Category: Geocaching

Miscellany

lpaulriddle

We took the “kids” (age 20 and 17) for an overnight trip out to far western Maryland Monday into Tuesday. We visited Swallow Falls State Park, the Maryland Rock Maze, Sideling Hill Creek State Park, Cumberland Narrows, and Washington Monument State Park. We got some hiking in and found several geocaches. Even though we were away less than 36 hours, it was nice to get out of the house for a while, and brought back memories of trips like this we used to take back when the kids were smaller. Who knows if we’ll ever be able to drag both of them out for something like this again!

I rode my mountain bike to work today, for the first time since June 7. Although I’m no fan of mountain biking in the heat and humidity, the main thing stopping me this summer has been the wet and stormy weather we’ve had since the second half of June. My schedule is most conducive to mountain biking on Wednesdays, and most weeks, the trails have been too muddy. Currently, we are in the midst of a several-day dry spell, so conditions were pretty good. I stuck to familiar trails, and they were in mostly good shape, but there were lots of muddy patches in areas that aren’t usually muddy. I passed around 8 hikers on the Howard County side between Belmont and Rockburn Branch, which is 8 more than I usually see in that area weekday mornings. I guess the beautiful early August weather brought everyone out of the woodwork. Temperatures were in the upper 60s, with low humidity.

On the swimming pool front, something seems to be wonky with our SWG today. This morning, I went out and noticed that the temperature sensor was reading 5-8 degrees higher than the actual water temperature. I calibrated it to match, but I’ve never had to do that before. I ran a test, which showed normal cell amps, but then after I exited the menu, the display started flashing a low amps warning. Not sure if the two issues are related. The temperature thing is usually related to the tri-sensor, but the low amps thing usually points to the cell, so I’m not sure what to make of this. I power-cycled the controller and also backwashed the filter, but neither helped with the temperature anomaly. The low amps display went away after a minute or so, but the Chlorine has been running a little lower than expected this week, so I wonder if this has been happening for a few days. This evening, I’ll pull the cell out and inspect it, and I’ll also look at the check valve and see if there’s anything impeding flow through the tri-sensor. The cell is 14 years old, and has outlasted the original controller and tri-sensor, so it could be that it’s finally time for a new cell. However, it doesn’t seem like a bad cell would cause the issue with the temperature reading. I’m sure I’ll get to the bottom of it, and I’m sure it’ll end up costing me more money. That’s just life with a pool.

Weekend Ride

lpaulriddle

I rode through parts of Columbia, Savage, Laurel, and Jessup this morning, for a round trip of almost 40 miles. I usually plot my routes on gmap-pedometer.com ahead of time to get a rough estimate of distance, but I did not do that for this ride. I had guesstimated it at roughly 30-35 miles, which I guess was too low. Nice to get out for a longer ride, though. It was a fairly flat route, so I took my single speed bike. I was out for right around 3 hours, and found 4 geocaches along the way. The weather was nice: it started out in the upper 60s with a dewpoint in the low 60s, which felt great compared to the past 3 days. A line of strong storms passed through the area yesterday evening just ahead of the cold front. Most of the action must have been to our south, as there was a lot of storm debris in the roads, particularly around Savage.

Based on the weather forecast, it looks like I might be able to ride my mountain bike to work on Wednesday, for the first time in forever. Looking forward to that if it happens.

Biking Notes

lpaulriddle

Today, I took an out-and-back trip from Bethany Beach to Isle of Wight Park near Ocean City, MD. It was the first of (hopefully) 2 or 3 rides at the shore this week. My round trip distance was just under 34 miles. I rode my Masi single speed bike, which is my favorite bike to ride in coastal areas, as the flat terrain makes multiple gears mostly unnecessary. It was a really nice day for July on the east coast, but traffic has really picked up along this route in the post-COVID years, particularly near the town of Bayard. Once I crossed the border into Maryland, the roads quieted down, and I was able to enjoy the ride a little bit more. My main reason for visiting Isle of Wight park was to find a “Cache Across Maryland” geocache, plus a bonus cache. I skipped a few other caches in the area because they were back in the woods, and I forgot to bring bug repellent, which is a necessity around here this time of year, unless you really like ticks and mosquito bites.

This was likely my longest ride of the week. The next time I get out, I’m planning on riding east to Frankford, which is about a 20-25 mile round trip. If I can get out a third time, I’ll either head north toward Holt’s Landing, or south to Fenwick Island.

Pillar Climbing

lpaulriddle

I drove up to Pennsylvania yesterday to find a geocache at the top of a 30′ pillar. This is the third like this I’ve found, and a popular type of “extreme” cache hide. Most of these old pillars carried railroad tracks “back in the day”, which have since been abandoned, but the pillars (built to stand the test of time) remain, usually alongside or in the middle of rivers. Many of them have caches on top. These caches typically aren’t found very often — while there are a large number of people with the skills and equipment to ascend pillars, and also a large number of geocachers, the intersection of those two sets is relatively small. The cache we found yesterday had not been found in 4.5 years.

Typically, to climb these, you need to shoot a line over the top of the pillar, use it to pull a rope over, anchor the rope, ascend the rope using appropriate gear, and then rappel back down. Sounds deceptively simple, but throw in a fast-moving stream or river, trees to snag the line, nooks and crannies at the top where the rope can get stuck, etc., and setting the rope can get tricky. Ascending up can be physically challenging, and the technique takes some practice to master. Getting up over the edge takes upper-body strength, and rappelling back down can be scary. But it’s a great adrenaline rush, and a real feeling of accomplishment when you succeed.

I’ve used a different rappelling technique with each of the 3 pillars I’ve climbed. The tricky thing about these is that the rope is typically very low — most often running across the top of the pillar, at foot level as you start. The first technique was shown to me by someone with a lot of rope experience. You start by standing up, legs straight, with a low center of gravity, and slowly pivoting backwards until you “pop” onto the wall. It’s really cool, but really scary. With method two, you sit on top, legs dangling off the side, and then kind of roll yourself over into rappel position. Less scary, but fewer style points.

The third method, which I used yesterday, worked out well. We put an ascender on the rope above the rope protector, attached a rope (actually webbing) ladder, and dangled it over the side. I got into position by grabbing the ascender and stepping down onto the ladder to get below the rope. Not sure it will always be possible to rig this, but I felt more confident with this method than with the other two.

Anyhow, every time I do one of these, it whets my appetite to more. I hope to get a group together to tackle another one of these in the not-too-distant future.

Ride Notes

lpaulriddle

2023 marks the 15th anniversary of when I started using a bike as my primary method of commuting to work. Nowadays, I only go into the office once or twice a week, so I’m not bike commuting nearly as much, but I’m happy that I’m still doing it, and I almost never drive my car to work any more. In fact, I’ve been able to save some money by ditching my annual parking permit in favor of pay-as-you-go daily permits.

Today, I rode through Catonsville, which I haven’t done much lately due to the Grist Mill Trail closure in PVSP. With school out for the summer, there’s less traffic on the roads, so I rode through Ilchester and out River Road to Oella, where I picked up the #9 Trolley Trail. I then rode Edmondson Ave. out to Ingleside Ave., found a geocache off Harlem La., and headed to UMBC via Prospect Ave., Short Line Trail, Kenwood Ave., and Wilkens Ave. I’ve ridden on all of these roads before, but never this exact route. The weather was cloudy, windy, and drippy. I wouldn’t call it rainy, but it sprinkled almost the entire time I was out. I ended up putting my rain jacket on when I stopped for the cache, as I was actually getting chilly. It definitely was atypical weather for the first day of summer. My watch tells me I rode 17.33 miles, which is a couple miles longer than my usual commute through PVSP and Halethorpe/Arbutus. All in all, not a bad ride.

Today’s Ride Notes

lpaulriddle

I’m trying to start using my long-neglected blog kind of like a daily journal. We’ll see if I keep up with it.

Ever since COVID hit back in 2020, I’ve been doing more weekend bike rides, combining them with geocaching. Prior to that, I used my bike almost exclusively to commute to work. I still commute by bike, but not nearly as much as I used to, so these weekend rides are a good way to get some more biking in.

Today, I rode a 32 mile loop, which included some areas where I hadn’t previously biked: BWI Trail to B&A Trail, then back to Linthicum via Marley Neck Blvd., Fort Smallwood Rd., Hawkins Point Rd., Pennington Ave., and Ordnance Rd. Ordnance through Glen Burnie is not a route I would typically recommend, but it was doable early on a Sunday morning. The rest of the ride was great, and I found 5 caches along the way. I rode my Masi single speed for the first time in several months. The bike had been out of commission because the valve stem on the rear tube had broken, and I was out of tubes that fit the wheel. It took me a few months to get around to buying new tubes, putting one on, and reinstalling the wheel. Also, last year, the bike shop rebuilt the front wheel, because I had been breaking a lot of spokes. I wanted to take a few longer rides on the bike before I take it to the beach later this summer, just to put the wheel through its paces, although I’ve taken several rides on it already. So far, so good.

Top 10 Geocache Finds for 2021 and 2022

lpaulriddle

Haven’t written anything here in a very long time, so I figured I’d continue my series of “top 10 geocache finds” posts. I neglected to post 2021’s edition last year, so here it is, along with 2022.

Top 10 of 2021

2021 was another year where I didn’t do much traveling due to COVID, so Maryland is very well-represented for a second year in a row, with Delaware making a token appearance.

  • Alice Martin Memorial Letterbox (GC7T20G)
    I’ve always enjoyed caches by flyingmoose, and have two of them on my list this year. This was a great hike up Evitts Mountain in Allegany County (MD), near Rocky Gap State Park. The cache is right near the MD/PA border, and there are some interesting survey markers to check out there as well.
  • Could I Have Been…Caching at Merriweather? (GC9FH6R)
    This was a fun urban-style letterbox with a solve-at-home puzzle thrown in for good measure. I can’t say too much about the hide without giving it away, but I do enjoy finding caches hidden in this type of location when they’re done well, and this one most definitely was.
  • Discovering Soldiers Delight (GC8NQ2A)
    Soldier’s Delight is a really neat place to hike that features a very rare and unique serpentine ecosystem. This cache is a multi-stage hike that was placed in 2020 to encourage folks to get outdoors during COVID lockdown, but things had relaxed somewhat when I got around to it in early 2021. I really enjoyed the opportunity to spend a couple of mornings hiking in the area.
  • Drift Adventure Lab: Bigger Thing (GC8VDA2)
    This was an adventure lab bonus cache along a really nice 10-mile paddle down the Patuxent River from the Riverkeeper HQ to Magruder’s Landing. We did this in September, and had a great time.
  • Lizzie’s Long Walk – Redux (GC95RYD)
    Another nice multi-stage hike (are you picking up a theme here?), this time in Middle Patuxent Environmental Area. My first time visiting this area was in 2013 or 2014 to complete the original Lizzie’s Long Walk cache, and this was a fun walk down memory lane.
  • ManBear Trail 21 (GC8Z7R8)
    The ManBear Trail is a fun series of hides in Patapsco Valley State Park, on the south side of the river between Marriottsville Rd and Henryton Rd. Many of the hides feature challenges like tree climbs, steep terrain, etc. This was one of the more memorable hides, but this entry is meant to represent all of the caches, as this was easily my favorite series of 2021.
  • Polluted Beauty (GC6VWYZ)
    Kind of hard to have a “favorite caches” list of any kind without a ProgKing cache in there somewhere, although it’s getting tougher, as he has (sadly) mostly retired from geocaching. This was out on a rather swampy peninsula at Liberty Reservoir, but I lucked out and got there during a dry spell, which made for an easier approach than several other finders had reported. As usual, it was a great, secluded spot with wonderful views, even in December with the leaves off the trees.
  • The Dark Side of the Mountain (GC33GPX)
    This one is just off the Appalachian Trail, near the Pogo Memorial Campsite, and I found it in the pre-dawn hours of the morning during a quick overnight backpacking trip. Great climb up the ridge to the east of the AT, and a nice find with sweeping views of the valley below. I hung around until just after sunrise, which probably would have been spectacular, had the skies not been overcast. Oh, well.. life isn’t perfect.
  • Vanishing Bride (GC59ZZB)
    This is the second flyingmoose cache on this year’s list. It’s the second in a series of two letterbox caches hidden in Delaware Seashore State Park, near Bethany Beach, DE. The series is best done in the non-growing season, but I’m usually there in July, so I made do. It’s a well-done pair of true letterbox caches with a great backstory. Just don’t forget the Permethrin if you go in the summertime!
  • Wind in the Willows Bonus Cache (GC8ZZ1K)
    This was a serene paddle along the headwaters of the Chester River that we did in mid September. The associated adventure lab had a great story to go along with it, and the find was icing on the cake.

Top 10 of 2022

2022 finally saw the return of some out-of-state travel for me, which is reflected in 2022’s top ten list:

  • Arikaree (GC31)
    This is the second-oldest cache in Kansas, and in my humble opinion, a far better cache than its more-famous neighbor, Mingo (GC30) (although that one did make my list in 2016). The Arikaree Breaks are truly a sight to behold.
  • Brontosaurus (GC9TPP5)
    This is the final in a really nice series of dinosaur-themed caches in the Rockhaven area of Patapsco Valley State Park, a lesser-traveled section of the park with a very nice trail system. I’m partial to nice hikes and caches in the woods, and this series afforded me 3 or 4 very nice hikes, so it was a no-brainer for the list.
  • Turkey Run Stash (GCC6)
    This is one of the oldest hides in Indiana. I think it is officially billed as the oldest to stay active since publication, as apparently there’s another cache up in the northern part of Indiana that is older, but was archived for a significant period of time before being re-hidden and resurrected. Regardless, Turkey Run State Park is not to be missed.
  • G.A.Kohler (GC7BA2N)
    A virtual cache located on the beach outside Salvo, NC, at the shipwreck of the G.A. Kohler. Lots of reasons this made the list: I love the OBX; 2022 was our first visit in 5 years; shipwrecks are really cool; and this one was quite impressive. I apparently was lucky to see it in all of its glory, vs buried under the sand as it often is.
  • GoT: The Wall (GC8RCD3)
    Another epic 10-mile paddle on the Patuxent River, a little bit south of last year’s. This one started at King’s Landing Park and wrapped at Hallowing Point. The caches are part of a 50-cache series based on Game of Thrones, some of which are land-based, and others which are accessible by boat only. Completing the series is one of my projects for 2023.
  • Grand MasterMind (GC9TPR1)
    A fun, left-brained puzzle followed up by another great hike in Patapsco Valley State Park. Not much more to be said about this one!
  • Il Milione (GC9G3AT)
    This was a really nicely done field puzzle and gadget cache, with progressive clues to help guide the gadget-cache-challenged among us to a solution and a successful find. A well-constructed and well-done cache all around.
  • Kerckhoffs (part 2) (GC9PAWZ)
    A tricky, but fun, encryption-themed puzzle cache that had me scratching my head for quite a while, although not nearly as much as its sequel has me scratching my head!
  • Lakeview From 1700 (GC950D)
    This is an older hide along the Appalachian Trail near Annapolis Rocks. Lots of fun rock scrambling, culminating in a nice, secluded spot on the side of the mountain with a spectacular view. I love caching along the A.T.!
  • The Mailboxes of Hawk Ridge (GC9A68J)
    A unique suburban puzzle/scavenger hunt type cache that tested my observation skills, and a Tomulus hide! What’s not to like??

Geocaching Goals

lpaulriddle

I’ve been geocaching regularly for 8 years now. While I used to enjoy doing it for its own sake, over the past few years, it’s become more of an excuse to get outdoors for activities such as hiking, kayaking, etc. One of the things that’s really cool about geocaching is that it brings you to outdoor locations you might not otherwise visit. For example, if not for geocaching, I likely would never have visited Liberty or Prettyboy Reservoirs, various remote areas of Patapsco Valley State Park, or any number of other out-of-the-way places in the area.

One aspect of geocaching is the concept of a “challenge” cache. This is a cache that you can only “find” if you have met an arbitrary goal chosen by the challenge cache creator. One simple geocaching challenge might be to find, say, 100 other caches, which would make you eligible to find and log an associated challenge cache.

I have a love/hate relationship with challenge caches. The rules for constructing challenges used to be fairly arbitrary, which led to some interesting and creative challenges. A few years back, Groundspeak, the company that runs the most popular geocaching listing service, tightened the rules for what constitutes an acceptable challenge. While well-intentioned, the result has been kind of a dumbing-down of geocaching challenges, and lately, there has been an explosion of somewhat frivolous challenges, to the point where “power trails” of 20 or more challenge caches have popped up in various areas. Challenge caches by themself are not an issue, but when they begin to saturate a given area, they can become a “barrier to entry” to new players in the area who want to pick up the hobby. I know that, when I was new to the game, I would have been discouraged if I had looked at the geocaching map, and seen that most of the caches near home were challenges that I would be ineligible to “find” until I had been caching for many years. One way that Groundspeak could address this might be to add a special “proximity rule” for challenge caches that is much greater than the 0.1 mile for traditional caches: for example, only allow one challenge cache per square mile. I think that would level the playing field nicely, allowing for challenges while preventing them from becoming too prevalent in a given area. But, that’s just my opinion. I’m sure many challenge cache aficionados will vehemently disagree with me.

Now that I’m off my soapbox, I’ll talk about a type of challenge that I enjoy. Several years back, one of my goals was to find a geocache for each day of the year. It was a very effective motivator to get me out of the house. I finally completed that quest on Feb. 29, 2016. Once that’s done, you can try to find two caches for each day of the year (which I still have yet to accomplish, thanks to Christmas Day), and on and on. I have friends who are working on 5 caches/day, 10 caches/day, etc. Then you can move on to finding one of a specific type of cache for each day. My current project is to find a puzzle or “mystery” cache for each day of the year, and my goal is to do so by the end of 2022. While you could argue that it’s a “frivolous” or “arbitrary” goal, I’ve planned several bike rides, hikes, etc. around finding mystery caches on specific dates, and it’s been a good motivator to get me outdoors during these crazy times. Once I’m finished, I’ll have to find another “arbitrary” goal to pursue, just to stay motivated.

Top 10 Geocache Finds, 2020 Edition

lpaulriddle

2020 isn’t technically over yet, but the odds of me finding another top-10-worthy cache in the next 10.5 hours are pretty darned slim. This year, I used caching as an excuse to get out on my bike. Bike caching limits me to about a 30 mile round trip from home, and I had no business travel this year, so it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that all of my top-10 finds were in Maryland this year — the first time that has ever happened. I’ve really missed traveling, but on the plus side, I’ve discovered all sorts of new biking routes all over the area. Prior to this year, I only really biked between home and work. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens when I start going back to the office, which presumably will happen some time in 2021, though I’m not expecting it to be before summer. Anyhow, I’m going off on a tangent. Here’s this year’s list of caches. Interestingly enough, 5 of the 10 are multi-caches:

  • CAM 2020: Lone Cedar Point (GC8GPW9)
    I don’t think I’ve ever included a CAM cache in this list, but this is certainly a good one to start with. A wonderful hike on the beach with great views of Assawoman Bay and Ocean City. Strangely enough, the trailhead is in Delaware, but the point (and the cache) are in Maryland. We found this in March, at the beginning of CAM, and right when the pandemic was really starting to kick into gear.
  • Gutzon Borglum (GCRJF4)
    I found this, along with several other caches, in February during a 6-mile hike on the AT. It’s a fairly typical Vizardo hide, but it makes the list because it’s a 2005 cache with its original container and log book, and I have happy memories of hiking on that warm February day before COVID was even on my radar.
  • MoCo Clue – Billiard Room (GC81Z9J)
    This was another pre-COVID find which I made with luvinlif2k and our respective kids. It’s one of my all-time favorite multis. It felt just like playing a larger-than-life-sized game of billiards.
  • MoCo Clue – Final (GC816TP)
    This series probably was my caching highlight of 2020. It was well-crafted and well-executed all around, and the final was the icing on the cake. We found this, as well as all of the prerequisite caches, with luvinlif2k and family. We made 3 or 4 trips to MoCo to complete the series, and it’s well-represented with 2 entries on my top 10 list.
  • Paddle Faster, I Hear Banjos… (GC259YA)
    This is a crazy paddle-multi on Zekiah Swamp in Charles County. I’m sure the CO intended it to be a peaceful paddle through calm waters, but when we tackled it, unbeknownst to us, the area had recently flooded and the entire second half of the paddle was against a raging current. Several kayaks flipped over, others got pinned by the current, and we ended up completing the journey by hiking and wading. The paddle back to the launch was fun, though. 😀
  • Red Run Stream Stroll (GC8NVFT)
    This was a well-executed walk/hike along Red Run in Owings Mills. There was a bit of a weird vibe to the hike, as it was early May and the whole COVID thing was really taking off at the time. But, it was great to get outdoors, and we even saw a few snakes.
  • Tip & Tie (GC8WH5A)
    Another paddle multi that I did solo. I enjoyed paddling on two different reservoirs and finding the cache at the end. I’ve been using one of the photos I took on Rocky Gorge reservoir as my Zoom background. In the past couple of years, caching to me has become more about the journey than the actual find, and this was a great journey.
  • Tracey’s Store (GC1NJH5)
    The second Vizardo cache on my list, this one is a 3-stage multi at Prettyboy Reservoir that is rarely found. I really enjoyed the hike, and the final container had some of the best swag I have ever seen in a cache.
  • Where the Rivers Flow North (GC7QPWG)
    This made the list partly due to nostalgia. It’s a fairly typical ProgKing hide at Liberty Reservoir. It’s not right on the reservoir itself, but has a great view of one of the feeder streams (Morgan Run?). After hiking countless times at Liberty in 2019, I only made it there once this year. I have lots of memories of hiking and caching there, culminating in the great Liberty Battleship series last year. There aren’t many caches there left for me to find, so I savor every opportunity to go back.
  • Who Stole Sammy’s Nuts Adventure Lab BONUS (GC91QY5)
    2020 was “year of the adventure lab”. Several well-done adventure labs popped up in the area, and I enjoyed all of them. It was tough picking just one for this list, but I settled on this one because it was a fantastic hike along Buzzard Rock Trail in Patapsco Valley State Park. PVSP is my home park, and I spend tons of time there doing everything from hiking to caching to mountain biking to rock climbing, but Buzzard Rock is a trail that I don’t hike on often. I completed the labs and the bonus over two visits before work, and had a great time.

That about wraps up 2020. What does 2021 hold in store? We will find out soon.

Studs

lpaulriddle

Looks like we’ll be getting our first dose of wintry weather tomorrow, although the latest forecast I saw has dialed back on the snowfall totals in our area. Looks like another trademark central Maryland ice-fest. Whatever we get in the way of precipitation, it’s going to be turning colder. This morning, I was debating either running or biking, but then I remembered that there was a new cache in Catonsville, which swayed me to the latter.

We got a bunch of rain yesterday, and it dipped into the upper 20s overnight. That’s a great recipe for icy roads, so I decided I should ride with a studded front tire. It turned out to be the right move, and actually, I was kind of wishing I had studs on both wheels. I’ll swap the back wheel out before my next wintry ride. As usual, the iciest roads were in PVSP, but there was ice outside the park as well, as many roads hadn’t been salted (that will change tonight, I’m sure). This is my 10th winter riding the same set of Schwalbe Marathon Winter tires, and they are still going strong. I’m sure that one of the reasons they’ve lasted is that I have a second wheelset that I use in the winter, so I don’t have to mount and dismount the tires at the beginning and end of every season. It also makes it easy to switch back and forth between studded and regular tires during warm spells.

This morning, I covered around 23 miles. It went well, except I was reminded why I haven’t historically done much caching by bike in the cold. I was only off the bike for about 5 minutes to find the cache and sign the log, but that was enough to make me really chilly for about the next 15 minutes of the ride. I might have to get used to that, because there’s probably more winter bike caching in store for me this season.

Tomorrow, I’m hoping to get a run in, as well as a quick trip to the climbing gym, before the weather hits. I guess we’ll see if either happens.