I capped my eyeball... did you?

Eyeball Munzees are a little creepy

Yup.  I capped my eyeball, and it didn't hurt a bit.  I woke up this morning to a Facebook post about the arrival of the Halloween Eyeball Munzees (here's the blog post).  These holiday munzees are only around for a day or so, and so adding these to my icon collection required speed and planning.  A first glance at the map showed they were currently four in the San Diego area (there are only about a total of 50,000 around the world).  Fortunately, one was on my way to work (sort of...) and not on one of my own munzees, so that was my target.  It was inside a geocache, so I figured it would still be there even though nobody has capped it since January.  In fact, this was the second munzee I ever capped, so I knew exactly where this one was. I drove over to the cache site and found the geocache in the same place.  I even found my signature on the log from last December.  What I didn't find was the munzee!!!  Somebody muggled the munzee!!!!! Sooooo frustrating!

An eyeball sighting at the Whaley House

     I got to work and regrouped.  There were a couple eyeballs downtown, so I planned my day to leave a little early and head to Old Town to see if I could get that one.  Again, I had already capped the munzee, so it would be a quick find and folks had capped it recently, so it seemed like a good prospect.  The best thing about this munzee was that it was located at the Whaley House in Old Town.  For those of you who don't appreciate the irony in this, the Whaley House is  the most actively haunted house in all of San Diego, and was named by Life magazine and the Travel Channel's 'America's Most Haunted' as the most haunted house in America!  Even Regis Philbin had an experience here.  How could I pass up the opportunity to get a Halloween munzee at the best haunted house in the US!  So, I fought the brutal traffic on I-5 and made my way to Old Town, scanned the munzee, and got my Eyeball Munzee as the sun was setting the day before Halloween!  Sooooo cool!

Geocoinfest 2013 Part 3: Invasion of the Munzees

Geocaching was a gateway drug for me, and I have now slipped further into the geo-abyss after starting to play Munzee in January.  Munzee also uses GPS-enabled smartphones, but instead of searching for geocaching containers, I look for QR-codes to scan.  The QR codes are usually stickers left by other Munzee players and, in San Diego at least, tend to be hidden in urban areas.The game is very different from geocaching because the main goal in Munzee is to score points and collect icons.  There is also a team aspect to the game (via Clans), and special promotional munzees with prizes.  Munzee has done a great job keeping the game fresh and exciting this year.  For more information about how to play, go here.

Special icons I have collected: Note the
Campfire Munzee at bottom (wahoo!)

 Naturally, wherever I go I look to see what munzees are around, and Las Vegas was no exception. Since my time was limited, and I wanted to get some geocaches too, I had to prioritize. So, after visiting John Mulls Meats (see previous post) I drove over to the northern end of the Strip, near the Stratosphere Tower.  My first stop was a Campfire Munzee, so named because the icon looks like a campfire.  They are special munzees put out by Wayward Nation as they travel across the country looking for the American Dream.  You have probably heard about this group (if not, here is their webpage).  It's very cool that they are playing Munzee as they go, but they do not leave many, so it is a real challenge to get this icon.

  I got to the Tower around 7:30 am, and parked in a small lot near a hotel and despite the early hour, there were still quite a few people out and about.  Not many tourists, but a lot of down and out folks and a bunch of girls that looked like they were probably just getting off work.  Interesting mix, that's for sure. I followed my GPSr to ground zero (GZ), where the munzee should be and I spent probably 10-15 minutes looking for a sticker on an electrical box, sign, railing, bench, fire hydrant, or any one of a number likely hiding spots.  My GZ kept bringing me back to a point just under the SkyJump.  Bungie jumping off of a tall tower was not my idea of a good time, but some people are crazy like that.  It was at that moment that I realized my GZ was probably correct horizontally, but not vertically.  Yeah, it was probably up in the tower. My acrophobia cackled at its success in keeping me from my goal.  I was undaunted, though, I knew there was another Campfire Munzee I could hit on the way home.  As you can see from my specials list, I was successful, but that's a story for another post.

Capping virtual munzees on Las Vegas Blvd

The 'virtual' Strip that only Munziers
 know about

   The Strip was an obvious place to go because there is also a high density of Virtual Munzees.  Virtuals are great because you don't have to scan anything, you just need to be within 300' of where the owner placed it on the map as determined by the phone GPS. The plan was to drive slowly along Las Vegas Blvd, try to catch some sights, and capture munzees at every red light.  Many of the munzees were placed in the middle of the road or on the sidewalk, so it was relatively easy to cap them from the car.  I capped several hundred points worth of munzees on two trips up and back.  At five points per capture, it was a lot of munzees! The screenshot on the right is one section of Las Vegas Blvd near the Bellagio.  The red icons are the virtuals I found, the white ones are virtuals I haven't capped yet, and the green ones are traditional munzees. Some of the virtuals shown here are new ones people deployed after my trip, while others I missed (usually because I couldn't find a good place to stop the car to cap). This means I'll have to go back to Vegas and pick up the ones I missed.  It's a sacrifice, I know, but one that I'm willing to  make for Munzee.

Geocoinfest 2013: Part 2: GCs and the O.C.B.

My DNA geocoin

The main reason for driving 300+ miles to Las Vegas was to attend my first Mega event.  Why?  To get this icon, silly! There are only a handful of events around the world each year that qualify for Mega event status (at least 500 attendees) and since I like the concept of geocoins, I figured this was the perfect event for me.  For those of you new to geocaching, geocoins/travel bugs are items that move from cache to cache. Geocachers log the movements of these trackables on a special webpage, so you can see where it is located currently, and where it has traveled around the world.  Some of mine have traveled all over Europe and the Middle East.  Very cool to watch them move!  Here is an example of one of my trackables that I released earlier this year, a DNA-themed geocoin.  You can follow its travels by visiting the page for this coin at geocaching.com (here).

     Another draw to this event was to see a part of Geocaching history.  On May 3, 2000 a guy named Dave Ulmer placed a 5-gallon bucket out in the woods of Oregon.  Using technology available to the public for the first time, he determined the GPS coordinates of where he hid the bucket and posted them on a chat room forum.  Mike Teague was the first person to take those posted coordinates, travel to that location, and find the bucket.  Geocaching was born.  Inside the bucket were various items that were available for trade.  These items included a Delorme Topo map, 2 CD ROMs, a cassette recorder, a "George of the Jungle" VHS tape, a book by Ross Perot, a few dollar bills, a slingshot, and... a can of black eyed peas.  Pretty good swag, I must say.  Over the years, the original cache was destroyed, but people realized the importance of this site and when Ulmer returned as part of a tribute to the site, the can of beans was discovered buried in the dirt nearby.  The thrilling discovery of the original can of beans (The O.C.B.) might be considered the geocaching equivalent of finding the shroud of Turin or the Ark of the Covenant.

The O.C.B?

     I heard that this great relic would be on display at Geocoinfest and I was just thrilled to be able to go see it.  Some of my coworkers are also geocachers, and I was relaying this story to them and shared my excitement about seeing the O.C.B.  I'm not sure they shared my excitement, but nonetheless, as the days counted down, they all wanted to be sure I took pictures of the beans.

     The display was on the other side of the ballroom, and I could tell by the crowd of people that I had found the right place.  When I first spied the relic, I was... surprised, and not in a good way. Imagine traveling to see the Shroud of Turin and finding a tag on it that read, 'Made in China'.  Yeah, it was that disappointing.  Somehow, I expected a steel can of beans that had been buried for God-knows how many months in the damp Oregon wilderness to look weathered.  I expected some rust, some dirt, something to indicate that it had been, well, outside!  This can looked like it was pulled out of somebody's pantry!    A Google image search gave me some pictures of a badly damaged can, which seemed more plausible.  What was this one?  Although my belief in the O.C.B. momentarily wavered, I still signed the logbook, jotted down the tracking number and grabbed a commemorative trading card. I was not likely to see this again, whatever it was.  Here is the website for the O.C.B. travel bug (link).

  After I returned to work, a can of beans appeared mysteriously on my desk (Garbanzo, not black eyed peas... what were these infidels thinking!).  People are now referring to me as Dr. Beans.  A small picture of a can of beans even appeared on the intro slide of a recent company seminar, much to the confusion of the presenter.  Centuries from now, historians will wonder why the symbol of a can of beans appeared so often in scientific presentations in San Diego.  Illuminati, perhaps?  Bean worshipers? And perhaps the most intriguing question... who was the mysterious Dr. Beans?

Geocoinfest 2013: Part 1: Lab Caches

I recently attended the Geocoinfest Mega event in Las Vegas, NV.  A big draw for the event was the possibility of finding an elusive "Lab Cache".  These are caches that are still being tested by Groundspeak's R&D people (what a job!), but count towards your find totals.  More importantly, you get the Lab Cache icon (shown at left).  They are a VERY new type of cache and to my knowledge, this was the second event they had been offered.  To check out the Lab Caches, see the Geocaching blog post here. The caches were published a few days before the event, so I was able to check them out ahead of time.  The theme was "As Seen On TV" and the GPS coordinates took you to various places around Las Vegas that had appeared on television shows.  I wanted to hit these before the Mega event got going, and I wanted to cap the virtual Munzees on the Vegas strip, so I was up before dawn to get this done before breakfast.  I left my hotel room and logged the LPC in the parking lot just as the first rays of sun were peaking over the mountains.


  I then headed to NW Vegas to a place called The Road Kill Grill (website).  This place was featured on The Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives with Guy Fieri back in 2012.  A recent blog with some pictures is here (link), including the one shown that I <ahem> borrowed from the blog since my picture didn't turn out well.  The place was closed, but the gate was open and some workers were prepping for the day, so I followed the arrow on my GPSr into the parking lot and up to the counter.  I saw a small poster with the Groundspeak icon and knew that I had found the code word.  I won't reveal the code word here, but it was simple enough.  I had noticed that there was a traditional cache here as well and happened to be a few feet from where I had parked (cache page).  It was a small container under an obvious geopile next to the fence.  I signed the log and returned to the car and suddenly two men came around the fence and up to the geocache.  They were chatting there for a few seconds and I assumed that they were fellow geocachers, so I got out of the car and introduced myself.  They were not geocachers.  One of them was none other than the owner of the place, and Food Network star, Chuck Frommer himself!  He's a friendly fellow and he and his colleague were asking about the geocache.  Groundspeak had asked for permission to put the Lab cache at his place, but he really had no idea what it was all about.  He did want to know why there was suddenly a steady stream of geocachers coming to his place to eat!  So I told them about the Lab Cache and why it was so special, told them about the cache outside their place, and explained the concept of geocoins (since we were all attending Geocoinfest!).  He asked if there were a lot of geocaches in Las Vegas, so I pulled out my c:geo app on the phone.  There were a dozen or so caches nearby on the map and it took a few minutes as I panned out for the map to refresh.  "Wow, that's a lot," he said.  Then, as the map refreshed and plastered geocache icons all over the three mile radius of his store, his comment was, well... this is a family blog, so I'll just say it rhymed with 'moley brit'.  I told him about some of my caching adventures in other countries (which will be appearing in future posts) and he was just flabbergasted that this was happening all over the world.  Both of them were going to look into the game and we could, potentially, have two new players.  I love when that happens!  Sadly, it was too early for lunch so I had to leave The Road Kill Grill without sampling their fare.  However, I got the code and I got the icon, so I am no longer a Lab Cache virgin!

You've reached GZ...

Wheee... another geocaching blog.  That's probably about as exciting as a new LPC or a nano in a bush, but that's okay.  I've been geocaching for a couple of years now (started Christmas 2010) and started Munzee in January of this year.  I'm finding that I usually have quite an adventure when I'm looking for these things and I'd like to share some of these crazy stories.  Even if no one reads them, it will let me go into more detail than a simple log.  If you like geocaching and/or munzee, follow this blog for my adventures with both!