Map My Page

GeoJoe, over at Geocaching Journal has shown me how to incorporate "Map My Page."

With this snippet of javascript, all worldwide locations will now show a little globe next to them, like Riverside, California, and you can click that globe to see the location on google maps.

That could come in handy, but I don't think it works with some of the obscure locations here in Okinawa. Like Ishikawa, Uruma, Kin, Yaka, etc.

Neat feature!

UPDATE: It seems to work with SOME of the locations here in Okinawa, but not all.

More Great Weather

Looks like the weather is going to clear up...next week while I'm at work.

Break In the Weather and FTF

The rain relented a bit today, and I headed out with my son to perform some maintenance on one of my geocaches. The original container had magnets glued to the inside of the lid, and they have broken loose. I built a new container, used some high-horsepower glue to attach new magnets to it, and swapped it out with the original container at the cache location.

We then headed out toward White Beach Naval Facility to grab a bite to eat, and we stopped to hunt for a couple of geocaches on the way. Unexpectedly, we were the first to find a tiny little geocache that was hidden on an uninhabited island that I have visited before.

Bananas growing at the cache site


After that stop, we went to a nearby park with a great view of White Beach. With all of the rain we've had, the hillside there was very slippery, and it made me thankful that we didn't go after that 5/5 cache today.
The park near White Beach

View of White Beach

A shrine near White Beach


Next, it was off to lunch, and then home. The weather cooperated for the couple of hours that we were out, but the ground out there is pretty soggy. At least it was nice and cool.

Okinawa Weather Woes

As you can see from the radar image, we have a little bit of rain falling here. The island of Okinawa can be seen outlined in the center of the image.

It has been raining since yesterday, is forecast to continue raining the rest of today, and keep on raining through at least tomorrow morning.

I had planned on teaming up with two other cachers to tackle that difficulty five geocache tomorrow, but the surrounding area will probably be a complete mess. The terrain there is challenging enough, and the red clay mud is slippery with even a wee bit of rain.

It's not looking good for the home team...

First To Find

I had some free time today, and decided to revisit a geocache that I couldn't find on my last visit. As it turns out, the previous cache was archived (no longer exists), and an entirely new cache was placed at the location.

I arrived at the small shrine, and began looking in the same spots I looked in before. My GPS kept pointing me toward the same object, but I just couldn't find anything out of place there. I took a minute to think about it, as well as what I had discussed with a fellow cacher, and was able to find the very sneaky hiding spot.

I opened the container and discovered that I was the first to find the cache. This surprised me, since the cache had published the previous day.

I then went on to a hillside cache on my way home. There was a nice view from the location, and it was an easy find. This beats working!

The view

The shrine

A Full Day of Geocaching

I spent today with a fellow cacher, and we made our attempt at a geocache that has a difficulty and terrain rating of five (out of a possible five). It is a seven part multi-cache, with each leg of the cache providing the coordinates to the next leg. The terrain was intense, but I'm not sure what it's like through the entire seven stages, since we were foiled after only two.

We had dense cloud cover today, and the second stage was near some high-tension power lines. I'm not sure if those two conditions, combined with the dense jungle canopy, led us astray, but we were unable to find the cache. We got a little beat up, and very dirty in the process.

There was a dam in the area, and I took a picture from on top of it. After that, it was off into the jungle.


After failing to find that cache, we hit some others that involved a little bit of a hike. There were some banana trees, with some small bananas growing.


This trail was probably the easiest part of the day.

Okinawa Poker Run Event

Today was the Poker Run event here in Okinawa. The host and hostess put a lot of work into this event, and I had a great time. I think everyone in attendance had fun.

It was fun to meet new people, and see some familiar faces. The event was held near another Geocache, and the venue accommodated us with no problems.

There were five unpublished caches that I had to find prior to the event. I took a card from each container, and couldn't open the envelopes for the cards until the event. My poker hand ended up being Jacks and Threes, and I came in fourth place. The top three hands got to divvy up the pot of donated geocoins (the ante was an unactivated coin). First place got eight, second got five, and third place got three. Quite a haul!


We all voted on the best camouflaged cache container, and another local cacher that is quickly finding his way onto everyone's "naughty" list won that game easily. Is that carrot evil, or what?

We all voted on the "most intriguing cache listing," and I won with the Space Cache Experiement.

We played geocoin bingo, and I didn't win anything on that game. Pure luck of the draw!

There was a word search game, and I didn't play that one. I let the kids that were in attendance have at it.

There was a pop quiz regarding the names of the five unpublished geocaches, and I won that event with some accurate guesses. Well, I knew the location of the five famous casinos, but the other trivia questions were tough! How much do you know about these casinos: Atlantis, Metropol, Clermont Club, Golden Nugget, Monte Carlo.

Another geocacher has his own custom geocoins, and he was generous enough to give some of them out to those that attended. Pretty neat, huh? Now, if I can figure out what the Japanese characters represent, I'll be doing much better!


I had a great time, and a fellow cacher and I will be teaming up to tackle a 5/5 cache tomorrow morning. It has a difficulty and terrain rating of five out of a possible five. The cache listing suggests bringing rope and a machette. I'll let you know how THAT one goes, if I make it back in one piece! Early reports from those that have found the cache indicate that the trek to this seven part multi-cache is nothing to laugh at. The cache owner is the same gentleman that created that evil carrot! The puzzle that needed to be solved in order to come up with the coordinates required some luck, and some intense google searching. Very creative stuff!