Pathtags are Fun

What's a Pathtag?  Pathtags are fun little personal items that geocachers have been trading or leaving in caches as their signature items.  My geocaching name is Bugleann and I'm a huge Snoopy fan, so my friend Brian designed this Pathtag for me.  Isn't is cute? This is my personal Pathtag....

Brian also designed his "Caching for Christ" tag for himself and also designed our friends "Tomeagle55" tag....

Pathtags are single sided, metal tags and are about the size of a quarter.  Many geocachers have them made and leave them in caches for other geocachers to find.  If you find a Pathtag, you can keep it.  That's how they differ from Travel Bugs, which you can't keep and have to move from cache to cache.   The Pathtags are magnetic, so it's easy to mount them to a magnetic board to display them.  They also have a hole punched into them, so you can slide them onto a keychain or wear them as a necklace.

When you first order them you design what you want and upload the design to the Pathtag site.  They make a blueprint, you approve it, they do a design set up and dye mix and then they make your tags.  The first time cost with the design and set up is about $ 110.00 for 50 tags.  After that you can re-order more and you won't have the set up costs anymore.

Pathtags have a huge variety of designs on them, from cartoon characters, to pets, to themes like hunting, fishing, hiking, swimming, camping.  Some people have tags made for some of the yearly geocaching events.  Other tags support our military, the scouts or different illnesses.  The design possibilities are endless!

You can leave them in caches, trade them with other cachers at events or trade them with other cachers around the globe through the Pathtags website.  You can scroll or search through literally thousands of different pathtags and when you find one you like, you just email the owner and ask them if they'd like to trade tags.  They have an opportunity to see which tags you are offering and then they can accept or decline.  I've traded tags with other cachers from as far away as Australia and the Netherlands.

I currently have about 40 tags that I've collected, but my favorites are any that have to do with Snoopy or any of the Peanuts characters....

Pathtags are just fun to trade, kind of like baseball cards when I was a kid.  So keep your eyes peeled next time you're looking through a cache container.  You never know what you might find!


I'm linking up today with the guys over at CacheCrazy.  They've had a busy week so stop by and read about some interesting stuff - I mean, after all, doesn't everyone carry a ladder with them into the woods????  Plus, Fred is on the loose, 2 cachers are on a road trip, there's night caching going on, Girl Scouts are on the loose, see what's cooking at Bloodhoundeds house and somebody got engaged!  Whew!!

Recycle for Soldiers

HAPPY VETERAN'S DAY!

In my ongoing quest to support our wonderful military personnel, I was put in touch with the folks over at the "Recycle 4 Soldiers" Program.

Any person or organization can participate in the program which recycles products to raise money for military organizations.  I'm going to let Jackie explain this to you because she's the expert.....

 Let me see if I can be of assistance and answer your questions.  Recycle For Soldiers is a fundraising by recycling program and with its’ sister programs has over 30,000 accounts across the country.  The items listed on our website (ink/laser cartridges, cell phones, laptops, video games, etc) are collected by our participants and sent in for recycling/fundraising.  If the item has a recycle value (again, current price list is on our website) the account receives the listed amount. 

     What happens to the items depends on what type of item it is—for example, ink and toner cartridges are purchased by companies to refill and put back out onto the market (the off/generic brands like Office Depot, Green Cartridge and the like).  If there is not a market for the cartridge to be refilled, the ink jets are put into the plastics bin for shredding and re-use by plastics recyclers.

     The electronics (laptops, cell phones, video games/consoles, etc) are refurbished and put back out into the market or scrapped out and recycled.  These are considered no waste items, meaning no components end up in the landfill, and all are recycled in the US.   Phones are cleared/ and/or sim cards removed; laptop hard drives are wiped/drilled automatically upon processing.

      We are currently receiving over 450 shipments each morning from our various fundraising by recycling accounts and even recycle the cardboard.  USPS drops off hundreds of mailer bags a month.

       Checks are cut once a month for items essentially received the month previous.   Any Soldier is one of our accounts that funds can be directed towards; we have various different ones and can enroll any new ones so that they can start fundraising too.  Organizations ranging from assisting soldiers and their families to care package programs/knitting collectives to send warm scarves soldiers overseas to Civil Air Patrol/Naval Sea Cadets/ROTC Units---we are thrilled to have them on board.  I try to watch for Soldier (and Pet) accounts, as both are my ‘thing’ J  

It's so easy to participate too - I went to the Recycle 4 Soldiers Site, signed up and chose the organization I wanted to support.  It literally took me 1 minute to do that.  Within hours I heard back from Jackie and she made arrangements to send me the shipping labels.   

Hey folks - I get to send this stuff out for free!!  I'm sure everyone has a couple of these items taking up space in a drawer or on a shelf - old cell phones, laptops, video games, digital cameras, inkjet cartridges. Please, take a few minutes out of your day, sign up for the program and put those items to good use.  Our military needs our support and this is so easy to do!

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Jackie directly at:  

"Jackie Rose" <JDR@accessftc.com>

Wordless Wednesday

Why I Like to Be In the Woods

I like to be out in the woods.  And not in a creepy way.  Ha ha!!  There's just something very peaceful about being there.

We usually head out early in the morning, before the crack of dawn.  We walk about 3/4 of a mile down a trail.  Usually there's just enough moonlight for us to see the path.  If not, we use our small flashlights.  This is what it looks like when we enter the woods.

Once we get to our deer stand, we climb up and settle in.  There's a farm nearby and we can clearly hear the cows and their constant mooing.  I imagine that's what it used to sound like on a trail drive.  They never stop mooing.  First loud, then soft, then loud again.  The sound is relaxing and could easily put me to sleep.

Next we start to hear birds chirping and we can make out the faint outline of the trees around us....

It rained the night before and we can hear the soft, steady drops of rain as they slide off the branches and hit the carpet of leaves on the ground.

Slowly the trees emerge from the darkness....

Off in the distance a rooster crows and chicken start to cackle.  2 squirrels play tag up and down a nearby tree.  One of them discovers us and its high pitched chirp sends out a warning that we are there.

Bushes and shrubs slowly start to stand out......

As the sky begins to lighten up, we tilt back our heads and look up at the tree tops.  The brilliant yellows and oranges of the leaves appear to be on fire.

The sun finally breaks over the treeline and light streams through the forest....

When the wind blows, the tree tops gently sway and the dried leaves rustle in the breeze.  The forest bursts with the harmonies of birds singing, turkeys gobbling, and squirrels whistling.

The final colors of autumn are still beautiful....

Walking out later in the day is nice too.

It's a good view, coming or going!  I never get tired of seeing the colors of autumn from inside the forest.

TGIF

No matter how hard I try to be a positive person, sometimes crap.... just..... happens.  Sometimes things are just out of my control.  I hate to get sucker punched and this week I got hit not once, not twice, but 3 times.  I don't want to go into it, so let's just say that I'm not really in my usual "Happy Blogger Frame of Mind" today.

I know so many people who are dealing with so much shit that they just should not have to be dealing with.  Honestly, life is hard enough these days without all the external B.S. piling up.  There are several bloggers that I can think of right off-hand who are doing a wonderful job of handling the turmoil in their lives.  You know who you are.  I applaud you and that is really what is helping me to get a grip on myself.  It's not the end of the world and I will live to fight another day.  But honestly, sometimes I am tired of the fight.  I'm sick of the up-hill battle.  It's a constant two steps forward and one step back kind of dance.  Based on my usual, what I think of as upbeat kind of blogs, this probably will come as a surprise to most of you.  But I do have bad days.  This has been a bad week.  Note to Life - I'm only 5'2" but if you don't knock it off, I'm going to punch you in the shins!

Louie told me that we have to be thankful for what we have.  Today I'm thankful that it's Friday and that the week ended on a semi-better note.  I'm thankful that my kids and Louie and I are all healthy.  I'm going to try to enjoy the weekend as planned with a house full of people and deal with all my crap next week.  Wish me luck....

So, for today I am going to feel sorry for myself and be pissed off, and kick a few things around and grumble under my breath...  Well, if you know me, you'd know it's so not under my breath....

Have a good weekend everyone!

Lake County Caching

We went out to Lake County on Sunday with my parents and found 15 caches, and had 1 DNF, in about 3 hours.  It was just nice to get out early on a Sunday morning and not have to deal with a bunch of traffic and muggles.

The view out over this lake was really pretty.

The cache was hidden somewhere along this boardwalk....

Notice that I am wearing my SAUCE headband and my STITCHFORK DESIGNS sweatshirt!

We had to wade through this field....

..... to find one of my favorite caches of the day....

Mom and Dad discussing another cache....

The last cache of the day was up on a hill overlooking a pond.  Mom spied the cache and we were done for the morning.

We were home in time for lunch and an afternoon of NFL. And a nap....  It was a great way to spend the day!

Trick or Treat For Our Troops

A lot of you know that we support a US Military Unit stationed in Afghanistan with care packages every month. Well, since it's Halloween, we came up with something fun that we did to benefit the troops.

Chablis, my sister Laurie, and I all dressed up like soldiers and went trick or treating for our troops.

We wore signs that explained what we were doing and then as we went to each house we also explained that we were collecting candy to send to our soldiers.  We also passed out flyers explaining the Any Soldier program.

The response we got was overwhelming!  Before we even reached the first house a neighborhood police car pulled up next to us by the curb and the officer leaned out the window and handed us a bunch of candy and wished us luck!  Honest to God, people were throwing handfuls of candy into our bags.  Several people said what we were doing was wonderful and dumped their entire candy bowls into one of our bags.  One woman laughed when we explained it to her and said "Thank goodness.  I was wondering why such old women were out trick or treating."   Ok, that was kind of funny but I sort of took offense at the old women remark!  Then she gave us a bunch of candy so I forgave her.  But the BEST one was an elderly lady who said she loved what we were doing because her grandson was in the army and waiting for his orders to ship out.  She gave us each a nice baggy full of candy and we went on to the next house.  A few minutes later the old lady came back outside and shouted for us to come back.  She handed us an entire bag of unopened candy to send to the soldiers.  Wasn't that sweet?  She almost made me cry.

It was quite the haul.  This was what we collected in one hour....

We'll be packing up boxes this week and you can bet that they will be stuffed with a lot of candy.  I think the soldiers are really going to like all the treats.  People sure were nice and I have to say, VERY appreciative of our military.

All I can say is God Bless all the generous people tonight for giving from their hearts and God Bless to our great military personnel.  It was a perfect evening to be out - the temperature was about 50 degrees and lots of kids were out trick or treating.  And a few old women!