Pet Caches

Blending caches in with the environment can be tricky and there are a lot of ways to do so.  While camouflage can be very basic, to truly get it just right takes practice.  But there is another fun way to do camouflage that we will look at today, along with several examples of this method.  Because of the various methods used, it will be hard to provide a materials list that covers every possible method.  So we will try to highlight what will be needed for each of the provided examples so you can get an idea about how to approach the method.  And what is the method...

ANIMALS!

Yep, I said animals.  So what exactly does that mean?  Those of you who have found a lot of caches may have seen a cache built like this before.  It a geocache built to look like an animal.  In some cases, the animal part is a prop that has been turned into a geocache.  Other times, it is a geocache that is attached to some kind of animal prop.  And in some cases, the animal actually hides the container.  We will look at one of each of these methods.

MATERIALS
One hard part about the methods we will be looking at is finding the right prop for the design.  There are two easy places to find these items, though they aren't the only locations.  One is a Garden Center.  Many stores that cater to landscaping and gardening will often have some animal related props.  Another location would be Halloween stores.  While these are usually only found in early Fall, with a little bit of looking you can sometimes find stores that sell Halloween related goods year-round. 

ANIMAL IS THE GEOCACHE

Our first example is an animal that has been turned into a geocache.  In this example, the animal is typically a larger prop that is hollow in some form.  Is this always the case...definitely not.  I've seen examples of bison tubes made to look like insects.  But for this post, we will focus on a larger version.  For this example, you will need a few items:

• A fake cat
• Logsheet
• Weather resistant glue
• PVC Plug and respectively sized threaded PVC adaptor

For the PVC Plug and adaptor, you can commonly find something called a PVC Cleanout W/Plug.  This would fit perfectly.  You just need to find a size appropriate for your design.  First, we see the cache itself, held by one of my caching friends:

You can see the cat, along with the black PVC fitting attached to it's belly.  A hole was cut into the belly, cut to the diameter of the bottom of the PVC Cleanout. The cleanout is then glued to the cat.  The PVC Plug then can screw into the cleanout to create a water-tight seal (provided you've properly glued the cat to the PVC).  In this photo, you might also notice a small metal loop in front of the PVC plug.  This loop was used to attach the cat to a tree, as seen here:

To attach this the way it is shown, the person who hid this would have had to drill a small hole into the tree, then take a hook screw a bit larger than the hole and screw that into the tree as well.  This would then provide the hook for the loop you see in the above photo, thereby attaching the cat to the tree as shown.

While this design is pretty cool when you see it in person, this did require putting a screw into a tree, which could cause damage to the tree.  If you like how this is setup (and it was pretty cool when I saw it), I would encourage you to find a location that doesn't require drilling into a tree.  I have seen reviewers archive caches that do this and they are right to do so.  It may not seem like much, but this can cause damage.

As you can see in this image, the design does create an interesting atmosphere for a cache, especially on Halloween. I know I laughed pretty hard upon finding this because my first thought was that we had actually found a cat.  Imagine the logs you would receive with a cache like this.

ANIMALS ATTACHED TO THE GEOCACHE

The next type of animal cache involves attaching animals to a geocache.  One of the first examples of this that I ran into involved a fake rat attached to a 35mm film canister, hidden under a log.  I happened to go after it at night, which made the cache even more fun to find.  These types of hides are rather simple and require nothing more than a geocache and some kind of fake animal to attach to the outside.  Spiders, snakes, and rats are the most common fake animals you'll see used, but insects often work wonderfully as well.

When building a cache like this using a smaller cache size, you typically need nothing more than the geocache itself, the animal to attach, and a method for attaching it.  Weather resistant glue is the most commonly used method.  For larger caches, like ammo cans, some geocachers will use items like snakes and large spiders and just rest them on top of the cache.

Here is an example of a micro attached to an insect.  The photo was taken by rhondapalooza.

ANIMALS HIDING GEOCACHES

The last example involves using an animal to hide the geocache.  Now the above example of the cat might seem like it fits here to but there is a difference.  With the cat, the cat was turned into the geocache.  The PVC parts merely provided an easy method to open and close the container, but the cat's body was the geocache itself.  For this last method, the fake animal isn't the geocache itself, it's merely the camouflage designed to hide the geocache.  Here, let's see an example of this:

In this example, the bird is the camo.  If you look closely, you can see the red, rounded edge of the geocache sticking out the back end of the bird.  It is hard to tell from this view, but the bird is actually carved from a lightweight wood, carefully painted to look like a real bird.  Using a drill, a hole was created for the bison tube.  A perch was created and tied to the tree on which the bird is attached.  Look carefully and you can see a triangular piece on the back end of the perch which helps prevent the bison tube from falling out accidentally.  To retrieve this cache, the bird rotated forward just a bit.  This was achieved by making the feet loop around the perch, but with a little bit of looseness to allow the rotation.  Rotate the bird forward, pull out the bison tube, and sign the logsheet.

Birds are definitely the most commonly used animal for this method, at least from what I've experienced.  Here is another example of a bird geocache (which happens to be an exact replica to two bird caches I have seen) as taken by Wrapped In Piano Strings, who we should welcome to the geocaching world as this is a picture of their very first find:

Once, I saw a large GINORMOUS Bison using this method up in St. Joseph, MO.  Always good for a laugh when taking someone to find it.

So there you have it.  Three ways to turn a simple geocache into a creative geocache using animals.  Have you seen an example of this before?  Post a GC code in the comments.

TripCyclone

P.S. I am waiting for permission from a few people to display their photos on the site.  I will update the post with photos as permissions arrive.  For now, I've merely linked to the photos I am awaiting permission from.

Building a Pict-O-Cache

Disclaimer: This is an edited version of a post I made on my personal geocaching blog.  I was getting ready to write about this when I realized I had already done it a long time ago.  I've made a few updates.

If there was ever a cache that everyone should try once, pict-o-caches would likely be near the top of the list. They take aspects of several different types of caches and join them together to make a cache that everyone can participate in and enjoy. But how do they work? First, we need to establish what they are.

Pict-o-caches are a class on their own. Taking cues from multi-caches, on-site puzzles, and visual puzzles, these puzzles definitely require an observant eye. Given a location to start at, you are basically guided through a multi-cache not by finding hidden stages with coordinates inside, but by finding things right out in the open. The clues are pictures. Follow the pictures and find the cache. It sounds simple enough.

Let's look a bit closer. There are two basic methods of doing a pict-o-cache. For the first one, we'll use a pict-o-cache that I completed in 2008 with my friend 8601Delphinium.  Both of us enjoyed this cache and thought it was a good example of this method. It is the Hastings Pict-O-Cache located in Hastings, NE, set up by Still Searching.  In this method, you are given a starting location, usually the cache coordinates themselves. Standing in that location, you have to scan around the area. Somewhere, within your field of view, you would find this:

Obviously, this image shows a brick wall, so you would want to scan for brick buildings. It could be on a building near to you or one in the distance, but it will be in your view. One thing to consider is whether the object is close to the ground or not. If you find a building in your view that has other objects masking it, like vehicles, bushes, or trees, you'll need to take that into consideration. Once you find the object in the picture, you need to go over to it. Stand next to it, and begin searching for picture number two:

Examining the photo, you at least now that it is near a window. Second, you can also guess that it is at least a second story window based on the ledge. Third, even though it also appears to be on a brick building, don't assume that it is the same building. So make sure to scan every building in your view. Okay, over there. That's the window. Let's move over to it. Time to find number three:

Now, you can be certain that this is the corner of a building, and along the roof. Again, start scanning around, this time paying attention to roof corners that have this style of decoration on it. Wait...over there. Nope, it doesn't have the streetlamp object visible along the edge of the photo. But, if you look at that other corner of the same building, it does have it. Time to go to stage four.

This is the overall idea of this type of pict-o-cache. It's nothing more than following the pictures. These caches are great caches for group caching or family caching. Everyone can get involved with finding the images, including kids.

But I said that the above method is just one type of this style of puzzle cache. So what's the other method? For the other method, I'll use Krypto Kache, found in Omaha, NE. Set up by Team Kryptos, this one still has you looking for pictures, but this time you are given a list of coordinates for the pictures. This might seem counter-intuitive, but it's not. The coordinates are just a list of coordinates with letters assigned to them, and the pictures are numbered. Go to each of the coordinates and figure out which of the photos is found there. Match each coordinate to a picture and you'll get numbers for the letters. Then fill in the numbers in the provided final coordinates based on the letters and you'll get the final location for the puzzle. Go to that location and find the cache.

Either method provides an interesting caching experience. But, what if you want to make one? Before you do anything, you'll need a few things.

Materials Needed:

• Camera
• Photo editing software
• Notebook
• Cache Container
• Logbook

A notebook?  That seems odd.  However I would also recommend bringing a notebook to help keep track of note only the order of the photos, but to match the photos to coordinates and to write notes about the photos. Both of those last two will make sense in a bit.  For a cache container, any size can be used.  Just remember to make it appropriate for the location you use.  Ammo can's are obviously not the way to go if this cache will be designed in an urban area.  And regarding the photo software.  Anything will work.  GIMP is a good free software.  It has a learning curve, but there are plenty of tutorials out there to help and it is quite powerful considering it is free.

For the first method, there's a bit more that goes into preparing this puzzle. Start by finding a place to hide the cache (and mark the coordinates). Many of the pict-o-caches I've seen are usually found in vibrant urban environments. Urban areas provide a lot of different options for photos that you just won't find elsewhere. Whether using architecture, window, window displays, vents, signs, lamps, etc., you should have a pluthra of objects to use for photos.  "Historic Downtown" areas often make great spots.  Out in a park, on the other hand, is not so great.  You have trees, bushes, plants, trees, benches, lamps, trees...imagine looking at a photo of a tree then looking around you to find a hundred trees that all look like the photo. Case settled.  However, that doesn't mean a park can never work for this type of cache, it's just harder to make it work.

Once you find a location, you have two options. You can find a random starting location and work your way along a path to the final location, taking pictures along the way. Or you can do the same thing, only working backwards through the route. Either way works, but it might be easier to visualize if you work your way forwards through the route. I'll describe the rest as if you are doing it forwards.

Find a random starting location and grab the coordinates. Then, scan around and find something to take a photo of. Remember, your path can be whatever you want, so don't feel like you have to always be getting closer to the final location. Also, your photo can be at a distance, or it can be closer to the object you want to photograph. Feel free to mix it up to increase the difficulty, just make sure that what you see in the photograph is at least big enough to see from the previous spot. Another way to increase the difficulty is use only a portion of the photo. For example, instead of using a photo of the entire statue, crop it so that you only see a small portion of it. This also helps to reduce the chances that someone spots stage nine and rushes straight to that spot in the puzzle before they've done stages one through eight. This is where the notebook can really come in handy, as you can write down notes about each image in case you want to mess with the images on the computer.

Once you have your photograph, move to whatever you took a photo of and stand next to it. Before you continue, make sure to grab coordinates. You will want to add waypoints for each picture when you list your cache online. This helps the reviewer in two ways. One way is to help them see what route you are having the cacher go. They may see something you hadn't thought of based on where those stages are that may require fixing. Second, each picture is techniqually a stage in a multi-cache. Multi-cache guidelines require posting the waypoints for each stage. Some reviewers may see it as a puzzle cache and not require the additional waypoints, but trust me that it will be appreciated. Some reviewers will actually require them for the above reasons.

After you have your coordinates, repeat the above process until you reach the final location. When you close in on the final location, think carefully about the last two photos. The last photo should be close enough to narrow down where the final location is within 10 - 20 feet (or about the typical accuracy of your GPSr). The second to last photo should get you close enough that the last photo makes sense. If the final location is hidden in the skirt of lamp post, and your final location is of the skirt, the second to last photo should not have eight lamp posts in the image. Figure out a way to narrow it down to no more than two, maybe three if they are closer together. You'll get complaints from cachers if you don't.

Now that you have all your photos, coordinates for each photo, and have placed the hide, you're ready to go home. At home, you'll need to take some time to get everything organized. Hopefully, you took notes of the coordinates for each photo and a description so that you can quickly match things up. Load up your images and start preparing them. I recommend numbering your final images so that you can get them arranged properly. Feel free to put a visible number in the photo to help the cachers as well.  If they are printing off a sheet of images then the numbers will help them keep everything in order too. Once you do have them prepared, you'll need to do one more thing.


When you post this online, you'll have an easier time displaying the photos if you create an image file that has the photos arranged in order that can be displayed online. Check out both of the linked caches listed earlier to see examples of this. It will make setting up the cache page easier. Also, don't forget to create additional waypoints for each image. They can be hidden from public view if using the "follow the images" method, or they can be public if using the "match the images" method (you have to list the coordinates anyway for this one). Get everything ready to go and submit.  As to the software to use for this, that may vary depending on your experience.  This isn't needed, but it makes creating the cache page easier.

But what about that second method I described.  You know, the one where you match the photos to the coordinates?  This method has a bit wider range of options for where you can set it up as compared to the first method because you aren't following images to the hide, but matching images to get numbers in order to determine the final coordinates. Your images can be in a confined area of a few blocks or they can be spread out over a mile wide area. I've seen some spread out across entire communities.  You just need to keep track of which images go with which coordinates.  Find some locations with something you want to take a photo of and take several photos of varying zoom levels.  You can also crop those as you see fit.  Make sure you take coordinates of the spot you took the photo from.  If using the notebook, take note of which coordinates go with which image.  Keep doing this for the number of photos you want to use, then find somewhere to place the final cache.  

Once you get home, make sure the photos are marked for identification.  Numbers are recommended.  Why?  Because when you provide the list of matching coordinates, labeling them with a number might confuse people.  Labeling them with a letter prevents this.  And if you label with letters, you don't want to label the photos with letters too. 

After cropping and marking the photos, and preparing the coordinates to match to the photos, you need to figure out how you want cachers to determine the coordinates.  One way to do this is to make math equations.  Write out a basic formula for the provided coordinates where certain positions equal certain letters.  For example:


N 40° 35.189 W 098° 23.354
N 40° AB.CDE W 098°FG.HIJ

Then, for each picture, provide a formula, such as:

Photo A = (B+G)*(F-I)

As cachers match up the correct coordinates to each image, they use those coordinates to determine the value of each photo.  Then they can plug those values into the final coordinates to determine where the cache is located at.  Since this is done in the field, a coordinate checker isn't needed.  Once they have the final coordinates, they can go after the cache to claim a find.

When submitting this design, it can be labeled as either a puzzle cache or a multi cache.  If you aren't quite sure how to list it, contact your reviewer and ask for what they would like it listed as since they will be the ones approving it.

These two methods are the two most common methods I've seen, but there are probably other ways to set this up.  I don't see Pict-O-Caches as often anymore, but I have seen a type called "Steeplechases" which are essentially method #2, but with a theme.  Themed Pict-O-Caches can be fun too.  While Pict-O-Caches aren't as common, I haven't met too many people who dislike them since they are a bit different and can be an interesting way to explore an area. 

TripCyclone

PS: A thanks to reviewers *gln and Heartland Cacher for their input on how to submit a pict-o-cache and to Still Searching for letting me use some of the photos on his pict-o-cache. I probably SHOULD say thanks to Team Kryptos, but I didn't use any of their photos so they'll get a thanks for letting me reference their hide.

An Electrical Plate

Some of you may have seen this design before.  It isn't anything new.  But it is easy to build and it makes a great example of creativity.  Before we begin, let's look at what materials you'll need.

Materials:

• Electrical Wall Plate
• 2 magnets
• Metal Epoxy
• Small baggie
• Logsheet

Most of the materials can be found in a hardware store.  However, most magnets you would find in a hardware store are larger and thicker than what is best to use.  For my magnets, I rely on Grainger due to the variety of different styles and sizes.  The only problem is that they usually require an account for most products they sell, especially magnets.  They are considered hazardous materials.

When you go to buy the wall plate, make sure that whatever you buy is the style of a wall cover with two holes for the screws.  For hiding outdoors, the metal variety will blend in better than plastic.  For magnets, I used a nickel plated, neodymium magnet that is .375 mm wide and .100 mm thick.  For a glue, I used a Metal Epoxy to better grip the metal between the two objects.  It is also fast drying and holds up to weather a lot better than normal super glue.  You will need a small baggie for this design.  Look in the bead section of any arts & crafts department/store to find cheap bags (50-100 for less than $2.00).

Here is an example of the Wall Plate alongside the magnets.  Notice one magnet covering the left hole.

With this image, you can easily see how everything will fit together. The magnets cover the holes on the backside of the plate.  All you need to do is glue them down.

Metal Epoxy works by mixing two substances.  One is a hardener and one is a resin.  This typically comes in a special container that looks like two syringes fused together.  Make sure you have a disposable container handy and something small and disposable for mixing the materials.  Open the container and carefully squeeze a small amount of both materials into the disposable container.  One of the materials will move rather slow.  I used my mixer to scrape the glob off the tip of the syringe.

Once you have the two materials in your container, you only have about five minutes to work before it becomes hardened enough that you can't easily apply it.  Quickly mix them until they have a uniform color and consistancy (about 30 seconds of stirring should be minimum).  Then, carefully begin applying the epoxy.  Use a little bit on the front side of the hole to seal that up, evening it flat with the rest of the plate.  Apply more to the back side, this time to the gap between the magnet and the plate.  Apply it a big thicker so that it can drip fully into the gap.  Apply it around the entire magnet and once you feel satisfied, you're done.

Here is what it should look like on the backside when you are done:

Now I recommend that you only do one magnet at a time. In the amount of time it takes to mix and apply the epoxy to one magnet, the rest of the epoxy will have dried out too much for easy application to the second magnet.  Once you are completely finished preparing the cache, allow at least one hours before handling it.  For the best strength, allow a full 24 hours before use.

This cache, as you might already be able to tell, works best in locations where an electrical face plate would seem likely (and not dangerous to the cacher who goes after it).  Since the epoxy dries a different color, you might look into a metal looking spray paint to blend the in the front side.  If placing this in a location with a different color than the face paint, definitely consider spray paint.

Once you have the location picked out, place a logsheet into one of the small baggies and place the baggie between the two magnets on the backside.  You will have to rely on the object you are attaching too to hold the baggie in place with the above design.  However, you can always consider modifying the design to hold the baggie into place.

A rather simple design, but also a devious design.  Even experienced cachers can overlook this one at first.  So find a good spot to hide it and enjoy the logs.

TripCyclone

PS: Watch your fingers handling the wall plate.  The edges are sharp.  I accidentally cut my thumb while trying to clean off some excess epoxy because I didn't have a good grip.