Puzzles, Puzzles everywhere

Please remember that the highlighted words are links and will take you to a different webpage that will be of interest!!!

Since moving down to Victoria we have been slowly caching and changing all the little green boxes to smilie faces. Plus I am still doing my cache a day challenge. We have noticed there are an awful lot of Puzzle caches down here. I have started working on them on my spare time. The worst part about heading out on a trail to grab some caches is, there could be a puzzle cache along the trail, and if you have not worked it out, you then have to come back to it later on. Most puzzle cache icons are shown on the map of geocaching .com in the middle of the ocean or a lake, but that is not where they are. You have to work them out, do the puzzle and then change the co-ords on the cache page by editing. (A feature that has been around for some time) I have recently come across an app for my iPhone called iGCT Pro which stands for iPhone Geocache tool. There is a mapping system within this app as seen on the top left hand corner of Pic. 2

Pic. 1                  iGCT Pro

Pic. 2

Pic. 3

It allows you to input co-ordinates into the app, and name them what you want and it saves them for later use. Then if you click on the map(pic. 3) it shows them as pins. Now when I head down a trail or head into the woods I click on the map and it shows me, as a blue flashing dot, and I can see right away if there is some puzzle caches on my path. I just then have to enter them as a waypoint on my GPSr and off I go. After finding the cache I can remove it from the app if I wish.

Speaking of puzzles, I FTF a hard(Difficulty 4) puzzle cache called Misery Loves Company that was put out by a friend of mine, Cameracowgirl AKA Kathryn Dunphy. It was a very hard math puzzle with many questions with Trig and statistical reasoning. (Jenna did quite a few of them for me. lol) I got it all figured out but one number kept eluding me, so I played with different numbers at the cache site until I got the cache in hand. I never did get a success on the geochecker on the cache page. Persistence paid off!!!

Also this past month I received my custom made lanyard from Geo-Knots (Thanks Laurie)
It is a new company that was started by a friend of mine, and she hand makes them using paracord.

 

 

Electric blue and Black Lanyard with accesories

 

 You can purchase a basic one, or have a custom one made up. I had mine made with the colors of my suit that I wear for magic shows. Jenna thinks I have a lanyard obsession, but as you can clearly see from the photo I do not!!!

PS This is not all of them!!! Lol

Also this month my good friends over at Landsharkz had a contest called "What's in my Bag?"

 You send in a pic and description of the stuff you carry in your Geo-pack and people vote on them, the one with the most votes wins some cool geo swag from them. I did not win, but still a cool idea. As you can see, I carry everything I may need on the trail.

 Did a cache the other day on the way home from my show. Can you spot the cache, I did!!!

 

 

 

 

 



See ya next month

Keep on caching!!

Chris Yuill

Magicman65

Geo booth at the Courtenay Fish and Game

This month we helped organize and run the
Geocaching Booth for the 21st annual outdoor recreation show at the Courtenay Fish and
Game. Over 3600 people came thru the gates. We had some awesome help in the booth and on the scheduled hikes to find caches for teaching. We had cachers C2C2C, RayandLynn, ArrrowO, Valleycats, GeckoGecko, TobyandMe, Angelcheeks and I.(Magicman65)


Entrance to Boomtown

Entrance Tunnel

 Doesn't this look like the train station on the opening credits of Back to the Future III

 

Because the Fish and Game is on private property there are no published caches on the grounds, so we went around the night before the event started and placed 7 different caches. We placed some caches for others to find while in the campground, in the park near the archery facilities and also in Boomtown which is built like an old western town with people dressed in western gear and they let you shoot some of the guns at targets. Very cool indeed.

Boomtown was complete with a saloon, general store, jailhouse, and train station plus to get people back and forth from Boomtown to the main grounds, they had tractors pulling haywagons that you could jump onto. Every hour or so, one of the wagons would get held up by a band of cowboys!! I got video of one of the hold ups but accidently filmed it upside down with my phone. lol

     

Here we are placing a cache up in Fort Whoop up, the night before the event

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The geobooth was sponsored by the Eagle 97.3 which is one of the local radio stations in Courtenay.
 We even had a special cache made up called the Eagle cache and we got to take Bob Johnstone, who is one of the DJ's of the Eagle on a hike to find it, and show him what caching is all about. Then he did an on air interview with myself and Tom(C2C2C)

Eagle Cache Geocaching Booth Smokey the Bear and I

 

 

 

See ya next month

Keep on caching!!

Chris Yuill

Magicman65