Merritt Madness

"Merritt Madness" is located on the Merritt Parkway in a Park and Ride.  The place is a mess, garbage everywhere in the woods.  The cache is in good shape but the area needs some work. I would recommend if you go after this one, walk on the road because the cache is located right near the street and skip all the mess.

On Our Way To The Car Show

"On Our Way To The Car Show" - This cache was set back on a trail about .14 miles. Parking is on the side of the road between two guard rails which I did not like and there is a big lip when you pull in so your car bottoms out, thats always nice.  The cache was found by some kids who did not take the cache but drew in the log book.  At least they left the cache there.

BlackstarNavigation 1.6.3 Beta

The new release of Blackstarnavigation 1.6.3 Beta is out with some nice new features.
current changes in beta:
* multiple track bug fix.
* text display of direction. change from compass to text with sideways scroll
* number of satellites locked display. But does not display until enough satellites are locked to create a location. I was hoping to display the number while still acquiring a lock, but I am not sure that will be possible.
customizable fonts for each screen
* fixed a bug in gps import if there is a line feed at the beginning or end of a geocaching log.
* fixed some formatting of gpx file to be able to import into gsak.
* fixed bug which prevented bcaching userids with embedded spaces in name from connecting to bcaching
* added date timestamp to waypoint
* Track in process display
* added Nautical Miles to units
* opened the file filter to allow gpx.rem and loc.rem files to be selected for importing
* added Cardinal direction (N/S/E/W) to units

You can download it OTA here. Blackstarnavigation 1.6.3 Beta

Eager Beaver

FTF! I like to be the first to find on a new cache, who doesn't ? "Eager Beaver" was an easy find in small park at Beaver Pond next to Southern Connecticut State University. Parking close to the cache was not a problem, there was one spot on the street which allowed me to only walk 300 feet to the cache. The first to find prize? $1.00

Le Tour De Orange

"Le Tour De Orange" is a multi-cache which are a little more challenging then traditional caches in hope that all the parts of the series are there so you can find the final. This one starts on the green in Orange, CT and ends up right across the street at the Orange Community Center so a lot of driving or walking is not required. This was a farely easy milti which ended on a good note, I found it.

Ode to Paul Cache

Orange Community Center is the home of a few caches but this one was the most challenging. The "Ode to Paul Cache" is located on the side of a cliff and it is a very steep climb. I stopped here doing another cache and had a few minutes to look for this one. Found it with no problem so another one off my list.

Family Fun - Critters

I went looking for "Family Fun - Critters" today, jcclark and I looked for this one a while back but we had problems with the cords. The owner verified all the stages are there and in good shape. As it turned out we found the cache of a previous fundraiser cache. Well I had a problem with it again, I was looking for stage two and it turns out that too was also part of the fundraiser. This one is turning out to be a nightmare. I will try again this coming weekend from scratch and post my progress...if any.

Caching at Millers Pond - Durham CT

We saw a nice group of caches were located at Millers Pond and since we have never been there we figured we would gather up the kids, minus Mike because he had to work, and take a trip there to see how many we could find. We went caching with jcclark (aka my brother John) and a muggle friend of Maria's

A nice park with a nice wide trail for mountain biking and a lot of little trails going off the main trail. We started out looking for "TUC-118 MP Warm up Crash". We made the mistake of not finding the trail head and climbed up a steep rock ledge, I don't recommend this. It took a minute or two to find this one because the GPS was bouncing a lot so we could not zero in on GZ. We just used our Geo-Sence and started looking in the area and found it

Our next stop was "Just Milling Around" A nice little hike to this one and an easy find because this one was exposed so before we left we hid it a little better.

Number 3 for the day was "TUC-119 MP The Other Left" and again the hike was not to bad, all the caches seem to be about .14 mile apart. We looked for this one for a few minutes and our muggle friend spotted it. Classic mistake on my part was I did not look at the cache size and thought it would be a small container like the first two and that is what we were looking for but it turned out to be a micro. Either way it was found but it does pay to read the description first.

Number 4 was "TUC-120 MP Rock N Roll" and this one was a neat hide and jcclark found this one. I don't think I would of looked there so it is always good to go geocaching with other people, the more eyes the better.

Last on our list for the day was "TUC-121 MP In Your Dreams" This was a good hide and it took us a few minutes to find it but Matt came up with the find.

After this cache we decided to leave for the day because we had other plans for the day, the Durham Fair, but we will be back on another weekend to try to get more of the caches here.

Equipment we use for Geocaching

We currently are using a Blackberry 8330 with Cacheberry 2.1.7 , I really like this program, it has a lot of features and the price is right. I have tried Blackstarnavigation and it worked great for us but I had a hard time reading the details of the log because the font was to small. I was told you will be able to change the font in an upcomming release. We have also tried GeocacheNavigator , works good because it is itergrated with Geocaching.com and automatically loads caches in your area but I could not bring myself to pay for a program every year and I also feel Cacheberry has more features.

Another program that we use to geocache is Google Maps Mobil. For me there is no better program for your Blackberry if you want to preview the area you will be geocaching in. Many times you can find the caches just with Google Maps, It puts you right on the cache if the cords were posted correctly. (that's another story)

How our new adventure started - Our first cache

July 23, 2009 - Scenic Overlook Cache - Mystic CT

Our first find was rather by accident, we were on our way to Mystic Aquarium and I was playing around on my Blackberry 8330 and found a program called Geocache Navigator and downloaded it. It loaded all the caches around us and I noticed there was one about 1 mile ahead in a scenic overlook so we decided to stop and see if it was really there. Being a newbie, we read the hint right away so we had a good idea where it was. I knew we had to be stealth so nobody would be curious as to what we were doing and remove the cache. (I guess we did a good job because the cache is still going strong). We jumped out of the van and found the cache with no problem at all. We signed the log book and replaced the cache and from that moment we were hooked.

Geocaching with The Hekawi Tribe

Join us on our adventure in Geocaching. We are new to this sport, game or however you want to describe it and would like to share our experiences with each Geocache we find or DNF. We will not give any info on where the cache is or how it is hidden, just our experience of the area.