I am back, chirp, ....Boom
UNPC 100th Anniversary Of Scouting Event
Well I made it back from my excursion at scout camp. Everything went well. No one died in my troop, no one lost much hair due to fire, and the frost nearly killed us in Heber, but we suffered through the ice cold nights (actually colder than ice).
One of my scouts placed a cache (jasonhappy), within a few minutes Jeocacher had found it. Too be fair he was teaching geocaching for two days at the event, and he was sitting in his car a few hundred feet away when it was listed. I had a good discussion there with him (actually many). Later Souldominator showed up and we shared new stories with each other as the boys wandered back from their letterboxes with the sheets showing they had found the ten caches.
It was cold sleeping in a field in Heber Valley in October, but I had an enjoyable time.
Chirp...Chirp... Chirp
Nope not a cricket or a bird..
. but a chirp. A Garmin chirp.
It is the newest release from Garmin. There apparently was no or little advance warning of the product.
It is a small device that when your Oregon will ping when it is close. The chirp can then send info to the actual reciever. There are a number of possibilities of letting you have a multi cache using one or more chirps, having the location of the a final, or sending a puzzle. These would be transfered to your device.
There are a lot of interesting possiblities, so we will see what happens with it. Currently they run about $20. They are a commerical product and run afoul of the guildelines. Any cache using them would need to have another way to solve them alongside the chirp.
The advent of this product has led Geocaching to consider a new cache type. A quote from geocaching.com's Users Voice by Jeremy said "For it to be supported on Geocaching.com there will have to be a new type created since it definitely requires a proprietary device and special equipment. I'd suggest keeping it more generic as a Beacon Cache so other wireless concepts can be supported. I know some wifi and bluetooth caches that have been created in the past that would fit this new type, for example, and the concept of "fox hunting" has been around for years."
So we will see what happens.
Blown up cache
A cache was blown up near an elementary school in California Saturday. It was at the far end of the school parking lot far away from the school, but still on school property. So the bomb squad was called in and blew it apart.
Please note... unless you are a teacher, do not place them on school property. If you are a teacher, we can go through a process to make sure that your principle, grounds crew, and office is aware that it is there as a school project and to avoid the same situation.