National Automobile Museum

Took kindergeek to see Harrah's Collection after the event.

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To say KG loves cars is a serious understatement. So, I figured he'd love to see the great collection at the museum. After talking my Dad into joining us, we all headed up to Reno to go through the galleries. Here's some shots from today, though no where near the number that both b0neZ and I took while there.

KG in front of the 1907 Thomas Flyer











b0neZ and KG being driven crazy in 1926 Ford











Me and KG in front of the 1960 Flying Caduceus

KG admires the original 1966 Batmobile

Kickin' it in Carson

Having a great time celebrating the end of the year with all my caching friends!!

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Spent the morning just hanging out and I managed to successfully cook pancackes for kindergeek and myself. Then it was off to the event! Had a great turnout with a lot of people showing up. Not bad for a mid-holiday mid-day event.

Got to meet lots of old friends, and see some new faces, including one guy who had never gone caching before and had showed up to learn more about the sport. Hopefully, after talking with several of the folks there, he'll get into the sport. He was interested in using his ATV to explore some of the back hills of Nevada - and living up in Virginia Highlands, he's in the perfect place to do so.

We had a lot of fun today!

1600 or bust!

Today was the day.

Spotted a bunch of caches out in Fernley this morning, so after breakfast and kindergeek playing numberous rounds of Crash on the gamecube, we headed north to Reno and then out I-80 to Fernley. I'd originally intended to grab a few on the way back, but - forgetting winter's habit of geting dark quickly - we only got the ones in Fernley itself.

Had a great day, ending up with 12 caches by the time it got too dark and cold. But we did get to wheel around the hills north of town and play in the snow all over the place. Some very creative cachers out there, especially Nitro. The best cache was his Ninty-Five-Fifty cache, but you'll need to head out there to see what it was so good.

Came home in time for two notifies to pop up telling us that Clark Gable and Garmin Dude had been busy while we were away and they placed two new caches. The first was an easy one right outside the Craft Market (where, alas, my dad had been considering placing one) and the second turned out to have bad coords. Sent an email off to Gable and then we went and looked at Christmas lights at the Governor's Mansion.

Once we got home (again), settled down to dinner - I finally got the hang of cooking some delicious chicken - and played some video games while everyone logged. With the 13 I'd picked up today, I'm now sitting at 1602. Yeah!

After dinner, my email began lighting up. Monty is finally giving up his Nevada caches and I adopted 7 of them. Some are, eh, whatever - if they go missing, they go. But I did get Box Falls out of the deal which is the best cache location I've found. Also 4 or 5 Crazy Guys is in a decent location, just the puzzle portion of it is shot, so I need to rework that. So, out of the now 27 hides to my name 13 are mine, 3 are joint with Dad, 2 adopted from Seredipity, 6 adopted from Doc Rock, 2 adopted from boogsar, and 1 "stolen" from Mountain People. Nice.

All in all a great day - and I still have two more days off this week!

Caches we found today: Hillside, what a view, Hang Lowe., Amazuma, All About the numbers #3, On the way to Reno, Park Right Next To It!, Block Me, Ninety-Five-Fifty, We have it all, Desert Pilot Cache, Wadsworth SHM, Crafty One

Caches I adopted today are Used to be Wearing a Ghillie Suit, FST: Give Me Immortality Or Give Me Death, Belongaboog Kid Cache, The NEW C-Hill Cache, Box Falls, JUST WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED: Prescription Refill, and FST: 4 or 5 Crazy Guys

Merry Christmas! / Late caching post

And a happy new year to all my friends and family.

Today was the usual Christmas thing, though b0neZ and I went out to his folk's place in Silver Springs to be there for breakfast. All the presents had been opened already (as we got there about 11am), but we opened ours. I got a cool fuzzy bear blanket, a wolf picture frame, and two wolf plaques to hang on the wall.

I spent the time hanging out with b0neZ's family - watching kindergeek play his new GameCube game, and Ryan play around with his new tool set and race track. His Dad was putting together a video game cycle, where the peddling and handlebar position controlled the action on the screen. Great idea!

Then it was time for me to go to work. As I was driving into Dayton, there were two caches that have just been nagging me right off the road (literally this time, promise, GPS read 0.5 miles). So, I got sick enough of seeing them, and had enough time, that I drove up the hillside to go get them.

It's been a great day - and the week will only get better as I have three days off and then next week its off to Viva Las Vegas, Baby!!!

Today I found "Have a Cigar" (very creative hide) and Rattlesnake MT. Both had excellent coordinates.

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12/22/07

I can't believe I forgot to post our brief (1 hour) caching trip after kindergeek got here. We ran up to Reno as I'm still on my quest for 1600. Swung by south Reno to grab a small clump that I saw down there. Trouble was 3 of them were along a walking path and a one hour crunch time does not allow for that. But I did get to play some more with my BT-20 and KG got to play with the Legend Cx as I still need to check the accuracy on that thing.

We found GBES Poker 07 - Ace of Damonte, Big Red of Damonte, FTF Compulsion, and Hewey

Waiting on eternity

Hanging out in Brew Brothers as the flight is unexpectedly delayed.

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It's been a long day - first Nicole and I went up to Reno for a great lunch and conversation at TGI Friday's, then came back home. Then Dad and I went up to Reno to play with my new bluetooth GPS, a Delorme BT-20. Got the thing working last night and it is so cool! Now I have a trick if RoadRunner publishes a cache while we're out and about and we're caught without either GPS (its been known to happen). I can use it either with the included Street Atlas or with Google Maps.

Then came back home and grabbed b0neZ to head back up to Reno and hang out in the airport waiting for the one and only Kindergeek. As the pic above shows, the plane was delayed over in Oakland, so our two hour wait turned into three. But all is good and he is here - and now playing the GameCube that b0neZ got him (ARGH, there is a game console in my house!)

Stay turned as I'm only 17 away from the big 1600 - shall we see what transpires over the next few weeks?

Caches hit today: The Eye of Providence (I think b0neZ would enjoy this), Old KooKoo's Nest (finally - kept ignoring this), GBES POKER - 07 - Once Upon An Eagle Thrifty.. (the bigest LPC I've seen)

Another snow day

According to b0neZ, this started a half hour ago. Its really coming down. I'm glad I went caching yesterday.

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Thankfully the snow didn't last too long and the rain that followed along with the sun later on melted almost all of it down here in the valley floor. Unfortunately for us human's, though, it dropped below freezing again and the nice layer of water from the snow and rain became a nice layer of solid black ice. Even my hiking boots lacked the tread for some patches and I biffed it while outside of Cabella's.

We went in to look around and had fun admiring all the COOL toys! Dad had asked me what I wanted for Chirstmas and the only things I could come up with were City Navigator for the Garmin or a portable printer for the house. We looked at the City Navigator, but I wasn't fully set on getting that. So we drifted over to CompUSA (who are going out of business!!) and I spotted the bluetooth GPS section.

:drool: And a beautiful Pharos 600!! But, alas, $650 is steep.

I ended up walking out with a cool little Delorme BT-20 for the Pocket PC. Spent all night trying to get the thing to work and finally had to muck around with the registry and the comm settings to get it to link up. But I was able to run both the Street Atlas and Google Maps with the GPS connected. Score!

The next morning though I have had issues witht the com ports to link up to the net (I'm blogging now, so obviously I got those working again. Now just to make sure that the bluetooth still works!

Wish me luck!

Edit - solution was to make sure that I deleted the open Com settings for the GPS before attempting the open the Com setting for the modem. One extra step, but hey, I got it working!

Caching around Reno

Just finished a great day of caching around Reno with Mama Gravy and b0neZ

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Once b0neZ got off work, we headed to Reno to try to clear out the area around northwest McCarran.

Started in Rancho San Rafael, where we finally got the Rowley Grove Micro, and also picked up a 5th grade medicine cache on the other side of the park. b0neZ made the comment that he was surprised at how big the park really is. After that, we started playing connect the dots on the map, and grabbed Wooden Teeth (great camo!), Bring Bread (tons of feathered friends), Electric 5th grade cache, Montezuma's Revenge (thankfully not like the Tonopah one), HelloMoto (cute container), Hey...What's the SCORE (watched some little doggies out playing), Top O the Hill (awesome dog prints), the totally cool Jenny, and Extra Naughty (appropriate for this time of year).

Managed to get my count up to 1580. No, it's not about the numbers, but sometimes its just fun to play around with them and score some good personal milestones. 1600 is a nice round number.

Update on MooseMob has him out of the hospital and home (and "feeling fine" - though what drugs were prescribed, no one knows) with pins, screws, and braces. Joy.

Kindergeek arrives in two days, and then the two upcoming events are going to make sure that the end of 2007 is anything but plain and boring.

Poor poor Moose Mob!!

John (2-old) got off the phone with MooseMob, and he was told to post this to the NGA site.

Moose Mob broke his ankle Sunday on the way to a cache. Techatticup Bridge.

Thanks to Broncocacher, whtwolfden, and members of the caching/hiking group from Meetup.com that were there.

Pictures of the extrication are posted on the cache page for Roadhobbler.

He is having sugery today (now, in fact) to either put in pins, or braces for the ankle. No riding to caches for 2 weeks, and then only to easy parking lot types for a while.

He will be out of work for 4 - 6 weeks, and they will go from there.

Get well soon, my friend!!

Delorme Finishers Party

Party's getting into full swing as all of Reno joins in to celebrate the most recent completers of the greatest Challenge

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Rode up with Dad today to attend the 3rd Delorme Challenge Finishers party, congratulating Lil' Devil and Team Alamo who were there, and a far-away congrats to spudkicker, FlaXJer, and jahoadi and john.

Around 25-30 people showed up and overran the little party room at Straw Hat. Course, dummy me thought it was at Round Table, and only the inflata-Bull out front kept our attention enough to spot GeoSpyder's own Green Jeep. Good food, great company, what more can you ask for?

Let's see, Team Alamo, rock & crystal, fisherwoman and ???, me, b0neZ, and Dad, LostInReno, faith (no cookie that I saw), iamacaver, SKWERL, CharlieBaltimore, Topaz GeoGoats, LaughingGravy, Find Waldo, geospyder, FortuneFinders and Lil'Devil were there, plus a handful of kids running around. Great turnout! Moonchaser and abeyoni showed up at the end of the event but still got to say howdy to everyone.

Afterwards, about six of us walked while the rest drove over to spyder's new cache The Canidate which RoadBird had published about two hours before the event. That was a blast to see, in Lee's words, a gaggle of cachers surround this poor little hide. It didn't stand a chance.

It was a very cool day! I'm planning on trying to hit about 30 caches in Reno on Wednesday before work (wish me luck) and then I'm hosting an Event here in Carson on the 29th. Hopefully I'll bag 1600 by the end of the year. Hard to believe it was only in February that I broke 1000. Course there's no way I'm getting about 400 before February to gain that magical 1k in 1 year - though it'd be nice.

On another note, over in the NGA forums, a simple question was asked as to who would be the Geocacher for November - well, one thing led to another, and, well, here's the post from JoBoSoMo's Mom:

"I come back with one post and I'm being mentioned on other threads. Gosh but it makes me feel good. "Life Experience", "caching experience". I'm not sure that qualifies me but if it does I will say that it is official. Nevada Wolf is now the Official Geocacher of the Year for all of Nevada. If anyone out there doesn't agree let me know. It won't make any difference but you can let me know. I think all the votes that have been submitted verify that I have made the right call."

I'm going to have a seriously stupid smile on my face all the way through to the event down there - I think the lackey's are going to wonder about me. Tis all good, and I'm so thrilled that this simple little wolf has such great friends.

Awesome Day

White Elephant Christmas Party 2007

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Today was so cool! Started out this morning with a rush up to Reno to meet up with Mamma Gravy and Doodad to pour over some maps for the Rally course next year. Think we have a really good road planned out and I can't wait to see if it has the overlook that I believe it will. Oh, participants are going to love the 5th Rally!

Picked up b0neZ for a caching run around Reno with Gravy and managed to grab a handful of caches before it got to cold to get out of the truck. Finally managed to get the Shelf Life and What's MINE caches which I'd been staring at for a long while, but never could make it during business hours.

Dropped b0neZ off and returned to the White Elephant event hosted by GBES. Lots of cool presents with some wacky twists in them. A room full of friends and pizza all around. how can you not have a good time?

Today was also my first 12 of 12 day, so hop on over to that blog and share in the pictures I took today (though I spaced on getting one of the three of us with maps spread out all over the place.)

Moments of coolness

Jobs Peak, with cloud layer, totally cool sight.

Winter caching

Out and about on a snowy cold day of caching. Stopped off at Emerald City café for the travel bug hotel and for lunch.

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Today was a great day, despite it snowing last night. Met up with LostInReno, moonchaser, NVGreenGecko, and Razorback for a day of caching around Reno. They needed some areas cleaned up and I was just along for the ride.

Caching in the snow is definately a unique experience. Cold, windy, and icy all add to the adventure. We were breaking apart chunks of snow on trees, sticking hands down into frozen rock piles, and generally getting cold. Though both Gecko and Razorback had bought little hats that, in Gecko's words, made them look like "Heidi from the Swiss Alps" or the little boy in A Christmas Story. We were threatening to find a flag pole after that.

I managed to score 15 caches and 1 DNF. Not sure how much of a dent that put into the total needed in Reno, but hey, its a start.

Got home, waited for b0neZ to get off work, then the two of us went to go see Beowulf in 3-D. OMG!!! Totally worth the cost of admission for a mind-blowing experience. The technology for the 3D plus the skill level on the graphics was enough to completely suspend reality. Course, the little "Oh, look at the 3D effect" cheap effect moments were unneccessary, as the overall movie was just downright COOL! Highly recommended, especially if you gave up on movies for expense and lameness.

No plans yet on the next caching adventure. Two upcoming events are the Delorme Finishers Party and a huge Groundspeak event in Vegas. Fun times are going to be had!

Crumb muffins!!

Well, it finally decided to snow down here in the valley and stick. Figures, since I was hoping to do a run on the Rally course tomorrow on my one and only day off this week.

In the background is Bill's new Bronco. He wanted something that he could play off road in.

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I like WNC's webcam - it shows so many nice things:

Go Mobile

I set this up awhile back, but so much has passed, I need to see if its still possible.

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Alright, so I'm able to upload from the phone, awesome. Now I'll be able to post from the road and then return home to fill in the story. The break above will be the seperator point.

Above is b0neZ fussing with his new blog. You'll find the link to it on the side.

A quick summary of 5 months

Oh good lord! What happened?!

Caching wise: Since the hike to Snow Valley Peak, several things have happened on the caching side of my life. Quick highlights include:

• Solving some cool multis with Mamma Gravy
• An AWESOME hike to Mt Rose with randallh, abeyoni, and eph
• Enjoyable hike through Galena Park with Mamma Gravy, b0neZ and kindergeek
• Cool trip through Fernley with b0neZ, kindergeek, and geospyder
• Pre-trip to Lagomarsino with b0neZ and KG to check on my cache.
• A BUNCH of FTF's around Carson
• Trip down through Yerington and back through Gardnerville.
• The MEGA-HUGE Meet & Greet event in Tonopah
• A second trip along the 2007 Rally route
• A re-check on the Tonopah caches

Not only that, but I got roped (gladly) into helping with the 2008 Rally Route. There's been a lot of events past and future that I'm going to try to get to, another Delorme Finishers party, the GBES birthday party, and a major Vegas event shortly into the new year.

Life side: Too many changes have happened, some of which are why I haven't had time to cache, blog, or anything else for that matter. Biggest changes are I moved into my own place and I have someone new in my life. b0neZ showed up while I was looking at info about the Angora Fire. He's been by my side ever since and I've majorly gotten him into caching. He's seriously afflicted with the FTF bug and between our notifies we have run all over Northern Nevada at some very bizarre hours.

Hopefully I'll be able to start this up again. It may be short entries, but I'll try to post something from each trip using Mobile Blogger.

Stay tuned!