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Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Caching in YMM.

The Sturgi were taking it easy on the last couple of days during Sr.'s holidays(Staycay) and found ourselves in YMM locating a couple of geocaches! The caches we tackled today were nothing out of the ordinary, nothing special but the type of caches that get you around town. 



















This is our home.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Brass Caps

Rather simple really.

Daddy solo run. 

YMM Airport.
Lil muddy!


YMM.

Northern Lights Regional Hospital.

NLRH.

Close enough!

HWY63 or Sakitawaw Trail. 

Hwy 63 Northbound. 
I compare it to a rather simple version of a geocache, without treasure - but IMHO a great reward! I stumbled across benchmarks some time ago, then eventually my research led me to BC's (brass caps). I looked up BC's on geocaching.com and came across GC43F3, rather popular as of late both on the GC website and user forums.

I simply followed the link to this gentleman's (he lives in Alberta) website and loaded the BC's in the YMM area. A few weeks later, on a Daddy solo trip in the rain, I found 3 BC's.

I also visit the Alberta Land Surveyors' Association website for more info, and they have 3 GC's.


Brass caps, simple, clean FUN with or without kids. 


Earthcaches.

Earthcaches - Visiting an EarthCache site is a great way to learn more about our wonderful world. It can take you to many places that you would not normally visit, and teach you about why those places are special or unique.
EarthCache sites can also teach you and your family important skills such as navigation and map reading. What better way to learn than to have fun exploring on this wonderful planet we call Earth!



The Sturgi completed our first Eath Cache while on our March Madness Geoavdenture of the Rocky Mountains and area. The Pyramid lake Earthcache was right in our way, and a place both Candace and I have been to before, but not for GCìng!! We had to follow the lead of the GPS, the trail and the interpretive information along the way. Ahead of time we made notes of the questions required to be answered to get full pull on this type of cache. This cache was a great exeprience, took some brains, brawn and FUN to complete, but after our emailed answers to the owner, we passed!!!


Sturgi at Pyramid Lake - Jasper National Park.
So even thou we GC alot, there aren`t any Earthcaches in the YMM area.......until now. I just completed the requirements to post and host a Earthcache and yup I picked the OILSANDS to learn some folks. I submitted "Giants of Mining" and am using the Giants of Mining display near Syncrude. If all goes well, it will be posted in a few days! 

If you get a chance to review any of the Earthcaches in Alberta I`m sure you will find a couple worth interest!


Check this out. 

Stay tuned for the posting of the Earthcache - Giants of Mining! 


Sunday, August 19, 2012

Caching the Zac!

Caching the Zac! A geoevent during Anzac Daze Saturday 18 2012

After the good feeling I got from the Geocaching 101 seminar I hosted last spring, I thought I would "attempt" a geoevent. Man did I learn some lessons, but good stuff and enuff to make me want to be involved in a bigger, awesome YMM Geocache event.



I started off with a simple plan to deploy 3 GC's in and around Anzac during Anzac Daze 2012. KISS I thought, but the challenges of dealing with people from behind a computer made my blood boil...a bit.

I sought out 3, well actually 4 locations on one of my Fridays to myself, 6 pack on board and bug fug! The locations are spread out over Anzac, but a good hike if you like the challenge (Scouter Gizmo did 5 GC's on Saturday on foot). I built the caches complete with Anzak Kamo, and filled with some of the best SWAG to date in the YMM area, maybe Alberta (from what I've experienced). All deployed, coordinates double checked, caches stashed - go to go. Well except for the lovely run in with the official from geocaching.com he is a stickler for the book, which I can respect, but everyones perception of those rules varies. ANYwho, after some much challenging emails, we came to agreement to post the caches on geocaching.com and all was good. All we needed was sunshine and some cachers, both of which we fond.

What a great day, solid breakfast served by the church, not a cloud in site, geocaching in the air, and a small town carnival. Bouncy things, horseshoes, crib tourney, beer garden (I attended when off the clock), kids face painting, burgers, goodies, veggie contest (who's is actually BIGGER) and more!!

Our cachers who are also friends and Scouts turned up to help kick off the 1st annual? (we'll see). They all had a great time, and I had a table full of prizes to give away! All the participants found the caches and logged their visits, that went well. I asked for feedback and all the caches received passing marks! I'll know for next time to post the event well in advance on geocaching.com to entice more folks, but this was a test and our folks who joined us understood that! All in all, went well and I thank our good friends 3Strykes for joining us with Penny and being great sports.

As for the rest of the day, Anzac is a great community (IMHO) to raise our kids in today's crazy paced world. I can sit there and visit with our friends, neighbours and town folk and not worry about my kids. All the while I am concious of their where abouts, between everyone there, my kids are safe and it feels good. Our community always comes together (albeit the same faces over and over doing the work) we have fun, and it's small town.

Living and having fun in the Zac.




Smoky Lake - GeoAdventure

Smoky Lake a mere stop on the highway for the Sturgi when traversing this great province. We honestly haven't spent much time here, but have always known it as the pumpkin capital of Alberta.

This time we were in NO rush to get anywhere and just completed a awesome run of geocaches in rural Alberta - our favorite spot to geocache. Momma loaded a new cache in the BB, but I thought we were headed for ice cream, I mean come on priorities man!!! So after a huff and a puff (not literally) we sped off to the local corner store for IC. Ha, momma comes out with screamers - DADDIES fav and we haven`t had then in a while...MMmmmmmMmmmmMmmmm


We pull over to the spot where they have all the info on pumpkins a guy needs to know and have a nice sit down in the shade.....for 3 seconds and were off. I head to the display booth with maps and info (my kinda thing) the kids are climbing on some big ass pumpkins and mommy, well mommy is watching in the middle. 
Liam strikes up a convo with a grandma and grandpa, chewed their ears off about Transformers (which I know they had no idea what this 1 tooth MIA kid was talking about), Jr and the Bean stumbled around the pumpkins. 


I found the maps very informative as we had just followed the real "Victoria Trail" - Alberta oldest road and then blasted thru the Iron Horse Trail. The Iron Horse is just the beginning for geocaching this trail, follow this link to the Iron Horse Power Trail. A 1410 cache trail with a new geocache every 181m, the rules. Now I`m not sure where I sit on doing this type of "powercaching" one right next to the other, but it is a kool trail, we can learn lots, and it`s a huge trail. Well see!


Iron Horse Geocache Power Trail
After scarfing down our screamers we stomped over to the Smoky Lake train station. Although retired still a big part of history for the area and the kids got to climb on the caboose. A great visit, and we`ll be back for more caches and SCREAMERS!!!!



It was a stripey day!
More pics here.


Summer? What summer? Other than the temp's being nice and toasty summer blazed past the Sturgi! BUT, were having FUN AND LOTS OF IT.

The summer sure knows how to take a guy away from a computer, but yet the leash to my BB is still there. The new summer of 2012 brought many changes for the Sturgi, so indeed it has been a blur. June was a write off, as I needed to re-coup from a hard year of Scouting - not with the kids, but many lessons learned with parents. A few trips south to Edmonton to visit Grammy as well as 2 fun filled weekend with our besties the Kuncio's!

July, dunno about July! August and its HOT, much like it was when I was a kid and consistently HAWT! Our geocache adventures have been limited to around YEG, and between YMM mainly on Hwy 881. If you can imagine this leaves a ton of room for caching in Alberta, and we have.  But first a re-cap of Sturgi Geocaching..

Since starting Geocaching 3 yrs ago we have learned a ton, seen alot of place, visited spots we've passed and so on. Here's what Anzac looks like with GC's now



And YMM aka the RMWB (Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo), lots more GC's have sprung up. Although we have completed a whole bunch of caches in McMurray, we reserve them for "things to do when in town now and then"!!



And here's Western Canada, so there's no rush to attempt to find them all. But we can't wait to try.



Our statistics have changed immensely, on account of our combined mini-geotrips, long hauls, and discoveries!


We still manage 11 of our own GC's, plus our Scout Groups caches, so I've been busy checking up on them, ensuring they are in good shape. So far so good. Lessons learned and more experience help build better caches.

Signs of the Oil Sands


What's next, well;

Geoevent - Anzac Daze 2012 - Caching in the Zac!
Smoky Lake visit
Earthcaches
Challenges




Sunday, June 3, 2012

More time has passed so that must mean some geocaching was done. Nope. It's a busy time in the spring around Anzac and in particular the sTuRgi!

I recently put on a Geocaching seminar at the Anzac Community Hall which was rather well attended and appreciated. Scouter Gizmo was undercover as just Jim, as he was my left hand man delivery what I put together. I called it Geocaching 101 - plain and simple. The video I scooped from geocaching.com didn't work in my powerpoint, but I tried. The folks in attendance sure understood what I was throwing down. As I packed up they took my hint to go look for the newest listed GC in Aznac. So off they went and found no it without issue.That made my day and effort I out into the seminar all worth it.

I have completed a total re-haul of all my pictures, including geocaching pics - lots to come.

I FINALLY received my new Blackberry 9930 and first application I loaded was Blackberry Bridge, then Geocache Navigator. This new phone is faster and works well. More to come.

I'm building geocaches to sell now. Our yard sale is just around the corner so I'm going to lay out some samples, offer a few for sale and take orders. This is a test, see how much interest it generates.

 Our Travel Bug (TB) TCB was picked up sometime ago and made a journey west to the Coast in Mission, BC. The Mission TB/GeoCoin Hotel is the current location of this TB. I am very happy to have our TB in this location on account it's specifically for TB and GeoCoins. This should certainly help out TB make it's journey to Graceland in Memphis Tennessee. I can't wait for more reports!

The TCB bug has had a great journey so far, no pictures yet, but hopefully soon!!