Logistics: If you visit during the Nature Center's open hours (8
am - 5 pm daily, closed most holidays), you may park at the Nature
Center's parking lot. If you want to visit outside regular hours,
you'll have to park out in Mohawk Park, outside Oxley Nature
Center's main gate.
Remember, Mohawk Park's gates open at 7 am and close at 9 pm! On
weekends, April 1 - October 31, you'll need to bring $2/vehicle to
enter Mohawk Park, unless you are a member of Friends of Oxley
Nature Center or Zoo Friends. Pets are not allowed on the Nature
Center trails, but leashed ones can enjoy other parts of Mohawk
Park (if you want to include a 4-legged geocacher, you might want
to do
"Green" Country at N 36 12.956' W 095 53.506'.)
This cache was placed by members of the
Tulsa Area Geocachers
This cache was placed with the
permission of the Tulsa Parks Department.
There have been a number of comments about the
accuracy/inaccuracy of the coordinates. We have raised the
difficulty level because it seems that multipathing is a
challenge.
Whenever there are obstacles between the GPS receiver and the
moving array of satellites overhead, especially tall, vertical
obstacles like cliffs or trees or skyscrapers, the incoming signal
will bounce off of the obstacles on their way to your device.
Unless you have attached a large external antenna, even the best
handheld device is designed to be accurate to about 20 or 30 feet,
meaning you will be searching a 40-60 foot diameter area. However,
with your signal reflecting off obstacles (this is called
multipathing), you will have a much larger oval to search, perhaps
50 to 75 feet.
Whenever you place a cache, when you set your point, you MUST allow
your GPS device to settle and track satellites for a while before
capturing the coordinates. The longer you let it settle, the more
accurate your coordinates will be. Holding your GPS receiver over
your new cache and waiting 5 seconds before snapping the
coordinates is not going to produce good results. This holds true
for hunting a cache, too. If you are walking around and around and
back and forth with your GPS receiver, you are decreasing its
accuracy because it is calculating and recalculating input from
moving satellites plus trying to account for what you are doing,
too. To improve the accuracy of your handheld device, put it on a
tripod, or set it in one spot and let it settle. Walk over and look
at it every few minutes while you are searching likely hiding
places. If it indicates the "zero point" is north or south or east
or west so many feet, go ahead and move it to that place, and then
leave it there. Gradually you will define an oval; the cache should
be near the center of the oval, if the cache owner took the time to
gather accurate coordinates in the first place. You may even end up
near the center of the oval, but that usually takes an hour or
more. (Yes, we have hunted a single cache for an hour or more. And
found it, too.)
Bottom line: if the cache is within 30 feet of where it is
"supposed" to be, it is within the design parameters of a handheld
device. Increase that limit if there are trees or cliffs or tall
buildings or power lines overhead. A stationary GPS receiver is
more accurate than a moving one.