January 26

Great day today, Guys! My final tally for the day, assuming I have logged everything correctly, was 18. A really good day on the trail!

A cold Monday

hey had to go to Halifax today to see Doctor so I loaded a few caches in -- picked up my sister as Rhonda could not get away from school today. That was ok because we were pretty sure all was good with me . We were right - doctors are pleased with CI and also tumors are stable so good for another year not 6 months as before. Then we decided to try a few caches --man it was soooooo cold -- we did grab 2 and one was at the new Oval so a new one ---- too cold to do any more ... lets hope warms up a bit for Wednesday .... cya then ... Chris

GPS issues in southeastern US

Let's be glad we don't live in the southeastern United States:

Don't panic, but anyone planning on using GPS in the southeastern US for the next month or so will likely want to make sure they have a fallback option. That's according to a flight advisory just issued by the FAA, which warns pilots that their GPS signal "may be unreliable or unavailable" due to "GPS tests" that the Department of Defense will be conducting between January 20th and February 22nd. Details are fairly light beyond that, but the FAA does note that when the "tests" occur they will be active for 45 minutes, and be followed by 15 minutes of off time -- additional notices to pilots will apparently be issued at least 24 hours prior to any test. Of course, while this particular advisory is directed at pilots, it will presumably will also affect all other GPS devices, as the FAA doesn't mention any GPS issues specific to aviation. The real question, however, is just what those mysterious "GPS tests" are -- if they're, in fact, GPS tests at all...

Found at:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/20/faa-warns-of-ongoing-gps-issues-in-southeastern-us-due-to-defens/

Friday

Hey inter net in down in house so just on phone and easier to post new5 then to add comment. Not having a good teck day.lol.
Your day yesterday sounded great till the end, Brian. I know Ken is now double jealous !. Lets hope weather OK and a
We can tie up together next week. Later Chris

Wed & Thurs

We were in the city on Wed, had Vic's parents in to visit their son and for an eye appointment which came about at the last minute. We dropped Vic's parents at the hospital and went to my appointment. We got to my appointment a little early so i opened up the geo app on my phone and discovered we were parked less than 50 feet from a cache. Well we just had to have a look, i didn't have my GPSr so i used my iphone to find the cache. It took me right to the exact tree the cache was in and along with reading the hint made for an easy find in the high muggle area. Neat to have the ability to search for caches even without the GPSr.
Thurs. was such a beautiful morning with the sun shining and a freah coat of snow on the trees and trails. I had 6 caches to finish on the trail that Blackrattle is developeing so i figured a nice easy hike to grab some caches was just the thing, wrong. The first 4 were easy but then the last 2 were on a section that hasn't been cut out for a long time. I had to bushwack for the last 2 and it was mostly through swapy ground as the trail was too overgrown to stay on and all the snow on the trees made it that much harder. I was glad the trail was close to the paved road and i hiked most of the way back to my truck along the pavement, much easier going.
Those 7 caches moved me up 1 more notch closer to the the top 100 in NS, I now sit at #107 overall in NS with 1176 caches.

Thursday Run

Hey Ken & Brian  ... we missed you guys today ... we went to Sackville, Bedford and Hammonds plains ----we cleared up 2 DNF from a year ago and got 12 caches for me and 13 for Rick -- we did a couple at the end of the day that we had done without Rick one day ----we did a couple of good hikes early in the  day --t
he walking on the trails with frozen foot prints was not the  easiest and one cache we went too after a good walk was not WF ---- we laughed at that  .... weather was great , a bit slippery going in but I just took my time and we were home by 4 .... looking fwd to next week with all of us --- have a good night ................ Chris

Valley Cachers' Meet & Greet

In my opinion, another successful Valley Cachers' Meet & Greet this evening. A total of 32 cachers representing 21 teams signed the log book and I believe that 6 of those cachers were first time attendees. BP also got it right tonight, having extra servers working for our enjoyment! And rick o brought presents - thanks, Rick!

We missed you, Brian, and hope that all is going well with you and the family!

Ken

Friday

Vic and I had 9 new caches published today on a section of R2T we are developeing. We were out this afternoon putting out 14 more caches on the same trail when the emails started coming in from cachers finding our newly published ones. Passed one cacher on the way out from finding our caches as we were going in to hide more, kind of neat.
When we were getting ready to go hide our caches notifaction came in about 4 new caches from Blackrattle. We had to decide wether to hide or find and we chose hiding.
Caching tomorrow with Chris in Bridgewater while Rhonda & Vickie attend a beading course, looking forward to it.

Souviners

Hey last week they sent me a souvenir from Portugal because I did caches over there and tonight I get one from Ontario because of caches there so now I have 3 .... Chris

Hiding caches

Vic & I were out hiding caches this morning, beautiful morning for mid Jan. We put out 4 P&Gs around Brooklyn and then headed to the RTT to start putting more out only to discover they are cutting bushes on a large section of the trail. We couldn't do the first part of the trail so we went in about a mile and started there. We got about half way through this section of trail and put out another 7 caches until we reached an older cache of mine. I will have to go back in a couple of days and do the first part of the trail and when i get more containers ready will do the rest of the trail. A great day topped of with supper and a movie in Bridgewater.

Monday January 10th

Sunday morning I check my e-mails and see a number of new caches posted but not really in the mood , then a mail from Rick 0 --10 new caches lets go get em ??? I was still not in the mood so said not today --glad that I said that as 2 hours later it was snowing a lot here --
So last night I sent Rick a note lets go Monday ...  I picked him up at 9 am -- we thought 10 easy find s, mostly FTf and home by noon --- hahahha ...these caches were well done --- some one beat us to 8 of them but we did get 2 FTF ---- it was almost 2 pm by the time we finished --- snow banks and all were at least 100+ m in the woods --- but it was an awesome day weather wise and we were both were in top form so we had fun .... Rick had an egale eye today for sure ...then coffee at Crib Doners house then home by 4pm --- longer day than we thought but it was a fun one .... so that was it for the Hantsport boys today

Friday 10th

My Friday didn't go as planned. I had to wait around in the morning for Eastlink to show up, you know what they are like for appointments, anywhere from 8-12. I had 16 new cache containers all ready to go and just as soon a Eastlink left i was going to head out and place the caches in places i already had scouted out.
Around mid morning my Mother -In-Law called and wanted to know if i could drive her to Lunenburg in the afternoon for an appointment. It had been snowing all morning and she was afraid the roads might be slippery. There went my cache hiding plans.
I have been chosen to look after her parents for things like this now that i am retired, but i don't mind and actually enjoy helping them out. I figure that this is one of the things that this time of your life is for, both of my parents are gone so i have adopted Vic's. They are very thankful for the help (Vic's mom is 75 and her dad 78) and i am getting along with them better than i ever have. Now to find another day to hid my caches.

Jaqnuary 7, 2011

hey had to go to my sons today in Porter's lake and Rick came with me --- he was having a TV delivered and window was between 10 am  and 2 pm. So we left home around 8 am and stopped at a cache just before John's house. I did it a few months ago so it was gonna be an easy start to the day ........   You guessed it cache was gone ....MIA .. so we went to John's place and waited -- 11 30 am --TV show up but it has snowed while we waited and there is about 1 cm of wet snow over everything -- made it a messy  wet day to cache but we started out --- 1st cache was a quickie --then we hit next 3 three  and either they were gone after a lotta looking or we decided too far to walk so stopped looking ..... then we hit a good one --then 2 more no finds or to wet or something --then a long long look and Finally we hit "Yahoo" at this one cache and that made us feel better ...then 2 more finds --- then Tim's then home -- 4 hours ---- not our best day but we did enjoy each others company and it was good to get outside ..

January 6th -- Bayers lake

Met the Seeker around 9 45 am to grab a few caches together in Bayer's lake as we were both in the city today . Well the first cache that we do together is on a light pole -- it is on 1 of 6 so at the 1st one I say to B ... stay in the car I will look ... so I look and no cache so off we go and we check all the other 5 --- no cache -- Back to 1st one and both get out to check and sure enough ''The Seeker finds it -- I had my hands on it the first time -- LOL ..what a start to our day ... It was an awesome sunny morning and in two hours we grabbed 7 out of 8 caches  and I think the 8th was MIA ....... It was hard to believe that we were so close to all those stores but it seemed like we were in the middle of no where --
Great Morning --thanks Seeker ........................

GC2JE2F - How Do I Solve all of these Puzzle Caches?

So, at 11:45 last night (while I was watching NHL hockey, of course) I see a new puzzle cache has been published. GC2JE2F - How Do I Solve all of these Puzzle Caches? is supposedly a tutorial on how to solve puzzles and is 14 puzzles in one, one for each number in the coordinates. That isn't totally true, there are several numbers that are actually identical solves.

We all know how much I enjoy trying to solve puzzles. So, when I got up this morning I started to solve the coordinates. Before I knew what was happening, I had all but three numbers solved. For time's sake, I took an educated guess at the other three. It came back incorrect. I changed one number and had the correct solve!

Around noon we headed out - Jan with her book to read while I beat around in the bush.

We arrived at the parking coordinates and I had a 105 meter walk. In I went. I searched at GZ with no luck and had just begun to expand the circle of my search when I heard somebody coming down the trail. It was Pam Grant-Murray, the Valley part of team Fundy & Valley. We searched together for probably 35 or 40 minutes and we were both about to call it when I saw one more spot I wanted to check. As I walked towards that spot I had my head down to watch my footing - there is snow in the woods and I am, after all, a clumsy old guy! I saw what looked to be the cover of a 35 mm film canister. I called Pam over and we cursed and blessed Leona together because the cache listing said it was a regular size container, not a micro. (I think there is also an error in the puzzle, but it is obviously solvable.) I had to pry the container out, it was frozen in, and we found a blank log. Co-FTF! YAHOO!!!!!!!!

As an aside, Leona has changed her caching name. She is now 4CeasonS (think four seasons).

Cache on, cache safely,

Ken

An Earthcache on Highway 101?!?!

Well, I've probably driven right by it hundreds of times, but today I grabbed an earthcache on the side of Highway 101.

It all started out with the need for a warmer winter coat for Winnipeg next week, so we took a flying trip to the Mecca of bargain shoppers in Nova Scotia, the Sears Bargain Basement. I scored a $149.00 coat, extremely warm, for $80.00.

But before we left home I ran a PQ for caches along a route, the 101 from Kentville to Halifax. Lo and behold, there is an earthcache jumping off the screen at me. GC11WHZ -Cobequid Chedabucto Fault. (Mind you, I have since done a little research and I'm not so sure it is a good example of the fault line, but I'm probably wrong.) So we stopped on the way home and I fulfilled the requirements - I hope. I haven't heard back from the CO yet to approve my answers.

That is my first find for 2011. It's January 4, friggin' near time I grabbed a cache! I only need 764 more this year to meet my goal of at lest one more find than than last year!

Cache on, cache safely!

Ken

Great Hike

Had a great hike today, 4 miles (6.4 Kms) on old hauling roads and trails. I wasn't looking for caches but i was scouting locations to place caches. I love hiking in the cold weather, the air seems so much fresher. I marked spots for 8 caches on the trail and i already have 3 in the area to tie the trail together. I plan to expand this trial over time to cover 20 miles or more and probably at least 50 or 60 caches.
I also marked locations for 10 caches around Brooklyn. Now i have to get the containers ready and then place them. I seem to place most of my caches in the winter.

January 1/2011

Yesterday as I was closing up the computer a listing for a cache in Halifax came up that it was put back in action that day. It was on Veith Street so I loaded it into the GPS and today I told Rhonda just one cache on the way home to start the new year ---YUP I got er ... Happy New Year Guys !!!!!