So after I arrive at the hotel, I go to get check-in. This is when I learned I was on the 12th floor. I asked the guy working the front desk how many floors there were at which time he told me; “12″. Knowing I drove down with a truck full of boxes and GCF gear, I was not happy. I had contemplated asking for a lower floor but decided I would just suck it up. He gave me my hotel key card and told me my room. I headed to the elevator with my personal bags and got inside.
There was a bell boy standing at the elevator when I was getting ready to get in and he let me have the evelvator first as he had a huge load he was moving for someone else. I got in and pushed #12. The elevator didn’t move, I pushed #12 again a couple times and nothing. The elevator doors opened and I smiled at the bell hop. The door shut again and I pushed button 12 again and it didn’t light up (again). I honestly thought the elevator was broke and was a bit worried I might get trapped inside. The elevator doors opened again and the same bell hop was there waiting for an open elevator. I smiled again and said I think the elevator is broke, room 12 won’t light up when I push it. He smiled and told me that I needed to use the key card to get to my room. He took the key, stuck it in the slot and pushed the 12 button and off I went
I got to the 12th floor and started looking for my room. I had #1204 and wouldn’t you know it, mine was the very last room. YOu have got to be kidding me, I”m never going to make the Meet and Greet before I get my stuff to the room. I elected to just go back down the to event and worry about unloading the truck later. So off to the meet and greet I went. I got down there and it was pretty well attended. I saw people I knew and met lots of people I had only seen on the Groundspeak forums. I got a chance to sit down and chat woith a couple people and that was nice.
I was also fortunate enough to get some help from some special cachers (about 9 of them) who helped me lug all my junk up to my room! Thanks so much my little helpers!
I also got a chance to set up my banner display a bit early. I built mine and Yime’s banner stands so we could hang our banners. Pabloturtle made it his priority to oversee my setup skills and give me a hard time. Redwing Dave and Yime helped me haul the wood stands in and it gave me a change to see these two in action. I can say they were feeling good, haha. Yime makes a great human parking lot arm. It’s one of those “you had to be there” moments. I got a good laugh out of it all.
Some of the things I liked about the Meet and Greet: The set up was nicely done and it was organized. Plenty of room for cachers to mingle and we didn’t have to worry about other groups being around. I wish I would have taken pictures but I honestly was just busy enjoying myself. I thought the setup of the actual event room was pretty decent and easy to navigate.
There was only 1 thing about Friday night that I wasn’t impressed with and that was learning that a couple of vendors/people were selling their coins openly. 2 of them did not vend at the event. I thought that was disrespectful to those of us who paid the full $200 to be a vendor. I know a few other vendors were not happy about this but no one ever wants to rock the boat by saying anything. This is not allowed and according to the rules for the event, they are suppose to be asked to leave. It was “overlooked” by the event staff because again no one wanted to cause problems. I could talk a bit more about this but what’s done is done and I’m sure I’ll receive a couple nast emails for even opening my mouth about this on my blog. However, I am just calling it like I see it and if you’re going to engage or allow certain behaviors than I suppose you should be open to accepting the heat that comes along with it.
Here is my latest pieced together geocaching video. I had to cut out a few sections because I was over the time limit for You Tube.
The round trip hike is about 3 miles if you go to Beaver Creek and back to Hauser Dam. It’s a nice workout but nothing too strenuous if you’re in relatively good shape. The hike goes along the Missouri River and lots of people head to this are for some blue ribbon trout fishing.
During the August month, Kokanee Salmon migrate to the Dam where they spawn, lay their eggs and die. The Osprey are heavy in the area during this time because it’s a feast, along with Bald Eagles. If you’re lucky you’ll catch a glimpse of Mountain Goats. Plenty of deer in the area and lots of bird watching and small critters scampering around.
I really enjoying hiking out here and many times I just hike along the river because I love the sounds and the scenery. Cache Across America is also located along this hike and is the toughest cache to get to because of all the boulder/rock climbing.
I know I enjoyed getting out and spending time with mother nature, I hope your weekend was pleasurable also.
Joe the cacher behind the “catsnfish” name emailed me one day asking if I would submit a story about geocoins to his online magazine. I told him I would and to give me a couple of weeks to put something together as I was busy and wouldn’t have a chance to get to it. However I think that was well over a month ago and I still haven’t wrote anything for him. I know, I know, I’m a terrible! The problem is, I have so little free time that sitting down to try write something for someone else seems daunting and one more thing to add to my “tsun: to do pile”.
I did ask Joe if he would like to be featured on my blog since it was geocaching related and I didn’t mind helping get the word out about his e-zine. So I wrote out some questions for him and said just answer and I’ll put a little article together on my blog. He made time and answered my questions, so I suppose I better write him an article for his e-zine too, huh?
So here is my article dedicated to THE ONLINE GEOCACHER e-zine with the help of Joe answering questions. I hope you’ll check his e-zine out and consider submitting your own articles and pictures to keep the e-zine interesting and hopefully inspiring you to continue your caching adventures!
The website address is http://onlinegeocacher.com/ it’s free to everyone and is a labor of love to the geocaching community. It was originally started by Ed Manley who is known in the geocaching community as The AlabamaRambler. He created the e-zine after someone in the forums had spoke of creating a print magazine about geocaching. Ed offered to start the e-zine as a not-for-profit venture as a gift to the geocaching community.
So I had asked Joe how he came to take over the magazine, to which he said that Ed had posted in the Groundspeak forums that he was looking for someone to take over because the submissions were slow in coming in and he didn’t want to make a “job” out of having to find people to write articles. (oh man do I feel bad now - guess I better write something this weekend). Joe said he saw the thread and discussed the issue with his wife because he felt the e-zine was a great way to relay his own stories and that he truly believed in the concept of the e-zine. He contacted Ed and made his “offer” which Ed accepted. So here Joe aka catsnfish is trying to offer the geocaching community a fun place to share stories, pictures and videos amongst our own kind You have to admit, geocachers are definitely a breed of their own.
According to Joe, anyone can submit a story and I highly suggest you contribute or share with the geocaching world your experiences. You have to admit it’s fun to read about people who are out there doing the same thing as you and having similar experiences. I love looking at pictures and fun videos. I did offer Joe to check in on my blog and take a story and pictures from my place if he felt it might be something worth posting to his e-zine.
The Online Geocacher e-zine discusses everything from caching, geocoins, benchmarks, to tip and tricks. If it’s caching related, they’ll use it. You don’t need to be fancy with words or an expert photographer. The idea is to share stories and geocaching items of interest. Joe mentioned they have submissions from other countries like Greece and the Netherlands. Again, there is no cost associated with the magazine for those of you who enjoy reading geocaching.
I asked Joe about his 2 year goal for the e-zine and he mentioned he would like to see the e-zine on Iphones, Blackberries, Cacher’s PC’s, and articles written in their native languages. My personal opinion is that this is very accomplishable with a little bit of help from all of us!
Some of the geocachers who are a part of the e-zine are; catsnfish, TheAlabamaRambler, Rockin Roddy, GATOULIS, and KC5NVJ and then the contributing public. So I say thumbs up to those who are giving their time to give us a free geocachers e-zine!
A little bit bout Joe himself; he found the geocaching obsession in 2007, I know he’s at least a part-time coiner cause he’s been a customer of mine so that makes him a great guy in my book, lol. He’s located in Omaha, Nebraska (are you a Husker fan Joe? I’ll just assume he is) and he enjoys giving back to the caching community through this e-zine.
Ok, that wraps up my discussion with Joe aka catsnfish. Now having written this piece and knowing how much time I put into blogging, keeping in touch on FB, doing this geocoin desiging/minting amongst other geocoin/caching related stuff in conjunction with my real life (haha), I know this kind of thing is very time consuming and is usually a labor of love which many times is underappreciated because of the lack of understanding of just how much time and money a person puts in behind the scenes. So my thoughts to you are; let’s make an effort to help Joe and his crew out by submitting some articles, pictures and even videos if you take them. Check in and read his e-zine when you have time and I promise to do my part! I like to see the “little” guy succeed and I know just how tough it can be to keep chugging along.
Thank you Joe for your time and effort and that goes for the others associated with the venture along with the contributions sent in by the public. Thanks for your time in answering some questions and for giving back to our global community!
Ok, the coins are loaded on the store and now we wait! The coins will say “Sold Out” until the sale starts at which time I will manually have to go into the admin panel and change everything to available. When the “Sold Out” disappears it means the coins have gone up for sale. It will probably take me a couple minutes to get through each coin since I am unable to make them available all at the same time.
If a version of the coin “sells out” than the “Sold Out” will appear again. I have no idea how this sale will go and I have limited each version to 3 of each. In the event of a sell out, I’ll put in an order for a remint on some different and maybe a couple of the same colors/metals. I probably won’t send out a new newsletter but I will keep this blog updated and I will post to the Groundspeak Forums once the coins are listed for sale. This should make it less competitive.
Please remember the 2nd minting will have the new texture underneath the translucent. This 1st minting will be the only one without the textured background.
Ok, keeping my fingers crossed that this sale will be successful on the store!
The Cache Hopper Geocoins will be available for purchase on July 16th, 2009 at 4:00 pm Montana time. Please remember there is a time clock on the Store.
Time conversions: Eastern time: 6:00 pm, Central 5:00 pm, Mountain 4:00 pm, Pacific 3:00 pm. If you are from outside of North America, please email me which country you live in and I will let you know what time/date the sale will be in your country.
As mentioned before, this is not being posted on the Groundspeak forums, I’m trying to keep it limited in notification to the blog/newsletter so we can attempt a successful sale on the new webstore.
In the event of a sell-out, please remember the design will be reminted but in some different color combinations for the next round. I will also bring some of these with me to GCF.
The price will be $7. 75 per coin. They are trackable with a unique icon. 2-1/4″ toe to toe and 1-1/4″ wide, 2mm thick. They have a small hole so you can use these for a number of purposes. I have made one a necklace pendant that I have been wearing. These have been priced to make them affordable and to stimulate coin releases into the wild!
Once the intial sale is over, I will open a thread on GC for those who need to discuss the coin or get information easily accessible to and from others. I’ll work on getting a newsletter out tonight.
Just a quick note on these; I have not decided on a sale date for these therefore no newsletter has gone out. I need to coordinate with my website host due to problems with the webstore in the past. They believe the issue has been resolved but would like to have the sale during the week when they are around incase there is an issue. I’m leaning towards having the sale some time this week and I’ll work on a newsletter shortly.
So for those of you who have asked or thought you missed the sale, you didn’t. I have been kinda busy and the coins can wait for a few more days Hope you enjoyed your weekend!
THE WINNER IS JULIA! CONGRATULATIONS…more contests to come!
Woohoo, the first contest I am running on my website/blog. While everyonce in a great while I might still run a cointest on the GC Forums, most of the time they are going to be right here where you, my much appreciated customers, can have easy access to them.
So let’s get on with it. The first CONTEST will be for your choice of Cache Hopper Geocoin (because that’s all I have at the moment :)). All you need to do is be the first person to email me at tsunrisebey@gmail.com . I will edit this post with the winner’s name as quickly as possible. I will hold 2 other contests tonight for the same prize.
Guess what little amphibians made it across the big pond? Yes, the sweet Cache Hoppers! I’m very happy with the way these turned out. It’s the toes that I find so adorable
There are 11 versions total on the first minting and what I mean by that is; I did 5 different colors but they are done in 2 to 3 metals for each color. So it gives you a chance to pick and choose your favorite! I’m going to post a picture of the 5 color versions so you get an idea of what they look like (front only for the moment).
They measure 2 -1/4″ long and 1-1/2″ at their widest point. They are only 2 mm thick so they are a bit light but I wasn’t going for heavy on these, this is more for a releasable coin into the wild although I have no doubt many will end up in your collections. It’s a very basic design with the exception of being shaped and utterly adorable. There is a small hole to put an attachment tag on your coin or if you’re like me, I’m going to put a jump ring on it and put it on a necklace!
For those of you who watch my blog, I’m going to give away 3 coins tonight but you have to check in here for the contest! You can pick out the Cache Hopper you would like! Stay Tuned for details.
The above is a small picture and video clip of the Ophir Cave geocache I accomplished today. Now in order to complete the whole experience, I’m going to tell you a little bit about the adventure and post a few more pics of the entire trip.
I spent my Friday evening doing research on some geocaches and what was suppose to be about a half hour time limit turned into a couple hours as usual. I get so engrossed in reading about these remote or neat caches that I just keep looking at the next one and then I’m trying to decide which cache I should do. This Ophir Cache has been on my ‘to do’ list for well over a year.
There are a couple of really neat things I loved about this cache before I even got there. The first thing is it was published in July 2001 making it one of the oldest caches as far as geocaching is concerned and it’s not archived! Second it involves a cave and third it’s way out in the middle of nowhere up in the mountains. This is a tsun cache if there ever was one.
The geocache is located northwest of Helena. My GPSr says 26 miles but that is very misleading. The drive from my place is a good 45 minutes. The easiest way to approach the cache is head west out of Helena on Hwy 12. When you get to a very small town called Avon, you’ll take a right onto Hwy 141 that goes to Lincoln, MT. After about 2 miles, you’ll turn right onto 3 Mile Rd which is gravel and pretty nice for the first couple of miles. As you start climing the mountains it gets a bit rocky and rutted in places and it is best if you have a high clearance vehicle or 4WD.
Now I’m not familiar with this area so I took a wrong turn on some dirt road and climbed higher into the mountains. Hey, my GPSr was pointing left and it said 1 mile to the cache, so I took the road. I drove about .30 miles and the gate was locked showing I had about .78 mile left to hike. Now I printed off the description and it said I should only have about .40 mile to hike. In my mind, I thought well this doesn’t seem right but I’ll hike it and see if I can find the trail. Well, I didn’t find the trail I was suppose to see and when my arrow started pointing straight up the mountain, I said no way, I must have missed something! Back to the truck after about a good half hour of hiking uphill already. I decided I’d get back on the main dirt road and head a little farther in to see what the GPSr would read.
I traveled about another .5 mile when I saw a road that said Cave Gulch, that makes sense right? I took that road and drove about a mile up to the locked gate and I saw the trail! On our hike up the side of this mountain, it was a moderate hike up a few switchbacks. There was a nice breeze and decent shade from the forest. The mountain flowers were in full bloom and Dakota and Tristin were loving life. I had to stop a few times to catch my breath, you figure at 6500 above sea level is enough to make everyone breath a little heavier.
I finally arrived at the cache and it wasn’t what I had envisioned in my mind at all. You know how you get an idea in your head of what something is going to be like? When I got here, I thought it would be the typical cave we all think of; kind of a u-shaped entrance into the side of a mountain but this was a smaller hole into the ground. This is probably more typical than I realized but hey, I like my little fantasies. So, now I’m at the cache and I pull out my cache description and it turns out I need to hike further up the hill over the cave to get the cache. I silently groan and climb the last 140 feet, sit down and grab the ammo can (Yeah an ammo can!). I read over some of the previous logs where most people mention being too chicken to go in. I root through the cache hoping for something good but alas people leave cheap junk. I’m going to admit I’m like a kid when I open an ammo can, I always hope to score something cool and 99% of the time I’m let down with stupid junk. I didn’t take anything but I did leave one of my Cowgirl coins in the cache and I left a nice log for the owner.
Back down the mountain I went and into the cave to explore. While the video gives you somewhat of an idea of what the cave is like, it doesn’t even come close to actually being there. Dakota was the first one in and if you look closely at the video when it first starts, you can see her kind of crawling in the beginning. The opening is kind small and it’s real slick and rocky and much more steep than it appears. I have a bad back so bending down and back up made me wince a bit in pain but once in, there was plenty of standing room. I had my camera in one hand, one headlamp on and another headlamp in my other hand because it was so dark once you got in a little ways. You can hear the water dropping in the background and other than that, it’s cool inside and very quiet. I admit as I climber further down I got a little creeped out. First off I was alone in a dark place, lol and secondly when I studied abroad in Belize, I went cave exploring with local experts. We went miles into these caves and some of them required swimming throughout the entire journey and going through very tight places. The Mayans believe ina creature called a ‘Dwende’ which is a small black spirit type creature and they supposedly hang out in the caves. If you are a bad person they can mess with you. Now I was privvy to a number of dwende stories and as you can imagine my mind kind of ran away with itself, lol.I didn’t see any dwendes in there or bats for that matter. Once I saw the first shaft than I decided I had went far enough and was more in fear of my dogs dropping into one of them and I wasn’t too keen on looking down one all by myself cause there may have been a dwende waiting to pull me down
The climb back up was tougher than I thought it would be. I had to stuff my camera in my shirts pocket, put my other headlamp on and climb back up to the entrance on all fours. It was much more slick going up and nothing to hold on to. I think part of the problem is the recent snow melt as there was a little bit still on the ground and the melt off was running down inside. Remember what I am about to say right now cause at the end of this story you’ll head something kind of funny but something more to consider; I was glad I left a message on my parents telephone letting them know an approximate area I was going to be exploring in.
After the exploring of the cave, if was a hike back to the truck and downhill the whole way! It was easier breathing but tougher on the toes pushing against the front of my hiking boots. Once to the truck, we took a water break and then were headed to the next cache about 2 1/2 miles away at the very top of the mountain. This drive was even rockier than the last and I got to thinking; I sure hope I don’t get a flat tire or my truck breaks down because I’m totally hosed if something happens.
As I got about a half mile from the cache and closing in on the top of the mountain, I could see snowdrifts in places. Yet everything was lush green and the meadow was full of various purple flowers in full bloom. I could see the snow-capped Garnet Mountain Range and I hadn’t seen a soul or another vehicle all day, it was heaven! At about .30 of a mile from this other cache, the road was blocked by a huge snowdrift that I knew I couldn’t get through, so I decided to save that cache for another day. The dogs and I got out and walked on the snow and I just took in the sights and smells of a beautiful summer day. I snapped a couple more pictures and decided that saving the cache for another day was a good choice because I could see the thunderstorms being made about the Garnet Mountains and I don’t like being on mountaintops where there’s lightning involved.
We made he long trek back to Helena, the dogs were completely out not long into the drive. Once I got back into town, I stopped to grab a bite to eat prior to heading home. While I was in the Arby’s drive-thru, my mom calls me. She say’s; “What was the message you left? I accidentally erased cause I thought it was an old message.” I think I thanked God right on the spot for getting me home safely cause no one would have any idea where to even start looking for me. She apologized and I told her I was going to start leaving other instructions when I head out because she scares me, lol.
So in the end it was a wonderful day and here are some additonal photos for you to look at. Enjoy and I hope you had a great weekend! ~ tsun
