Geocaching and Pumpkins

Today was a lot of fun and it was a gorgeous day! We went geocaching with our friends, the Kaufmans, and then we all went up to Mom and Dad's for the annual Pumpkin Carving Fest.

It was a hot day for October (88 degrees!!), but nice! We started out by showing the Kaufmans a few of our caches and a few other cool caches in the area and then we headed up into the foothills, by way of Auberry Road, to a geocaching get-together that was celebrating the return of a cacher who had spent the last eighteen months traveling around the US by Amtrack train and finding caches in each of the contiguous 48 states. What a great goal to accomplish!

From there we drove up into the mountains around Kerkoff and Redinger Lakes in the Sierra mountains past Auberry. We drove as far Cal Center where there is a benchmark showing the exact center of California. There is also a cache there. There was a different one there six years ago when we were last there, so it was fun to go back and see it again and find another cache. We found a few other caches on the way back towards Auberry.

As we drove through the mountains and around the lakes we stopped to take photos here and there, as the Kaufmans had never been up in the mountains here. It was a perfect day to show off the beauty of this area! Kevin stopped short twice to get out and look at tarantulas that were crossing the road (I stayed in the van, thank you very much!). That was the only "wildlife" that we encountered.

We got up to Mom and Dad's house and had dinner (Mom makes the best soups!). Besides us and the Kaufmans, there was Wes and Laura and Stone and Scotty and Lea. We hadn't seen Scotty and Lea for a few months, so it was great to be able to catch up with them a little bit.

After dinner we all headed out to the garage where Mom and Dad always have the table covered and there are tons of bowls for the pumpkin guts (This year, Scotty not only brought gloves, but a surgical gown as well! Too funny!), and every cutting implement you can think of. There are all kinds of patterns to choose from as well, although most of us come with designs in mind. I found an idea that I couldn't wait to try. I spray painted the pumpkin black and then carved out the design. It looks really neat! Amanda carved the face of Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter, Rebecca wrote several things on her pumpkin and then carved a jack-o-lantern face on it, and Katie just drew a face and some squiggles, took out a few pumpkin seeds and then declared that she was done.

This is always a fun part of the Fall/Halloween season and we always love being there, not only to carve pumpkins, but to talk and enjoy the company of our friends and family.


See all the geocaching pics HERE.
See all the pumpkin carving pics HERE.

The Life of a Survey Monument

Here's a Flash animation of the life of a survey monument by the Bureau of Land Management.

http://www.blm.gov/ca//flash/fb/survey.html

Happy Fourth of July!!!

It's past midnight again! The fireworks didn't start tonight until 11:35pm, so we were up late!

Today was a lot of fun! We started the day off with our own little private pancake breakfast, rather than head downtown in the rain for the one that the city was hosting.

We left for the parade and got good seats that gave us a good view of the staging area and the end of the parade route. The weather was nice enough to stop the rain for the parade time. It was a lot of fun! We saw all kinds of great floats and the patriotic spirit in the crowd and with the participants was great! There were a few highlights for each of us! Me, I am always a sucker for bagpipes. Amanda went crazy when she saw the Star Wars contingent round the corner. Rebecca loves polar bears and when the Alaska Zoo float went by, the polar bear mascot passed by everyone else and walked up to Rebecca and gave her a hug. We all thought it was great, and Rebecca was so thrilled!

After the last parade float had gone by, they were headed toward the Parkstrip, where the food was, so we followed and unofficially became a part of the parade. We had hot dogs, gyros and a funnel cake. Then it started to rain.

We left there and I took the girls to the Alaska Railroad Station. While we were there, Kevin called. We talked for a little bit, and then we got on the subject of benchmarks, and Kevin went looking on line for where we were on an online map. Not only were there three Tidal Benchmarks on the Railroad Building, but there was also a Geocache nearby. I didn't have the GPS, so Kevin read me the cache page, and I was able to locate it. Neat! (Read our Geocache Log here.)

One of the reference point benchmarks was on the front of the building, but the other two were on the track side of the depot (where you are not allowed to go if you are not a passenger), so we couldn't get to them. I asked the lady behind the ticket counter if we could go out there to take pictures, and she was given permission by Security to "escort" us out there. Ironically, even with Kevin giving me the description of where it was in my earpiece, the Alaska Railroad lady was the one to find it first. Neat. We took a few photos and then left the station.

We drove up through town, and as I was turning onto C Street, my phone rang and it was Kevin. He asked it we were still at the train depot. I said no and told him I was at 9th and C. "Stop right there!" Kevin yelled. "That's exactly where I need you to be!" Miraculously there were no other cars on the road at that moment, so I was able to turn over two lanes of road into a parking lot. Kevin told us that there was THE original Anchorage benchmark across the street, and it was also a virtual cache. We went over and found it and took some pictures that then we headed home.

As we drove, I decided that I was going to give a cache I had tried twice before another shot. I had figured out what the cache was on the first try, but I had had no luck getting it out. This time it was backwards, so I knew I was looking for the right thing and grabbed it. Don't twist. . .PULL! Anyway, I called Kevin from the car and told him I had found another cache. He was surprised, but thought it was great!

Every Fourth of July, we spend time together as a family geocaching. So, it was really wonderful that we got to geocache together, even if we were over 2000 miles apart.

When we got home we had baby back ribs (I have a great recipie for when I get home) for dinner and s'mores for desert. (Katrina - "Mama, my sticky!") We did some sparklers on the back porch and then we headed out to see the fireworks. The fireworks show began at 11:35pm and even when it ended the sun had not gone down. It was a fun day!

See all the pics here.

GU1670 - An Important Mark, in a different way than most

Until recently, I was employed by a Civil & Survey engineering firm that was the contract engineer for the City of Coalinga, California. As the 'field guy' for the acting Engineer, I was fairly familiar with the local benchmark network. A few years ago, I was given the task to map a portion of State Highways 33/198, about 1.4 miles long, through the town of Coalinga. It was an infrastructure project for curb, gutter, sidewalk (etc.) improvements. During the project, I tied into multiple city benchmarks and other various benchmarks within the project area. Four of the 'others' are in the NGS database - AH5203, GU1673, GU1670, & GU4200. AH5203 - COALINGA RESET, at the north end of the project, was destroyed by the DOT while building a new bridge. (According the one of their surveyors, it is to be reset, again, by them.) For obvious reasons, it was not tied into. GU1673 - J156, is the main benchmark for all the vertical control in town, and was adjacent to the roadway and well within the project area. GU4200 - INTERSECTION, is a street centerline monument in a well, also well within the project area. GU1670 - G944, at the south end of the project was not located, and consequently, not tied into.

GU1670 was a standard brass disk set in a round concrete post. It was set on the side of the road, across from the old fire station behind a curb. It was reported as 'found' in 1984 and then 'not found' in 1985, and for all intents and purposes, it should have been there as no improvements have been done in the area in some time. I couldn't find it as part of the project, but the benchmark hunter in me kept looking. I went back multiple times over the next few years, kicking dirt and looking in the logical and not so logical places, with no luck. This site probably had the most visits by me for any mark I've looked for without finding anything.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this thread, my employment has recently changed. My present employer has a collection of surveying equipment and artifacts on display throughout the office. Last week I was speaking with one of the other employees (relatively new to the survey industry) about the purpose of benchmarks and their markings. I was using one of my employeer's display benchmarks to show him what I was talking about. During our discussion, the designation of the mark caught my attention; 'G944 1958'. The '944' was familiar - there was a '944' series of marks around the Coalinga area, set in the late 50's. I routinely used 'Y944', north of Coalinga, as a calibration point for my survey-grade GPS. I searched the NGS database for G944 in the State of California and only got one hit - it was GU1670. After nearly four years of searching, I found the brass disk I'd been looking for, more than 75 miles away.

Now, for the rest of the story....

Flash back to 1987. I was studying Architecture at a local college and got hired by a Civil & Survey engineering firm as a draftsman. This was before computers and CAD; all the plans and maps were drawn by hand with pen & ink. I was hired because of my drawing ability and penmanship, not because I knew anything about surveying or engineering. I honestly didn't know what either a surveyor or civil engineer was, let alone what they did. As I drafted the maps and plans, I would ask about things I saw or drew onto the plans. Over time I found that I was more interested in the surveying portion of my job over the civil engineering portion, and the architecture I was studying for that matter. (That interest in surveying is still there, nearly 20 years later. The architecture is all but forgotten.) I routinely asked the chief surveyor and the lead crew chief questions. I remember posing the question 'what is a benchmark?' to the lead crew chief. He explained it to me using an old brass disk he had on his desk that he used as a paperweight.

Now, flash forward to last week. My new employers are the same chief surveyor and the lead crew chief I worked with back in the 80's. About seven years ago, they cleaned out their desks and went out on their own. Now I'm back with them. GU1670 was in their small collection. When I told them that I'd been recently looking for that mark, one of them, the old lead crew chief said 'Really? I used that thing as a paperweight for years!'