Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Geocaching in Las Vegas

During my 5 day stay in Las Vegas NV this year, my sole purpose (besides seminar classes) was to find as many caches as I could. This was much more difficult than I'd expected. There's so many people (muggles as GC's call them) everywhere! I spent 3 days looking for one just outside of the hotel I was staying at. I did find it, but man it was difficult. I haven't come across cache containers like those here in Oklahoma at that time, and found most to be ridiculously clever. Two that I searched for came down to did not find (DNF). My brother and his wife accompanied me for the most part. They really got into it too. We walked and walked and walked. I think I got in well over 20mi for my entire stay. This was my 4th trip to Vegas, but my first caching trip. I found micros, nanos, and tins. One was just a duct tape bag with a magnet in it. If you haven't been to Vegas before, there are literally poster boxes all down the strip, fancy fencing, and electrical boxes everywhere. I carried a trackable with me to drop off since it hadn't been in Nevada yet. Just finding a place to put it was a task. I ended up backtracking to one of the first ones I'd found, and forcing it into the tin. Now I know why some people tend to not grab trackables that are larger in size. Here's the one that I had picked up.
Several things that I wish I had for most of the geocaches was a more discreet pair of tweezers, a log roller, a battery box for my iphone, and a notebook. The Las Vegas strip is pounded with attractions. A notebook would have been more handy to write down the description and attraction point, than to keep using my phone. A log roller because I spent more time trying to get the logs rolled up to return than I did finding and signing. My EDC backpack that I carry also housed my geocaching things, this was a mistake. When you're on the strip, you've got a couple water bottles, wallet, purchased items, and if you're smart, a couple of blister pads. :) Then included was my swag bag (which i only carried small specific things on these treks down the strip), pen, iphone/gps, and a small flashlight.

A few of the obstacles I had to dance around was the homeless people. Asking for money or food, and they tended to hang out around areas that I was caching at. Security guards are also all over. Glaring at you while you check the lamp post and stand shady around it until the coast is clear. One location that we went to, we were spotted checking it out and asked what was so interesting about it. Come to find out that she had worked in the restaurant for awhile and tend to see many passerby's inspect the attraction. I wish I had brought some of the brochures about Geocaching with me to Vegas. I now carry a few of them in my backpack now. We tried explaining it to her with what small time we had, but she had to get back to work. Another cache location was directly located on a super busy intersection corner. In fact, as it got darker we gave up waiting for muggles to thin out and just dove in checking out the location. My SIL had told one guy that she had lost her earring. :p I checked this location 7 times in my 5 day stay, I DNF. Actually on the last time that I went back in the morning hours, there was a homeless guy sleeping on the ground in the location. So I could only peek around a little bit.

Just as most of the Las Vegas cache descriptions say, Most people are drunk or too busy to notice anyone else. Another useful tip is to be safe! I picked up what I thought was a cache container fallen from its location. When I picked it up, it revealed used syringes! This was in my other DNF location. A bed made of cardboard boxes, and a bicycle chained up to the fence most of the day. After finding the syringes, I marked that off my list.


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