Jennifer

Cowinkydink! It is ever so close, indeed - we should have plenty of time to do that!

That ball of paint is among the gems contained in the book "Indiana Curiosities." Another is the grave of an Indiana pioneer woman named Nancy Kerlin Bartlett. Her grave was located in "dead center" of where road builders were planning on building a new county road. Her son guarded her grave with his shotgun - and they built the road beside without disturbing it. When the road needed to be widened, also with shotgun in hand, Nancy's grandson now protected her grave and "encouraged" the road crew to plan an alternate route. They didn't - but evidently they compromised. The Indiana State Fair had an Indiana Curiosities exhibit based upon the book this year, but I stumbled upon this myself this weekend while I was geocaching with a friend. As I read the description of the cache location, I knew it all sounded familiar: here is the cache page, which contains some photos of the area. If you would like to see just what compromise they came to, click here and then follow the link to the photo gallery: Rest in Peace? Amazing!!

As I have time (and when I know the information), I manually update the location information on my older photos by adding them to the Flickr map. You can also manually add the location information with Location Stamper in the same way as Flickr, by dragging it onto the map. That way, the local version on your computer also had the location info.

I viewed that one, both signed in and not signed in, and that one doesn't have the coordinates tagged into the EXIF information. Try this one: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cbustapeck/1792156629/

So are you saying that instead of your comment being tongue in cheek it comes across more as foot in mouth? LOL

Welcome aboard, Christopher! You are providing great information - as you can see, it is much appreciated by the members - we love this stuff! I like what you did with the Google Map, and the link back to Flickr. I have been geotagging my photos using Location Stamper (we had a discussion about that when I bought my new GPS)....it is such a time and "brain" saver when I'm trying to figure out just where I took certain photos - that aren't obvious, anyway. I just use DeLorme SAHH to track our trip, and use the GPX file to geotag the photos in Location Stamper. I noticed that the coordinates for each location are available in Flickr...once you click over to the Flickr site, then click view on map, and the coordinates are available down on the lower right of the pop-up map. I couldn't figure out how to get the coordinates from the Google Map, though if you click directions to or from the location, the coords end up in the to / from field.

Maybe we ought to make it out there to add a coat to the ball of paint!

If you (or anyone) happens to get back there, tell Flo or her son (darn, I forgot his name...) you read about Kitchen Little in American Road!

They also serve a great breakfast at a pretty good value! They have a buffet available for $6.95, but for $1 less, you still get an ample portion if you order "The Brickyard," which consists of two eggs, hash browns, bacon or sausage, three silver dollar pancakes and toast or biscuits. Perhaps we can meet there for breakfast before we leave?

Last weekend, we planned it both ways. On Saturday, I planned a route in SA, and then searched for caches along that route. On Sunday, we searched for caches that were placed by a specific geocacher (a TV news anchor in Indianapolis who's totally into the hobby). So, once I had the waypoints loaded into SAHH, we just made our way east and went from there, just navigating to each cache, without the benefit of a specific route. I'm adding a new piece of equipment to my collection - a very simple, grayscale-screen, no-map GPS unit, the Garmin eTrex H. It will show a path between waypoints, and point you to a waypoint with a compass and coords, but no map. I bought it just so that as we make the final trek to the cache we can follow the coordinates / compass to the location. SAHH on my Palm works great to plan a route and navigate around to caches (on a route or anywhere), but it's not rugged enough for me to want to take into the woods! The new unit will take over once we get to the general location and get out of the car.

I just bought a Bluetooth GPS receiver to go along with DeLorme's Street Atlas handheld version, which I have on my Palm. I bought it to supplement my trusty Rand McNally atlas, which I don't want to give up. I like seeing the "big picture" the atlas provides, which the Palm simply won't. I can get a sense of the overall route way better than I ever could with the Palm. However, when I need street level detail and navigation in a tricky area, I love the convenience of the GPS. I also use the GPS for other things - to create trip logs so I can geotag my photographs ( a godsend now, if I take a huge batch of photos and want to instantly and automatically tag where they were taken). I also use it for geocaching, as I have elaborated in a separate thread. But for me, my old paper maps (30's, 40's 50's) and brand new Atlas aren't going away - the GPS is just an additional item in my travel arsenal - not a replacement.

Hi Denny - sorry we weren't able to meet up today. Did you find any caches? We did make it down to Pompilio's and we managed to find four geocaches - three were in Ohio, and one was in Indiana on US 52 in a cool old cemetery. The ones in Ohio were all in Dayton...two were in parks, and one was along a fitness trail behind a hospital (that one had quite a climb to it, but we made it without needing the hospital!). There was one we couldn't find, in the UD Girl Flyers ballpark. Pat was determined, crawling under the bleachers, but we just couldn't find it. The ability to get the waypoints to your GPS is cool and very handy. There's a good program called GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) that will import batches of waypoints and cache information from geocaching.com (you can do a Pocket Query to find alot of caches). You can search from a radius or you can create a route, upload the GPX file, and find all caches along the route. The Pocket Query will e-mail you two files - one is a file of waypoints and the other are the waypoints plus all the cache info. You import that into GSAK and then you can use GSAK in a bunch of cool ways. You can do a filter and export the waypoints to Street Atlas. They can be filtered any way you want - by a state, by the geocacher who placed the cache, within X miles from any location, or along a route and a billion other ways. You can import the same GPX file you used to create the route and then export those waypoints as a Street Atlas text file - then they will show up in DeLorme nicely plotted along your route! I do that, but with the additional step of exporting all of this to my Palm version of SA. It works out well. Another thing that's handy, if you have a Palm or Pocket PC is to use GSAK to export the cache info into a program called CacheMate ($8). That allows you to do paperless caching, because it has most of the information from the cache page at the website so that you will have the description, difficulty, past logs, etc. It also allows you to set the start and end time of your search and record what you left and took, or other notes. This way you don't need to print out any of the info from the website. It's quite a fun hobby! We're hooked!

It's very cool indeed...I picked up a geocoin yesterday (one with a mission to get to Mass.). Pat and I are driving to Ohio in hopes of getting it closer to it's goal. I just sent you a note, if you are available to meet us.

My coworker likes puzzle caches, she said they're fun. Some are easier than others...some require research in advance, and others you need to find a location, where there might be numbers which fit into the coords, or which you have to do math to get the coords - or else letters that correspond with numbers... We haven't done any puzzle caches yet. Some of ours have been by the side of the road, others more off the beaten path and in unusual places. I've done some in downtown Indianapolis during lunch or after work. One thing cool about this cache near you is that it has a travel bug. Those are interesting - they're bar-coded dog tags you attach to an item to put in the cache. Before you do, you register the TB at geocaching.com and then people find it, and take it to another cache, then to another, and so on...you can track its progress through the website and see where it travels - around the country or around the world. With your travels, you could take the travel bug and move it to a new location! Let us know if you find the cache. It really is fun!

I was just near there this evening, though it was dark by that time. Those caches are still there and active, so I will have to check them out. There's a ton here in Indy, but last weekend Pat and I ventured into rural areas in eastern and southern Indiana. We definitely have found that it's a great complement to road trips (though we specifically went out geocaching this weekend)....we know it would be fun to search for ones as we travel. Plus, it helps you to get to new places, that you might not have thought about or would ordinarily gone to.

Good afternoon, everyone! A couple of years ago (on the Yahoo version of our forum), Brian Butko made a post about geocaching. Due to the way we had to import the Yahoo posts, I had a tough time finding it, but searched the post down on the Yahoo site: I am reviving the post because recently I have been introduced to geocaching. As many of you may know from my thread a few months ago, I was in search of a GPS unit. A coworker of mine mentioned geocaching several times in the past couple of years, but I had no idea what it was and admittedly, didn't take much interest in it. Now that I have a GPS, I inquired again. As Brian indicated in his post back then, it is basically a high-tech treasure hunt. At Geoaching.com, you search for various types of "caches" hidden by other geocachers. Using the coordinates and other information, you use your GPS to guide you to the general location. Depending upon the accuracy of your GPS, you are typically routed to within 30 feet or so of the cache, which could be a physical container ranging in size from a pencil eraser to a five gallon bucket. Smaller caches usually hold only a paper log which you sign and date to indicate your "find." Larger ones hold the log as well as some items for trade - usually kids items, but sometimes CDs, DVDs or other items. It's alot of fun, because you get to go to new and different places you may have never been or wouldn't think of going. Geocachers place caches to get you to visit a place which might have a nice view, a pleasant spot they enjoy visiting, a historical site or marker, who knows! This weekend, Pat and I went out both days geocaching (in unbearable 90+ degrees heat!) and we had a fun time. We saw an old bridge built in 1885 (didn't find the cache, but still enjoyed the bridge), small local parks, ice cream stands, old cemeteries and more. We are intrigued by the places we have been to, but that have caches hidden nearby. Route 66 abounds with them, as does pretty much any area. A cool feature is that you can plan a route on map software, export the GPX file, then using the geocaching website, find caches along a route. Very cool, and a fun addition to road trips. Anyone else?

Thanks, Denny and thanks to Brian for asking me to contribute. But as you devour your next delectable dinner, look for another Bremer blurb from the Road Maven. By the way, your heading reads like something from an old Variety paper! LOL

Actually, the GPX file would be perfect - that is the format needed to upload to Geocaching.com to find caches along a route. But, the link above isn't working?

There are an abundance of geocaches between Indianapolis and White Heath! Denny, do you have a DeLorme file of the PPOO you would be willing/able to send us?

Thanks, Kip...most folks on this list should be initiated with the Wigwam Village Motel - we had a "Dixie Highway" Cruise back in April and used the Wigwam Village as our "home base" for the weekend. I do hope they find a suitable owner for it, who will take care of it and not let it go downhill. The owner before them did a lot of work to clean it up (the buildings themselves as well as the clientèle) - so it would be a shame for it to go back to that.

Hi Denny, Thanks for the write up! I bet at this moment you and Pat are doing some PPOO exploring. Sorry I couldn't make it, but you can't be in two places at once, and Saturday night I had tickets to see a stand-up comic I *really, really* wanted to see in Indy last night. His name is Frank Caliendo and he's absolutely hilarious! I bet a lot of sports guys here would know him from FOX NFL and his dead-on impersonations of Jim Rome (as he says, for the 30 or so of you out there that get this - thanks to Pat telling me who Jim Rome is, I got it now...! LOL) and of course, his "signature" impression of John Madden. If anyone wants a good laugh for 9 minutes, check out this video on You Tube: His George Bush is amazing - also make note of my favorites - John Madden at 01:13, Robert DeNiro at 03:30, Ted Knight at 04:46, Jay Leno at 06:10 and Chris Farley at 08:12! Meanwhile, back to the topic....

And I will let Pat handle THAT one solo!

Hi there! Welcome aboard...we look forward to hearing more about the PPOO and any other contributions you wish to make to our merry band of roadies!

Pat doesn't use Photoshop, but I do, extensively...except this time, I did very little except some standard, across the board enhancements. I wanted to get them up more quickly than I usually do, since there are times it's taken months...if not a year, to get around to it. The problem is my Nikon...while it takes great photos (in capable hands! ) I take so many photos, that when I get back at times it's overwhelming to go through them all. So I breezed through them at a much faster pace than Pat's "fastball". So, I made some editing concessions...besides, on this trip, more of the road shots were taken from the car as we drove through, so they aren't as good as usual...but thanks for the compliments! I fixed the erroneous entry regarding the number of baseballs...thanks, Denny! In the throes of my horrible chest cold this week, I assumed the baseballs were a representation of 4,192! And yes, the Palm had Ohio maps on it...gotta love geotagging the photos! In skilled and capable hands, the Canon PowerShot 550 is an excellent camera. Being a Point & Shoot, it is of course limited, but in most typical situations, it does a fine job...just not as good as the Nikon D-50 in equally capable hands!

Thanks for posting the photos, Kip - I enjoyed my first Missouri Motor Tour! Here are photos Pat and I took: Missouri Route 66 Motor Tour - 2007 and also of the newly reopened Animal Paradise: Animal Paradise - Route 66, Stafford, MO