Caching at the Taj Mahal

I know I haven't posted here in a few years - and haven't even done much caching for the last 2 years - but I had to post about this awesome cache.

I visited India on a business trip and made the road trip from Delhi to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.  I decided to do a quick check to see if any caches were near by since I hadn't been able to get close to any in Delhi.  Low and behold there's one on the Taj grounds!!  I have to get that one.

My colleague from the Netherlands had never found a cache but had heard about it from me before. The two colleagues from India and our tour guide had never heard of it.  The tour guide visits there everyday and tell people about the Taj Mahel, but now I'm able to teach him something about the area.

Fun for everyone and I get to log India with a find!

Here's the link to the Taj Mahal log on cache page on geocaching.com.

Nostalgia Cach

Wow, it's been a while since I posted anything. Where has time gone....

I stopped by one of my caches this morning, Up Front (we'll, I really stopped to find a new cache but since I was in the area I decided to checkup on this cache too.)

Based on some of the previous logs I decided I better check on the cache because it appears people are finding more than one cache.

I found my cache quickly (knowing where it was) and everything was just fine. But the real goal of the maintenance run was to find a possible second cache in the area. It took some time but I finally found it about 30-35 feet from my cache. Looks like three other cachers were also lucky enough to have found it in the last little while.

The cache was intact for the most part. Small chew holes on the lid let water leak in but the log book was dry in its baggy.

Interestingly, according to the log book cache was placed in Dec 2002. It was found 5 times before going dormant in Jan 2003. The finders were Kleiner, Jonsom, Eron?, EelSid, and lastly, lsildvr's Bane on Jan 11, 2003.

The cache has been hidden well since then - at least well enough not to be found by anyone.

I searched GC.COM to try and find the old cache and came up with this...

The old cache was called "Cuddle Up" by Centris.
I know the coords were at the dome but Cuddle Up is a puzzle cache and looking through the logs and the pictures the puzzle definitely led them to this cache location (there's a picture of the old cache in a log by Centris - and that's what I found, today).

I removed the old cache and contacted Centris so she could also benefit from a little bit of nostalgia.

"Must Have" GPS case

I wanted to put a quick plug in for an awesome protective case for the Garmin eTrex color series of GPSr's. The definition of an eTrex color includes the eTrex Vista C series, Venture C series, Legend C series, and the Summit C series. These units all have color screens and are all basically the same physical size (approx 4.2 x 2.2 x 1.2).

I've had one of these color units since I first started caching in Dec 2005. Since then I've acquired quite a collection of Garmin eTrex units - most of them color units. My kids use them when we go out caching and, of course, the kids aren't quite as careful with them as I'd like them to be. So shortly after I bought my second color unit a couple of years ago I searched for a case that would protect it from the wear-and-tear my young children put on it.

After quite a search I came across Foarm on Amazon (here's a link to search for Foarm on Amazon.com). After continuing to search and look for more options there was nothing like Foarm anywhere. So I bought one to try it out.

Long story short... The case is absolutely awesome! It holds the unit snugly and surrounds them with a plastic protective shield. Unlike other cases, there is no plastic cover over the screen - which usually make the screen very hard to read. Instead Foarm ships 2 screen protectors with the case.

I think I've now purchased 11 of these eTrex cases - 4 have been given away to other family members. I absolutely love these cases. Matter of fact I also bought two of them for my GPSMap 76CSx's. I see they now have one for the Garmin Colorado, too.

So if you looking to protect your eTrex color, 76 series, or maybe even the Colorado GPS (or have someone on your Christmas list who is) check these guy's out at Amazon. I've been very pleased with their product and customer support.

Note: I am not affiliated with Foarm, Inc in any way. I just tried their product and have been very impressed.

Geocoding addresses and loading them into your GPS

What does "geocode" mean and now is it going to help me? Geocoding is the process of converting an address (like 123 1st St) into a set of coordinates (expressed in Latitude and Longitude). I suppose that's not really correct, though. There is no "conversion" going on. Goecoding really finds a set of coordinates for a given address. In my testing I found it to be fairly accurate - at least close enough for me to get where I need to go.

How it will help you depends on what you're trying to accomplish. In my case, I work with the youth group at my church. Sometimes I provide rides to or from various activities and have to pick them up or take them home. I know these kids and their families very well, but that doesn't mean that I know how to get to all of their homes. I also don't know their addresses off the top of my head so just typing their address into the GPS isn't always an option, either.

So with the problem in mind I set out to find a solution. This article describes what I found.

As I thought about the problem I came up with a basic set of steps that I thought I would need to do.

1. Get the address data I needed
2. Format the data into proper format - whatever that meant
3. Geocode the addresses
4. Create a GPX file to load into the GPS.

Seemed pretty simple, I guess. At first I thought it would be fun to break out the coding skills and write something that did this for me. However, after a few hours with Google, testing a few things, and throwing some things away, I put my coding skills back on the shelf and came up with a fairly straight forward process for "Geocoding addresses and loading them into your GPS."

I tested the process with the Garmin line of GPS's. I tried it with a Garmin Nuvi 660, eTrex Vista HCx, GPSMap 76 CSX, and other eTrex units. I didn't have access to other brands to test but assuming they can deal with GPX files this should work just fine.

Once you've created the GPX file you can either load it onto your GPS as waypoints or you could even load it as points of interest. Points of interest act differently than waypoints so feel free to experiment with it until you get a format that you like. For this article I'm going to load the data as waypoints.

You should also take into account how may waypoints and/or points of interest your GPS can handle. In the Garmin line there are some that can handle 500 waypoints while others can have 1000 or more. Just make sure you consider how many you have and how many you're going to try and load.


1. Get your list of addresses - electronically of course unless you like typing.

2. Format the list into columns with the following structure (Excel works well). Make sure the first line is a column heading. You can use the example below to get it started.

Address City State Zipcode Name Description Symbol

Address = The street address of the person. "2400 Pennsylvania Ave"
City = The city. Try and be specific. "Coon Rapids"
State = The 2 letter abbreviation for the state: "MN"
Zipcode = The 5 digit US zip code "55432"
Name = The name of the waypoint you want in your GPS. I like the families last name for this. Keep in mind your GPS limitations on the length of a waypoint name. You'll also want to make each name is unique. Think about this one - don't just jump in with any old name.
Description = This will show up in the waypoint "comments" in the GPS. Keep in mind the max length your GPS will take. It will usually truncate it for you but you never know.
Symbol = The name of the icon you want to use in your GPS.

Here's an example of what it might look like (the lines may wrap)

Address,City,State,Zipcode,Name,Description,Symbol
123 1st St,Landen,MN,82520,Macfarlane,123 1st St 952-555-1212,Residence

You can see that I also decided to add the phone number to the Description field. That way I'll have their address and phone number in the GPS if I ever need it. Be creative and try various things with the name and description. You can't break it and anything you add can always be removed if you don't like it.

Here's a hint while you're testing... In the example above I used "Residence" as the Symbol (GPS Icon). The Garmin line of GPS units allow you to delete waypoints by symbol. So, if you use a unique symbol, say something like "Diver Down Flag 2" you can easily delete all the waypoints you just added by removing only the "Diver Down Flag 2" symbol. This will allow you load and delete the data as many times as you want without harming any of the existing data on your device.

Same logic should be applied to Points of Interest. Make sure you use a separate POI file just for these addresses. That way you can easily reload your other POI files if needed. I'm not going to go into details about POI files for the Garmin units but you can find ton's of information by Google'ing "Garmin POI"

3. Assuming you used Excel in step 2, save the file as a CSV file. If you didn't use Excel and just used a text editor, that's fine, too.

4. Open the CSV file in a text editor (wordpad or notepad) - NOT Excel!

5. Highlight all of the text. Press CTRL-A for a quick way to highlight all.

6. Press CTRL-C to copy it to the clipboard. You can also choose File | Copy from the menu on most text editors.

7. Open a web browser and go to the following URL http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/geocoder/
This web site is going to do the rest of the work for you. You can read all about what it's doing by visiting the web site.

8. Click in the white box labeled "Input" part way down the page.

9. Press CTRL-P to paste the address you created earlier into the "Input" box. You should see all of your address in the box. If nothing showed up, go back to step 4 and try again.

10. In the "Type of data:" dropdown box, select "Tabular (columns & a header row)"

11. Press the green "Start Geocoding" button to the right.
It will read the addresses in the "Input" box, lookup the latitude and longitude of the address, then create a set of formatted data in the "Results" box located below the input box.

12. If you want to keep the latitude and longitude data around for some reason you can copy can paste it into a new text file. I don't save this data. It can always be obtained again if needed.

13. Just to the right of the "Results" box is a button labeled "Create a GPX file" Press the button to create a GPX with all of your address in it.

14. Once the "Create a GPX file" button is pressed, it will create the GPX and open a new web (depending on the number of address you converting it may take a little longer). At the top of the page you can download the GPX file. In the middle you'll find the contents of the GPX that you can cut and past if you wish. Save the GPX file to your computer.

----- Note: From here you should check with your GPS documentation to see how to load data from a GPX file. The following steps will describe one way to load waypoints to a Garmin GPS by using the Garmin Mapsource software.

15. Start Mapsource and open the GPX file you saved.
You should be able to see all the waypoints for the addresses you used on the web site. You should also see the correct symbol/icon you used (eg "Diver Down Flag 2")

16. To send them to your GPS as waypints:
a: Connect your GPS to your computer and turn on the GPS
b: Select "Transfer | Send to Device" from the Mapsource menu.
c: Select Waypoints under the What to Send section.
d: Press the Send button to send the data to your device.

That's it. You now have all your friends loaded as waypoints on your GPS. Assuming your GPS has turn-by-turn navigation, you can now easily navigate to a an address by searching for the waypoint.

Questions and comments are always welcomed!

Note: I am not affiliated with GPSVisualizer in any way. They control the web site and may change it. In order to support the development of free tools like GSPVisualizer, feel free to contribute to them by using the links on their web page.

Woohoo! Winter Caching is back!!

I may be crazy but I really enjoy winter caching. Yes, sometimes it's too cold but for the most part as long as it's above 20 degrees it's the best time to be out.

I suppose some of it has to do with cleanliness. Many of my finds are done at lunch time. That means I'm wearing dress clothes most of the time. In the summer I all too often come back to work with dirt smudges on my pants or leaves on my back. The great thing about winter is that I cover all of those dress clothes up with "winter gear".

So two days ago I dawned my winter coat, snow/wind pants, snow boots and headed out for some caches. Now two day's ago I only needed that because it was cold. No snow on the ground yet but the wind was very cold with temps in the low 30's.

I didn't have much time so I only went after two caches (I'm leaving the names out because of the picture that shows the cache container). I headed out into the woods which soon became a swamp - but it's cold, right. There shouldn't be any water problems in the swamp when it's this cold... Silly me - Soon I stuck my boot into 6 inches of mucky, muddy, swamp water. Duh! it's only been cold for a day. I kept moving forward to find the cache and then on to the next one.

Side note: There you go - another reason winter caching is the best. Even though my foot was 6" under water in the muck, I didn't care! My snow boots are water proof and come up to my calf - see there are many reasons why I like winter caching.

The next cache was a great walk. It was cold outside but it was a clear afternoon which made the 1/3 mile walk each way worth it. After seeing the title I had a good idea what I was looking for but how could it be a regular size cache if it's what I think it is. Humm, maybe the hider messed up....

As the picture shows, nope, he didn't mess up. That's how a shot gun shell can be a regular size cache!! My glove is in the picture to show a relative size. Very cool container. Made finding it even more difficult.

Two days later.... (that would be today).

Today I had time to renew my drivers license which expires in a couple of weeks. I went a little early to miss the lunch traffic and it worked. I got out of there very quickly so off I went to Central Park in Roseville to find the caches - it's only a block away, how could I pass them up? The difference this time is that it snowed last night! Real winter caching today!! I once again dawned my winter gear and headed out to find a few caches.

I was able to nab 5 today, which once again cleared out Central Park for me.

ADAT The picture of the baseball field is close to where this one was hidden.

Fir Protestor by Posen. I love caching in Roseville primarily due to Posen. He has some GREAT containers! This one was near a wasps nest that was nesseled in a pole about 12" in diameter. Yikes! See the log posting for a picture.

Make an ash of yourself more winter fun - climbing a hill.

Fowl Ball This one was starting to make me mad. I can't believe how long it took me to find it!

Girls Scouts are Prepared Another Posen hide - but one that I wasn't expecting. Not his normal type of hide made this one harder that it should have been. Oh well, a find is still a find.

After all of that, my gloves were soaked, my pants and coat were wet, but my work clothes were dry and clean as could be.

Now back to work I go after a most excellent day of winter caching!

More Travel Caching in Dallas, TX

It seems that caching is been very slow this month - at least while I'm home. However, I once again spent a few days in Dallas, TX and was able to grab a few caches in the evenings. I don't know how much business traveling you've done but for me caching has made it much more enjoyable. Before I got into caching business travel meant uneventful evenings usually in front of the computer working because there really wasn't much else to do. However, caching changes all of that. Now in the evenings I go caching until dark. Then back to the hotel to log the finds. It makes it all much more enjoyable.

This last trip to Dallas was no different. I was usually finished for the day around 4:30 or 5:00. However, this late in the year the sun goes down around 6:45 or 7:00. Being a stranger in a strange town I don't like to do any night caching. I don't really want to deal with the police when I'm not from around those parts.....

On this trip I was able to snag somewhere around 40 caches. All of them were fun but the rest of this post is about some of the more interesting finds.

The first cache on my list to do was The Grassy Knoll. If you think about it long enough I'm sure you can guess the significance of this cache. It's a virtual cache because the area is considered a US landmark - so I didn't find any container but I learned a great deal.

It made me think back to all of the old news footage that is seen of the events when Kennedy's motorcade drove past this small grassy hill. Standing there I could remember that footage and see how it happened. In the picture to the right I'm standing somewhere near where a shot likely came from. The closest building on the left side of the picture is the "Book Depository" building and the far right-hand window of the second to the top story (just above the trees) is where others claimed to have heard shots. Anyway, there's lots of stories that can be found all over the net. It was just pretty interesting to see the site where it all happened.

I've noticed that Dallas has a great concept for neighborhood parks. They call them "Greenways" which are parks that weave behind houses and across streets. They're very nice. This is one of them. I spent way too long looking for this cache - What a view. I spent a lot of time sitting on the rocks shown in the picture just under the fence on the grass. I even found a friend while searching - a small gardener snake rolled up in the leaves. Made me jump back but I never saw him (or any of his friends) again.

This one 'scuse me while I... was a fun one. You can see from the pic there's a large freeway involved and of course it's on a walking bridge over the freeway. Ok, so that part really isn't that interesting - we have lots of those around here. The interesting thing is that if I were able to follow that freeway for about 25 hours or so I'd end up right back here in Minnesota. That freeway is I-35E - and if you stay on I-35E it will lead from Dallas, Tx all the way back to St Paul Minnesota. I often thought it was funny that I-35 splits into E and W in the Twin Cities, but it was even funnier to see that it splits into E and W in Dallas, too.

In Texas they have an "early voting" capability. Voting actually started when I was there and evidence could be seen all around. The picture to the right was taken as I was coming out from finding a couple of caches. The polling place was about 500' from where all of these signs were lined up. Boy I can't wait until this is over...

I've always been a Dallas Cowboy's fan. I used to follow them a lot. I had Cowboys room decorations, coats, clothes, uniforms, etc when I was a kid. So it was kind of cool when I found Made Me Glad - 'cause it did. This picture on the left was taken from the cache site (and zoomed way in). After finding this cache I headed toward the Cowboys Training camp to check it out - and get a few caches around there. Of course it's all locked up and visitors are not allowed, but it was still fun to see.

The last cache on one evening was planned to put me next to a Fry's Electronics store so I could waste some more time in the store. The cache was "I'm Fryed" and it must have had something very valuable in it at one point. The last picture to the right shows how this cache is guarded - and that thing is less that 50' away from the cache - in an open parking lot. I thought this was a pretty interesting 'unit.' I wonder what it's used for. I can't imagine them needed to use this for the Fry's parking lot but maybe, I guess. It also has a great view of the freeway from here so maybe that's the reason. At any rate, I grabbed the cache quickly and moved on.

Overall it was a great caching trip. I was able to grab some fun and memorable caches. Because of caching I was able to visit some new places, see some new things, and experience the memorable - things that I wouldn't have done otherwise. Thanks, caching, for making it fun!!

FTF, Lunch, and some Dallas Caching

I've been pretty busy at work lately and haven' t been able to do as much lunch caching as I like to - oh, ya, it's been raining, too. So when I saw a new cache pop up only about 6 miles from work (as the crow files, that is) I had to jump on it.


It was about 10AM when I finally got around to checking my email (and forget about checking it on my phone, there just hasn't been time). I noticed a new cache had been published that morning. I didn't really pay attention to the time it was published but I new it was after 7AM 'cause that's when I turned on my phone and there wasn't an email at that time. I pulled up the cache page and it was still blank - no finders yet. Woohoo - maybe a chance at an FTF for October. (It's not official, but I like to grab at least one FTF each month - except for those few months this last summer when Rebelex was gobbling them all up before I could get there).


I checked again around 11:30AM and still no finders. Humm... I might get lucky. There are other caches in the area that I haven't been able to go after (plus one DNF I would certainly like to rectify!) so it looks like this is the place for lunch today. New Road (GC1GXD9) was found at about 11:45AM. See the log for the suspenseful ending to the quest.

The it was off to Childs Play (GC1G7JN) - which I had previously DNF'd on Oct 2, 2008. I had to find that thing! As I approached the parking lot, a city truck loaded with sod turned into the lot just ahead of me. Rats! This may cause some issue since the cache is within view of the parking lot. That thought quickly dissipated as I watched the city worker get out of his car and head to the port-o-potty (see, there is good reason for having an inside job - no portable restrooms). As he went in I quickly headed out to GZ. I scanned the area for places I hadn't searched yet - and there weren't many. I did notice a couple of places, though, and immediately started searching them. In less than 2 minutes I had the cache in hand as was signing the log. I quickly put it back, made it back to my car, and was driving off before the worker finished his business. I don't know how I missed finding that the first time but at least the cache is now off my DNF list. (see the log entry here)

I went on to find two other caches just to the south. I just hadn't spent the time to walk the trails in this area but sine I was here and the first two went so quickly I figured I might as well do it today. Both were fairly quick finds but at noon there are quite a few walkers, runners, bikers, and stroller pushers in the area so I had to time it just right when I decided to leave the trail. Those caches were Beyond Repair (GC1F79E) and Pictureesque (GC1F7A6) - both hidden by TopGear. Thanks for the hides!


As my post below indicated I reached 2000 finds while on a business trip to Dallas, TX. The rest of the pictures in this post are from some pretty interesting caches and places in Dallas.

This was a tough one to get to. Around and around. You'd never know that this was in the middle of 3 major streets just hanging there. As I walked back from getting this cache a person waiting for the light to change asked if I found the cache. He was a cacher, too.







Ok, this isn't a Dallas cache. It's from the Minneapolis area. I can't say much else but the hider put a lot of work into this. No, you're not looking at the container!

This one turned out to be missing. You're looking at the cap of an acorn. The acorn was not a normal acorn size. The cap your looking at was about 1" across. The bottom part is missing - which was the cache container. If you look really close you can see the fishing line it's hanging by.

One Bugger of an FTF

Caching at lunch today wasn't quite what I had intended. I had planned on grabbing 5 new caches in the area - they've been placed in the last couple of days. One was a possible FTF so I went that way first - Calvin Chooses his fathers Nursing Care Facility (no I don't get the name either but that's ok).

Here's the story as it was written in the log on geocaching.com.

WooHoo!! FTF @ 12:58PM. This was actually a co-FTF with __________ (Dang! I didn't write the caching name down and now I've forgotten it - sorry about that)

This was one BUGGER of a find!! I spent about 40 minutes looking at every spot possible. I climbed, poked, prodded, dug, sifted, and moved just about everything. Did you notice that this was hidden BEFORE all the leaves started to fall!! Yes there is a bed of new leaves (with many more to come in the near future).

Then I realized..... the east side of one tree is the west side of another (see the cache page to intrepet what the means)... Yikes, that makes it even harder! So more poking, prodding, and sifting.

You know I have a meeting back at work that I'm supposed to be back for at 1:00. I don't think I'm going to make it...

It's about 5 minutes to 1. If I leave now I'll be about 10 minutes late....

One more try - I usually leave my electronic compass off on my Garmin Vista HCx. I'm going to turn it on and see where it leads me.

Ok, I've been to that tree already. Yep been there too. Humm, I've been here a lot - it's still pointing over there. I've been here before but I'm going to poke around some more.... VIOLA!! There it is!!

That was one bugger of a find, that's for sure!

Cup of Joe event and caching after

Tbone and I decided that we wanted to go to the Cup Of Joe event organized by Fireman121 and Skatergirl today. It was a small gathering but we had lots of good conversation and then headed off for some caching. At the event Bus&Betty talked about their first WhereIGo cache and it made me want to find one, but even more I want to make a fun one. So that may be in the works sometime... It was also good to meet FlagFinder for the first time. Minnesotabrad rounded out the group and also brought his Cache-A-Maniac's guest coin for people to see (I left my coin at home in my coin book).

Part of our conversation at Cup of Joe was about a cache only about 1 1/2 miles from the event put out by Grey Wolf and Wild Rice called Jambro Hates . It's been DNF'ed a ton so we all thought it would be a good idea for all of us to go and look for it together. Luck for us we did. It was a bugger of a find. One of those that is right there all along and when you find it you do the famous forehead slap and "Duh!!"

Afterward Tbone and I did some more caching in the area. We ended up grabbing 7 caches and one DNF.

We spent over an hour at Centerville's 150 cache and didn't come up with the find - another DNF for us. There really aren't that many hiding spots so I hope to find that the cache is missing so we don't look so bad.

Overall it was a great day of caching. Tbone and I had a great time. Next time maybe we'll have a few more Sokratz kidlets along, too.

Ring Ring goes the Geocache

I know cachers are a friendly bunch and I've seen it in action before. But these log entries from one of my recent hides takes the cake. Not only does it prove that people generally want to do the right thing but it shows what a little bit of luck can do....


Cache: What's your sign? (GC1GCGJ)

September 18 by notsmike (1581 found)
Looking for this cache, I dropped (lost) my cell phone.Not knowing where I misplaced it I called it to see if I could locate it. XHawk was looking for the cache and heard the ring, answered it and waited for me to come back and pick it up. Very nice meeting you XHawk and thanks again.notsmike [view this log on a separate page]

September 18 by XHawk (714 found)
I usually stink at puzzles. So I was real happy to solve this one. Doubled back to the car to put on long pants. A good idea on this one. Found cache right after hearing a phone ring. After signing log, I hung out and waited for notsmike to show. Nice meeting you today. TFTPC![view this log on a separate page]

Is that cool or what??