Geocaching, Personal

Video: Beginner’s Guide to Hiding a Geocache

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Geocaching is a great family-friendly outdoor recreational activity that involves getting up off your butt and heading outside.  Into the real world.  Where life happens.

All is not lost for the technologically savvy, as participants don’t use olde tyme cartographic periodicals to find caches (although they kinda still can), they use Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers or GPS-enabled mobile devices and navigational skills and techniques to hide and seek geocaches (or “caches”) worldwide.

It’s the world’s biggest and most interactive treasure hunt!

A typical cache is a container that holds a logbook, maybe some trinkets, and a pencil so the finder can note the time and date they found it.  Containers can be as small as a plastic film-roll container, or as large as a tupperware box or even a waterproof ammo box.  The contains might contain trading items, and can even contain travel bugs or geocoins – items which are picked up and later deposited in different caches. Geocaching is a great ways to learn about GPS mapping, navigation, orienteering, treasure-hunting, and waymarking. Continue reading →

National Parks

Retired National Park Leaders Oppose Soda Mountain Solar

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Chris Clarke has posted an article at KCET.org about the Soda Mountain Solar monstrosity that seriously threatens the Mojave National Preserve and offers virtually no benefit whatsoever.  From the article:

Five retired National Park Service Superintendents who spent a cumulative 35 years managing California’s three desert National Parks are asking the Bureau of Land Management to move a 4,000-acre solar project they say would threaten the Mojave National Preserve’s wildlife, views and groundwater.

In a letter to BLM California Desert District staff, the five also contend the Soda Mountain Solar project would violate local ordinances regulating renewable energy facilities. They’re asking the BLM to issue a new Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project that would take a serious look at alternative locations for the project, and extend public comment on the project by another 60 days.

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State Parks

Mount Diablo camp spigots go dry during drought

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

A hat top to Dennis Cuff of the Contra Costa Times, who reports that campground visitors at the Mount Diablo State Park are roughing it in a new way: There is no tap water in campgrounds and most park areas because of the drought.

“A third consecutive dry year in California has depleted springs that supply water for most drinking fountains, faucets, flush toilets and showers in the 20,000-acre state park above Danville and Walnut Creek.”

The California State Park page for Mount Diablo states:

With perhaps the worst drought that California has ever seen Mount Diablo is suffering from a severe water shortage. Most of the water in the park is produced through a series of springs that is fed to various water tanks, treated, tested and then is ready for the public to use. However, with the lack of rain the springs on the mountain have been reduced to a trickle.

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National Forests, National Parks

National Park Service announces public engagement campaign as centerpiece of 2016 centennial

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

I wrote about this yesterday, but there’s a press release about the shiny new logos for the National Park Service and National Park Foundation, so I thought I’d put the press release up here for you as well:

National Park Service and National Park Foundation Unveil Expanded Graphic Identity

The National Park Service today announced that the centerpiece of its 2016 Centennial will be a broad public engagement campaign to reintroduce the national parks and the work of the National Park Service to a new generation of Americans, inviting them to visit and get involved. The two-year effort will begin in 2015 and run throughout the National Park Service’s 100th anniversary year in 2016. Plans for the campaign, entitled “Find Your Park,” are underway in collaboration with the National Park Foundation, the official nonprofit partner of the National Park Service.

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