Team List and Found Icons

I had this idea that it would be neat to have team members listed on the find logs for geocaching. You could even indicate which member(s) got the find credit on the icons. I have made some simple stick figure icons to such ends. I went back and updated the logs I've posted to this blog with the new icons and member list.

Here is a sample of going caching with another team, 4krejcis, and the Mrs. found the cache:
4krejcis MrWitzAbout

Here is I gave up without finding:
MrWitzAbout

And one where my middle child found it, and my youngest was along too:
Pirate2 MrWitzAbout Pirate3

GCGHMZ Colorado Keychain Exchange II at Cragmor Overlook

I was ready to do a CITO where the cache was hidden! :) I was glad I decided to check under it with my foot.

GCGHMZ Colorado Keychain Exchange II at Cragmor Overlook Reg 2.0/2.5 MrWitzAbout Found-It log: April 9, 2006 by WitzAbout

Mr.WitzAbout alone about 11:27am 3rd stop, second and last find of the day. Fantastic weather for caching. Spring is definately here! I know - the weeds are growing around my house ;-) This was a neat cache - I like the theme very much. I've been meaning to get up here for a long time. Wonderful views. It is great that there are a couple of more caches in the area now - to do on the way. I was searching around for the cache - checking out the obvious places. I already knew my GPSr was off by at least 20 feet today - from finding the previous cache on the way. So I looked around a bit more. I looked over to an area that seemed a bit far - but there was something that caught my eye. I didn't think it could be hidden there, but when I checked, there was the cache! What a surprise! There is a bunch of keychaings and lots of room. I left a keychain pen and a koosh-character frog. I took the discovery trek keychain. Thanks for the cache! (pictures)

Koosh Frog - 54' Confused GPSr Pikes Peak above Garden of the Gods UFO Refurb Station? Barbed Wire, Cell Tower, Blue Sky and Clouds

GCT76H Tulip's Treasure

Another Micro I could not find. There were many, many place a micro could be in this area. I probably spent about 25-30 minutes looking for this one. I checked lots and lots of likely places. A number of times my GPSr seemed to want to lead me down a crevace. But I didn't want to try it. Knowing the team that placed the cache, I did not think it was a good bet. The average spot the GPSr took me was an open area near abotu 100 hiding spots. I might try this one again. I might chalk this one up as another micro that is just beyond me.

GCT76H Tulip's Treasure Micro 3.0/3.0 MrWitzAbout Note log: April 9th by WitzAbout

DNF - but I think it was my GPSr's fault. It was 26 feet off at your other cache up here, and it was only the clue that let me find the other one. Unluckily even with the hint's help I couldn't find this one. My GPS started me over by one tree - but then had me about 40 feet West later on. This was a nice hike - I was glad to be out today in this neat area. I'm glad there were other caches for me to find up this way. Neat area. Wild looking rocks! I will have to add this one to my list of wanting to try it again some time. I guess my luck with micros has been used up - for now! :)

This Rock Face Caught My Eye Nearby the listed coordinates, downhill and South Rock Face Wide View

GCT76P The Rat Family

Second stop. I was glad to find this one. My GPSr was off by 26.1 feet. If I was smart, I would have brought the travelbug I have along. But it would not have fit into this cache. The log book is the same size as the container. Good thing there is a waterproof overcase as well. This was a tricky hide - I liked it. One of the 4ks specials. They are creative!

GCT76P The Rat Family Small 2.0/3.0 MrWitzAbout Found-It log: April 9th, 2006 by WitzAbout

Mr.WitzAbout alone - 11:04am TNLN-TFTC This was my second stop, and first find of the day. This was a nice hike and an amazing day. I think I got just a fraction of a sun burn. Wasn't there a blizzard 2 days ago? Very nice hike. I was glad for the parking corrdinates. The was a good hide. Considering how crazy my GPSr was acting, I was very thankful for the hint. I got in some very nice hiking, and continued on to keychain exchange.

Low Bridge Wonder How This Formed Mighty Pikes Peak Above GOG GOG=Garden of the Gods

GCRXP5 Cuppie's Cache

I'd stopped at OfficeMax for raffle tickets for the coming meeting/event. Then I stopped at the supermarket for a few food items. I parked on the access street to Checks Unlimited - the closest spot to this cache. This cache was one of the nearest to my house. It was bothering me that there was this cache so nearby that I hadn't found yet. I was feeling lucky from finding a couple of other micros easily lately. I was feeling less lucky after not finding a few times. But I finally got this nearby cache!
And as I was working on the log entry, the same group posted a new micro just a little further away! Another one to find! I wonder what my chances are of getting the FTF on the new one on my way to work? :)

GCRXP5 Cuppie's Cache Micro 1.5/1.5 MrWitzAbout Found-It log: April 5, 2006 by WitzAbout

Third time lucky! Mr.WitzAbout alone. 80th find! About 5:50pm. I tried this one twice before. I must admit I asked for a hint on this cache. First time I tried for about 15 minutes with my 2 younger pirates on the weekend. The boys needed to go before I was ready to go. I hadn't read the hint I got well enough. I tried again for about 5 minutes last night without any luck. I reread the hint much better the second time. I went back this evening on my home after running a couple of errands. I walked up, looked at one spot then looked at another. It must have been less than a minute. I had one of those 'how could I have missed it' moments :) This was a very cute cache. I had to use the pliers on my Swiss army knife to get out the log. I felt like a FTF, signing this blank log! Thanks for the near cache - and the help!

I always hate having to mark a travelbug missing. I've not had to do it too often, but I had to do it with this one. I'd figured it was missing for a while now. It is a nearby cache, but I just didn't get around to it until this Monday. Someone had put in a little votave candle. I didn't think it was a good thing to be left in the cache - especially as the days start really heating up. So I went by and checked the logs for who took this bug. I was thinking that it wouldn't be listed. But it was. And there was an online log too. It looks like a geocacher took 3 in the area, never moved them on, and hasn't been online in a month or so. I can only hope that the bugs are someplace safe, and that this use will get them back in a cache soon. I also sent an email to the geocacher to contact the owner about this bug.

TBBACD Lil' Squirt Post a note: April 3, 2006 by WitzAbout

It is with great regret that I have reported this travelbug missing. This TB was removed from my cache GCR8A9 Nit Witz on 12/21. Sorry about the delay in tracking down the log entries. The log says: "12/21 Rroundncircles (Boniquish Holywolf & Kalamazoo) T Lil Squirt TB (tbnum), playdoh L 2 pennies" There is a matching online entry: "December 21, 2005 by roundncircles (16 found) had to pet a muggle's dog before finding cache. T-TB L-spiffy$ Further got Quisha and the holy Wolf mesmerized by geocaching Had a great time!" I just sent them an email asking them to contact the TB owners: "-- Copy of email sent to roundncircles -- Hi roundncircles, I was doing some maint on my cache today: GCR8A9 Nit Witz I was checking the logs for a TB called Lil' Squirt - TBBACD . The log on 12/21/05 says that you took the TB, but I am afraid that the TB has stayed checked into my cache. I am going to mark him missing. Please contact the owner fugowee about the status of this TB (visit link) Mr.WitzAbout" The profile for this user shows last on the system 1/31/2006.

TBJEWW Kim Bug

It is always fun to find a travelbug. It is interesting this one came from the UK. I decided to check the path of this travelbug to see if it came from or went near a great blog-friend who lives in Bristol. It started about the same distance south from London, but quite a bit East. I hope to be able to move this travelbug on shortly - maybe even tomorrow.

TBJEWW Kim Bug Retrieved: April 1, 2006 by WitzAbout from Flutter's Fortune

Picked up this TB from Flutter's Fortune. This was our second try at this cache. I guess fortune smiled on us and on Kim - as she wasn't there the first time we had tried for this cache. This way she gets to spend a little time with us. My youngest Pirate pulled her out of the cache and yelled 'Kim Possible!'. I said, 'let's check her mission and see if we can help her out'. I read her mission - Disney World and UK. Colorado is closer to Disneyland in California, and neither is close! But I figured we can move her on. So I told my 2 pirates that we could take her along. We brought her home with us. I snapped a picture of her at home, with some geocaching accessories.

Kim Possible Fighting for the Camo-Way of Life

GCT769 Flutter's Fortune

We had tired this one before. Last one weekend day a few weeks ago with all 3 pirates. I had to give up after not too many minutes due to the cold. I had already done one cache on my own this morning - a FTF on a micro. But I had a couple of hours to kill, and my younger 2 pirates. So I said 'let's go geocaching!'. While they weren't all that enthusiastic, they seemed to accept it. I asked them what kind of cache they wanted - no big surprise when they wanted an easy, close one that had toys to trade. So I decided to try this one again. I'd reset my GPSr since the last time, and checked the location on google earth again.
Well, reseting my GPSr has not helped all that much. In fact, it seems about equally inaccurate, and it seems to trust me less. Twice today it hard a hard time getting the satellites at first, and when it couldn't, it kept asking me questions:
Are we inside? No.
Have we moved a great distance since the last time? No.
Usually that is all that it asks, but it asked an extra question twice today:
Is today April 1st, 2006? Yes.
Yes you silly GPSr, it is April Fools day! No, I'm not trying to trick you with false satellite readings! Now show me where the cache is!
Well, I was trailing Pirate #2 coming out of the tall weeds, and he just reaches down and plucks up the cache. In fact, his wording and style reminded me very much of when I found the micro the other day when caching with the neighbors - and he wasn't even along for that! :)

GCT769 Flutter's Fortune Reg 1.5/1.5 Pirate2 MrWitzAbout Pirate3 Found-It log: April 1, 2006 by WitzAbout

Mr.WitzAbout and Pirates #2 & #3 - about 11:38am. Second try at this cache. I started out parking at the wrong secret trail - second time that has happened to me today. Got back in the car and found the secret trail we had used the last time to try this area. Luckily it wasn't anywhere as cold this time. This way we were able to spend more time without the cold forcing us to retreat. Again the GPS was bouncing all over the place. Changing it from low-power mode to full-power mode does not seem to help. This area must be very reflective for radio waves. I went far enough out that the ground was getting really soggy. I warned the pirates back. At one point I thought I was going to sink in and lose a shoe! And with no sword or shovel along to help. * Taking a number of passes over the area, I could not find it, but more often than not, it kept leading me to a line about 30 feet long. I searched high and low, in and out. I could not find it. I was getting to the point of giving up. I was even considering checking the abandoned tire. Pirate #2 bends down and says, 'is this it?', plucking it out of it's hiding spot so fast that I can barely figure out where it had been hidden. He had found it just like that! Wow! I complimented him on his really good spotting. Even Pirate #3 congratulated him - what a great sport! I couldn't believe how hard this one was for me. I was really glad we could find it. It is one of the few left that we haven't found in our home area - that is big enough for trade items. I knew I needed to do one with trade items for the kids today. So we traded! At first both pirates were considering the click-clacks, and I'd even written that in the log. But they decided not to take them in the end. Then Pirate #2 decided to take this solid dog/dragon looking toy. Pirate #3 handed me the Kim Possible travelbug. I read the mission. I don't know how much I can help with Disney in FL or the UK, but I am certainly willing to move her on. Pirate #3 then decided he needed the stuffed bear - with rainbow, American flag-colored wings. Why a stuffed bear has wings, much less American flag-colored wings, I have no idea - but he likes it! We put in a dragon figure, a koosh character, and a McToy-style General Grevous. Pirate #2 wanted to put in one of the micros I have left from the REI event, but I explained him that it was a cache. I must admit, I was tempted for a moment to leave it as a spawn - Denver-Bacteria-like :) Thanks for the cache - this was a good one! SL.

Clouds Moving in as we headed for the Fortune

GCV4NG Saxy's Place

The truth is I'd like to have slept in this morning. But some of the boys were making a little noise, and that woke me up a little. Then I thought about that first-to-find waiting out there, and I couldn't go back to sleep. In case you weren't sure I was obsessed with geocaching. :)
I got to meet the cache-owner, SAXman, last meeting in Denver. So I had an extra connection to this cache. I saw that he posted this morning that the coordinates were off. I'd seen the night before that the coordinates were in somebody's back-yard. But I could tell the secret trail, as I call them, was pretty narrow here, limiting the places the cache could be if the coordinates were close. So in spite of only having a short time, and in spite of the coordinates being off and in spite of it being a micro, I was drawn to do this cache.
I was glad I was able to find this cache - that means I was able to confirm more accurate coordiantes, so the cache-owner doesn't have to run out himself to check - especially since he works on Saturdays.
There is a bit of irony in how easy this one was compared to the 2 others I tried today. I could not find another micro, even with the help of my 2 younger pirates. And the middle pirate found a medium cache that I was having trouble finding today too. I guess I used up all my luck in the morning :)

GCV4NG Saxy's Place Micro 1.5/1.5 MrWitzAbout Found-It log: April 1, 2006 by WitzAbout

N 38° 56.813 W 104° 47.381 Mr.WitzAbout on his own - about 8:30am. A day later and nobody has claimed the find. I saw the DNF last night. I woke up this morning a little early wondering if anyone had found it yet. Checked - nope - no finds. So I got out of the house while half the family was still asleep. I tried coming in from the south, I'd sort of turned the map 90 degrees in my mind. I parked at the spot that showed I was the closest, at what looked like a path in. I got out of the car, and started walking a couple of feet down the path when I realized it was actually a driveway. Wrong way! I got back in the car and drove the long way around the block clockwise, past where they were building a church. I saw a couple of people near the spot as I rounded the construction area. I was thinking I was too late for the FTF. But I figured I might meet up with a couple of other cachers this way, and perhaps get some help with my nemesis: the micro cache. I found the secret trail entrance from the North, so I did not have to cross the construction zone. I hurried out to the cache coordinates. The other two people seemed to be talking about 200 feet away. I wasn't sure then if they were geocachers. I tried to look nonchalant as I looked around the natural cache hiding places. Boy is this area screaming for some CITO. But the only caching gear I had with me is my GPSr. And I was on a tight schedule - I had to stop looking in a half hour to get home in time. So I will have to come back to CITO. I think there may be more trash here than all of Midland Trail ;-) Watch out for the fresh doggy droppings. So after a couple of minutes, I figured out what the other 2 were doing. I had wandered about 50 feet further down, and saw that they were filming some sort of intro or sales video in the construction area. But the camera was facing the other way. The guy with the mic was facing towards me, but he seemed to be more interested in his script. So I turned my back to the muggles and continued my visual search. I was not optimistic. A micro. A micro that had a DNF. A micro in an area with many places it could be hidden. And lots and lots of trash that could possibly be a micro. I checked one piece of trash that didn't seem likely. Nope. I was walking back to the general area of the coordinates. I check my GPSr and got as close as I could to the coordinates without going into the back yard. I looked around the area some more. I spotted something in a logical area. I think I said out loud - that doesn't seem right here. Poke, poke. Pick up. It must be the cache! It reminded me of something from the listing! Cool container! I wasn't positive it was the cache until I tapped out the empty log. I got the FTF - yay :) :) I have to acknowledge the Spot Crew for trying first and having trouble with the coordinates. Signed the log. Put it back. Took a GPS reading. N38 56.813 W104 47.381 - checking google earth, it looks like the right spot. Double checking the listed coordinates - same exact longitude, just a different latitude. I think I spent more time finding the right place to park than finding the cache. :) I agree with the rating. I had enough time to run over and get some fresh bagels for the family. Thanks for the cache! Mr.WitzAbout

GCMCW7 Knock-off # 15 (Paul I. area)

GCMCW7 Knock-off # 15 (Paul I. area) Micro 2.0/2.5 MrWitzAbout 4krejcis Found-It log: March 30, 2006 by WitzAbout

Mr.WitzAbout (only WitzAbout) along with the 3/4krejcis. We were heading back to the parking area. I decided to peak if there were any more caches as we were taking a different route (much easier!) back. Thre was - less than 400', and it seemed like it was right along the trail - the numbers were counting down quickly! It seems Mr.krejci had the same idea - he found that we were quickly approaching this cache. We got to the area, and our 2 GPSrs were closer than they'd been all afternoon. But that still meant about a 50 foot area to search for a micro in the forest. We needed to head back, so I was emotionally prepared to give up after just a little time. I have so little luck finding micros. We were searching the area, and I moved over to a spot that was passed. I looked, and there it was! Wow - I found the micro! I think the Knock-off series will be the key to my learning to enjoy micros! This is the second one I've found without much trouble at all! It probably helped that it was missing one piece of natural camo. I put it back in place after we were done. SL. Thanks for the cache - and thanks for helping me believe in doing micros again! :) (pictures)

Steep Rocks on the Way Great view of Downtown from up here Looking back up the trail on the way out

GC247F Red Rocks Ramble

For us, this was Red Rocks Scramble. We took one of the hardest ways into this cache. Trying to get to it as the crow flies. It was interesting to note, when I went back and read more of the logs for this cache, that we were not the only ones who ever came at it a harder way.

GC247F Red Rocks Ramble Reg 1.0/2.5 4krejcis MrWitzAbout Found-It log: March 30, 2006 by WitzAbout

Mr.WitzAbout (only WitzAbout) along with the 3/4krejcis. We took the 1.0/4.5 route in to this cache from the 'which came first cache'. Definately the hardest route in for this cache. We had some real challenges getting to this cache - brush, scrub-limbo, steep downgrades, slides that left us with red mud marks, box canyon, ice, steep crevace climb up, down again, up again through more scrub, it seemed like an hour that the GPS said we were about 300 feet away. Finally we hit a trail with less than a hundred feet away. I'm standing there, reading the detail for this cache from my palm - hoping it will help us find it. Thunk-thunk interrupts my reading. Mrs.4krejcis was tapping the cache with her walking stick. Seems they had spotted it about the time I started reading, LOL. TNLN, SL. This was a nice cache. Easy find if you go in the right way. Super challenging to get to if you take the wrong way - but we were exhilarated by the hike and glad to find the cache. And even gladder to find the main trail nearby to head back on. We were clued in to the main trail by the moutain-bikers that passed as we were doing our final ascent on this cache. Thanks for a nice hide! (pictures)

Rocks across the valley What do you mean the GPS is pointing at the rocks across the valley? Box Canyon Still some ice along the stream Look there's downtown Colorado Springs! Interesting Rock Formation What a vista!