Aladar123 plays geocaching

This time I'm sharing another cool matrix you can try to fill, but before that let me show you one of the cool geocaches I came across just recently, while working on this matrix. The frog on the branch It is early spring here in the Netherlands and the trees and bushes are not covered with leaves, that was helping a lot. The hint for this hide was clear we need to find a frog on a tree, of course all it said was the latin name of the frog... Honestly it is hard to find time to go geocaching on busy days when those days are also short like in winter and early spring and this brings us to the next matrix I want to share. Finds by found date This matrix is showing you on which day of which month you found and how many geocaches you found; the year does not count. As you can see after a few years geocaching it is still kind of empty on the darker months starting from October till March. January and February was in a worse condition, then I decided to fill as many gaps as I...

Have you ever heard about the geocache in Maastricht, the Netherlands? The one that is hidden in a safe? In a place that once used to be a bank? A geocache with more than 3000 favorite points? (of course still counting after I wrote this blogpost) The geocache My daughter wanted to visit another famous place in Maastricht, the bookstore that is in a church. That building is not used as a church any longer only as a bookstore, it has its atmosphere, and beauty. After the bookstore we stopped for a quick lunch at a quick food place and my wife started to look up what geocaches should we go after in Maastricht. She immediately spotted this one and realized this is that famous one, the legendary, and less then 300 meters away. There could nothing come in between this find and us. Inside the geocache She became so excited she kept on rushing us to finish up with our lunch. The we walked to the spot, and what do we see there? Another of her favorite places, a store for all tools ...

Now this is one of those geocaches that I heard of but never saw one personally till the day we were in Belgium on the road back to the Netherlands. It all started with let's stop at a geocache to avoid highway and then came look there is another one just a few meters down the road, and this was the one. Guess what we kept on going on with that serie as there were many cool hides out there. The film is ready to be caught ... When we turned on that dirt road and I spotted the geocache from the car I got so excited that I did not really pull down thinking who else would come this way. We jumped out and went for the geocache with a huge smile on our face, finally we meet one of these. The geocache is not too much hidden A pipe with many holes attached to a tree. How complicated could that be? Well at first we thought we'll need to find some tools in our geocaching bag, but then we saw the two metal stick hanging there and we knew the tools are also provided. Pushin...

Light posts, US, what's next? Under the skirt? That is what my first guess was, and I was wrong. After an hour in a taxi to the airport then going through all steps to get to the airplane, flying for over 8 hours and finally in Detroit? Going through the border control, then picking up the checked in bag, and quickly dropping it off. What to do? Ok, I was fully prepared this time, offline map, walking distance geocaches saved and updated yesterday evening. So let's try to find a transportation to a location where with some walk I can pick a few geocaches. The geocache on the light post To be honest, maybe it is also called skirt, or maybe I could just call it a mini skirt. It was a quick find, which gave me some happiness and the motivation to go for the next one, only 1.8kms away, if I could go straight, and of course I could not, so over 2 kms to get to that. A closer picture of the geocache on my tablet. I got a tablet from my wife, and I decided to use that when...

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...

Oh, this was fun ... when you start playing geocaching you try to go for the lower difficulty and terrain, then based on your experience you increase what you give a try. This one was around 3. When we got to the coordinates we first looked around, then saw that on the other end of the plank in front of us there is a tree. We assumed the container will be somewhere there for the higher difficulty level. The petling hiding under the plank. Of course I walked over the plank. Can you imagine how dizzy you can get if you walk on a narrow plank while the water below you is visibly floating? Most people would not even step on the plank to get to the other side, but I did, was fun once. The other end of the plank. After walking to the other side with my phone in my pocket my camera in my hand there was this small fence kind of construction. Why is that here? How do I get around? It is moving ... oh, nothing to hold on to to at least feel secure on this plank. So I lifted it a bit...

When it comes to creating geocaches it always comes to my mind what would I love to see out there. One of the biggest problem is rolling up the logs. Especially when they are old, being out and handled in not the best ways, etc. I saw many better solutions then just placing a rolled up paper in the pill capsule and then I cam to this solution with all combined. The pill capsule with the log roller. As you can see above the log is rolled up on a plastic roller and then has a piece of straw covering it and holding it together. Let me share with you how I made it. A 3D printer log roller, two parts. First thing is to find a template, or create one for the 3D printer and print it out. The one I used I found thanks to instagram, where weellu posted a picture of one and shared his blog post (which is in Finnish, but easy to read...) with the downloadable templates. You can find this in his blog on  the logroller . Feel free to download and share with the world, he dese...