Posts

Showing posts from June, 2017

Geocache: High voltage or stress

Image
Let me see, what did I have this morning. Was it a hide at a high voltage location or a high stress? It all started when I decided to fill up the 366 days find matrix. I still have a lots of missing dates there, but if I do not try it will never be filled. I had to travel for my work and the day of the travel was missing, so I told my colleague that we need to stop along the highway to find a geocache. He used to geocache with me before so he was into it, he even convinced me to stop at more geocaches. Two out of three was that day, so that was fun. The geocache in the grass under some construction ... If you look at the hide above it does not look any like stress or high voltage at all. What caused the stress then? The week passed by and did not have much time to find more geocaches but that was ok, I only had today missing, so I was looking at the map, two candidates in reach. One along the highway and one in the neighboring village, looking at the possibilities if I pick the

Geocache: Nano in the grass

Image
oh, uh, ah ... grass, and a green nano in between, already sounds a bit complicated to find, right? Not this time we found this within a minute, but the reason was only luck. That's all the geocache The first of these hides I found was also in an urban area somewhere in Hungary, that was on some electricity pole, and a lot easier to spot, but as the grass was recently cut around here it was an easy. We went out to find another one just to get a quick park and grab, but that was missing in action. The luck we with that first try is that it was next to a store which we did not think might be open, but was, so we could at least do some quick shopping before driving to this geocache. With the grass cut it is easy to find As we were on the way to park at the given parking place the rain started, not to bad, but still it was sprinkling. Then we reach a roundabout where we needed to turn right, guess what, the only exit closed, as we knew the neighborhood a bit we decided to t

Geocache: In the bus stop

Image
Another piece of a series I placed in Hungary. This time hiding just where many muggles would wait for the bus, right there, they could spot, but nowadays most people do not look around, they just watch their phones mostly. Hiding in there... The bus stop is next to a busy road with double lanes both way, and there is the public transportation company building as well. When I took the pictures a bus also came by, and the driver even said hi to us. The view through the bus stop I had to wait a few minutes to make this picture as so heavy traffic was in the area. As you can see it was a great weather, perfect summer the forecast predicted rain, but that happened a lot earlier so it was really nice walking around. The full bus stop... how about when it is rainy and windy? I remember the days when I used to commute to work with public transportation, if I only knew about this game back then, I'm sure I could have picked many geocaches on the way to different places, b

Geocache: On the sign

Image
Another popular hiding technic in many countries is to put a geocache on a traffic sign or other signs. See it hiding? There are usually a petling inside the pole of the sign, but in many cases that would place the container too high for shorter geocachers. This is one of my own hides and I know some of the local geocachers who needs help from their parents to find some of the geocaches placed higher so I decided to put some to easier reach height. The nano taken out Very important to make sure a container placed in its hiding should not be gone easy, this one has a tiny but really strong magnet glued to its side, that holds it so strong that if the last to find it pushed it too far in you might need a stick to push it out from the other end. Many geocachers do not like finding nano containers, but to be honest in urban areas most to hide feels better about them, I have many of the nanos in place in this area, and as I move out to the bicycle roads in the area I start

Geocache: Under the crust

Image
In bushes and forests it is a typical way of covering up the geocache with branches and crust, this hide is one of those. The geocache uncovered. In the Netherlands it is common to have series with a bonus container at the end. You need to find all or some of the containers and they will contain some bonus information which you need to note and when you have all needed information you can figure out the coordinates of the bonus cache. This geocache is part of such a serie, but what happened when we were doing the others this one was muggled for the nth time, so missing, it had one number needed to get the bonus coordinates, so what we did was checking on the map all the possible (10) coordinates and there were only a few that was not overlapping with any other geocaches in the area and only one that was not under water (in the lake). Based on the terrain level not too high the only one we had to check was close to the last geocache from the serie (also a hint), so we found that a

Animals: Lucanus cervus

Image
Lucanus cervus Lucanus cervus (male) Seen in:  Regenye, Baranya County, Hungary Danger: Not really any More info: The one on the pictures is a male, which is bigger than the female and has those big antlers which are actually part of its chewing organs. It is a protected animal in Hungary. For detailed info visit wikipedia  for Hungarian ,  for English . Lucanus cervus (male) How did we meet: We are searching for roadside crosses in Baranya. First we picked a few geocaches hidden by others, then we decided it is time to hide some more, so let's get off the main road and visit a few smaller villages, they might have some crosses around. The we saw a tower as we were driving across Regenye and decided that building deserves a geocache, and we were looking for hiding places when my daughter spotted this beutiful create. We quickly took a few pictures before continuing the hide. I recall them being around when I was a little boy, and did not see any more for a lon

Geocache: Branch #3

Image
There is an unlimeted number of ways to hide a geocache and also to hide it in a branch of a tree. Some of them are more challenging than the others, check this out below. Just like there is a cut tree there. The bigger the branch used the bigger the container could be, not really in this case, it was not a pill capsule or a petling, but still a micro sized container. With the cap on top When it has the cap on the top of the branch it is really not one that stands out of the croud in its environment. As the hide is in between some bigger and smaller trees and the GPS was jumping around we had no choice but look everywhere. We arrived while the sun was still up high so it was not to hard to cover a bigger area. You could see many geocachers do the same as all the area was clean of fallen brances and you could see their footprints all over the place. Just a few steps away and the hide is hard to spot. This is a lower difficulty level hide, but still I would not recommen

Geocache: Sempervivum

Image
When it comes to PET preforms, I always prefer to add some to them to make the hide a bit more fun to find. Here is my implementation of the sempervivum. The sempervivum on top of the cap. All you need to make this geocache is: a PET preform (petling) a plastic sempervivum (you can find it in local dollar stores, action stores, look at the decoration departments, if you are luck they might have ones broken for like 10 cents, but they are the best for this) a green cap for the petling, I prefer a dark one but you can pick any color a drill to drill a hole through the cap to put the sempervivum in it. some glue to properly glue the sempervivum to the cap, in and outside (that helps to maintain waterproofness)   Inside the cap As you can see above the glue is not only keeping the sempervivum in place but also makes sure that the cap will still be waterproof. I see many petlings while geocaching that has a screw holding some objects on top of the cap, but that'

Geocache: Smiling tennis ball

Image
Sunny afternoon, usual busy day at work, let's get outside. It is not so hot as the previous days, so it's time to find a few geocaches which are just there, but not many in the area. A happy tennis ball. When it comes to more creative geocaches they allways give more pleasure, but they are mostly placed one by one and not on trails or series. The was next to a closeby lake, but on the other side we had to drive 15 minutes to get to the parking, and all we could find in that area was two, but both of them was a good hide. Let me eat that pill capsule. It can still be a micro container and have fun finding it. This hiding technic gets on the list of I want to create one of these myself. I'm not sure if it is fortunate or unfortunate but where we live there are so many geocaches in the area that it is close to impossible to hide more, so any ideas I duplicate will be far from where I find them. A picture from below while it is hiding. Under a small wooden br

Geocache: Roadside cross #3

Image
Sunny day in Pécs, and I mean seriously a sunny one, at the end of the day I had a headache and burn on my head. But I won't remember that in a week from now, all that I will is how many geocaches we found, and that in Baranya county different geocachers started to place geocaches next to roadside crosses, just like this one. The geocache taken out of its hiding place. Some of the main roads in Baranya have many of these roadside crosses, just like 58, so we decided to put some smiley on this road today and then getting inspired by the effort by the others we went for a different hunt, we started driving around to see if we can find more of these roadside crosses and if we do and it is easy we'll place a geocache next to it. I had help, my daughter who did some videos and pictures and my nephew who enjoys geocaching but his parents are not taking him to have some fun. My daughter took a few pictures and videos, and laughed at us in case we did anything unneeded. The

Geocache: Autobahn cache #3

Image
Driving on A3 in Germany is not always fun, so far I cannot recall when the whole autobahn was without any closed lane, the only fun you can count on is that there are many geocaches hidden along this autobahn. Tiny film box on the rock. Most autobahn geocaches are placed with the intention of park and grab; just like this one. In some cases they are planned to be P&G but the coordinates are a bit off or your GPS is showing wrong coordinates. That is not a big problem unless the parking you stopped is full with muggles. When we pulled into this parking I did not even know if there was a geocache, I just felt tired and my eyes needed some rest. We parked I saw a few muggles, rested a bit and wait a second... We mostly stop at big parking lots and the chance of stopping at this same again is really low, so let me quickly take a look around. My lucky day again, we parked less than 20 meters from the geocache. The rocks, one of them gives shades to the geocache. Also lucky

Geocache: Filling station off the autobahn

Image
If you travel a lot in Germany and you want to save real euros you must know that with a few extra minutes the fuel prices can be a lot lower. All you need to do is get off the autobahn and fill up your car at a filling station that is not on the autobahn. Mostly we do not do this as we have a lot more kilometers to go, but this time due to nature call my daughter wanted to get to the next filling station, and this came up. We rolled off the highway, and as it was a lot cheaper we filled up the tank, got a small hot breakfast and of course checked if there is any geocache close by. And there was one. The geocache is it is found. Wow, when you first look at it, just there, that's it. How? Why is it not muggled? The log had multiple entries, many of them. See the geocache? and the truck parking close to it? One of the reasons why it might be there is that most probably the workers at the filling station know about it, and they do not disturb while cutting the grass next t

Geocache: Highway cache in Hungary

Image
I drive a lot, that is for sure. After a while you get so used to drive that you only stop for a few reasons but it is best if you stop more frequently, one way of geocaching helping drivers like me is to pick a few geocaches along the route you go and stop at them, of course you can combine the stops with needs like food, fuel, etc. Half way out of its hiding place In Hungary most stops on the highways have a geocache, it was a combined effort of multiple players, but I'm sure it give people lots of fun. As you can see above some geocachers went an extra step of hiding their petlings a bit more sophisticated. Just by adding a cap and pushing it into the bench it already more fun then just puting it on a safety rail with a magnet. The bench with the geocache in its place.  There are some places where finding the geocache is not too hard, but picking it could be challenging when it is buy. Lucky for me on a weekday in the beginning of the summer there are not many muggl