Table of Contents

Cover Page

An Interview with DeViDe

Solving Mystery/Puzzle Caches

An Interview with SnappyTurtles

Don't Miss the Dixie Train & Caboose

A Few Words from A Couple of the Totally Insane

Regular Features

Chuckles

Credits

Back Issues of the UTAG Magazine

Dewayne and Vickie Dean are well-known in the Utah caching community as lovers of the San Rafael Swell area of central Utah. They have hosted several events there and have placed a number of caches in the area, ranging from very easy to get to and find, to very difficult ones to get to.

They have a nice website, too, chock full of photos from their lives and times. Click Here to see it.

Dewayne was just elected President of the Utah Association of Geocachers. I thought it would be a good idea to publish this interview with him so that we can all become a little better acquainted with him.

UM: How did you select your caching name and how do you pronounce it?
We wanted to be a caching team so we chose to combine parts of our names De Vi De. Some people pronounce this divide as in doing math. We pronounce it DVD.

UM: What do you do for a living?
I am a self employed General Contractor. We do home remodeling and geothermal heating/cooling systems. Vickie teaches 6th grade.

UM: Are co-workers aware that you geocache?
My sons work with me and they have heard all of my caching stories. They have been caching with me a few times, but are not addicted.

UM: How and when did you get started geocaching? In August of 2002, we went on a pioneer trek with a youth group. Several of the guys on the trek had GPS units. I had never seen one before. They would say things like: "We have hiked 5.4 miles today and have 3.6 more to go. I knew right away that I had to get one of those gadgets. Vickie and I had been on several all day hikes and we were always curious about how far we had hiked. As soon as I got home, I went online and ordered a GPS. When it came I went to my neighbors house, who had one, for a few pointers. His son was there and asked me if I was going to use my GPS for geocaching. I said what is that? I went home, logged on to geocaching.com and joined. That weekend we hiked Mount Olympus and placed a cache there. I had no idea there was a cache already there. When I realized that we had passed right by an existing cache, I was quite upset.

UM: What do you like best about geocaching?
For me this is a two answer question:
First -the best part of caching is finding all of the unique and scenic out of the way places that you would never know about with out a cache being there.

First- the best part of caching is hosting or attending an event and making friends with awesome people. We have many friends whom we have met at events.

Notice there are two firsts here. They are both first place in my book.

UM: How often do you get out searching for new geocaches?
For me caching is not a numbers thing. For a lot of people it is and I wouldn't have it any other way. We look for caches that are going to give us an adventure or reward us with a scenic or memorable view. We really enjoy finding interesting virtuals and were sad to see their demise.

UM: Who usually goes geocaching with you, or do you often go alone?
Vickie and I usually go together, some times I will take our grandson.

UM: Tell us about your grandson. Does he have a caching name?
Dylan is 8 and doesn't have a caching name. When we get close I give him the GPS and he loves looking for and finding the cache. He carries swag and is very particular about trading.

UM: What is your most memorable geocaching experience?
Again this hard to narrow down to just one.

Hiking Moonshine Wash and placing our cache there has been our biggest challenge and most rewarding adventure. We had read the description of the hike and it didn't sound too bad. They said things like "a little rock scrambling", "knee deep water", "a nice little hike". We thought, "we can do this." We had been looking for a real slot canyon and hadn't found any that we thought were very interesting.

As it turned out, we were in frigid water up to our necks, quicksand up to our waists, I had to climb cliffs and pull the others up with a rope. Vickie had moderate hypothermia. She is looking at me like "boy are you gonna get it IF ever we get out of here." I was thinking how much I wanted to punch the guy who said this was a "nice little hike".

Well... we did get out and now we love to look at the pictures and relive the adventure.

Fat Mans Misery is a great cache
The Munitions Tunnels was fun
The Catacombe Cache is one of those neat places that caching will take you
The Sure Shot cache was the first clever hide that I found.
The hike to Wild America is on our favorites list.
Our all night trip to the Wah Wah Stash chasing Hermits Gold is one we talk about often.
Of course we can't forget Sleeping with the Brine Shrimp. This definitely took the most preparation of any cache we have done. We had to make a retrieval device to snag the cache from the bottom of the Great Salt Lake. Our group will probably be the only ones to log that cache!

We had a lot of fun watching our #100 $100 Cache. At one time 32 people had this on their watchlist. We were really curious who would find it first.

UM: Who DID find your $100 cache first?
A cacher that we had never heard of named hermmit. His log does't say much other than "we took the money". I contacted him via email and found out that he had a friend who knew how to get up on Sid's Mountain. Sid's Mountain is a very remote inaccessible area of San Rafael. We specifically chose this spot knowing that you can't just start hiking and get there. Prior to hermmit, two other cachers had spent all day looking for a route up Sid's. The mountain is about 20 miles circumference and pretty much surrounded by shear sandstone cliffs. There are only a couple of spots where you can get on top. The area is also Wilderness Study Area so you can't drive very close either. As it turns out hermmit and his friend parked 3 miles further away than we did. We hiked 14 miles round trip to place the cache, so they hiked 20 miles. We did our hike in one day, they carried packs and slept over night. We placed the cache Oct 11, they found it Nov 6. The cache has been visited one other time by a Scout Troop who came in from the East (we came from the West) who said their route was 9 miles round trip.

UM: In your opinion, what makes a cache a "good" cache?
For us a cache has to have some adventure to be "good".

UM: Do you own any travel bugs? Where are they and how have they done toward accomplishing their goals?
We own four bugs, three have gone missing. Vickie's bug has been to Hawaii and is now in the United Kingdom.

UM: Have you done much caching outside of Utah?
We went to Argentina in 2003. We found a cache there that had been out sitting unfound for more than a year. We hiked for several hours through country that was very similar to parts of Utah. The cache hider lived in Mexico. When he saw that we had logged his cache, he was so excited. He sent us an email asking us to tell him all about our trip. We have a virtual cache there (Mt Aconcagua) and it is fun to get logs from people from all countries who visit.

UM: What is the farthest you've travelled strictly to find a cache or travel bug?
The farthest we have traveled just for a cache would be the Wah Wah Stash while playing Hermit's Gold. We left home at 2pm and returned at 6am. Vickie just changed her clothes and went to teach school. She had that look in her eye again!

UM: Did you find it?
We did find the cache, it was midnight and I had to climb into an abandoned mine shaft while Vickie held the flashlight. There was a drop off with water far down below. We were rewarded with a gold coin and did eventually find the Hermits stash of Gold.

UM: What features would your "perfect" caching vehicle have?
Our perfect caching vehicle consists of our truck, camping trailer and ATV's.

UM: Have you had any animal encounters in your geocaching?
We have seen buffalo, wild horses, wild burros, a rare glimpse of a civet cat, mountain goat, big horn sheep, antelope, mountain lion, moose, eagles, snakes,

UM: Have you met many other cachers while hunting for a cache?
Since most of our caching is done in remote places, we don't run into many other cachers. The exception is J&L Lee. We did meet them in the middle of San Rafael. They were looking for one of our caches while I was there doing maintenance. We have done many subsequent caching trips with J&L.

UM: Have you ever had to explain what you were doing to a member of law enforcement or to vigilent neighbors, or inquisitive muggles? No, mostly because we seldom cache in the city. UM: How do you prepare for a day of geocaching? Are you paperless? We are paperless, I use GSAK to load caches on my GPS and Palm, then away we go. UM: Do you have any geocaching tips/tricks that help you be more effective? Remember to take your GPS. We once got all the way to San Rafael and realized that the GPS was still sitting on my desk. I called our son who met us halfway with the GPS. UM: Tell us about your family. Do you have any pets? We have 8 children, 4 boys and 4 girls. 9 grandkids with more to come. Family is big part of our life and we love each of them dearly. No pets.

UM: What is your favorite TV show?
I don't watch very much TV. It has been quite a few years since I watched regularly. There have been several mini series over the years that I really liked. Masada and Winds of War are two that come to mind.

UM: What is your favorite movie or type of movie?
We enjoy going to movies. I go to be entertained and there have been a lot of entertaining movies. I don't maintain a favorites list of books or movies.

UM: What is your favorite board game or party game?
Vickie and I play Canasta a lot when we are out camping. We have this board game called Scum that is a lot of fun to play with big group.