Maryland Geocaching Society

You may post your CAM 2018: Fort Frederick logs here. No spoilers please!
On May 5th you will be able to officially post your log on geocaching.com.

ABOUT OUR DAY:
Near the end of every year Cache Clown 76 and I start showing symptoms of CAM FEVER. This fever intensifies through the early months of each new year. Symptoms generally include randomly saying "I can't wait for CAM" and changing the words of songs to fit the word "CAM" in. Songs such as Bob Marley's song "Jammin":

♫ ♬ We're CAMmin, You know CAMmin' is always a blast, We're CAMmin', and I hope this CAM is gonna last! ♫ ♬

When March finally rolls around symptoms intensify to where we staring blankly at our calendars and randomly searching through Maryland Road atlases.

Today CAM has finally arrived, and relief is near. We both woke up extra early today, met up at ZERO FIVE THIRTY, and started our long trek from Prince William Virginia to attend the 2018 CAM Kickoff Event – Central.

Not only do we have CAM FEVER, we still have to earn 500 Friend League Points to earn all nine of the Planetary Pursuit souvenirs.

ABOUT THIS CACHE:
FTF
We arrived at the parking coords a few minutes after 10 am to see Buffalo Bob getting out of his car. The three of us headed into the fort and worked out the math for the coords. We noticed that there were not any footprints in the snow in the fort so we we started getting excited that we may be FTF's.

We drove to the second parking coords and headed down the trail. It wasn't long before Buffal Bob spotted the cache and we all signed on the top line of the fresh log.

This was a cool fort and CC76 would have liked to spend more time here, but we had two more CAM caches to get out west.

TFTC

After a week on the road, CAMing, we were heading back to Monkey County. Had to make a stop at Fort Frederick. Been here plenty of times, but never as a cacher. Got all of the info needed for this cache, and before going for the search, I decided to give the other nearby mystery cache a shot. Had problems with it, as one of the questions, the answer is different in the winter months. After getting that cleared by a park ranger, he also informed me that the CAM cache will have a change in one of it's questions also. I notified the higher authorities in the CAM circle and was told that they will make changes as needed.

After finishing the other mystery, I decided to go and find this one. I was 30 feet from GZ, ready to make the move, when all of a sudden another body appears in front of me, coming in from the opposite direction. I continue walking, acting like I'm just a hiker, when they notice who I am, just as I notice them holding a piece of paper and a cell phone. It was a fairly new cacher, cokelover. I'm a diet cokelover. We chatted, signed the logbook, then chatted more until we got back to the geo mobiles. Mine 4 wheels, his two.

A nice fort and a lot of history. After this one, which is number 9 for me, the wife and I went to finish up on the covered bridges bonus cache. Two more CAM caches to go, which I'll probably get this week, then it's time to relax, until the picnic. AIO TFTC TNLN

4/5/18 Know how old cars need to occasionally be taken out on the highway to "clean the carbon out" so they will run smoothly? Well that's how my Spring caching is every year. I need a couple of test runs before the geo-senses are in tune again. After several covered bridges to see if Whereyoygo still works on my ancient tablet, I headed west. A couple of local caches and then off to Fort Frederick. Mid week and no one around. After doing the math and scratching my head, one of the rangers approached me. "You must be a geocacher," he said. "Ah, we moved the cannon out of the fort this week, and it won't be back for a week or so," he added. "Thanks, now my math makes more sense," I happily responded. But, I still made a slight error in entering the coordinates and ended up close to the GZ, but surrounded by swampy water. Rechecking my entries, I did the obligatory "Duh," corrected my coordinates, blew my nose to clear the carbon out, got to drier ground, and found the cache. TFTC

3/30/18 CAM cache #5
This was our last CAM cache for Pegasusmoon and I for the day. Luckily we got here with over an hour to spare before sundown. We made short work of the puzzle and once I re-read it and realized I had to do a little math, we were set to go. Instead of going directly to the cache, we took a roundabout way, which was dumb. In our defense, we had drive from the Eastern Shore all the way to the westernmost cache and this was nearing the end of our day. It was a quick and easy find. Nice puzzle. It was the first time I've actually been in the fort! SL TFTC

This is the closest I’ve ever come to a DNF on a CAM cache! It all started with not quite getting a good read on the number for C. Of course, that made the checksum not work out, so I started looking at all 6 digits. Hmm… maybe I’m interpreting this one incorrectly. And didn’t I read something in the forums about that one? Changed both of those, and bam! The checksum worked out. Took off for the final...

… and couldn’t find it. Stood in the sun for a moment to decrypt the hint, which could certainly apply to the place I was searching. Expanded out in all directions, nothing. So I looked more closely at the cache listing and realized that the coordinates for parking at the final were not anywhere close to me. I wasn’t planning on moving my car, so I never really looked that close. Well, now what?

Back to stage 1. Everything looks good. The regular who a few of us watched demonstrate a musket wandered over my way. He took a look at my answers and realized where I went wrong. We went to the well, got the right number, which, again of course, made the checksum not work out, but I already knew where I fudged the other numbers. Unfudged them, and had a match on the checksum.

By this time, I had more than gotten my entrance fee’s worth out of Fort Frederick, so I drove to the final stage, made the walk to the cache, and found it pretty quickly, thus avoiding probably years of merciless yet well-deserved abuse for DNF-ing a CAM cache!

TFTC!

April 6, 2018
Mr. and Mrs. MDSearcher headed out early on a Friday morning to grab all 3 of the Western Maryland CAM caches and as many others as possible along the way. This was our first stop of the day and it didn't go quite as planned. As I worked on the mystery cache nearby, they went to get the answers for the CAM cache, but the checksum didn't work out. I checked their numbers which they swore were correct, then I went back and verified the date on the well, at first I thought they were right, but when I looked closely, I saw it was a different number, very hard to read. Once we had the right numbers, the final was easy. Coords were dead on and it was an easy find. We then were able to solve the mystery cache in the park also, so this was a successful day in this park for us.

March 29th....this was our 3rd CAM cache. We have always passed the signs to Fort Frederick on I-70 saying we should visit sometime. Today was the day. We were very surprised on how big the fort was. Also surprised there was no battles fought here. We gathered info needed for this cache. We soon had the needed cords....back into the SUV and we headed off to make the find. The cache location was no disappointment as we enjoyed the walk to the cache. What a great day.

Found April 8th at 3 PM, CAM #8

Ford Frederick was our only CAM cache planned for our second day in Western Maryland.

I think this was the first weekend that the Fort was staffed with reenactors. Being their first weekend preparing for the busy summer season and not many other folks around, they were eager to talk to us about the fort and to demonstrate the musket loading and firing among other daily fort activities. This ended up keeping us at the fort longer than we intended but made the visit extremely informative and engaging.

As mentioned, they demonstrated the musket loading and firing, discussed the various exhibits and told us about daily life within in the fort. It's hard to believe that Fort Frederick was built to defend the western frontier of the English settlements in Maryland. For those that may have done this CAM cache in advance of the fort being staffed by reenactors, we would highly recommend a return visit.

Beyond the interpretive portion of this cache, the walk to the final was very scenic and enjoyable. We spotted some ring-necked ducks and heard a Kingfisher although we never did see it.

Thank you for placing this excellent CAM cache, this is one of our favorites. TFTC!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11
With seven CAM caches logged, we had been waiting for a good two-day forecast to cross the Bay and get Fort Frederick, Upper Youghiogheny, and Rocky Gap. Tuesday, when that seemed likely, we booked a motel and left home this morning at 5:45am. At 10:30am Thursday, with our tenth CAM cache logged, we started home, arriving home about thirty-five hours after we started, having driven 631 miles this trip, and 1,424 for all ten caches.
Today, as we gathered information for the CAM cache, we also looked for what we needed to complete WCG - Fort Frederick. With the coords calculated for this we drove to the trailhead and enjoyed the scenic walk to GZ. Thanks to MGS and the hider for an informative puzzle and an easy find!
Eight logged, two to go!

TFTC.... SL... TNLN.... This fort reminds me of Fort Ticonderoga in the Adirondacks of NY....

BTW this is my fav kinda puzzle. A 1.5 star difficulty... point in case my arithmetic error for the JAGA crew at Echo park...

This cache marks the 10th of 11 caches... my buddies tell me thats all i need... I'm gonna go home and organize all the data ( or is data?) Beautiful day outside... Thought i'd be the last one finding these cuz of all the hype from the guys from altoona pa...


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With two CAM caches to go, a very very warm April afternoon seemed like the perfect day to find the remaining ones! We started with Rocky Gap and then proceeded over to Fort Frederick. Both were fun adventures!

This fort felt like a time machine--as if we were transported back to the 1750s! We were lucky enough to run into some historians who were clad in 18th century garments. After gathering the clues we made it to GZ, but we quickly realized that we were at the wrong GZ. Turns out we inputted one of the numbers wrong into our GPS. A quick correction had us on our way to the cache.

Many of the trees here were in bloom--something we have not yet experienced at home in Central PA. It feels really good to know that Spring is rapidly approaching in our area.

This was our 10th and final CAM cache of 2018. This was our first ever CAM completion, and we enjoyed every minute of it! We're very excited about the picnic coming up in May and Fort Frederick was a fantastic way to go out on a bang!

I certainly picked the right day to finish up CAM with the Western Maryland caches. It was a high in the 80s, my kind of weather! Took a drive out with my geo-hubby who just indulges me. We have visited the Fort a few times previously which made getting the needed information easy. After getting the needed information we took the short drive to the final parking. I saw a few caching buddies on my route: GnomeGcer, Candybear118, and Anitajforever. Once at final parking I took a nice stroll along the trail to a quick and easy find. The cache was in good shape! I did see a tick laying on the lid while I was signing the log. Made the walk back to the car expecting to pass my geofriends on the way but those crazy cachers did not see the trailhead and were walking up the rode. Alas off I went to the next CAM location. TFTC!

Weather turned cool overnight, so it was a great morning to to sit in front of the cook’s fire at the fort and watch the cook chop onions. Sadly, he wasn’t allowed to serve the sausage and bacon, as they aren’t licensed. Oh well, time to head out for part b of the cache. Geopup was happy to be out on the trail again. We looked and looked for beavers but saw none, only wonderful spring flowers. Everyone in the Park was so friendly. We enjoyed our first ever visit here. Thanks again CAM!

CAM 2018 cache find #10 - 14 Apr 2018

I was in the area today to seek this CAM 2018 cache. I got the 3 most western CAM 2018 caches today to get the 10 required to attend the picnic. I saw several other cachers at each CAM 2018 location and spent time catching up and seeking a few caches together.

This was my 10th CAM 2018 cache find! [:D] I've been to this park on more than one occasion. That being said, this was the only cache find for me in this park, but no worries as it meant I could go home in victory. No problems with the information or the find. Very nice little trail to the cache. TNLN TFTC

What a difference a day makes. Saturday was so hot, and the A/C isn't on yet. So, it was hard to cool off. Sunday, was so cold. We were at Fort Frederick in the morning before the staff got dressed in period costumes. We had a problem solving the puzzle due to a wrong number. The checksum didn't add up. Another couple said something about someone having the same difficulty. So, I re-computed the checksum with all numbers except the questioned value, and I came up with a number that could easily be mistaken for what I thought I saw. Weirdly, both of the questionable locations were plausible when viewed on a map, and both were in the park, and within easy walking distance of parking.
However, when I viewed the coordinates for parking #2, the answer became clear. The checksum works.

Along the path, we saw a human felled tree log, that apparently the beavers like the taste of. Because they stripped the bark off of it where ever they could. What they couldn't strip had a fungus/lichen growing. So maybe that's what they liked....

4/15/2018
We had a restful stay at our cabin and got a good start towards home this morning. This is #7 of the CAM. We spent some time after answering the questions just visiting at the fort and checking out the barracks. It was all very interesting. We were glad that we did not plan our trip at the end of the month since there will be a huge event there. They will also be closed for a short time while preparing for the event. The hike was pleasant and we encountered a few fellow cachers. We had been warned to make sure we did the check sum and had a little help from one of the resident soldiers.

We did Fort Frederick today and like almost everyone else we had trouble with the checksum.
We resorted to an old technique and did a "temple rubbing" of the questionable coordinate and finally made the coordinates work. Then we put the parking coordinates into our Garmin nuvi and it tried to send us to God knows where. We ignored that, followed our noses and ran into some helpful park workers who allowed us to drive in and park close to the cache location. Success! This is number 8.

Finally back on the CAM trail today, for the first time in almost 3 weeks. Our goal is to get the western Maryland caches this weekend, and finish up next weekend at Ocean City and Deal Island. Fort Frederick was our first stop of the day. This was my third or fourth time here, my kids’ second, and my nephew’s first. Most recently, we were here in summer 2016 for Park Quest. It can get hot inside the fort in July and August, but today, it was nice and pleasant. Very quiet today on the weekend before the Market Fair. We spent about 45 minutes in the fort, touring the barracks and talking to the re-enactors. We saw demonstrations of musket firing, musket ball production, and food preparation. No problems collecting the info we needed to find the cache. When we were finished at the fort, we took the short drive to the final parking coordinates and hiked out to the cache, which was a quick find. We didn’t see any other cachers in the fort or along the trail, but there were a couple of signatures ahead of ours from earlier today. Great to revisit the fort. I really enjoyed the walk to the final, which was an area of the park I had not previously visited. 7th CAM 2018 find for us. TNLNSL.. TFTC!

CAM #6 04/21/18
We picked the perfect day to do this cache, with the warm sunny weather and re-enactors at the fort! Thanks for a wonderful cache.