Lost for words

Statistics can be boring, but they can also be enlightening.

Take for instance this message from the Geocache people -

We travel from geocache to geocache. We make friends. We are explorers (even if we sometimes get lost). We each have our own story, come in different shapes and sizes, hail from various corners of the planet (though the planet is round), and have our unique missions and goals.
But what brings us all together is this: We love geocaching.
As 2016 has come to a close, we want to say thanks. This game is co-created by people around the world like you: hiding geocaches, hosting events, sending trackables out into the wild, writing logs, and supporting the game.
 

GEOCACHING IN THE STATS 

2,982,645

geocaches were logged. 

526,292  
new geocaches were placed. 

 

So lets get out there and make 2017 a 3 million year of caches found! 

Winner

Sunrise on Heron Island

What a way to reach 200. I've just logged my 200th geocache.

It was a virtual cache on Heron Island, placed by Bundyrumandcoke. 

What I didn't realise until messaged by Bundy -
"You are a winner. You can now log the oldest unlogged unfound GCA cache in Qld. "
I was the FTF First-To-Find the cache which was the oldest unfound GeoCacheAustralia cache in Queensland, seems that not many cachers make the journey out to Heron.

Pleased to for Bundy who must have been despairing of anyone actually searching for his cache (it had been released back in February 2008).

So if you are holidaying on Heron Island take some time out to do a bit of searching and see if you can find "No, no, don't do it"

End of the day - Heron sunset

 

Mobile Thing 4. Check it out

Up to "Thing 4 - Maps and checking in"
This Thing covers the uses for the GPS function in smartphones and mobile devices that locates your position on a map, and the 'real time' tracking apps (I like the Live Traffic cameras).
One of the Discover tasks was indoor maps of cultural institutions - so i visited the Google Street View, and as I'm going through a sci-fi phase at present, I checked out the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library and particularly liked their merchandising display.

Would really like to see this style of technology for confusing places like airport terminals - get familiar with the layout prior to arriving there.

Log:
"It's not just books that can be found here!"

And "Have you considered geocaching as a library program / allowing interaction with the library as a destination (eg. British Library)?"
Yes we had considered it and unfortunately had to abandon the idea as our location was considered too close to another cache by the Site Administrators, so created a Munzee instead (currently muggled & will work on it after the building works finish).

We have our branches marked on Google maps with a widget on each branch's page, just need to do the same for the Mobile Library sites.
I do prefer the layout and options of the Google Maps app to the default iPhone one, it is interesting to see the different quirks.
Getting my head around Foursquare and 'checking in' for libraries rather than coffee shops! (though I could combine both?!)
The disadvantage of all these apps which refer to your current location, is their battery zapping power.

Wow Weekend tWo

Having satisfied my Abandoned need for a while, I needed to attend to the other requirements -
So I dragged the bike out of the car and took off along The Domino Trail, an abandoned rail-line now rail-trail still with some of its bridges 

Over Stony Creek

Above - the Doctors Creek Bridge deck, & below - in Doctors Creek

The dilapidated Blue Creek Bridge, I went around, except when I had to venture out for the cache. And finally the brick culvert tunnel through the embankment that crosses the Domino Creek.

Then having logged all the 11 geocaches on the Domino Trail, I needed to bag a trig point, so up the steep Tower Track to the top of Blue Mountain with its communication, trig & fire towers. It was on the way down that I spied the red leaves of a deciduous tree in the forest AND found a cemetery! The Newbury-Blue Mountain Cemetery is reverting back to bush, but is still open, it had its most recent burial about 1980.


The trig & fire towers
 

The exotic tree in the cemetery

The path into the Newbury-Blue Mountain Cemetery

Next Sunday - a change of pace