TA DA! 100 GEOCACHES FOUND!

A couple of years ago, we became interested in geocaching – a kind of high-tech scavenger-hunt in which someone hides a "prize" in a secret location, and records the latitude and longitude of the hidden cache.  Then other folks, using GPS devices, try to find the "hide".  The cache is recorded on a national web-site by the person who placed it, and the finders login to note that they found it – or didn't. 
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There are over 1.3 million caches worldwide that are tracked in the website.  They are often located in places that require some hiking and are also often in scenic areas.  A fun way to get a bit of exercise and see interesting places.  They are rated by difficulty – some require a lot of exercise.   Many take "geosense":  Being able to see what doesn't quite look right – like why is that rock black and others are white.  Look underneath and a geocache may be found.

Today, we achieved our 100th find, one of eight we found today on the Long Beach Peninsula.  We thought it was one of the more clever hides we've seen.  The capsule was hidden in a fake drain pipe at a fake RV hook-up site, complete with a fake water faucet and power plug.  Couldn't find anything else near by.  So, just as a thought, checked the power plug - aha, nothing inside.  Good clue.  Tried the top of the dump pipe - and guess what we found down the hole?  The cache!

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Well done!  Fun!

The Geocaching website keeps track of the number of caches that someone has found.  (You use a name, kinda like a CB "handle", when you log in.)  We met a fellow last week who has found 4500, and have seen records of people with over 10,000 finds!  We won't be a contender there!

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Some of our other memorable finds include:

Kitty City in Alamogordo, NM is a cat rescue down a dirt road in the boonies.  But there was a geocache there, so off we went.  Not much place to hide a cache but this unique sign worked! 

Hiding geocaches in national parks is frowned on, so this geocache was defined as "virtual".  We had to find this picnic bench by the coordinates and count the number of bolts used to put the bench together.  (None!  It was a concrete bench) Then send the count to the owner of this cache.

Really like learning bits and pieces of history.  This monument, truly in the middle of nowhere, was placed to commemorate Soloman Smith who established a mission here in 1840 and was Oregon's first schoolteacher.  It looks like there has never been anything here.  But the cache lat/lon led us there for a piece of lost history.

Followed coordinates to the Makah Museum to find out the names of the carvers of these totems.  Another virtual cache.

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EarthCaches teach us geoscience.  At this spot we learned lots about helium.  How it is mined, used, and transported. 

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And other geocaches direct you one place to get clues to develop the coordinates to find the hidden cache at some other place.  Some of those clues might be a date on a reader board, an address, or a number off a power pole.  All fun, all a challenge.

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Sometimes we may find the caches wet or maybe even the path underwater. 

We bypassed this one for now.

Here at this cache in the woods around Tillamook, we were dropping off what is called a "Travel Bug" that we'd picked up in Port Townsend.  A Travel Bug comes with an ID tag and many times a destination in mind.  This one wanted to visit race courses in California.  We helped it along it's way.

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Many different containers are used.  Army surplus ammunition boxes hold up well and are watertight.  But we've seen many in Altoid mint tins, tupperware, coffee cans, magnetic key holders, plastic pipe, and attached to bobbers underwater.  

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We've found caches in bird houses, bird feeders, stuck to guard rails, in and under logs, water meter boxes, hanging from trees, on people's front porches!

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Tomorrow we are going to go try a webcam geocache.  We stand in front of a webcam, somebody captures a picture of us there, and we post it to prove we've found the spot.

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Getting more interesting all the time.  We still aren't experienced enough to find caches described as "nano" size.  These are about the size of your small fingernail.  Nope.  Think I'd need new glasses to find them!

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Interested? Check out: www.geocaching.com .  You will be amazed at how many are hidden within a mile of your home!

Out of the frying pan and into the fire?

After the Japanese tsunamis, Oregon coast disaster authorities realized that they weren't going to be able to protect their citizens if an earthquake occurred near the US west coast.  The tsunami warning sirens won't be set off early enough to get people evacuated to higher ground.  These days they are telling people to watch the videos of the speed and destruction of the recent Japanese tsunamis and if they feel an earthquake to immediately head for higher ground without delay. 
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We are now on Washington's Long Beach Peninsula.  Just after we got here, I found this report on Cliff Mass's Blog.  Cliff Mass is a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington and writes some very astute articles in his blog.  This was a big scary!
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Posted by Cliff Mass Weather Blog

Pasted from <http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2011/03/us-west-coast-is-not-at-risk.html>

Thinking about the tsunami I wondered whether locations threatened by tsunamis like coastal Japan (and coastal Oregon and Washington) should build escape towers. Steel and concrete buildings were not toppled by the Japanese tsunami....what if structures that could hold 200-1000 people were positioned regularly along the coast, giving people another option for safety. This would be much cheaper than sea walls and the like, which didn't seem to work anyway. Here in Washington I think of the Long Beach peninsula...a tsunami deathtrap if one ever existed. A few such towers could save many, many lives in case of a major event. And they could be relatively cheap...perhaps as simple as a wide suspension bridge between two towers.  Is this a viable idea? If it is, why aren't we doing it? Now.

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Eek! Eek!  Where's my bridge?!

The Coast That Time Forgot

Our Grand 101 tour continues...

Our time in Oregon has been eventful with tsunamis and gale winds.  23 out of 24 days were wet.  Even before the tsunamis, there were 10 storms working their way across the Pacific.  We got to feel the effect of them all.  Lots of rain with 6" in Seaside and 10" in Newport.   Just a few days there were only sprinkles and even then the winds were biting.  

What should we expect in a northwest coastal winter?

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We left the freezes and snow behind in Washington and the Oregon coast has been in the 40's – finally this last week of March – spring - the temperatures have reached 50s.  Think there might be sun and 60 degrees when we get home.

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So we had lots of time to goof off.  So far we've found 30 geocaches and expect a few more before we toddle back home.  On the rainiest of days sometimes we had cable TV – and are ashamed to admit that we watched 41 episodes of NCIS during a cable marathon.  If we didn't have cable, reading and listening to music. 

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Feeding birds and squirrels who could climb the pole to the feeder.

Checking out various eating establishments.  Only needed to stop at Fish Tales once for the excellent and filling Marionberry French Toast.

Stopped for some squeaky cheese a couple times at Tillamook Cheese Factory.    

And with all the rain, Dean's been running around draining puddles where he could by digging shallow ditches.  We've watched rain water handling techniques all up and down the coast.  Saw no rain barrels to catch the precious fresh water like you might see in other places.  We were tickled to see these downspouts on a Seaside bank. 

Why not!  Certainly gutters and downspouts are necessary evils here why not make them decorative and fun.

Lots of pretty spring flowers. Daffodils too.

It's been no picnic.

But we haven't let it ruffle our feathers.

So maybe we need a new attention-grabbing name for this coastline:  like The Green Coast; The Emerald Coast; The Mossy Coast; The Wet Coast; The Forgotten Coast; The Lost Coast; The Sunset Coast; The Gale Coast; Backward coast? – no TV, few radio stations, no cell, and weekly newspapers!  The Great NorthWet works for me.

Pacific City Tsunami ... yawn

Right before we went to bed on the 10th around 10pm, we flipped the TV to CNN and saw the start of the horrors of the tsunamis hitting Japan.  We watched from then until 1AM (CNN does a great job reporting breaking news).  By that time we realized that tsunamis were being predicted on the US West Coast – right where we were.  We were not worried about our safety since we were about 100' up in elevation at our campsite.  We expected that if a tsunami of any magnitude hit this coast that Hwy 101 might be wiped out in places.  We kept the TV on all night and peeked every so often to see if there was new news. 
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At 5AM, the ranger came around and told us that the lodge was open if we were feeling uneasy.  The lodge is at least 50' higher.  We were still comfortable where we were and we had a great view of the surf.  We took pictures whenever we saw a very high or very low tide but really it was a yawner in our area.  We heard a report that the tide was .7 of a foot higher than normal but in the winter we will often see that due to barometric pressure changes.
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The tsunami alarms started going off around 6:30AM (adding to the continuing whoosh-roar-moan).  We understand that in Seaside and Tillamook, some alarms didn't work, some of the reverse 911 calls didn't go through, and when people got to the evacuation sites, nobody was in charge.

The campers at the campgrounds we had stayed at last week in Seaside, Oregon and Ocean City, Washington had both been evacuated.  (I was so glad to be in our warm RV here.)  Compared to Japan, not much damage was felt on the coast.  Big surges into the harbors; broken docks.  Brookings and Crescent City, CA (now called Tsunami City).  And a few people took on the tsunami and got too close to the surf.  One drowned.
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Some of the more exciting shots in Oregon are at this webpage:

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2011/03/oregon_coast_tsunami_brookings_crescent_city_depoe_bay_report_serious_damage_photos_video.html

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After watching the 30' tall tsunami eating up the countryside in Japan at 35+ mph, you might wonder if a visit to the coastline is ever a smart action.  It was 30 minutes from earthquake to total devastation of the Japanese coastline towns.  Would we be aware enough to head for the hills if we ever felt an earthquake on the coast?  We really, really should be!

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Found more interesting info on this adjustment in the earth in Japan and on subduction zone earthquakes:

Japan has moved west 8'.  The earth has flattened a bit.  The axis has shifted 10cm.  The earth's rotation has sped up 1.8 microseconds per day.  (Maybe we won't need a leap day if this keeps up.)  I imagine there are more statistics (location and elevation) that are able to be derived from GPS readings and comparing them to before . 

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In the Honshu area of Japan on 3/9 there were 26 quakes (All over 4 magnitude; 3 over 6 magnitude)  10 on the 3/10.   All of these would have been felt.  Imagine the stress caused by these frequent quakes.  The Shinmoedake volcano in Japan which has been erupting this year shut down for a few weeks before the quake and has started erupting again.  Might that have been an indicator?

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This is a tremendous website to track current earthquakes. 

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.php

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Now when might our US west coast shores expect debris from Japan?  Researching that I found out about a great floating debris field in the Pacific the size is twice the size of Texas.  Amazing!  This is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Tsunami damage?  Not this time.

The Ocean Cacophony and the Whistle Buoy

Ah, we had too many nice days in Seaside – time to pay the piper!  Our first day here was dry and now we are experiencing a line-up of 10 storms. 

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When we first got here to Pacific City, a whistle buoy off Cape Kiwanda a mile away was emitting a moan about every 30 seconds in the low surf. 
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Whoosh went the incoming waves;

moan went the whistle:

whoosh; moan; whoosh; moan. 

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That night a storm came in with gusts to 60mph whooshing thru the trees.

And the ocean surf has gotten higher and is really roaring.

The whistle buoy is reacting to being bounced in the surf – it's a constant moan!

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WHOOSH - ROAR - MOAN!

MOAN - ROAR - WHOOSH!

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Add that to the buffeting to the side of the RV has made for an exciting couple days!
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Today between the rain showers, we drove down to Pacific City.  We were getting sand-blasted whenever we got close to the ocean. 

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Information on whistling buoys from the internet:

Whistling buoys emit a mournful and saddening sound.  They are obnoxious to the house dweller within earshot of them and they can at times be heard 15 miles.  It is well suited for broken and turbulent waters, as the rougher the sea the louder its sound.  The internet description of the whistling buoys is pretty technical for me but taking a combination of a bulb and a tube and a locomotive whistle floating and bouncing in the waves to create the moan works for me.

A Week at Seaside

We arrived here with a week forecast of rain, rain, rain!  Uh uh!  We had only one day of rain and lots of sunny cool days.  We took many pleasant walks along the promenade.  Went to the Seaside museum and learned that the turnaround on the promenade has been there since the early 1950's.  Also, that the beach in front of the promenade was at that time all medium 5-6" rocks.  We've always remarked on the decorative use of rocks on fireplaces, porches, columns, and fences on so many of the older houses in town.  Now we know where they got the rocks as they aren't on the beach any longer.
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We found a bunch of geocaches from Astoria to Seaside.  One was at a spot where on June 21, 1942 a 5.5" shell exploded.  It was one of 17 fired at the Columbia River harbor defense installations by the Japanese submarine I-25.  The only hostile shelling of a military base on the US mainland during WWII and the first since the War of 1812.

We marveled at the fairly new WorldMark Timeshare hotel that had 3 sides covered with tarps and scaffolding 3 stories high.  It seems that their outside stucco has been breaking off similar to the picture below.  Oh, ouch.  Guess they need to fix that up quickly!  As they said: "The Seaside Resort will be undergoing significant exterior building renovations which will impact the entire resort. This renovation project will require sections of the resort building to be closed in phases."  Ouch!  Expensive too.

Oh, yeah, spent some fine time chasing around in Bumper Cars :o)

FROM RADIO STATION K-SEA, SEASIDE, OR ---

"Jim, Sally – I can't tell exactly what I'm seeing on my screen here in traffic central, but it appears all three lanes of Oceanway, the main drive to the famous turnaround at the promenade walk, are blocked.  I see what appears to be a hiway worker in an orange vest picking up what looks like dog poop in all three lanes.  Maybe Harry Wapwapwapler in the  KSEA  helicopter can get a better view.  Polly Igamist reporting live from KSEA Traffic Central."
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"Polly, Harry here.  I can see that it is in fact dog poop across all three lanes of the road, and the person picking it up is a elderly lady with a orange hat.  No wait --- it's not a orange hat; she's blushing.  A lot.  I see a small brown dog that may be the culprit, sitting near the curb.  The dog seems to be grinning or chuckling.  Wait a minute --- the dog just looked up at the KSEA wap-wap-wap helicopter and raised a paw towards us; and I swear, I think the dog just gave me the finger."
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LATER COVERAGE ON THE 5 PM NEWS ----

"We sent reporter Joe Kerswild out to the Seaside promenade to see if he could determine the circumstances surrounding the massive traffic tie-up just before the afternoon rush hour earlier today. Joe?"
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"Jim, we were able to find the elderly couple and the odd-looking dog that witnesses said were involved in today's incident.  The woman refused to be interviewed, but her companion indicated that they were merely passing through the area and were part of a gypsy band of some sort --- I believe he called himself a wandering singer.  I think that may be true.  From what I could see, the vehicle they were boarding was mud-spattered from end to end,  as though it had been towed through miles of bad roads.  The mud was such that I could not make out the license plate as it pulled out of the parking lot.  Joe Kerswild reporting from the KSEA newsroom."
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"Thanks, Joe.  Co-anchor Sally Mander contacted the Oregon governor's office to inquire as to the legal aspects of today's incident."
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"Jim, a spokesman for the Governor said that pooping on highways is not illegal in Oregon, but that if the dog had been texting or on a cell phone, he/she would have been slapped in the county kennel in a New York minute.  The spokesman indicated the Governor is appointing a committee to study the issue.  We obtained a partial list of the members of that committee, but could not interview any of them, as they have left for a taxpayer-paid retreat in Hawaii, where they will get to know each other before getting down to the nuts and bolts of the issue.  This reporter thinks they probably already knew each other, as they are all on the list of major contributors to the Governor's re-election campaign. Be that as it may,  a preliminary report from the committee is expected in a year of two, at which time a formal hearing will be scheduled by a legislative sub-committee yet to be named.  Back to you, Jim."
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"I can only conclude that it appears the dog is free to poop it's way across the state with impunity, including giving the finger to helicopters, reporters, and the community at large.  One can only hope the wandering singers haul it's cute brown butt to some other state soon." 

They talkin' about me?

ROADSIDE SIGNS

More snow on our travels.  Slush on the road.  But we are ahead of the next storm.  This one will be rainy and windy.  No snow forecast this coming week! 

Some people are getting tired of it all!

We enjoy the humor as we pass by on the road. 

Here's a couple we found up near Joyce, WA.

And, in case you can't figure it out!