GeoWoodstock 7: Bell Buckle, TN

Recently attended GeoWoodstock 7 in Bell Buckle, TN and the experience was far different than any event I have attended. The weekend began with a Meet & Greet in Mufreesboro. Well over 500 cachers were in attendance and I enjoyed the fellowship and put faces to names, including a couple from St. Louis, MO who made a pass through my area a couple of years back. After the event, we retired to dinner at Cracker Barrell and the motel.

The next morning I was excited to be going to my first GeoWoodstock. The pattern of the day would be set early with the first cache find just outside the motel when a cacher from Arizona hunted the cache with us. Later, when we got off the exit for Bell Buckle, we stopped at Road to GeoWoodstock 7, a large amount of people were at the cache and no need to hunt the cache since we we walked up, the log was being passed around. We arrived at Bell Buckle to find small quiet Middle Tennessee town coming alive with outsiders carrying handheld Global Positioning Receivers. Unlike muggle events where directions are printed out, we had coordinates to destinations. We found the town center and attended the opening ceremony with First Lady of Bell Buckle thanking geocachers for their attendance. We walked around the numerous vendors and ended up buying many products to include nifty cache containers. The vendor plaza gave me an opportunity to release several wheresgeorge bills and have had hits in Delaware and Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada.

We spoke to many more cachers over the day including many cachers from West Tennessee and West Kentucky, whom I knew beforehand. The music was nice and lunch was great. From what I have observed from Internet sources approximately 5,000 cachers from 32 countries were in attendance.

All the geocaches in the surrounding area were also found. We walked up on Louisville & Nashville 3492 cache log being passed around. I did find my first Whereigo cache seeing others retrieve the cache and didn't have it on my Garmin. Would not have mattered anyway, since I need a Garmin Colorado or Oregon GPS to find a Whereigo cache. Later, I walked up the hill to Hazel Cemetery to find a church group from Tullahoma touring the cemetery. I noticed they were at a marker for a US sailor killed in action in the Battle of Midway while serving on the USS Yorktown. Knowing that my regional adminstrator's father served on the aircraft carrier and fought in the battle, I took a picture of the marker for the sailor. Several of the muggle crowd asked about the GeoWoodstock and geocaching. I explained the game and showed them my GPS. Walked onto the cache location to meet a cachers from Long Beach, California. Another cache where the log was being passed around. We talked a bit while walking back to town.

Later in the afternoon, we decided to leave Bell Buckle and travelled to Wartrace, TN. We looked at the town and hunted some of the caches. Locals from the town also asked us about the traffic and all the out of state license plates. We explained the game and what was going on in Bell Buckle. We found the caches with a group of cachers from Utah. We drove onto to Mufreesboro and continued caching. Again, we ran into more cachers, this time from Hawaii and West Virginia. Our caching ended for the day at Midnight Coin Madness Event which was just a quarter mile from our motel. We are not much into the geocoins, but I did enjoy the fellowship.

We left Mufreesboro the following day picking up two park and grabs and headed home.

They Checked Out

My daughter signed up for a job shadow at Wickliffe Mounds State Historical Park in Kentucky and would work there all day. Being that Wickliffe is over an hour from Dresden, TN; I thought it would be best to just take the day off and geocache the Paducah area.

There was one cache I set my sights on and that being They Checked Out. Since it's placement on July 19, 2007, I have wanted to find this cache and see this historic hotel. I would not be disappointed when I arrived at the cache location in Smithland, Kentucky. The hotel has been around since the last 1700's and two US Presidents and other dignitaries visited the hotel that is situated overlooking the Ohio River.

Coordinates were tight and I found the cache quickly. I took some photos of the building, the overlook and historical markers. Afterwards, I went back to Paducah finding several caches downtown and then onto Wickliffe.

Garmin Nuvi vs. laptop

I have been using a Dell laptop with Garmin GPS 18 to navigate on the job and for geocaching purposes. It has everything the Nuvi has but also I have the benefit of a wide screen. Set at one mile, I can see 2.5 miles in front of me and 6 miles to either side. This wide screen gives me a distinct advantage while geocaching. The disadvantages if the laptop is bulky with wire running all over the floor and dash. My Dodge Dakota has an area to place the laptop, my wife Nissan has no such room. Unless one is used to using the nRoute feature, it's difficult to train someone while on the road.

Last Christmas, I gave my wife a Garmin Nuvi and it is very simple to use and I am able to send GPX files to the Nuvi; giving me a map and autoroute capability for geocaching. On our vacation that took us through Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina, we used the Nuvi and never set up the laptop for navigation. It's compact size and only one wire was great. It was also very accurate. Driving through Atlanta, Georgia, the Nuvi knew which lane were were in and gave us advance warning to change lanes. However, I did find the Nuvi is not up to the challenge of geocaching. It's map feature is not nearly as detailed at nRoute and the small screen gave me the impression of tunnel vision.

Overall, I do plan to purchase a Nuvi for my own truck and use it for on-the-job purposes and would use it for geocaching in some cases. But for a good cache run, I will go with the laptop.