Naked Geocaching

[Greenbare Woods]

Today I went out to the Salvin Conservation Area which is about 25 miles from here.  I figured that a Nature Conservation Area would be the perfect place for some Naturist time.  Before I left I looked up the Geocache web site and found that a bunch of geocaches are within the Nature Conservancy, so I printed one out, grabbed my shorts and headed out.

I arrived at the parking about 11:30 AM to find that 2 cars were in the lot.  One woman and a dog were leaving the parking area.  The first 1/4 mile was wide open field, formerly a wheat field from the looks of what is growing there now.  The parking lot was gravel but the trail was dirt so I just went barefoot with shorts.  MAP

After about 50 yards the trail forks so I chose the westward path.  I hadn't gotten 10 more yards when a woman with a dog hailed me to ask if I had seen some kind of wild flower.  Maybe she just wanted to start a conversation.  I replied that it was my first time there so I hadn't seen any of the flowers.  She insisted that I should choose the other path, so I did.  It went more directly to a woods area.  I could see that she went back to her car with her dog before I got to the woods.  A little way into the woods I stopped by a fallen log to program my GPS into locating the Geocache.  I was punching in data when another woman came by with another dog, also headed toward the parking lot.   That makes 2, I thought, all of them.

As soon as the 2nd woman was out of sight, off came my shorts.  I hiked another 3/4 mile to the Geocache location while conserving naturism  I spent some time finding and documenting my find, and then climbed a small hill overlooking the lake.  It was a beautiful sunny day, about 75 degrees with not much wind.  I took a few photos of the lake and the ducks.  I decided to loop around the other way going back.

After I got back to the open fields I could see some houses in the distance, and a bicycle riding on a distant road.  I kept conserving nature through the field until I climbed a rise near the parking lot and saw two men had arrived and were taking the other path, the one I had taken going out.  Well, I'm almost back anyway, so I put on the shorts and went back to my car.  Then drove home naked. 

Perhaps in a few days or weeks I can go back and find the other Geocaches at that Nature Conservancy.  There are several.

Naturist Bob with the Geocache.  Found it.  I can post this much naturism on the Geocache web site.  At least another guy named Nudecacher does.   




Naturist Bob standing near the Geocache location.




Naturist Bob looking out from the hill top.




Some ducks on the lake.




An old boat on the lake.




The north end of the lake with some houses across the fields.

[milfmog]

Hi Bob,

I took up geocaching properly around two years ago and got fairly intense last year while I was working away from home. Staying in a hotel alone, I had a choice of becoming a workaholic or an alcoholic; I decided to become a walkaholic instead. Geocaching took me to loads of great places I would not have found otherwise. To date I have logged a total of 676 naked finds, roughly a third of my total to date.

I can be found on the geocaching site under the same user name as I use here.

As a matter of curiosity, you referred to programming your GPS after you got to the reserve rather than downloading the co-ordinates direct from the PC into the GPS. What equipment are you using? Is it not supported by the geocaching website?

Have fun,


Ian.

[Greenbare Woods]

To date I have logged a total of 676 naked finds, roughly a third of my total to date.

OUTSTANDING!     A couple years ago i found all the caches within 10 miles of here.  About 10.   Now I'm going farther out.

As a matter of curiosity, you referred to programming your GPS after you got to the reserve rather than downloading the co-ordinates direct from the PC into the GPS. What equipment are you using? Is it not supported by the geocaching website?
Have fun,
Ian.

I have an older Garmin Etrex.   I bought it when REI was asking $400 for them.  The new ones are lots less expensive and more capability now.   I paid an extra $100 for a disk with a whole US map, and my Garmin will only hold a piece at a time.   I actually haven't tried the download feature on the Geocaching site.  It probably would work.  I've been printing the maps and hints to bring along.  New high tech folks probably can use their Iphone to access the Geocache site from the woods, but I'm not that high tech.  Actually, doesn't an Iphone do the GPS as well as the web site?   I just punch in the coordinates and off I go. 

Yesterday i found that my Garmin was set for degrees and decimal degrees, the HughesNet and Direct TV standard.  I had to figure out again how to change it to degrees, minutes, and seconds which is the Geocaching standard.  I was busy converting its units from digital to minutes and seconds when the dog lady came by. 

Having fun naked!
Bob

[milfmog]

A couple years ago i found all the caches within 10 miles of here.  About 10.   Now I'm going farther out.

I guess that puts the relative cache densities into focus. Within ten miles of home, I have logged 616 caches and have currently a total of 796 still waiting for me to visit.

As a matter of curiosity, you referred to programming your GPS after you got to the reserve rather than downloading the co-ordinates direct from the PC into the GPS. What equipment are you using? Is it not supported by the geocaching website?

I have an older Garmin Etrex.   I bought it when REI was asking $400 for them.  The new ones are lots less expensive and more capability now.   I paid an extra $100 for a disk with a whole US map, and my Garmin will only hold a piece at a time.   I actually haven't tried the download feature on the Geocaching site.  It probably would work.  I've been printing the maps and hints to bring along.  New high tech folks probably can use their Iphone to access the Geocache site from the woods, but I'm not that high tech.  Actually, doesn't an Iphone do the GPS as well as the web site?   I just punch in the coordinates and off I go. 

I'm pretty sure that the Etrex is supported by the site. Typically, when going out caching I will download a number of caches to the unit (maybe as many as a couple of hundred) so entering them manually is quite a task. The site download is OK but I tend to use GSAK (Google it) as a quick tool to manage all the caches I have yet to visit and to load them into my unit. GSAK can also produce customised tables of cache data including location size difficulty and terrain ratings, hints... for quick reference on the trail. Alternatively an old Palm OS unit can carry all that data electronically.

I use an ageing Garmin GPSMap 60C. The newer units are geocache friendly and can carry all that data internally so no external documents are required. I am still trying to justify the expense to myself...

Yesterday i found that my Garmin was set for degrees and decimal degrees, the HughesNet and Direct TV standard.  I had to figure out again how to change it to degrees, minutes, and seconds which is the Geocaching standard.  I was busy converting its units from digital to minutes and seconds when the dog lady came by. 

It might be easier to change your preferences on the Geocaching site to display the co-ordinates in Degrees, minutes and decimal minutes. That would save you changing anything else.

I also have a small calculator on my Palm to allow me to convert between degrees minutes and seconds and Degrees minutes and decimal minutes (and back) for use with some of the internet mapping applications. Being an old sort I still prefer my Palm to the newer electronic personal assistants such as an iPhone or Android phone. I have an iPhone (hoisted on me by work) and hate it :-(

The iPhone can do the entire geocaching thing but I find it slow to download in the field (even assuming it can get an adequate signal, something it regularly fails to do and then "blames" on "network failure). There is also the fragile nature, poor battery life and (although Apple deny it) flaky accuracy of the GPS implementation to consider. I'll stick to my dedicated and rugged Garmin when I'm caching or trying to navigate. The iPhone can act as a backup but I'd hate to rely on it.

Have fun,


Ian.

[Greenbare Woods]

I'm pretty sure that the Etrex is supported by the site. Typically, when going out caching I will download a number of caches to the unit (maybe as many as a couple of hundred) so entering them manually is quite a task.
Ian.

You talked me into trying the download feature, Ian.   Upon looking at my Etrex it has some kind of weird connector, not the usual USB connector.  I must have once had a matching cable because several years ago I loaded local maps from my CD.  Now I have to find what I did with the cable when we moved here from Albuquerque about 8 years ago.  Maybe I still have it.   I'll let you know if I find the cable and it works.

Bob

[Greenbare Woods]

This morning I went back to the Salvin Conservation Area to enjoy the day and look for another Geocache.   Two horse trailers were in the parking lot when I arrived, but the horsies were just finishing their ride, and were loading the horses while I left the parking lot.  A few minutes and I was over the little hill so off came my shorts.

This Cache was on the west side of the lake opposite from the parking.  I tried following the trail around the north end of the lake.  The farther I got the more the trail faded out.  Soon I was more than knee deep in weeds and thistle.  I eventually got out across a fence into a field of alfalfa on private land.  That was no picnic, but at least better than the Conserved weeds.  After crossing the field I came to another fence on the west side of the lake, and found the trail again.  It ended at the fence. 

Soon I found the cache, took a couple photos, and then headed back around the south end of the lake.  Trails weren't well marked and I took a wrong turn a couple times, but in less than 3 miles I had been out preserving my nature for almost 3 hours.  One car was in the lot when I returned, so I put on my shorts again.  Sad.  Then I drove home naked.  Carpe Diem!

[

[jmf]

The last post was in 2013. Are there still any active naked geocachers.

mixgeocache by jacquesmarief, sur Flickr

[jmf]

A new post on my blog geonat (geocaching and naturism:-)
http://geonat.e-monsite.com/blog/retour-a-la-grotte-de-la-barre-mangin.html

(it's translated in english)

[John P]

On the recent Naked European Walking Tour, we visited a famous waterfall called the Johannisfall, which you can see in a picture in my trip report. As we were leaving to head back up the trail (a fair climb, as I recall!) one of the other people, German Martin (not English Martin, who's a member here) asked if anyone had a pen. He said that at the last moment, he'd had the idea that there would be a geocache somewhere near the waterfall, and he'd found it, and he wanted to write a note to place in it. I was the one who actually had a pen that Martin could use, and he turned back to leave the note, then caught up with the rest of the group in a few minutes. He could do this easily enough, as he was the youngest person there!

There's a German website that has a lot of naturist hiking stories, and Martin has posted his experiences there. There's also an English version of the site, and what he says about the Johannisfall visit is "When I was just about to make the ascent back from the waterfall, I thought that a geocache would be a natural thing to find there and, as chance would have it, such was the case. So the "Johannes Waterfall" was transformed into a smiley during the golden hour of late afternoon."

https://natury.de/index.php/uk/reports/reports-by-date/2019/july#2019-07-20-martin-newt-day4

[jbeegoode]

Hey, John P, that is a fun link. He certainly writes an entertaining tale.

milfmog, Bob stated "outstanding" in bold letters. Me, I'm kinda stunned.... Been having any time for that delightful new sauna?

Bob no mater which way that I click I don't get the pic. Any clues, or out right, just "do this?"

Jbee

[jmf]

Two new posts on my blog of a geocaching hike on monday 3rd of february
 http://geonat.e-monsite.com/blog/

[Safebare]

Excellent summary. Thanks JMF!

[jbeegoode]

Thank-you, thar post must have kept busy.
Jbee

[nuduke]

Wow, that's some boulder!
John

[jmf]

I've put some posts on my blog since the last message here;
http://geonat.e-monsite.com/blog/