Caching Monday Madness!

Caching Monday Madness!
For awhile now, we've been heading out with friends on Monday after the kids are in school, and finding some local geocaches. Usually, we find about 7-10 on an average caching day. Today was no exception. Since we've been in Montana (since February), we've found MOST of the geocaches in the Missoula area. Now, we are having to go find some of the harder caches and ones that are further out from us because the pickings have become slim nearby. Today, we ventured to the south of Missoula, up Pattee Canyon to snag some caches that were cluttering up our maps.

The typical "finding" of a cache depends on what type and what kind of location its in - but generally its something like this:

"Out in the Woods Cache"
1. Drive as close as possible.
2. Get out and determine if the cache is a "park and grab" or one we actually have to go venture to. If its a park and grab, we park - and grab it - quick and easy.
3. If we need to venture out to get the cache, we determine if the cache is big enough to hold stuff or is just a micro - if big enough, we bring the cache bag - if not, we don't.
4. Once those things are determined, we grab the necessary gear (hiking sticks, bag, water, etc) and get moving.
5. Typically, the GPS is decent at homing us in nicely on the vicinity of the cache. Sure, after we get nearby, there may be a bit of drunken bee dancing, but not too much - and less now with the internal GPS compass.
6. We spot the typical cache hiding places, find the container, and sign the log.
7. Continue to next cache.

"In the City Cache"
1. Park nearby
2. Because they are micros, we leave the bag
3. Check everything metal for keyholder caches, and check everything else for velcro'd bison capsules.
4. Sign log and move on.

Today however, things were a little different. Our GPS's (ours and our caching friends') were extra-jumpy. From the get-go, they would generally point in the right direction, but would periodically jump around - giving us different directions to go, overshooting the cache areas, and just generally acting funny. Even after I calibrated the compass, mine still did it more often than usual. I was even beginning to get worried that something might be wrong with my GPS. But, the fact that it wasn't just my GPS indicated that perhaps it was something else - which was comforting. Towards the end of the day, we came up with a plausible idea that perhaps some solar flares had occurred and messed with the magnetic fields, throwing off the GPSs AND the compasses. We decided to check the Space Weather site to find out.

As it turns out, there were no solar flares today that would have interfered with the GPS satellites or compasses - in fact, there haven't been any sun spots for awhile now. But, interestingly enough, there WAS a situation that could have caused a disturbance in the magnetic forces. As it turns out, the polarity of the Earth's magnetic field shifted South a bit for a period of time, opening a hole in the protective magnetic field of the Earth from the constant solar winds and allowed some solar winds to get through - possibly screwing with GPSs and compasses. Now, with that in mind, consider the fact that the Earth is statistically long overdue for a polar magnetic shift - and what the implications of that are. But that is for another blog.

All in all, it was a great day of caching - we found everything we looked for and added another nine caches to the "found" pile! One of the caches today was a puzzle cache that required us to solve a Karuku - I'd never heard of a Karuku before this. i guess we learn something new every day. Woot! I love this sport. Now, we have to get rid of some nagging caches that are mucking up my pretty map of smilies. Also, we need to plant some caches up on Blue Mountain before the snow falls. busy busy busy.