We are just returning from San Francisco, a weekend celebration of
Sandra Fladger's 50th birthday. This was our second trip to the Bay
Area, and with each return, I am always a bit more impressed with the
culture of the area. This probably stems from the magazines I
subscribe to and regularly read: Make, Craft and Wired, all of which
are based out of the Bay Area. The area speaks to my inner technogeek,
and I am not ashamed to admit it.

While stuck in our hotel room during a fit of heavy rains, I picked up
my iPhone while lying in bed, opened up Google Maps and typed in craft
in the search bar and hit the Google button. I discovered an
interesting result, Craft Gym.

Craft Gym? What the heck was that, I asked myself as I sat up in bed.
I opened up the contact information and tapped on the included URL.
Safari opened up the website, and I navigated to the about page.

It compared itself to a health club, selling access to high-level
industrial equipment and training sessions for a variety of crafts.
One could purchase daily or monthly access passes. Very interesting,
indeed. It was something that struck a cord to my maker ethic. I
shared my find with Jill, and Jill liked the concept also.

I had discovered a similar service, but for industrial arts, called
TechShop. In fact, I was excited to also learn that a Portland-area
branch was scheduled to open this summer. I definitely will be trying
out the service.

During our visit, we also managed to visit the Exploratorium, which I
absolutely loved, and it warmed my heart to see McKenzie excited to
touch and play with the exhibits as much as I did. The Exploratorium
does such an excellent job in showing the aesthetic beauty of nature
and science and inspiring you to become more fully aware of that
beauty. The short afternoon we spent there wasn't nearly enough to
even scratch the surface.

We also managed to extend our caching streak to 156 straight days with
at least one geocaching find. As lame as this may sound, I hold a
great deal of pride in our streak, offering a small sense of
accomplishment and control in a world that is becoming increasingly
more daunting and chaotic. What can you say that you have done
consciously for 155 consecutive day? Outside our caching streak, I can
say nothing.

I guard and treasure our streak as I become more and more acutely
aware that, as with all streaks, it must one day end.

Sent from my iPhone

Kiet

While reading one of my many news feeds, I learned that today is geocaching is seven years old, and that reminded me that it's been awhile since my last post.

We have been busy. Work is picking up as Jill and I ready the Amphitheater for the upcoming season. Our first event is the WSU-Vancouver graduation on May 12th. My continuing education and our raising a sweet but rambunctious sixteen-month-old toddler doesn't leave us much time, and some things suffer. Before, in my youth, my greatest and most abundant resource was time; however, these last few months have opened my eyes to the fact that time has become a precious commodity.

School is going well. For the first time, I feel that I am learning something new, not just honing on my skills until there is nothing more to sharpen. The program isn't as technical as I had hoped. My courses, for now, seem to have more of a marketing and project management focus, which isn't bad for me. Jill has been broadcasting my school to others, and already she has strummed up two strong job possibilities for me. She is my marketing department.

The other thing I enjoy about school is the opportunity to step out of my shell and develop my collaboration skills. As I grow older, I have come to recognize my many faults. One of these has been my stubborn independence, which I once held up as a badge of great achievement. I have now come to realize just how much I have missed and hope to turn that around before it's too late.

These last few months I have been reflecting upon relevance and its importance. I want my life to be relevant: what I have learned, what I believe and what I have experienced, and the thing is, I am beginning to realize, that relevance is sharing.

Despite the fact that the news isn't updated as often as I would like, I do update other portions of this site on a pretty regular basis. Life Snippets has new photos, fed by Flickr, and timeline entries. Our Geocaching shows our latest finds and where our travel bugs have been. I know two little girls who may be interested in knowing where their former toys have traveled. Explore our website.

Kiet

Post from the field:

It's amazing what we missed on our daily routines, what we constantly drive by without knowing what, let alone why. Today, with Jill gone, McKenzie, Koda and I broke away from our routine, which was a stop at Starbucks for my coffee fix. Don't be fooled we still stopped for coffee, but after coffee, we walked up to the top of the 192nd Overlook to search for a geocache.

We found it and also found a beautiful view of the Columbia River and an active quarry. When I first arrived here in Washington State, the quarry was barely visible from Highway 14. A large ridge blocked the sight of the hole in the ground from the highway. However, slowly over the years, the ridge has gradually become shorter and shorter as the quarry has become larger and larger.

I'm sure in a few more years the quarry operation will cease and some new development will replace it, probably with the word quarry in it.

Kiet

Yesterday we were still nine caches away from our 150 cache goal. Our best caching day was seven caches in a single day. We had work ahead of us. I woke Jill up early.

"We're nine short," I whispered in her ear while she slept. "We need to get going."

Jill got up and ready without much fuss, and we were out of the house by 8:30 AM, not bad for a lingering wife and an one-year-old.

We headed east into the Columbia River Gorge. My plan was to head east to the Bridge of the Gods, cross over and then head into Portland, picking up our caches along the way.

By 9:20 AM, we found our first cache, Prindle Park. We picked up four more in the Gorge: Fort Cascades, Kickin' Bass and Watchin' Trains, Hidden Cove and Hollywood Dairy. One of our travel bugs, Mr. Incredible on Vacation, had recently spent some time at Hidden Cove. Then we had an errand to run in Beaverton.

While in Beaverton, We picked up the other four: Small Johnson, Big Johnson, Peek-a-boo and Monk Monk Cache. We made it, 150 caches for 2006.

Today in History:
01/01 J.D. Salinger born, 1919
01/01 Paul Revere born in Boston, 1735
01/01 AT&T officially divests its local Bell companies, 1984
01/01 The Epoch (Time 0 for UNIX systems, Midnight GMT, 1970)
01/01 Anniversary of the Triumph of the Revolution in Cuba
01/01 Castro expels Cuban President Batista, 1959
01/01 Churchill delivers his "Iron Curtain" speech, 1947
01/01 First Rose Bowl; Michigan 49 - Stanford 0, 1902
01/01 Beginning of the Year in Japan
01/01 Independence Day in Haiti and Sudan
01/01 Universal Fraternity Day in Mozambique
01/01 Country Joe McDonald is born in El Monte, California, 1942
01/01 New Year's Day

Kiet

Our Unite for Diabetes Travel Bug Dog Tag arrived in the mail yesterday. Groundspeak is giving away 20,000 free Unite for Diabetes Travel bugs to raise awareness for diabetes, the leading cause of blindness, kidney failure, heart attack, stroke and amputation.

Diabetes is a real danger for our family. Jill, along with her sister Jodi and her mother, is a sufferer of the disease and battles some of its devastating consequences. It is a constant worry on my mind. There is no cure, but it is a disease that can be managed with proper diet, exercise and diligence. Geocaching has provided us a form of exercise, both physical and mental. We cannot wait to release this travel bug out into the world to spread its message.

Thank you, Groundspeak, for raising awareness of this often overlooked disease.

Today in History:
12/21 Benjamin Disraeli born, 1804
12/21 Phileas Fogg completes his trip around the world in less than 80 days
12/21 Women gain the right to vote in South Australia, 1894
12/21 Women gain the right to hold political office in South Australia, 1894
12/21* Parashat Va-Yechi
12/21 Frank Zappa is born in Baltimore, 1940
12/21* Winter Solstice

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Kiet

Yesterday we released Tonka'n Across the World and In a Galaxy Far, Far Away travel bugs into the world, in caches in Washington Park. We found seven caches total on that day, an all-time best for us.

However, the day wasn't without its drama as we were in an auto accident on our way to Whole Foods in downtown Portland for dinner. The Volvo was hit in the driver's side passenger door, but luckily no one was hurt. McKenzie, already tired and hungry from the day's geocaching, was pretty rattled, and Jill, scared, had me call for an ambulance to have her checked out. In the end, McKenzie was fine; I, rattled.

My brother Thanh and his wife Brenda visited us for the weekend. This was Thanh's first visit to the Pacific Northwest, and Brenda had been stationed at Fort Lewis. Today, after brunch at Skamania Lodge, we went hiking on the Falls Creek Trail. A quick look at my Treo showed that there was a cache planted halfway to the trail to the Falls. This was their first geocaching adventure. Thanh found the cache, just off the trail underneath a fallen tree, and we released Traveling Woody into the world. We continued on hiking toward the Falls, always a bit farther and harder than you think it is, but always worth the effort.

After our hike, we made one more geocaching stop before heading home, stopping at Government Mineral Springs. We released Hey Der Hey into Mikey Likes It. Brenda and Thanh seemed to enjoy their hike and geocaching adventures. We look forward to their next visit.

Today in History:
10/08 First VisiCalc prototype, 1978
10/08 Great Chicago Fire, 1871
10/08 Battle of Agamos in Peru
10/08 Constitution Day in former USSR
10/08 Thanksgiving Day in Canada
10/08* Fiji Day

Kiet

Jill, McKenzie and I quietly celebrated our 100th cache find in Underwood Parkway in Wauwautosa, Wisconsin, and we commemorated the event with our own special travel bug. We created a travel bug out of an 1GB USB flash drive. On the flash drive I created a self-contained website, which consisted of a welcome page explaining the mission of the travel bug, a photo page accessing a Flickr group photo pool about this travel bug, a link to the Geocaching.com travel bug listing and a link to our website. I also created a variety of directories to act as depositories of digital snippets of travel information: maps, photos, video, audio or anything that can be digitalized.

When we arrived in Wisconsin on Wednesday, we had 89 finds. Our luggage didn't catch up with us until Thursday morning, delaying our geocaching and fishing. However, we made up for it. During our stay, we managed to cache from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River, adding 12 more finds to our total and including two more states to our geocaching adventures (Minnesota and Illinois).

Before arriving in Wisconsin, I ordered a Wntec-100 Bluetooth GPS Receiver and had it delivered to my dad's home. The GPS receiver is compatible with my Treo smartphone and Cachemate, a step further to being completely paperless. Now I can easily find caches stored in the Cachemate program closest to my location and then navigate to them with this new small GPS receiver and my phone. The GPS receiver is also compatible with my Mac, which works great with MacGPS Pro and allows for real-time tracking on a map.

Today in History:
10/03 Chung Yeung Festival in Hong Kong
10/03 Francisco Morazan's Birthday in Honduras
10/03 German Reunification Day
10/03 National Foundation Day in South Korea
10/03 U.N. Day in Barbados

Kiet

On our way home, after picking up McKenzie from daycare, we stopped at the Columbia riverfront to find a cache or two, LaPlaya (cache #83) and Ilchee, Moon Girl (cache #84).

Be sure to give it some time for the page to completely loaded. All our geocaching finds will load into the map, so you can zoom in and out and pan left, right, up and down. So check it our finds.



Today in History:
09/19 New Zealand women get the right to vote, 1893
09/19 Army Day in Chile
09/19 Simon & Garfunkel reunite to play New York's Central Park, 1981

Kiet

For my 35th birthday, two sweet little girls from Cedar Grove, Wisconsin - Miranda and Kelsey Lukens - sent me a bag of toys for geocaching trade items. I wanted to give them something in return for their kindness. I decided to make some of the toys into travel bugs so that the girls could vicariously travel around the world with each one.

A travel bug is a special trade item with its own unique tracking number. It travels from cache to cache on a mission as defined by its owner and be tracked online. If you take a travel bug from a cache, you log onto the Geocaching website where you found and where you placed it. You don't hold onto it for very long. The point is to keep it moving. From the Geocaching website, you can track the progress of its journey.

My hope is that at least some, if not all, of these bugs would eventually come home to Cedar Grove to roost in a nearby cache so that Miranda and Kelsey could find them themselves. Before they do that, I hope in their travels they help teach the girls about the world in which they live.

I created seven travel bugs, and they are:

• Hey Der Hey
  
• Tonka'n Across the World
  
• Worldwide Lilo
  
• How Much for that Puppy in the Cache?
  
• Traveling Woody
  
• In a Galaxy Far, Far Away
  
• Mr. Incredible on Vacation

In our upcoming geocaching adventures, we will be planting these travel bugs in various Pacific Northwest caches, watching their progress through the world and hoping that they will travel the world far and wide. We hope that you will join them on their journey and enjoy them as much as we will.

Today in History:
09/14 Benjamin Franklin is sent to France as an American minister, 1778
09/14 Frodo & Bilbo's birthday (LOTR)
09/14 Salem, Massachusetts, is founded, 1629
09/14 The US Selective Service Act establishes the first peacetime draft, 1940
09/14 Battle of San Jacinto in Nicaragua
09/14* Parashat Ha'azinu
09/14* Shabbat Shuvah
09/14 Francis Scott Key writes words to "Star Spangled Banner", 1814

Kiet

We have never been one to stay home for long. For some reason or another, we always found the outside world more interesting, and geocaching doesn't help keep us home.

Today I decided to head to OMSI, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Since we moved to the area, we have never been to OMSI. On previous caching expeditions, I had noticed a number of caches near OMSI. One of these was USS Blueback (GCQM6X). The USS Blueback was the US Navy's last non-nuclear fast attack submarine.

Koda was with us, so we couldn't visit OMSI today. However, it's on our list of places to return to.



There was another cache located near the OMSI, Look Down (GC6D93). This was a multiple leg virtual cache that began at the OSMI and took us to the Portland Classical Chinese Gardens and our final destination near Lincoln High School. This cache is an example of one of the many joys of geocaching, the wonderful feeling of utter surprise of what you find at the end of your search.

I was surprised to find out that Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, was born in Portland and had gone to high school at Lincoln High School. Our find was this tribute to him etched in the sidewalk. Now that was cool.

Then I noticed another cache just down the block. Jill waited in the car with McKenzie, and I went to find another virtual cache, Honoring Our Hometown Heroes (GC9D17). It was in a small park with a memorial for fallen Portland firefighters. I found the necessary information to receive credit for the find and emailed it to the cache owner.

Also be sure to visit our photo gallery of our geocaching adventures here.

Kiet

Since our latest geocaching entry, we have found several more cache, here and there, during our travels through life. I learned a little about Fisher's Landing and Portland's Union Station. We visited two parks in Washougal. McKenzie and I cached at a local restaurant and a soon-to-disappear vestige of woods in a booming housing market. I finally found an easy cache that has been eluding us for weeks and looked down from Portland's west hills at a bustling downtown.

However, our biggest caching achievement has been the locating of the Key to Camas, our 75th find. Back on July 22nd, we began our adventure. To find the Key to Camas, you had to find ten other caches hidden in parks throughout Camas first. Each of these caches held a number needed to complete the missing coordinates to the Key. In the process of gathering this information, we discovered some neat parks in our neighboring community of Camas. We discovered:

• Goot Park on July 22nd
  
• Oak Park on August 25th
  
• Louis Bloch Park on August 26th
  
• Forest Home Park on August 28th
  
• Fallen leaf Park on August 29th
  
• Prune Hill Park on August 31st
  
• Lacamas Park on September 4th
  
• Heritage Park on September 4th
  
• Grass Valley Park last night
  
• Dorothy Fox Park last night.

You'll find a map of our geocaching finds here and a photo gallery of our geocaching adventures here.

Kiet

We headed back to the Clackamas River to try and find my lost wedding ring. I had to have lost it at one of the places we stopped to look for a cache. The two that stuck out in our minds was Getting Him From Dads and Clackamas River Falls.

We also knew that finding it would be like finding the needle in the haystack. The best we could hope for was that we lucked out and found it. With luck being such a huge factor, we were in no hurry to search, so we stopped at some caches along the way. The first we found was The Hanger (GCMR83). This cache was found right next to a popular bar and grill in the small town of Carver, Oregon. We signed the log, took the paper crane and left a starfish.

Jill was insistent on finding the next cache. She complained that I was hogging the GPS, so I relinquished it over to her. The next cache was only a short distance away, TONY'S SUPERHERO CACHE (GCG753), located in a small riverside county park. McKenzie really enjoyed getting out of her car seat and exploring the world. She is such a happy baby. I immediately spotted the cache, and Jill knew I had found it before her.

Where is it? she asked.

I don't know, I answered.

You do, too, she shot back. She hated that I always found the cache before she did, and I couldn't help but have a smug smirk across my face when I did.

We signed the log, took Ranger Bud and Salmon and left a dinosaur.

We now reached the yesterday's cache locations, looking around. If the ring wasn't in an obvious location, then it was lost. We never found the ring.

After a futile attempt of looking for my wedding band at yesterday's cache stops, I pulled off to the side of the road for a new cache. Jill stayed in the car with McKenzie as she napped while Koda and I went to look for the cache Whos Oregon S.A.G.A.? (GCR150). After searching for about a half hour, we turned up nothing. The hint didn't provide any insight, and we left this cache as unfound.

After we fished the Oak Fork of the Clackmas River, there was one last cache I wanted to find. It had been on my hit list since I first discovered geocaching, Crater Lake Jr. (GC8E97).

The earth cracked and lifted, squeezing in the process the water from a layer of water-bearing gravel. This drove the water to the surface through the crack, forming an artesian spring. The force of the artesian spring on the soft siltstone above the layer of water-bearing gravel created Little Crater Lake.

One of the people who choose this place to hide his cache had read about this location in a school textbook and asked his parents to take him here. They never did. It is for this very reason why we geocache today, to see those interesting places in the world before we lost that opportunity.

Jill, Koda and McKenzie waited by the shores of the lake while I went to scope out its location. I had to follow a trail about 500 feet from the lake that linked up the Pacific Crest Trail, which follows the backbone of North America from Mexico to Canada. The path wasn't too difficult, and I went back for the others.

I sat down on a stump, took McKenzie and Koda from Jill and handed her the GPS. The cache is within 30 feet of here, I told her. You find it.

And Jill did find it without any smugness on my part. We signed the log, left Puff the Magic Dragonfly Travel Bug and took the green ladybug rock. It was a good day geocaching.

Today in History:
08/20 Leon Trotsky assassinated, 1940
08/20 Constitution Day in Hungary

Kiet

We hadn't been to the Clackamas River for quite some time, and not since we had taken up geocaching. There are several caches along Highway 224, the road that follows the river and offers some spectacular Pacific Northwest scenery. It is always interesting to see the different perspective a new hobby offers to the sense of a place.

However, before that, there was one cache near our home that we always drove past on our way from and to home, taunting me on the GPS, and I wanted to quickly find Another way to get around (GCRVN3). This one Jill went to find while I waited in the car with McKenzie. She easily found it and signed the log, and we moved on to the rest of our day.

However, I went a couple of exits beyond the normal one to the Clackamas River Recreation Area. Luckily, I was able to take advantage of Jill's dull sense of place, and she didn't suspect a thing. I had a surprise stop for Jill, the NW Natural Street of Dreams Tour of Homes. We spent the early part of the afternoon walking through six multimillion dollar homes, seeing new and interesting ideas of design and architecture.

We finally made it to the Clackamas River Recreation Area, and the first cache we stopped for was Getting Him From Dads (GCR14R), just off the side of Highway 224. The terrain rating for this cache was four on a scale of one to five with five being the most difficult terrain. However, I was up for the challenge and had my doubts that the rating was accurate. I looked at the hill. It looked steep, but doable. This was one cache, however, I would have to do alone.

Jill and McKenzie waited at the car as I ascended the hill. On my way up, I noticed the rock slide warning road sign at the base of the hill. The loose rock made the climb more difficult than I first anticipated, but I made my way up. Then I noticed that the GPS was pointing me all over the hillside; GPS reception was spotty. I searched wherever the GPS pointed and everywhere in between, scrambling up one side and down the other, but never found the cache. At one point I slide down the hillside about fifty feet, struggling to keep my feet under me and my butt off the rocks. At the end of my glissade, covered with dirt, dust and sweat, I decided to call it quits on my search for this cache.

The next cache down the road was Clackamas River Falls (GC7454). My brother-in-law Paul and I had fished just upstream of the falls when he and Jill's sister Jodi visited us a couple of years ago. It was just over the Carter bridge. On the other side of the bridge is my favorite spot to fish the Clackamas. While Jill tended to McKenzie's needs, I walked to the falls to search for the cache.

I found the cache's hiding spot, but left it. I wanted Jill and McKenzie to share in the scenic beauty and the find and walked back to the car for them. Jill reluctantly allowed me, covered by dust and dirt, to carry McKenzie as we negotiated a field of boulders to get to the cache. I sat Jill and McKenzie on the very boulder the cache was stashed under and then told them to look under their seat. They found the small ammo box. We took the glow-in-the dark alien and left a dinosaur.

While Jill fed McKenzie, I went down to the river's side and washed off the dirt from my climb up the hill, where I looked for Getting Him From Dads.

Farther down the road was Cave of Insanity (GCRR8X). Jill waited in the car with McKenzie, and I went off to find the cache. As the name of the cache suggests, the cache was located just inside a cave. I climbed up into the tight space, farther than the cache description said I would have to, and didn't find the 35mm film canister. Dusk was settling in, and it was getting too dark to see well.

I went back to the car for my geocaching pack, more specifically my headlamp. The extra light helped in my search, and I found the micro cache, log only. I signed the log, and we moved onto the next cache. One more cache, then we'll head home, I promised Jill.

The next cache was So Many Trees (GCR14W). It was located at a nice overlook of the river. I found the cache at the base of a tree, buried beneath a pile of rocks and brought it back to the car. We signed the log, took the army man and left a dinosaur, and I returned the cache back to its hiding spot.

Before we left, we picked up some of the litter near where we parked, practicing cache in, trash out. There was a great deal of trash, and Jill and I just didn't understand how some people couldn't look upon the beauty of this place and not be compelled to keep it clean.

Jill was ready for home, but the GPS read that there was another cache just a short distance away. One last cache, I promised again, then we'll head home.

Located at the top of a rockslide embankment, the next cache, Place of Disbelief (GCR14Y), offered another spectacular view of the Clackamas River. Initially we had difficulty in finding it in the waning light. Jill and McKenzie went back to the car; it was too dangerous to be on the side of the road in the dark. I must have walked over it three or four times before I finally found it. I signed the log, took the army man and left a ladybug.

On the way home, INXS' Not Enough Time was playing on the iPod, and I couldn't help but chuckle. Jill asked what I was chuckling about. I told her the irony of life. In high school, when INXS was the big name of the day, my friends would rage about their music and attend the band's concerts. They even went to the extent of waiting outside the hotel they were staying at after one of their concerts to get autographs. At that moment in my life, I didn't take much interest in such things. Where our career paths take us . . .

When we got home, McKenzie and I showered. She had her last bottle and went to bed. I sat down on the couch with my dinner when Jill asked me, "Where is your wedding ring?"

I looked down at my finger; it was missing.

Today in History:
08/19 Air Force cargo plane snares payload from Discoverer 14 spy satellite,
08/19 Gail Borden patents condensed milk, 1856
08/19 Independence Day in Afghanistan

Kiet

Jill, McKenzie and I were out running errands, and on our way home, we made a slight detour to the Portland Internation Airport to find PDX Airport Travel Bug Embassy (GCKQXQ). We had to see Hula Helen off, hoping to catch a plane ride to Hawaii.

We found it easily. Sitting on the top of the ammo box was a fake rat. At the same moment we found the cache, something was scurrying in the nearby bushes, and I suddenly pulled out the fake rat and jumped back in horror and managed to scare the crap out of Jill. I had a good laugh at her expense.

We dropped off Hula Helen and picked up Padong Hilltribe of Thailland Travel Bug, making its way to either Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon. We think we can help it get closer to the Grand Canyon.
;-)

Today in History:
08/15 Gandhi's movement obtains independence for Pakistan and India, 1947
08/15 Hurricane hits Plymouth Plantation, 1635
08/15 Founding of Ascuncion in Paraguay
08/15 Independence Day in India
08/15 Liberation Day in South Korea
08/15 National Day in Congo
08/15 Santa Maria in Malta
08/15 Beatles replace drummer Pete Best with Richard Starkey
08/15 The Beatles play Shea Stadium in New York, 1965
08/15 Woodstock Festival, Max Yasgur's farm, 1969

Kiet

Last night, I was doing some research on paperless geocaching, storing the necessary cache information on your mobile computer or smartphone. I currently use the Mobipocket ebook of cache descriptions that are distributed with your personal Groundspeak's Pocket Queries; however, there are text encoding issues with these ebooks. I was unable to complete one cache while vacationing on the Oregon Coast due to this issue; the minus symbol was garbled into several different characters. During my research, I came across CacheMate for Palm OS and MacCMConvert.

CacheMate takes advantage of the Palm OS database capabilites. You no longer have just an electronic read-only book version of the cache descriptions. You can now organize the caches in a variety of ways and also record the status of your finds with the each record. I was also surprised to learn how much information the geocaching.com .loc or .gpx files contained. All the pertinent information about the cache, including cache description, visitor logs, waypoint name, cache owner, travel bug inventory and much more, is stored inside these files. I originally thought that just the GPS coordinates and waypoint name were stored in these files, and this is where MacCMConvert comes in to unleash this information into your Palm.

CM stands for CacheMate. CMConvert converts either .loc or .gpx file types into CacheMate files. The Mac in front of CMConvert, of course, means that this particular version of the program runs on a Macintosh. A Windows version also exists. You run your .loc or .gpx file through the convertor and then download the resulting file into your Palm. Now you have all the necessary information about your caches in your Palm.

However, one of the downsides of this method is that it doesn't transfer images in the cache description to your Palm, which are sometimes critical pieces of information, but all in all, it is an acceptable solution.

Jill, McKenzie and I went out for brunch, deciding to try someplace different. On the refrigerator whiteboard, Jill had written out five or six different restaurants reported to have an excellent Sunday morning brunch. We chose Milo's City Cafe. It was a wait, but most good restaurants are. Also one should never be in a hurry for Sunday morning brunch. If you go, we highly recommend the peanut butter and jelly stuffed French toast.

After breakfast, we walked through the Pearl District, doing some shopping at some of our favorite stores: Hanna Anderson, Sur La Table and Powell's Books. Before heading home, I wanted to find a cache or two.

We drove around a bit, trying to decide where to go geocaching. I was thinking that we would geocache along the I-84 corridor out to Cascade Locks, take the Bridge of the Gods across the Columbia River and head home via Highway 14. We eventually found ourselves out in Gresham and, totally unplanned, pulled into Kane Road Park. In this small park were two caches. The first was Fantastic Fob Exchange III (GCMKH7). Jill waited in the car with sleeping McKenzie, and I went out to grab the cache. I found it and brought it back to the car. We took the 101 Dalmatians key ring and left a hammerhead shark.

After I re-hid the Fantastic Fob Exchange III cache, I went for another short jaunt into the woods on the opposite side of the park and grabbed the second cache, Kane Cache II (GCG6CB). We left an anklysaurus and took the tank.

We headed to Oxbow Regional Park; however, it was $4 to enter, and it was too late in the day to justify the expense. If I had to pay, I wanted to spend more than a hour or two at the park. We skipped the park. By this time, McKenzie was hungry and wasn't shy about letting us know. It was time to head home and get her ready for the end of her day. Besides, there is always tomorrow.

Today in History:
08/13 Annie Oakley born, 1860
08/13 Fidel Castro born, 1927
08/13 Berlin wall erected, 1961
08/13 Li'l Abner debut, 1934
08/13 Proclamation of Independence in Central African Republic
08/13 Women's Day in Tunisia
08/13 Dan Fogelberg is born in Peoria, Illinois, 1951

Kiet

Jill wanted McKenzie and me out of her hair for the day. She had things she needed to get done, and we would only get in her way. She loaded us into the car and shooed us off. McKenzie and I decided to go geocaching. We had the Nemo Travel Bug that we had to help get home to Atlanta, and we decided that the Original Stash Tribute Plaque (GCGV0P) was the cache we were going to place it in.

On May 3, 2003, the sport of geocaching began here when Dave Ulmer hid the original 5-gallon bucket cache and posted the coordinates on the Internet, and McKenzie and I wanted to pay our respects. We dropped off Nemo and picked up the Powder Travel Bug, making its way back to Utah.

A family of four - father, mother and two kids - pulled up behind us. They were also geocaching, and we struck up a conversation. The father complimented me on my choice of GPS units; we both had the Garmin GPSMap 60CSx. They had been geocaching for about a year and a half and had been caching in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Florida. I told them that we had only been doing it for four months and that I wanted an activity for my daughter and me to do together.

Located right next to the Original Stash Tribute Plaque was Un-Original Stash (GC92). McKenzie and I snaked our way uphill and under and through low hanging branches. She giggled as we made our way through, and that made my heart glad. We found the cache. We left a humpback whale and took Little Greenie with Red Wheels Travel Bug.

McKenzie and I quickly gathered our things to get out of the way as that family were hot on our heels. I had almost forgot our bag of trade items when the father stopped me and asked me if it was mine. I answered yes and thanked him, and we were off to the next cache.

McKenzie and I moved onto COYOTE'S DEN (GCMBAT). I reached for my Treo 700p to read the cache description and discovered it was not in its holster. I had received a phone call at the last cache but didn't remember what I did with my phone after the call. I had been driving for thirty minutes before reaching this cache. I jumped back into the car and sped back to the last cache. I hoped that I would find my phone lying on the ground or that the family behind us had picked it up and was trying to get a hold of me.

The family was gone, and I scrambled back to the cache. No phone. I opened the ammo box, hoping for a note from the family stating that they had found my phone and had left their contact information. No luck. I jotted down their caching alias, Mountain Girl and Belted Kingfisher. Phoneless and not knowing what else to do, I drove back home, hoping that the family had called Jill and told her that they had my phone.

When I finally got home, I asked Jill if anyone had called with my phone. No. I left McKenzie with Jill, grabbed her mobile phone and drove back to the cache site. Maybe I had dropped it in the brush.

Just as I was about to reach the site, I had weak phone reception. I called Jill and told her to ring my phone. There laying in the bushes was my ringing phone. Crisis diverted.

Since I was out here anyways, I decided to return to and look for GCMBAT. I parked off to the side of the road and walked into where the cache was suppose to be. I looked and looked. Nothing. Finally, though there was a weak signal, I looked up the cache description off the web with my phone. Due to recent logging activity in the area, the cache had been deactivated and pulled for safety reasons. Not this cache, this time.

The next cache on my way home was Led Zeppelin (GCW5W4). In the middle of July, Jill, McKenzie and I attended a wedding at Abernathy Center, and I thought I would reach the cache this way. However, there was a private property warning sign just outside the entrance, and I knew that this wasn't the way to access the cache. I went around the block and found the small green space Metro, metropolitan Portland's government agency responsible for parks and green spaces, created the space as part of a stream habitat enhancement effort. l found the cache. Unfortunately I didn't have an appropriately-themed trade item, so I didn't take or leave anything, just signed the log book.

The last cache of the day was I hate the Railroad: Chandler Pond Troll (GC8CE2), just down the road from the last cache. I easily found this one. I left "Cerro del Aire (NM)" Green Jeep Travel Bug and took Hula Helen Travel Bug. I looked up the Hula Helen Travel Bug on my phone and read that it been released in 2004 and had gone missing. I had rediscovered it. Hula Helen was making her way back to Hawaii. Accepting responsibility for her welfare, I would help to try and get her back home.

Today in History:
08/12 Thomas Mann's Death, 1955
08/12 First test flight of Space Shuttle "Enterprise" from 747, 1977
08/12 Last US ground troops out of Vietnam, 1972
08/12 Queen's Birthday in Thailand

Kiet

We, with the McLaughlins, decided to take a road trip down to Tillamook and left the house at about noon. I figured we could stop and do some geocaching along the way. According to my GPS, several caches dotted the length of US 101 between Seaside and Tillamook. The first we stopped at was the Haystack Rock Earthcache (GCMRFZ). Haystack Rock is the world's third largest freestanding monolith. Haystack Rock and other nearby basalt monoliths that rise up from the ocean are the volcanic remnants of the expansion of our western shoreline millions of years ago and will soon, in geological time, disappear as the ocean waves reduce them to rumble. We stopped for a brief moment and marveled at their beauty in this wink of geological time.

We then pulled into Hug Point State Park, and John, Austin and I went looking for the Sons At The Beach (GC609D). For those of you who have been following along, you will recall that it was at Hug Point State Park that McKenzie first looked upon that Pacific Ocean. Though our stay was only briefly longer, we did manage to explore the beach a little farther. What a beautiful beach. Though there were people, it wasn't as overly crowded as the beaches at Seaside or Cannon Beach.

The cache was located at the top of a cliff and required a good scramble up slippery sandstone. I tried getting Koda to follow, but he would have nothing to with this climb. He even almost pulled me off the cliff a couple times as I tried to coax him up. Eventually I had to leave him with Jackie and Chantel on the beach while John, Austin and I continued our ascent.

We reached the top, and the GPS showed that we were close. Now we had to look. In the stump, I noticed an unnatural arrangement of debris inside the stump. I had found it, but didn't reveal it yet. I called Austin over and asked him what was unusual about this pile of debris in the stump. He didn't answer, just immediately pushed aside the brush and revealed an ammo box. So much for a lesson, I thought. I wanted to explain to Austin how to easily identify a hidden cache by paying attention to his surrounding, that eventually you develop an eye for that which seems out of place and unnatural. However, what can you expect from a seven-year-old boy? Perhaps, next time I can try again.

I signed the log, and we took the yellow car and left a trout.

We stopped at the Art Fair in Nehalem. While the others walked through the booths, Austin and I went to look for Nehalem Dock (GC897A). However, after reading the cache description, I learned that you needed access to a watercraft to find this cache, and we had to give up.

Before leaving Nehalem, I stopped into one of the stores, Foxgloves, which had a section dedicated to speciality toys, and bought McKenzie an elephant marionette.

When we finally reached Tillamook, we stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. However, we had to turn around right away and head back to Seaside. The outlet stores closed at 7:00 PM, and Kayla and Chantel just had to go shopping.

While the others went to the outlet stores in Seaside, I continued geocaching alone, just north of our house, in Fort Stevens State Park. I parked at the beach access and decided to walk to the caches. When geocaching, I am enjoying more and more walking rather than just driving up to and grabbing the caches. I often look for caches in close proximity and plan a walk or bike ride to them.

Near where I parked was Tsunami Warning (GCG9X5). However, the last two seekers had no luck, and there was a warning from the cache owner that he might have to relocate the cache due to damage to the forest floor moss caused by those looking for the cache. I looked but found nothing. I decided to walk away, look for another cache and come back afresh afterwards.

A little more than a mile away was Battery Russell (GCWTDG), and I walked along the nice paved trail. I now regretted not bringing along my bike. I also had to exercise some discipline as the GPS receiver showed me at about 350 feet from the cache; however, I was on the backside of the cache, and a direct approach would have required some serious bushwhacking.

After another half mile of walking, I came to Battery Russell, a former and now historic military artillery battery installation. Its significance was that on the night of June 21, 1942, a Japanese submarine fired upon the installation, the first time since the War of 1812 that the continental United States had been attacked by a foreign power. I took the Jeep Travel Bug and left a ladybug.

I hiked the back trail back to Tsunami Warning (GCG9X5) to retry my search. Still, despite a fresh approach, I was unable to find it.

It was becoming late, so I drove to the next cache, The Armand Hammond Cache Version II (GCRG3V). The first cache had been muggled so often that the owner finally gave up; however, he regrouped, resurrected the cache and did a splendid job hiding it. Initially I had a hard time finding it and was about to give up when I stumbled across it.

I was filling out the log when a vehicle pulled up next to mine, and out came three people, walking towards my location, three fellow geocachers. They were vacationers from Utah. We talked a bit, and I finished my log entry and exchange and said good-bye and good luck. I left a ladybug and took the Kodak car flashlight.

The last cache of the day was USCG (MLB) Triumph (GCX1BT). It was located in a park just on the waterfront of the mouth of the Columbia River with a spectacular view. The cache was a tribute to the lost USCG motor lifeboat Triumph and its 5-man crew while assisting the fishing vessel Mermaid on January 12, 1961. This cache was a multi-cache and had to use information in the tribute to find the final coordinates of the actual cache.

Just as I was searching for the cache, Jill called, wondering when I would be back and if I could pick up a few things from the grocery store on the way home. I knew that the day's geocaching was over, and besides that, I really did begin missing Jill, McKenzie and Koda and had been already debating whether or not to make this the last cache of the day before Jill's call. Jill's phone call decided for me. I found the cleverly disguised cache container, took the seal and left a trout. And, before leaving for home, I watched for a brief moment a container ship leave the Columbia and head out to sea.

Kiet

Our neighbors, John and Jackie, Chantel's parents, along with their son Austin, joined us last night, and this morning, John and Austin joined Jill, Kayla, McKenzie, Koda and me for a walk down to The Sunset Beach Cache (GCPQBN) to complete the cache. This was John and Austin's first experience with geocaching, and Jill taught Austin the basics of the game. Austin held the GPS unit and lead the expedition to the treasure.

He found it with no problems, and we exchanged items. We took a sand dollar (for our collection) and an Oregon patch (for Austin) and left the travel bug we retrieved from Ape Cave and a ladybug. We figured the travel bug would enjoy a brief vacation at the Pacific Ocean before moving onto the next cache. Austin seemed really excited about geocaching and asked when we could look for the next one.

We decided to visit Cannon Beach for the afternoon. Yes, it took us all morning to get motivated and finally leave the house. When we arrived in Cannon Beach, Austin and I went to look for Whale of a Cache (GC4C32) while the others waited for John to find a parking space. A word to those who wish to visit Cannon Beach, it is a VERY, VERY busy place on a nice summer weekend. John had a horrible time finding a parking space. We lucked out and caught someone leaving just as we pulled into town.

I tried to teach Austin not to solely rely upon the GPS receiver to find the cache. I explained to him that the receiver will get you close. After that, you have to find it the hard way, look. We eventually found it. We took the soccer ball (for Austin) and the clapper (for our collection) and left a half sand dollar (from Austin) and a trout (from us). Then we returned to the group and walked through the shops of Cannon Beach.

Before returning back to the house, we searched for one last cache, Cannon Beach Elk Forest (GCJ09K), south of the main drag of the town. Austin once again took the lead on this hunt and lead us down a trail where he easily found the cache. We left a ladybug and took the smiley man.

We split up with the McLaughlins. Before leaving Cannon Beach, there was one last cache right off US 101 we wanted to find, Cannons Don't Thunder (GCK2VN). It was a multi-cache; however some of the cache description was scrambled on my Treo 700p. We couldn't figure out the next leg of the cache and had to save this one for another day.

We went to Seaside, because I needed internet access to upload pictures onto Flickr and hopefully update the website with news. Unfortunately, Jill realized that the McLaughlins didn't have a set of keys to the house, and I had to leave before being able to finish publishing. Not having internet access at the house is a drag.

Kiet

This morning I decided to take Koda and McKenzie for a walk, and I had to try out my new Garmin GPSmap 60 CSx. Before leaving home, I created a pocket query of 500 caches around the Seaside area and downloaded them into my unit. A little more than a half mile south of where we were staying was The Sunset Beach Cache (GCG8GN). I knew the cache was located on or near the beach; however, how to get there was another matter. The house we were staying at was located at least the third row of houses back from the oceanfront. I had almost given up and was one my way back from the frontage road we had turned onto when I stumbled across a beach access trail.

Of course, when I left the house, I left without my geocaching pack a decision I knew I would later regret. I found the cache in the grass and wrote a preliminary log entry. We would return later to trade items and complete the log.

We, Jill, Kayla, Chantel, McKenzie and I, finally got ourselves motivated and left the house at about noon and headed to Seaside for breakfast or lunch, depending what one's fancy were at the moment. After our meal, while Kayla and Chantel went shopping, Jill, McKenzie and I went caching and found Be Our Guest Travel Bug Bed & Breakfast (GCWRAC), a cache designed to be a drop-off and pick-up for travel bugs. We didn't have any travel bugs with us at the time, but we did pick up a Nemo travel bug, making its way back home to Atlanta, Georgia. We will give it an 80 mile start on its eastbound journey.

The next cache during our travels was Make'N Salt (GCH53Y), a multi-cache. The first leg of the cache began at the site of Lewis and Clark's saltworks during their stay on the Pacific Coast. The tricky part of the multi-cache has always been that it requires some bit of simple arithmetic of local clues. I, of course, miscalculated and entered a wrong coordinate into the GPS unit before having Jill check my work. While it still lead us to the correct parking area, it veered too far away from the Tillamook Head Trail. Jill checked my math, found my error and got us back on track.

We found the general spot, but the tree cover was thick and caused spotty GPS reception. Kayla, Chantel, Jill and I spread out and looked for the cache in several potential hiding spots. Eventually Chantel was the one who found the ammo box. We logged our find, took the Winnie-the-Pooh Bear keychain and left a trout.

Even before reaching the second leg of Make'N Salt cache, we stopped and found KOTG (GC5D69) on the way. We pulled off the road and parked along the oceanfront. The GPS pointed us towards a nearby grave site, and I immediately recognized how the cache derived its name. The grave site was marked, Known Only To God.

The cache description gave a brief historical background of the grave site. Jill found the micro cache near the head of the grave, a small bottle filled with scraps of logs of other cachers' visits. Also attached to the side of the bottle was a snail, about the size of a grape and almost dried out. I told Kayla to run him down to the ocean and revive it, good karma for when she would come back as a snail. She did, and the snail sprang back to life in the ocean water. We left our mark and moved on to finish our original mission.

After completing Make'N Salt, we discovered one final cache before returning back to the house, Honk Honk Rattle Rattle Crash Beep Beep (GCPQBN). I went in the back way of the cache, requiring some bushwhacking. Jill had originally planned to go with me but changed her mind after surveying the terrain. I found the cache and realized my error. I brought the cache back to the car. We took the Gizmo Duck and geocaching sticker and left a winged space alien and a ladybug. We took two items, left two items.

When we returned the cache back to its hiding spot, Jill and I grabbed a bag to pick up a piece of trash or two. One of the principles that geocaching espouses is cache in, trash out. Though it is a good principle, it is also one, for some reason or another, that is hard to remember. However, the amount of trash along the trail quickly reminded us of that principle. You don't have to pick up everything, but at least pick up something, and we did.

Also, along the trail was a white cross marker with the name Max painted in black. Probably someone's pet dog, I assumed. Jill thought it was something more macabre, an actual hiker. Included with the name on the cross were brief written farewells. The one that really set Jill off was, "I will always remember our drunken hikes together." I told her, and the girls after we came back to the car and reported our finding of the grave site, that we could always exhume the body to be sure. They didn't appreciate my thirst for knowledge.

After stopping at the grocery store, we finally made it back to the house. While Jill made dinner, Chantel went for a run and Kayla played with McKenzie, I went for a bike ride to find 10 (GCQ4PY) about 2.25 miles north of the house. The cache lead me to an observation deck that overlooked Sunset Beach and the Pacific Ocean, the end of the Fort-to-Sea Trail. What a beautiful view. I logged my visit, took the triceratops dinosaur and left a space shuttle.

After I had just finished swapping items and logged my find and was about to take a photo of myself with my discovery with the Pacific Ocean as my background, an egregious eight-year-old boy and his adult companion had biked up to the observation deck. I soon learned that the boy's name was Sean and his adult friend's, Mark. He asked me if I worked here. I told him that I did not. Then he asked me, in a polite, yet curiously pushy manner, what I was doing. I told him that I was geocaching.

"What's that?" he asked.

"A game," I explained and further explained it to him: how you go to the Internet and find out where the caches are, how you use a GPS to find the cache in the field and how you trade items and log your visit with the cache itself and then on the Internet. His friend Mark had heard of geocaching, and his father played it regularly. Our meeting seemed to rekindle an interest in the game for him. I showed Sean my GPS and explained briefly how it worked. I then showed him where I had re-hid the cache and said good-bye.

I never did get back to GCG8GN and will have to return to complete it tomorrow. I had another 6-cache day.

Kiet

To my surprise, we were able to get out of the house before 9:00 AM. Today we were on a geocaching mission with a bit of fishing adventure mixed in. We were heading to the Lower Falls on the upper Lewis River, taking Highway 14 through the Columbia River Gorge and up through the Wind River Valley. We stopped at Beacon Rock and hiked to the top. McKenzie was strapped to my stomach in her Baby Bjorn. She prefers looking out at the world rather than having her face smashed into her father's sweaty chest.

This was the first geocache of the day, an Earthcache (GCPFQX).

An Earthcache is an educational form of a virtual cache. The reward for these caches is learning more about the planet on which we live - its landscapes, its geology or the minerals and fossils that are found there. Many Earthcaches are in National Parks. Some are multi-cache in form, and some have a physical log book located in or close to a Visitor Center. Earthcaches are developed in association with the Geological Society of America. For more information go to http://www.geosociety.org/earthcache/.

A word of warning about geocaching in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, the GPS reception can be spotty and notoriously inaccurate. Perhaps, it could be my GPS receivers. In Gifford Pinchot, when we were able to find a cache, our GPS receiver would show us as far away as 80 feet from the cache waypoint. Normally, our receiver would show us with 10 feet of a cache.

On the way to Lower Falls on the Lewis River, we stopped and tried looking for the two caches: GC7D86 and GC7D89. No luck. I went into the woods to look for GC7D86. I found the landmarks outlined in the cache description and hint, but I still couldn't find it. Then we stopped at McClellan Viewpoint to look for GC7D89. Even with Kayla's help, we weren't able to find the cache and moved onto the Lewis River.

After fishing below the Lower Falls, we watched swimmers jump from the top of the falls into the deep pools below and then returned to the truck. Before heading home, we went looking for nearby cache, GCP6AR. Jill found it right away, and I retrieved it from a hollow tree stump. We took the Jesus Loves You purse and left a ladybug.

McKenzie was fussing, and we were hungry. I took a short side trip to Ape Cave. While the girls ate, I went and grabbed the travel bug from Bucket O' Apes cache. It was more luck than skill that I found this cache. It took me over a half hour to find it, and again the GPS reception was spotty. However, we are excited that we found our first travel bug, which originated in Virginia, and will give some extra thought to which cache it will be placed into next.

It was another fun day geocaching.

Today in History:
07/23 Ice cream cone introduced, St. Louis MO, 1904
07/23 Anniversary of the Revolution in Egypt
07/23 Egyptian National Day in Syrian Arab Republic
07/23 Remembrance Day in Papua New Guinea

Kiet

You don't have to travel far to geocache. I find myself often looking around my surroundings and wondering what treasure there are nearby. I loaded cache waypoints near home into my Geko 201, hopped onto my bike and pedaled to the nearest one.

The nearest cache, GCNBV3, brought me to Hathaway Park, a small park along the Washougal River. My GPS receiver pointed me to a little-used trail along the river, and I followed it in. So many hiding spots, and my GPS was going all over the place with the dense tree cover. After a half hour of searching, I needed to regroup and try a different approach. The trail followed the bottom of a ridge. I went to the top of the ridge; maybe my approach was wrong.

At the top of the ridge, my GPS pointed down to its base. The ridge was too steep for the top to be the approach. My initial approach was the correct one, and I went back to the trail. Then I stumbled across it in the brush. I lucked out. I took the dinosaur and left a trout. Next cache . . .

My next find took me to Goot Park, GCQ0CH, part of a nine-cache series called Key to Camas. Jill had printed out the cache descriptions of all the caches in the series and had hoped to do the series as a family. Unfortunately, unaware of her intention, I got a jump start on the series. Just as I was logging my find, Jill called me on my mobile phone.

She had taken McKenzie shopping and was heading home. She apparently closer than I had expected as she turned around the corner near the park. I loaded my bike into the back of the Volvo and headed home. I was finished geocaching for the day.

Kiet

On Saturday, while Jill, Kayla and her mother, Joan, shopped along NW 23rd Avenue in Portland, McKenzie and I went geocaching in the West Hills of Portland, in the Macleay Park area. McKenzie and I tried and tried looking for cache GCF11A. However, we were never got a good GPS fix and gave up after an hour of looking.

I hate not finding a cache, especially when another seeker found it after our attempt. Today, we first stopped at REI in downtown Portland and had another go at searching for GCKVXF. Other geocachers were able to find it after Jill, McKenzie and I had tried. It was there, but where? Our second search was also fruitless.

When I got home on Saturday, I used Google Earth to get a visual of GCF11A, and Jill, Kayla, McKenzie, Koda and I returned to the site to resume my search. Of course, we lost the GPS signal, but the Google Earth hint helped. I discovered a trail, followed it and found the cache. It was Kayla's first geocache. We took the small bottle of Tabasco Sauce and left a space alien figure.

On our way back home through Washington Park, we found another cache, GCHTF7, in Hoyt Arboretum. While Jill waited in the car with McKenzie and Koda, Kayla and I follow the path our GPS receiver pointed to and easily found this cache. It wasn't hidden very well and was almost too easy to find. We took the toy frog and left a toy lemur.

This ended our geocaching adventures for the day. We explored some new places in Portland, places we would not have normally seen in our normal daily travels. Of course, being in the neighborhood, we stopped at Whole Foods on our way home and picked up dinner. It was a hot day, and with Koda waiting in the car, we skipped eating at the store and took our food to go.

Kiet

With the Fladagers, we headed into Bend to have breakfast at the Westside Cafe & Bakery. As with every other Sunday morning, there was a line and usually a 20-45 minute wait. I have gotten into the habit of downloading the waypoints of several hundred nearby caches into my GPS of the places we visit. Then when we have time, I look at the nearest waypoints list. Only a quarter of a mile away from the restaurant was GCT4KA. Perry Fladager and I went looking while Jill, Sandy Fladager and McKenzie waited for the table.

Perry and I found the cache. I usually don't look at the cache description until within 500' of the cache. When I read the cache description, I was surprised to find that this particular cache was a recipe exchange, and we didn't have a recipe. Just then Perry's cellphone rang; the wait was over. We grabbed a blank recipe card and re-hid the cache. At breakfast, Jill and Sandy would provide a recipe and then afterward, we would return to the cache with it.

During breakfast, McKenzie became sick, emptying her stomach onto the restaurant floor. While the others ate, she and I went for a walk through the neighborhood. A walk would help her sleep. As we walked, I discovered cache GCVC1Y on my GPS, about a half mile west of the restaurant. This cache was located in a small urban park, and I was looking for it when my cellphone rang. They had finished breakfast. I told them to meet me back at GCT4KA where we would leave our recipe. I had to abandon my search for GCVC1Y.

I met up with Jill, Perry and Sandy, and we left the recipe in the cache. Jill left her peanut butter oatmeal chocolate squares recipe.

We parted from the Fladagers, heading home. I wanted to try a different way home. I recently overheard on the news that the McKenzie Pass had re-opened for the season. Highway 242 closes for the winter, and what was so newsworthy was how late in the season the road had re-opened.

Before we got too far, McKenzie began to wail. Her stomach continued to bother her, and we stopped at Tumalo State Park to tend to her. After emptying her stomach, we figured she was hungry. After a couple of ounces of formula, she emptied her stomach again. She also didn't like the heat or being in her car seat for so long. The temperature hover in the mid-to-upper 90s. She and Jill sat in the running car with the air conditioning on as Jill re-hydrated her with water. While they relaxed in the car, I noticed on my GPS a cache within 500' of the car, GCV1QD, and went off to find it. I found it, took a geocaching pin, which I pinned onto McKenzie's dress, and left a toy trout as a tribute to the mighty Deschutes River. McKenzie seemed to have settled down, and we moved on.

As we drove along, Jill had mentioned how jealous she was. I had been able to go geocaching, and she hadn't. The next one along the way was hers, I told her. The next cache was GCM59D, the Cave of the Seven Brothers. Jill went off while I took care of McKenzie and Koda. I eventually grabbed McKenzie out of her car seat, and together we went toddling off after Jill. Jill found the cache above the cave, which was more of a rock overhang than a cave. We took the nugget of fool's gold and left another toy trout.

For Jill, I connected my GPS to my Powerbook and opened up the National Geographic TOPO! mapping program. I had imported all caches within 50 miles of Bend into TOPO!. My GPS sent our current location to TOPO! automatically every 5 seconds, and TOPO! plotted our location in real-time on the map. Jill now see our location in relation to nearby caches.

We drove up and over McKenzie Pass, through the lava beds. What a view. At the summit of the pass was Dee Wright Observatory; however, we had to put a visit to this site on our to-do list. McKenzie was still sleeping in her car seat, and we didn't want to disturb her. We did manage a photo with her under the sign of her namesake.

On the way down from the pass, we found cache GCH0XB. This gave McKenzie an opportunity to get out of her car seat again. I think most of her fussing was due to the fact that she no longer wanted to be in her seat. As soon as she was out, she was happy and giggling. We took the toy dinosaur and left a toy space station, and we moved on.

Cache GCQMG6 was our last cache for the day. It was getting late, and this was the farthest west cache I had store on my GPS. I found the cache, completing our five-cache day. We took the traditionally dressed Korean girl magnet and left a toy space alien.

Kiet

We had a REI errand to run this morning, and before we left, I looked for two nearby caches to search for while in the area. More than a month had passed since we last went geocaching. Geocaching shouldn't mean that we only do it when far from home. Geocaches exist everywhere, and I decided to try to find at least one or two in the course of our daily travels. You never know where a cache will take you.

The first cache of the two, Geocache GCKVXF, was right next to REI in downtown Portland. Never able to get a good GPS reading, we never found the cache. According the cache log on geocaching.com, the two previous searchers were also unable to find it. Perhaps, muggles had discovered it. We moved onto the second of our two caches.

According to our GPS receiver, the next cache, Geocache GCVQXQ, was a just a bit over two miles away. However, it was a beautiful Sunday morning. I had just finished my morning coffee, and we were in the mood for a walk. Lord knows that Jill and I need all the exercise we could get.

Our walk took us through 23rd Avenue in the Alphabet District neighborhood, named so because the names of east-west streets are laid out in alphabetical order. Twenty-third Avenue is lined with all types of speciality shops and boutiques and unique neighborhood restaurants, and one of Jill's favorite places to shop in Portland. Since we were close and needed geocaching trade items, we stopped at Child's Play, the epitome of a neighborhood toy store, at 23rd and Kearney. We picked out an assortment of small plastic toys: trout, space men and ships, lady bugs, monkeys and lemurs. Of course, Jill had to stop at several of the shops on the way.

We learned that our search would take us to Washington Park, a long hike up the west hills of Portland. Once at the top of the hill, we, or at least I, discovered the International Test Rose Garden. In April, during her visit, Jill had taken her mother here. Then there were only four bushes blooming. Today, the entire garden was in all its glory.

Not far from the garden was the cache, and we found it. We took the toy plastic elephant and left a toy plastic lady bug. On the way back to the car, we stopped at the Oregon Holocaust Memorial and reflected for a moment. This is why I enjoy geocaching. It takes us to places we would have normally missed or skipped. Today I discovered Washington Park with the Rose Garden and the Oregon Holocaust Memorial. As I had said before, you never know where a cache will take you.



Today in History:
07/02 National Day in Kiribati
07/02 Felix Pappalardi and Leslie West form Mountain, 1969

Kiet

While walking Koda and waiting for Jill and McKenzie to check out of the Riverhouse, I checked my Geko 201 and noticed Geocache GCRQD1 nearby. Koda and I looked, but we couldn't find it.

After breakfast at Westside Bakery and Cafe, we headed toward Trout Creek to fish the Deschutes River. The salmon flies should be beginning to hatch in quantities. On our way, we stopped and found some caches.

Some of the caches we found were part of the Four Letter Cache Series. Hidden in and around Redmond, Oregon are twenty-six micro caches (logbook only), one for each letter. Their respective locations have a strong association with the letter they represent. We found Geocache GCPXHF in the Bi-Mart parking lot, representing the letter B, and Geocache GCPXKG near the Crooked River Dinner Train parking lot at the bottom of a railroad crossing sign (letter X). Over the course of the summer, we will find the other twenty-four alphabet caches.

I enjoy watching Jill get excited when we find a cache.

Then we also stumbled across Geocache GCG7XY, which showed off the history of one-room schools in Central Oregon. Only the brick foundation remained of the school, hidden in the overgrowth along the side of US Highway 97. We left a two-cent postage stamp and took a pair of dice.

Before Trout Creek, we stopped at Safeway in Madras for drinks and snacks. While waiting in the parking lot for Jill to finish shopping, I checked my GPS and found a cache stashed in this very parking lot, Geocache GC8233. The logbook was sopping wet, so I couldn't leave a log entry.

Today in History:
05/21 Plato (Aristocles) born in Athens(?), 427BC
05/21 DEC announces PDP-8
05/21 Kris Kennaway born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 1978
05/21 Battle of Iquique in Chile
05/21 US explodes first hydrogen bomb, 1956

Kiet

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After visiting my Aunt Susan and Uncle Lee, we stopped at Stone Creek for coffee and checked the Geko 201 for nearby geocaching activity. We were in between visits and had a minute or two to catch our breaths during our whirlwind tour of family and friends. There were two caches in the soccer fields of Nicolet High School just to the south. We walked over to the soccer fields and began our search.

I download the cache descriptions, usually hundreds of them, into my Treo 600 smartphone, and it is sometimes difficult to keep them straight. I sometimes got the cache descriptions mixed up. The first cache, GCR72T, we looked for was such an example. I got this one mixed up with the other one in the vicinity, GCR72X. Despite our mistake, we weren't able to find GCR72T, but we did find GCR72X.

We left a president ruler and took the yellow ankylosaurus dinosaur.

Kiet

At McKenzie's baptism reception, I enticed my nephews Daniel and Alexander to go geocaching with me. There were three in River Barn Park alone. I hoped to get my nephews interested in something that would broaden their horizons despite the rains that poured at the moment.

I tried to explain what GPS was and how it worked. I tried to explain that geocaching was like treasure hunting. Daniel, the older of the two, showed more interest than Alexander, the younger. I allowed Daniel to hold and read my Geko 201, having him lead the way and reading aloud the distance from our first cache.

We didn't find the first cache, GCRZWB. I wish we had. Though small, it had items that geocachers could exchange. This would have given the boys the sense of treasure-hunting.

We moved onto the next cache, GCRZWK. It was a micro cache, logbook only and not quite the stuff dreams are made of for two young nephews.

The heavy rain stopped us from looking for the third cache in the park.

Kiet

After grabbing a coffee at the new Alterra Coffee on south 1st Street in Milwaukee, I noticed the nearby geocache, GCN22Q, on my Geko 201, so Jill, McKenzie and I went for a walk.

The cache lead us to the boat yard on Water Street where I worked a lifetime ago as a yard worker, hauling boats in for winter storage and then launching them in the spring. I pointed this out to Jill and McKenzie.

The second surprise came when looking at the previous geocachers who found the micro cache. Our co-worker at the Bradley Center, Tom Winsor, was the last individual to find the cache. This prompted me to call him and say hi. I hadn't spoken with him in such a long time, and we spent a few moments catching up. In addition to finding a cache, I was also left with a trip down memory lane.


After lunch at Trocadero, I checked my Geko 201 for any geocaching activity. There was one right across the street from the cafe, GCR98G. It was near a public art display, Cavorting Critters. (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture.) However, the last three geocache seekers weren't able to find it, and we weren't able to either.



Today in History:
04/29 Jules Henri Poincare born, 1854, founder of topology
04/29 William Randolph Hearst born in San Francisco, 1863
04/29 Zipper patented by Gideon Sindback, 1913
04/29 Day of Green in Japan
04/29* Omer 32th day
04/29 "Hair" premiers on Broadway, 1968

Kiet

On our way back from visiting Missy, we stopped at Wal-Mart in Saukville. Jill had to pick up some items for McKenzie's post-baptism reception. McKenzie and I waited in the car for her, and while waiting, I checked out my GPS for any nearby geocaches. Before leaving the hotel this morning, I downloaded caches centered around Grafton. I chose Geocache GCPGH2.

We found ourselves in Peninsula Park. However, we weren't able to find the cache. The area had recently underwent some construction excavation, and we wondered if that hadn't disturbed the cache. We moved onto another nearby cache, GCPA47, just up the block and across the street.

Our next cache brought us to Veterans Park. However, Jill became ill, and we had to give up our search before we found the cache.

One can only imagine where tomorrow's cache will take us. :-o

Kiet

While running some errands for McKenzie's baptism party, we stopped for a quick geocache, GCQAXB. This cache brought us to Trinity Creek Wetlands Habitat. Initially, we had problems finding the parking area; Jill was navigating and didn't quite understand how GPS works. We kept missing the appropriate turns, and I was becoming frustrated and short with Jill.

Then I realized that I never took the time to explain GPS with Jill and that my misplaced frustration would eventually turn her off to geocaching. I apologized and silently vowed not to be so impatient. I want us to enjoy this activity together as a family.

We found the cache without the aid of the hint (our first) and logged our find in the cache's logbook.




Today in History:
04/27 Louis Victor de Broglie born, 1774, physicist
04/27 Magellan killed in Philippines, 1521
04/27 Independence Day in Togo
04/27* Omer 30th day
04/27* Parashat Emor
04/27 Freedom Day in South Africa

Kiet

Almost as if a Saturday tradition, Jill, McKenzie, Koda and I headed down to the Vancouver Farmers Market, where we met our friends, Perry and Sandy Fladager. Since our days in Wisconsin, when Jill, Koda and I regularly visited the Dane County Farmers Market in Madison on the Capital Square, we had fallen in love with farmers markets. When done properly, the concept can really energize an area.

Before we left home, I downloaded another 100 geocache waypoints located near the Market into my Geko 201 and their descriptions into my Treo 600 phone. I figured while we were out and about, we would perhaps try finding a geocache or two. There were three in the immediate vicinity, GCPN77, GCQMT1 and GCQBEQ.

As I looked down at my GPS receiver while walking through the Market, we were right on top of GCPN77. It was a micro cache, logbook only, and we had to utilize the hint (cheating). Perry and I walked over the area, but found nothing. Sandy gathered the courage to ask one of the local vendors. The cache description read that the local vendors knew about the game and watched geocachers searching for the cache. The vendor pointed to the very rock Jill and Sandy were sitting on. The cache was a film canister. However, the cache wasn't there.

We moved onto GCPN77, another micro cache, logbook only. Again, we had to use the hint, which lead us to a trash can. The cache was a magnetic key box. We found it, and I logged the date and our website. It is always exciting to find a geocache.

McKenzie needed to eat, and Jill and Sandy stayed behind in Esther Short Park while Perry and I moved onto the final geocache of the day, GCQBEQ. In my short geocaching career, this has been the best one so far. When we arrived at the waypoint, a riddle awaited us. We had to add the number of letters on a particular nearby poster to the geocache's north coordinate in order to get the new north coordinate. Then we had to multiply the number of letters from another nearby poster by the number of total posters, subtract five from the product and then add to the geocache's west coordinate for the new west coordinate. These new coordinates lead us to the cache and some great artwork.

We left a dime and took a pumpkinhead scarecrow figurine. Jill and I are thinking about some special trinket to leave that would best identify us.



Today in History:
04/22 Kant born, 1724
04/22 Joerg Wunsch born in Dresden, Sachsen, Germany, 1962
04/22 Jun Kuriyama born in Matsue, Shimane, Japan, 1973
04/22 Arbor Day in Nebraska & Delaware
04/22 Oklahoma Day in Oklahoma
04/22* Omer 25th day

Kiet

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Before we left, I paid for a Groundspeak Premium Membership in association with Geocaching.com. The two greatest benefits of a premium membership were the ability to load cache locations directly into your GPS unit via GPX and pocket queries. I designated a location (Camp Sherman), a radius (30 miles), difficulty criterion (2 or less on a scale of 1 to 5) and terrian criterion (2 or less on a scale of 1 to 5). The search returned 100 caches, and I received via email a GPX file with all the waypoints and an e-book for my Treo 600 with all the cache descriptions.

On our way back from Bend, I turned on my small Geko 201, into which I downloaded the 100 cache waypoints. I quickly scanned for a cache near our cabin as we turned off US 20 and onto Camp Sherman Road. Instead of continuing down Camp Sherman Road, I turned right toward the Headwaters of the Metolius, site of cache GC250A.

We pulled in to the parking lot for the Headwaters of the Metolius. My GPS receiver would get us within 100 feet of the cache, depending upon the satellite reception. Beyond that we would have to rely on the hints given by the owner of the cache.

I read out the hints to Jill, and together we search the area. I searched one end, and Jill, the other. Jill found our first geocache.

We left our Volvo map of Europe from our car packet and took a toy lizard.

Kiet