Caching in Rawlins, WY - July 2006

On my summer trips across the country from Tennessee to Oregon and back, I love to stop and cache in small towns. Whenever possible I like to find a nice place to park and will spend a good part of a day walking around town hunting caches. It gives me a much better feel of the town then just driving between caches.

On July 3, 2006, I was heading east through Wyoming and had previously identified Rawlins as a place I wanted to visit.

One of the highlights of my visit to Rawlins was the Old State Penitentiary. Rubiconlwb has placed a number of caches around the prison and one can find half a dozen or more with very little walking. The day was perfect. Very sunny and warm with few muggles out and about.


I started my hunt with The Mural Tour by Rubiconlwb (GCM1MT). I don't normally hunt multis while travelling on long trips, but I enjoyed this one. It is located in downtown Rawlins and involves some walking, but not overly much.

I hunted a couple of other caches and headed for Frontier Prison by Rubiconlwb (GCNDGA) where I parked my car in the shade and hunted caches around the old prison. If I had wanted to stay a bit longer the prison gave tours.

The brochure even mentioned that you could sit in the old gas chamber. Sounds like fun! I picked up a couple of brochures and bought a cold drink and continued on the hunt.


I'm not sure how long I stayed in Rawlins. It was more than a couple of hours, though, and I was quite exhausted when I finished up. Maybe it was the temperature or the relatively high altitude that wore me out.

I found 11 caches on that stop and missed a few outlying ones because I was running late. I enjoyed every cache I found that day so I can't remember if I had a favorite. I see now that there are several new caches there so I may be stopping there again. Maybe next time I will sit in the gas chamber!

Caching in Nashville - May 2007

Nashville has lots of great caches. I never cached here during the time I was hunting my first 1k finds, but had made a couple of trips to Murfreesboro (with Titansfan) and Smyrna (with BigDaddyD and the Bluff Boys) in the months immediately after. When cgeek invited me along for a hunt inside Nashville, I was eager to go.

I met up with cgeek at 5am and with no delays, off we went.

We only hit a couple of caches heading east along I-40, mainly for times sake but our first find of the day was An Unusual Occurrence at the Cotton Patch. It is located near an interesting-looking Information Center with rest room facilities (which I needed at this point). We took the opportunity during this short break to do a little CITO.


We reached Nashville around 8:30 am... Most of the caches we did were Park and Grabs, but several involved a little hiking in the woods. Many of the caches had been around a while and I appreciated the variety of hide types done by a large number of different cache placers.

Nashville has lots of interesting virtual caches, but we only did one on this trip - Trinity.

One of the caches I enjoyed that day was Shy's Hill. It involved a nice hike uphill and the trail was a little slick because of the recent rain, but very well-maintained. The expected rain held off for a good part of the day but it had rained enough so that we got fairly wet walking through the wooded areas.

After a quick pick-up of dinner at a Wendy's we started the long trip home. I still had some energy for caching so cgeek graciously let me hunt a few LTLs on the way back to Memphis.

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Thanks go to cgeek, who drove on this trip, for the company and for not falling asleep at the wheel!

A new day dawns on GOWT

Apparently some changes have been made to the GOWT forums in the last day. It looks like some clean up work was done and a few anonymous moderators added. I also noticed that several people who like to log in as "hidden" showed their faces today. Hopefully more changes of a positive nature are underway as well.

Off-Topic

As I prepare to go home for the evening I look back at our discussion forums with sadness. The most popular sections these days are the Milestones section where people rarely get offended and the Off-Topic section where non-geocaching threads are.

In the Off-Topic section the two most active threads are "Joke of the Day" and "Can You Explain This". There are other sections on the site with more posts, but once you edit out all of the fighting you are left with the Off-Topic threads. I don't often participate in these threads - my primary interest in this site is geocaching. The reason these threads are so active is there is nothing in there to argue about.

I think about all of this just two short hours after receiving my second "warning" about inappropriate behavior on the forums. I may be banned right now, I didn't check back to see.

I won't pretend I took the high road. In the end it doesn't matter. As a group we are afraid. Afraid to discusss the merits of ammo cans vs micros. Afraid to discuss urban caching vs rural caching. Afraid to see what is on the other side of the hill. I don't just mean GOWT or JAG. One group after all is simply a small but growing subset of the other.

I never wanted to argue. I wanted people to be able to rationally discuss geocaching issues/topics without some moron(s) trying to ruin it. We in GOWT were not prepared for morons to overrun our group. We were not prepared for a worthless stump to become our president. [Editor's note: The worthless stump resigned on May 3rd] I haven't given up on GOWT. I told some folks the other day: "It's not how hard you can hit, its how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward - how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!!" I didn't explain to them why I posted the quote (from Rocky Balboa) - why I find it relevant. I figured it would become apparent. Maybe it will.

The only thing I can guarantee is that I will get up tomorrow and keep moving forward.

I still have one question that I'll probably never get an answer to: What part of the "Jackson area" does Dyersburg fall in? I looked at a map but it appears that Dyersburg is not in the Jackson Area.... :-)

Wasted days and nights...

Yesterday a real bonehead posted a message on the GOWT forums in a public area calling me a back-stabber. In a rare move for me, I ignored it. After I saw it was deleted I knew all heck would break loose that night. I went home and enjoyed a couple of movies and went to bed. When I checked the forums the next day I saw the moderators had been quite busy.

I read the previous night's posts (those that didn't get deleted) and laughed out loud several times.

One dude wanted a refund of his dues retroactively for two years.

He also has a fascinating signature: "IF YOU DON'T LIKE ME, LETS GET IT ON......"
I wouldn't "get it on" with him even if I still liked him. I don't swing that way.

[You can't ban me in here, genius!]

We have excellent moderators on our site and I compliment the fine work they do. Unfortunately it appears they will be busy for a while.

JAG says hello

Fan mail I received today provided me with a good laugh!

// begin

Subject: Nice blog

I just read your blog, and just let me say.......GROW UP! Nice little session of whinning and crying.

If your that curious about JAG, ask a member, but if he gets caught......he's gone too!

_________________
There's a change a coming

// end

Anyone who is a regular reader of this blog, knows who sent it so I won't bother saying who it is. I will say that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The dude who sent me the message is proof of that.

Word of the day

cli·ché [klee-shey, kli-]
–n
1. a trite, stereotyped expression; a sentence or phrase, usually expressing a popular or common thought or idea, that has lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long overuse, as sadder but wiser, or strong as an ox.
2. (in art, literature, drama, etc.) a trite or hackneyed plot, character development, use of color, musical expression, etc.
3. anything that has become trite or commonplace through overuse.
–adj
4. trite; hackneyed; stereotyped; clichéd

When asked on our forums as to the status of our 2007 GOWT President, I made the comment that he was spotted recently "guarding the Krispy Kremes at a recent JAG CITO". I took a bit of heat for that - some folks going as far to suggest I should be banned from the GOWT forums. I later posted the CITO log entry from said GOWT president where he specifically referred to the donuts. I then received personal messages asking why I was so bitter and hateful. Sigh. Subsequently I learned that a few in JAG adopted the term. JAG's leader even used the phrase in a "Will Attend" log for an event.

That is how a new JAG cliché was born: "guarding the Krispy Kremes". Glad I could help!