings
The temperature is +3 C, with a high predicted of +15 C.
From the Environment Canada website:
Today Increasing cloudiness. 30 percent chance of showers this afternoon. Wind west 20 km/h becoming light this morning. High 15. UV index 3 or moderate. Tonight Cloudy with 30 percent chance of showers this evening. Clearing overnight. Low plus 5. Normals Max: 17°C Min: 3°C
I'm not too sure what I want to do today. Maybe another cup of coffee will help.
The 2 main competitors are Model Trains and Geocaching.
One difficulty with the geocaching is that it will involve a lot of driving. It is about 120 km to either the Crowsnest Pass or to Medicine Hat. These are the two nearest areas where there are a number of caches to be found. I prefer looking for urban caches during weekdays when the young muggles are in school. This would suggest going out today and leaving the model trains until the weekend.
4:00 PM Geocaching
I reviewed a number of geocaches in the Crowsnest Pass region and uploaded 8 of them into my Garmin. I left Lethbridge at 8:00 am with a view to seeing the snow and road conditions in the Pass while searching for the eight caches that were near paved roads.
Cache Name Find # GC2NCDG A Wing and a Prayer 959 GC2T3FC CNP TRACKABLES RETREAT 960 GC2T05V The Pheonix Cache 961 GC2T8EV TWO FOR ONE! 962 FTF GC2T8DY TURTLE PIT STOP! 963 GC2RY8M The opposite of historic walk 964 GC2T376 WORLD'S LARGEST PIGGY BANK DNF GC2T8C6 WHY? 965
Here are a few photos from the day's activities.
I have no idea where the container is located!
The searches ended with 7 finds (one a FTF) and one DNF. There was an interesting variety of cache sites and hiding strategies. Geocaching is not boring!
[Addendum] 9:00 PM
I received a lesson on how to log Alberta benchmarks from TeamDJM. A geocacher called outforthehunt maintains a website GC43F3 that contains a list of all benchmarks that he has logged. There are two different situations for logging a find. One is when one discovers a find while doing something else. In this case one needs to determine if that particular BM is on the website. If it is then one can log a find on GC43F3. If it is not on the website then one cannot log the find. The other situation is when one uses the GC43F3 to locate a BM and then one goes out to find it. When one finds the BM one then needs to take a picture of the BM with the GPS unit beside it displaying the coordinates and send an email to outforthehunt mentioning the BCP number and a copy of the photo. It may be possible to transfer the coordinates from the GC43F3 site to one's GPS unit, but this needs to be verified depending on the model of the GPS and perhaps the computer (PC or Mac).
It turns out that the BM on the "TWO FOR ONE" geocache site is not on the list and thus, at least at this time, it is not a two for one situation.