Near the first cache

The Dolfor Series is a series of 8 caches each of different size and container, yes some repeats but still a fun journey, not just micro after micro.

sheep!

There are more than a few sheep on view today, but the mist rolled in and the pictures are, to be honest mainly of the road area and some frozen leaves

the misty mountains

The first was a bit of an oddity, I was expecting a bison on a hook on a pole, what I got was something FAR more simple. When a hint tells you something, think literally!

hit the frosty bit

Onto number two, and here were go up in altitute only a few metres, but I hit the ‘frost line’ and everything became just a tad more painful to search.

Gotcha mk2

Thankfully after a few prickles it turned out to be a quick find! TFTC!!

Dr frost has been here!

Well quite a frosty spot!, onto 3/8!

Ouch!

This blog has his progress since the injury and how he advises people to be careful while caching.
Always need to keep safety in mind.

Pinned!

http://sqinjury.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2008-01-01T00:00:00-06:00&updated-max=2009-01-01T00:00:00-06:00&max-results=44

Ouch!

He has in his own words ‘enough pins screws and metal work to open a small hard wear store’. I might just watch my footing a bit better from now on!

It’s a daunting series that Lorrie, an airline pilot, started in 2008. She says, “While traveling anywhere in the world is a great thing, I just believe that the United States has so much to offer that most folks will never see!  I have a ‘bucket list’ of places I wish to visit, but my list started with visiting all 50 states.”

Across the USA!

Lorrie discovered geocaching after reading a newspaper article about the treasure-hunting adventure. “I tried to get my younger brother interested in geocaching…  I ended up being the one addicted.” Her discovery came only two years before beginning the Cache Across America series. “I started caching on July 9, 2006…the last day that I ever touched my golf clubs (which are still gathering dust in the garage to this day…).”

On the cache page for the final cache in the series Lorrie says, “Oh sure, the many trips were amazing. The thousands and thousands of miles of driving seemed endless at times. Some of the sights I saw were breathtaking (and so were my VISA bills ).” But she says something was more important than all of that, “Cache Across America (CAA) was really all about people.” Read her Geocache log to find out about the people who cheered Lorrie on to complete the challenge, and it is no mean feet!

The hardest cache in the World?

Now that’s a hard cache series!

station in Sweden.

The Mines of Moria?

In order to crack the mystery and find the cache (referred to on the cache page as “your precious”) you (and possibly the fellowship with you) need to decipher clues at the cache coordinates. Then take the information and plug it into a formula found on the page to discover the “Entrance to Mordor” – pictured above!

There are even Goblins

More than 100 geocachers received a smiley for this cache since the difficulty 3.5, terrain 3.5 cache was hidden in 2007. “Entrance to Mordor” also has 22 Favorite Points so far.

Geocaching Favorites is a new feature on Geocaching.com which allows people to generate a personal list of their favourites, award a star to the listing.

That’s not Ben Roethlisberger, the quarterback, but Ben Roethlisberger, the 2005 Topps football trading card, which traveled 8,568 miles around the country and landed in the hands of photographer Alan Freed of Ambridge.

With the card tucked safely in his pocket, Freed snapped photos from the sidelines at the championship game. He’ll carry it with him again at today’s Super Bowl.

“I’m thrilled that I got the opportunity to get it to its goal,” he said. “It could have merely made it to a Cleveland game.”

The Trackable!

That goal was the dream of 14-year-old Timothy Holden of Nephi, Utah, who placed the card into a container as part of the high-tech scavenger hunt game Geocaching.

Using GPS navigation and coordinates from the official website Geocaching.com, participants hide and seek containers, called caches, often leaving items inside for others to find.

In some cases, these items have a specific mission and are meant to travel between caches. Travel Bugs, as they are called, have an ID number, and their movements are tracked on the website.

Holden’s goal for his Travel Bug: Make it to a Steelers game.

But after watching the card bounce back and forth across the map, Holden and his family didn’t know what to expect.

“I didn’t even think it would go to a game, but then figuring out that it would go to these big huge games, it was really cool,” he said.

Tom Sands of Sandown, N.H., acquired the card at a geocaching event in Seattle, Wash., and moved it from the West Coast to the East Coast in July 2010.

“I did have it in mind to put it in a place where it would sit for a little while, just out of spite,” joked the New England Patriots fan. Sands said he, along with most of New England, rooted for the Steelers over the Jets and are behind the team today.

“I’m not so glad that we’re not the ones going to the Super Bowl,” he said, “but we’re happy for Pittsburgh, no question.”

Sands placed the card in a cache at a park-and ride-off I-93 in New Hampshire, and it made its way to West Virginia, where South Hills resident Mark Porembka picked it up.

“I saw this one was supposed to be destined for Heinz Field and I thought, ‘I can at least get it close,’ ” he said.

Porembka met Freed through geocaching, and the two exchanged the card in an IHOP parking lot just days before the AFC Championship.

A long-time Steelers fan, Holden said he was “stoked” when he found out the card was heading to the game.

“I said to him, ‘Where do you want to be this Sunday? Where’s the only place you would want to be if you could pick any place?’ ” said Holden’s mother, Karin Bradley. “He was like, ‘The AFC Championship game!’ And I was like, ‘Well guess what? You’re not going, but your travel bug is!’ ”

Bradley and Holden watched the championship game at home with their family and will cheer on the Steelers again today, knowing that Freed, with the Roethlisberger card in his pocket, is watching from the sidelines.

Holden, who hopes to go to a Super Bowl one day, said he thinks the Steelers will win, but not just because they’re his favorite team.

Freed also hopes the Steelers will win. He made the drive from Ambridge to Dallas last week, logging additional miles for the Travel Bug on the way. After the game, he will return to Pennsylvania and mail the card back to Utah.

“I don’t know if this is cheating … but I keep thinking it would be kind of scary to put it back in a cache and hope that it reaches us,” Bradley said. “We’d like to put it in a frame.”

Since Holden last held it in his hands, the card has worn a little around the edges. When it finally arrives home in Utah, it will have zigzagged through all parts Steelers Nation, logging more than 12,900 miles.

“It’s amazing that all these people helped out, just to, like, make my dream come true,” Holden said.

All picked up from an article here:- http://www.timesonline.com/bct_news/news_details/article/1373/2011/february/06/roethlisberger-rookie-card-makes-trip-to-dallas.html

Recognise anyone famous in the clip box – its the male Anchor on the show, a Mr Mike Bushell!

The BBC Cache - Mike Bushell

Have you found this cache yet, or know the code for the cache. Perhaps you’ve come across the Travel Bug or even got the the FTF? I’m guessing it got quite allot of finds in one day to after a prime advertising slot like BBC1.

Mike Bushell Hiding the Cache

Let us know if you know anything about it!

Edit:- found the article here:- BBC Video

Edit:- found the cache listing here:- http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GC2MG0M

Salem woods - nearby

The trip started with a couple of quick grabs, one of them above was one in a little patch of woods in Salem, to be honest it could have been used as part of the set in Lord of the Rings. Lovely spot

View from the first cache spot

The first cache I tried, ignoring the suggested route as I had little time today to do the whole series, so a couple was the aim. I got to the cache spot of this one at 12:30, using a nearby layby to do a reasonably quick cache and grab (about 25min round trip).

The nearby mountain, I think that's the one I may have to climb!

Looking around I can clearly see why the cache owner called this ‘lookout’ clear views in a stunning panoramic view.

Panned a bit more right in view

A lovely spot to stop, and a nice easy find.

Quite a view, glad it cleared up for a bit

I wanted to stay up here for longer, but there were caches to be found!

Another spot of the peak

So onto the next one, this one was called ‘bridge’ So I was expecting some kind of a bridge.

A bridge! oh hang on 30m to GZ, oh dear...

Well I found a bridge, but alas, not that simple, I carried on looking for somewhere more fitting of the Terrain rating.

Well thats a kind of bridge

A bit more rustic than I was expecting, but I guess it functions as a crossing over water. But WARNING!! take your time and get a good footing as it was rather slippy.

A little bit of Hobbington

The look around all of here was stunning, I run a larp group and this would be perfect, if not a little far to go for an event/

Pavement?

A great, if slightly dangerous cache spot. But with sense and taking it slowly, you should be fine!

ONWARD!!

A bit of a climb

The next one was, well shall we say, a bit of a climb. Looking on the map it looked VERY close to the road. The one thing that maps doesn’t show to easily is elevation changes. This one was 50m up a wet slippy bank covered in moss. Got up there in 5min, getting down, well that was basically a controlled fall over multiple stages. But caching is always fun!

The best place I found to park was at the unrestricted station car park where I happily parked for two hours.

Firstly a nice easy find with ‘traditional rest’ which tbh I don’t understand the name at all

First one of the day

The series was a nice mixiture of different caches, granted they were all micros, nano’s or small’s

The woods

The Ruabon circular was a nice complex bent figure 8 that was horribly wrong in the middle with the tree cover.

The cache I almost gave up on

There were a couple of simple go here, spot the geo sticks, but I did love the mix of styles here. I feel that cache owner did make a real attempt to ‘mix it up’ and do a few different cache containers and hides.

Lovely woods

The woods are reasonably simple to navigate, but you do have to backtrack a little on no 7 where you have to dodge a bridge, go on a little and then back track. I however didn’t and ended up doing no 8 and 9 backwards. No matter, still found them all!

The walls, oh the walls!

There were a few caches I was worried about, one being the one near this wall, as a few people had complaigned that the walls were hard to distinguish. and another involving a magnetic, and finally a wooden hide.

The muddy path

The path was rated faily I’d say, but this time of year +1 to the terrain at least, it was mud the whole way, darn mud!

And then the rainbow!

The rainbow came out path way through, which I found odd as it hadn’t rained yet. And then the heavens opened on me! – I thought it was supposed to be it rains and THEN the rainbow came out. Oh well.

the sign

The magnetic caches on this walk were cunning to say the least, maybe bar this one, that was rather visble, but not where you are thinking i’d say!

All in all, a great circualr, I jsut wish it hadn’t been raining when I managed my 356th find in under a year!!!

YATTA!!!!

Thank you Ruabon!

still its nice to perhaps have an aim! So I tracked down the coordinates of the Seven wonders of the Ancient world to be:-

Great Pyramid of Giza: Coordinates:                           29°58′45.03″N   31°08′03.69″E

Temple of Artemis: Coordinates:                                  37°56′59″N         27°21′50″E

Lighthouse of Alexandria: Coordinates:                     31°12′51″N           29°53′06″E

Statue of Zeus at Olympia: Coordinates:                    37°38′16.3″N      21°37′48″E

Hanging Gardens of Babylon: Coordinates:             32.5355°N            44.4275°E

Mausoleum of Halicarnassus: Coordinates:            37°02′16.6″N      27°25′26.6″E

Colossus of Rhodes: Coordinates:                               36°27′04″N          28°13′40″E

Map of Treasures!

So my aim is to find the nearest caches to each set of coordinates, perhaps just on the GC site for now!

First up,

The Great Pyramid

A rather easy to find one here,  http://coord.info/GCJG9J or http://coord.info/GC22Z4Y, its a tourist hotspot after all!

Great Pyramid at Giza

They would be awesome to do, but Egypt, rather a long expensive trip, but ONE DAY, i’ll go try and i’ll probably log a DNF. So next up;

The Temple of Artemis

Stands near the ancient city of Ephesus, in modern day Turkey, this one was surprisingly easy to find, simply typed the name of it and up it popped, although until I zoomed right in and spotted the outline of the ruins on the middle left of the image below:-

Temple of Artemis, Turkey

As you’ve probably spotted, there is indeed a cache there, just below the top right:- http://coord.info/GC2DCJ8, although i’m stunned to see no real mention of it in the listing, just to the basilica the cache is in. Next!!…..

The Lighthouse at Alexandria

Well, this one took a bit more searching, look at completely the wrong place, then a place in the US, until I realised Alexandria was STILL a place.

Lighthouse at Alexandria

Alexandria as a place still exists, but the lighthouse built in the 3rd century BC, is long gone, destroyed in the 13c, and the reclaimed the ruins in 15c. Shame pictures of what it must have looked like were stunning!, The nearest cache is imaginativly called:- find me.. http://coord.info/GC245MW. Next up (sort of half way!) Next up,

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia

Well this one was a bit of fuss, found the right spot at its shown below:-

Statue of Zeus, no caches??

But I had a good look around, and alas no caches nearby,  a quick pocket queary later an I found one, 8 miles away to the south, http://coord.info/GCPE5F shown here as the top one:-

Statue is in the center

I guess the site could be protected against putting caches nearby, maybe a local version of Cadw? :-p So, 4/7 so far! Next up we have……..

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

This one, straight off was going to be a problem as the old site is long gone, and the area in question is in modern day Iraq, hmmmm yeah, that’s what I thought! So here is the spot;-

Babylon, now known as Iraq!

Trying a cache near here might involve a touch of kevlar and an AK47, so a quick pocket query tell me that:-

The nearest cache is:- SE 44.5m, eeak! http://coord.info/GC2D04D, So this is kinda a fail to find one near, but at least it is in the same country I guess! Oh well, only a couple left now, at least there is actually one reasonably near….right?

Mausoleum of Halicarnassus

This one I was hoping would be a click and i’m there….

Mausoleum of Halicarnassus

Almost felt spoilt for choice!, But this it the closest one:- http://coord.info/GC1HN97, great just one left to go!!!

Colossus of Rhodes

Hopefully, this one might actually mention the presence of one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World being nearby? perhaps? Naa, not likely! However;

Colossus of Rhodes

Wow, big bunch of caches compared to the rest! The nearest one? – http://coord.info/GC2JCJ3. Again no mention of the wonder.

Well, I enjoyed that little stroll around the ancient world, but it is rather disappointing to see a lack of the local ancient history in the caches, but I guess we are just tourists looking in, to them the sites might be from a time way in forgotten knowledge, or it could even be offensive to them… who knows?

The Encoder Program for Omega

Omega is, as I think the end of a difficult series should be, a D5.

Yes, yes I’m sorry, but it is entirely doable with a few pages of paper and some time on google.

The program above may look complicated to the untrained eye, but to be honest as program I make go; this is a baby!

Gamma: A hint perhaps?

Gamma, is by comparison easy, this should be doable in less than 10 minutes and a tiny bit of googling!

So, headackes to come, but at least something to flutter away those cold winter nights.