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From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good morning everyone,
Sunday evening I was doing some chores and found a calendar that requires a daily change of numbers and monthly change of month name. To my surprise, it showed March 5, the last time life was normal, before things went quite so cuckoo.
After viewing a recent post about the sport of geogaching, I learned what this bag hanging on an information sign on St. Augustine Beach was all about. Although not in my pics, the warning flag today was red. Unlike south Florida, our beaches aren’t closed. Yet.
St. Augustine Beach, FLMarch 17, 2020
St. Augustine Beach, FLMarch 17, 2020
Origuy
That’s not a geocaching flag. Geocaching controls are usually small and hard to find unless you know what you are looking for. That’s an orienteering control. The markers for orienteering are intended to be visible when you get close to them.
Paul in Saint Augustine
@Origuy:
Thanks for the clarification.
hotshoe
Yeah, as a fanatic geocacher myself, I can testify that is not a geocache.
Now, it might have been an actual cache, which is simply the name for the container, big or small, which holds the paper log sheet (or small notebook, or tiny rolled-up slip of paper) which a geocacher should sign to prove they found the cache.
Except, there are no geocaches in St Augustine which have coordinates at the shore. There are a half dozen caches along A1A; for example, at the big tree at the corner of A Street, and at the sea turtle mural off Blvd Des Pins. But none close enough to the shore to be in that photo.
So, no, that is not a geocache after all. Ah, too bad :(
If we ever get over this pandemic-isolation, I’d be happy to visit and check it out myself.
hotshoe
P.S. It’s considered bad form to photograph a cache in its specific location because that spoils the fun of hunting for it, but it’s okay to photograph the container itself if the photo background doesn’t give away the exact location
Origuy
I couldn’t find any events for any of the Florida orienteering clubs on March 17. I think someone was doing a low key training event. If it had been an organized event, there probably would have been a small plastic box with some electronics to record the time that a participant was there. Instead, there’s a pin punch hanging from the flag. We used to use those before the electronic systems
While I was searching, I found that the Florida State Parks website has a page on orienteering. Most park systems don’t really know that the sport exists.
https://www.floridastateparks.org/learn/orienteering
J R in WV
That plastic bag looks a little like a diving flag, which is typically on a buoy where people are in the water, so that speedboats don’t slice divers or swimmers into pieces. They still do that from time to time, but if you had a diving flag they’re at fault in every case, so easier to sue the bastards if anyone can ID them after the “accident”.
Origuy
@J R in WV: It does look a little bit like a diving flag, but they are red with a white stripe going on the other diagonal starting from the top left.
Orienteering flags have the orange and white parts separated by a diagonal starting from the top right. The blue stripe on the one in the picture is to aid in visibility for color blind people, but it’s not standard.