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 Would you expect anything less from the far right? Newt has decided that it is in his best interest, as a candidate for President, to make the following statement:
"It's pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman. This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it's a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization."
If wanting to create alternatives to the status quo makes one Pagan, then hell, count me back in. I would love to create an alternative to the political travesty running this country. I would love to create an alternative to the current policy regarding immigration used by our Federal Government and a variety of Country and Local governments. I would like to create alternatives to the hatred practiced in the name of religion. Does that make me Pagan? No, that makes me sick and tired of the bullshit that our leaders are promoting.
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 After trying and trying to get the Triton 400 to be a nice little Geocaching tool, I have finally thrown my hands up in the air and said ... screw it! So, its being returned to the store we bought it from, and we will be watching for a nice price on a Garmin etrex simular to the one I have, or maybe an upgrade. The problem(s)?
Vantage Point Does Not Play Well with Windows 7! Nothing unusual, I have seen a lot of complaints on the Internet about the problems with Vantage Point, the software included with the Magellan GPSr Hand Units. I even tried the little game of running in an acount of which DOES NOT have the Administrator setting, but I still had problems.
Blue Screens! Just when I thought things were straightened out, the Triton 400 would crash my Windows 7 P.C. I would be working with teh GPSr, and suddenly, the Blue Screen of Death. I have looked around the internet and nothing I have tried has fixed this problem.
No Support! I have looked at more than one report talking about No Support from Magellan, and I went through their customer support on the Magellangps web site and NOTHING. There is nothing in the FAQ, they did not respond to my Email, there are no Updates to the software that address and fix the problems that I have been having with the Triton 400.
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 Yeah, I know ... Streets and Trips 2012 is now out. The stunt here is that I can now get the 2011 version of Streets and Trips with the GPS receiver for around $35.00, and when you're running on a limited budget, half-price is nice. But that's not what I'm wanting to talk about.
You can import and export gpx files from Streets and Trips 2011. What does that mean? It means that if I'm going someplace like ... Salina Kansas ... I can then sit down on Geocaching.com and look at my route, downloading the gpx files along the route I am planning on taking. I can run a pocket query of Salina, collecting a fair number of caches, and then import all this data into my Street and Trips. I can then look at where they fall on my trip. I can use my Streets and Trips as my Navigation GPS, and keep an eye on where the Caches are falling in my route. I can use the Streets and Trips to take me directly to the cache area, and then pull out my handheld and pinpoint the cache. Now, you will need to have the caches in your GPS unit, or have the gpx file so that you can load the caches with your GPSr software or a program like GSAK. The location will give you the cache name and Geocaching.com identification code.
Yeah, there are other features ... like using Streets and Trips to create routes that can be exported to a gpx file and then uploaded into a GPS unit. But for a Geoknut like me, the ability to program Geocaches into the maps makes it easier to look at my geocaching options when I'm on the road.
Now, I will warn you. You can easily end up with duplicate markers for a geocache if you're not careful. I am importing my gpx files into my copy of GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife), which will not create duplicates for a cache location, and then after cleaning up the list the way I want, importing that file into a fresh map of Streets and Trips and saving it to my Geocaching file name. That gets rid of the old, brings in the new, and avoids duplicates. The maps shown with this article has around 2900 caches in the Kansas City to Manhattan Kansas area, mostly Kansas City.
Well, I was wondering how long it would take, but someone has finally stolen (muggled) the Geocache at the Odessa Scout House. 58 people had found the cache, which was hidden under a small stump in the front yard. It was an easy cache, in a four inch by two inch container. Likely, someone decided it was trash when they were cleaning up the yard, and instead of looking to see what it was and putting it back, they simply threw it away. Well, after thinking it over, I decided to relocated this one on the same site.
The container is now a pill bottle wrapped in dark gray duck tape. It contains only a log, so Bring your own Pencil. It has also been moved, and the new coordinates have been posted to Geocaching.com. So, the challenge is ... will this one survive?
On My Honor - GC2TXZ0
Every now and then I stumble over what seems to be a good deal. Recently, I fell into the Magellan Triton 400 for $110.00, new in the box. Seemed like a good deal, and when I looked at some of the features, it really did look like a good deal. 4.5 star rating from Geocaching.com. Paperless Geocaching. Compatible with NatGeo Topo Maps. Not bad, and now that I've worked out most of the bugs, it seems to be a good unit. But working out the bugs can be a challenge.
FIRMWARE ISSUES:
Working through the settings, I was lost on how to get the time and date set. According to information I found on line, I was supposed to be able to view settings and work down to Time and Date. Wrong, there was no Time and Date selection under Settings. What it came down to was the fact that the Unit was on an out-of-date Firmware version, and I needed to update.
This is where the trouble began. Updating the Firmware from the software provided ... Vantage Point ... started a nightmare. There were failures. Vantage Point was seeing the unit as a Triton 300 and not a Triton 400. It corrupted the Firmware in the attempt to update the GPSr, and things got rapidly worse. Hooking the GPSr up to the computer and trying to connect to Vantage Point was now causing Blue Screens on my computer, crashing the system. I went to the internet and found that this was a common problem, but the solutions I found were making matters worse. There is a file out there for the Triton 400 that allows you to re-install the firmware via an SD Card. The problem there is that the file is an OLD version of the Firmware, and you will start to get what people call "the white screen of death" on the GPS.
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 There is a walking trail area located off of Cyclone and East Park Road. When you look at the right maps, you can see that there is a trail that runs from the main walking trail, around the back of the Rotary Camp and exits on Colbern Road. Having done the main walking trail one afternoon as a part of a Geocaching adventure, I didn't remember seeing the trail breaking off and heading towards the Rotary Camp. When the trail was brought up as an option for the 2012 adVenture Race, it was decided that someone needed to recon it. Well, give me an excuse ... someone put a new Geocache in the area, so New Year Eve afternoon, I grabbed the kids and headed for the trail.
We were looking for the trail head as we were heading in for the Geocache, and found what appeared to be an overgrown access road. We went ahead and bypassed it since there was no visible trail, and approximately 0.7 miles from the parking lot we started in, we found a narrow trail crossing the walking path. After finding the Geocache that we were looking for, and after checking further down the trail for a developed trail head, we returned to the narrow trail crossing and started our investigation.
In the first 525 feet, the trail drops in elevation from 911 feet to 848 feet. The decline runs as high as 32 percent, and the trail surface runs from dirt to rock and broken rock as you go over the end of a rock cliff line. After you are at the bottom of the initial decline, the ground runs fairly level, with a couple of inclines as you actually start to go along the east edge of the Rotary Camp. The only strong incline is around a 27 percent incline as you climb the final few hundred feet to come out on Colbern Road. From the trail crossing to the trail head at Colbern Road, you're looking at 1.1 miles of undeveloped trail. There are two bridges on the trail, one wooden near Colbern Road, to a large steel I-Beam that crosses the creek feeding the small cove on the lake between the Rotary Camp and the walking trail.
Now, be advised, this trail can be hard to follow as you're working around the Rotary Camp. For us there were a lot of leaves on the ground coving the worn path, but if you paid attention, you could see where the trail should be. There were also some trail markers, and some flagging to keep you on track. Come April, when they are talking having the race, the trail may be a lot easier to follow.
Overall, it made for an interesting day. We mapped the trail with my GPS unit. The GPX file for the trail is attached to this article in .zip format. This file also contains the Google earth .kml file so you can see the location on Google Earth.
 lake jacomo trails.zip
2011, I ended up with 143 finds. The closest to home was .9 miles, the furthest was in Illinois (204 miles). The furthest north was in Conception Missouri, the farthest south was the Masonic home in Wichita. East was my hometown in Illinois, and West was just down the street from the Masonic home in Wichita next to an elementary school.
I placed two geocaches in 2011, one for myself, and one for the Venturing Crew that I'm the advisor for. On My Honor has had 58 people find it, but it appears that just before Christmas the cache was muggled. I am going to fix that for 2012. The other is at the VFW Post in Odessa Missouri (Crew) which also has 58 finds registered to it.
WINNER! Originality! The owner of this cache does not want people giving this away, for some reason. When I read the discription for this Premium Member cache that just went up recently, it said that it was really cammo'd and not to give it away. Well, I am not going to tell you where this one is, you'll have to find the location for yourself, but if this was cammo'd, it was more for a laugh than actual concealment. The last thing I expected to find when we went looking for this cache was a halloween mask. Better yet was the way we found it, and we put it back EXACTLY the way we found it.
WINNER! Super Cammo for 2011 has to go to the "No Smoking" sign we found that was a magnetic sign stuck to a door, the log on the back of it. One other place gave it a try, but the metal plate looked out of place and was easier to find than the No Smoking sign was.
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