Year: 2011

/ Eric Schudiske /

Groundspeak Weekly Newsletter – November 2, 2011

Turn Every Location into an Adventure!

Groundspeak’s mission is to inspire outdoor play using location-based technology. We want everyone to be able to walk out their door and find an adventure – or 100 adventures – nearby. An adventure might take the form of a geocache hidden at your local park, a Challenge to take a photo of yourself performing a task at a specific location, a “Ginormous Everyday Object” that you discover through Waymarking or an interactive Wherigo experience.

You’re probably already familiar with geocaching, but how many other Groundspeak adventures have you tried? Challenges, Waymarking and Wherigo provide hundreds of thousands of additional location-based adventures, all accessible for free via your Groundspeak membership.

So, the next time you go find a geocache, search for one of these other adventures nearby. Can’t find enough of them? Create your own! Premium Members can create Challenges on Geocaching.com and anyone can submit a Waymark or create a Wherigo cartridge.

/ Eric Schudiske /

“La Réunion the First” GCQJFP GEOCACHE OF THE WEEK – November 7, 2011

 

Sunrise near the cache location

A geocache hidden on a small French island off of Africa reveals breathtaking sunrises and a volcano that still roars to life.  The location Réunion is popular with French, German, Czech and English visitors.

“La Réunion the First” (GCQJFP) was hidden in 2005. The sturdy cache container is well suited for the environment. It can be found near the lunar-like landscape of a lava field.

The small island  of Réunion mirrors the climate of the United States islands of Hawaii. Both have similar volcanic histories.

Réunion is also home to dozens of geocaches. An EarthCache  is even located near “La Réunion the First.” Geocachers who log the traditional cache say, “”One of the most beautiful places in the world and for sure a place one should visit at least once during a life. I’ll never forget our vacation in La Reunion – we’ll be back :-)”

Cache container

“La Réunion the First” has the most Favorite Points of any cache on the island. It was hidden by SwissSniper and is rated a difficulty two, terrain two. 150 geocachers logged smileys on the cache so far.

Continue your exploration of some of the most engaging geocaches from around the globe. Explore all the Geocaches of the Week on the Latitude 47 blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com. If you’ d like to nominate a Geocache of the Week, send an email with your name, comments, the name of the geocache and the GC code to pr@groundspeak.com.

 

/ Eric Schudiske /

Bruneau Sand Dunes GC10F12 GEOCACHE OF THE WEEK – October 31, 2011

Bruneau Sand Dunes

This difficulty one, terrain three EarthCache delivers adventurers to towering sandy dunes. These dunes don’t rise out of the middle of sweltering desert, but can be found in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Bruneau Sand Dunes (GC10F12) was created in 2007 by The Wandering Stars.

The cache page reads,”The tallest single-structured sand dune in North America rises high above small lakes in the high desert south of Mountain Home [Idaho]. The state park includes desert, dune, prairie, lake and marsh habitat with opportunities to observe nocturnal species… Feel free to climb but no vehicles are allowed on the dunes.”

More than 130 geocachers have logged a smiley on the cache, which now has eight Favorite Points. Cachers often combine discovering this EarthCache with finding nearby traditional geocaches. One log reads, “This is our first time out at the dunes and we have lived in Idaho 40 plus years. What a fantastic place. Took the walk over to the physical cache here and snapped a bunch of pictures. Thanks for putting this cache out.”

Bruneau Sand Dunes

Continue your exploration of some of the most engaging geocaches from around the globe. Explore all the Geocaches of the Week on the Latitude 47 blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com. If you’ d like to nominate a Geocache of the Week send an email with your name, comments, the name of the geocache and the GC code to pr@groundspeak.com.

 

 

/ Eric Schudiske

Groundspeak Weekly Newsletter – October 27, 2011

Geocaching Favorites

The Geocaching Favorites feature calls attention to exceptional geocaches hidden around the world. Premium Members award Favorite Points to the caches they enjoyed most. The points reward the person who hid the cache as well as help others to discover great caches. A blue ribbon on cache pages and in the search results list displays the number of Favorite Points a cache has received. Since Favorites was added to the Geocaching.com website, more than 2.6 million Favorite Points have been awarded.

While a quality geocache may earn a few Favorite Points, some amazing geocaches have earned hundreds of points. One traditional geocache, about a ghost haunting the woods of Germany, earned more than one thousand Favorite points.

In addition to awarding Favorite Points, Premium Members can sort the search results to display the caches with the most Favorite Points at the top of the list. This helps you easily identify the best caches in an area.

See how the Geocaching Favorites feature works to improve your geocaching experience in this new Geocaching.com Presents video.

Benefits of Adding Home Coordinates

Please enter your home coordinates so we can provide information on new geocaches and geocaching events near you.

/ Eric Schudiske /

7 Tips to Attending a Mega-Event

Editor’s note: Groundspeak Lackeys traveled thousands of miles from H.Q. this year to share smiles, shake hands and make geocaching memories at more than a dozen Mega-Events worldwide. Nicole Bliss, a.k.a. Louie Bliss, attended Mega-Event Catalunya 2011 in Calella, Spain. Nicole has been  a Lackey helping geocachers in customer service since 2010. This is Nicole’s account of the Mega-Event. 

Nicole and Signal

Oh Mega, My Mega! Catalunya 2011

I recently attended Mega-Event Catalunya 2011 in Calella, Spain and represented Groundspeak. It may have been my fifth Mega-Event, but it was my first international event.  I was surprised at how Mega-Events can be so similar 5,000 miles away from each other. There were still the same activities: discovering Trackables, shopping for merchandise, dinner events and, of course, lots of caching. I even attended my first flash mob – one of the best parts of the event! Yet, international events can be so different; everyone speaks different languages and cache descriptions are all in the local language. The difficulty rating goes up at least a star for foreigners. It helps that many geocaching phrases are universal.

With an international event, it was amazing how many countries were represented. I met cachers from Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Czech Republic, Portugal, UK, Canada, France, Netherlands and Spain. I was the only American. I spent so much time with a group of French cachers that at one point, I felt like I was in France instead of Spain.

I learned a lot about what to plan for when attending a Mega-Event. If you haven’t had the opportunity yet, listen up! Here’s 7 tips for attending a Mega-Event –

Catalunya 2011 Flash Mob
  • Check to see if there are any additional events nearby. Plan to arrive a day or two beforehand to attend these events and find nearby caches.
  • Plan your routes ahead of time. If you are a Premium Member, you can sort by Favorite Points so you’ll know which are considered the best local caches. The event organizers may even publish a new GeoTrail for the event so it is a good idea to run a Pocket Query on the day of the event.
  • Check the event forums to see who else is going. It is much more fun when you meet new people or go in a group. I cached with a few different groups and had a great time.
  • Are you attending an international Mega-Event like I did? I suggest learning the major phrases of that language. It can still be overwhelming, but it is much easier and the locals appreciate it. I was surprised that Barcelona and Calella, Spain primarily spoke Catalan and my Spanish was almost useless.
  • Make time to see the tourist sites. There’s a Mega-Event there for a reason! Of course, you can cache along the way.
  • Considering organizing a Mega-Event? Check out the Knowledge Books article on Mega-Event Classification.

    Cataluyna 2011 Community Dinner
  • After the event, log your Trackables quickly! Too often, Travel Bugs have gone missing from events because they are forgotten.

In the end, I realized geocaching is a language all its own. No matter what our native language is, we can understand each other perfectly.

 

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