Dan Q

Category: Personal

Maps Showing California as an Island – The Public Domain Review

This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/maps-showing-california-as-an-island/ (publicdomainreview.org)

If California were a country its economy would be the fifth largest in the world (just ahead of the UK). Yet the tech boom is not the starkest way California has ever stood apart from its neighbours. That would surely be the maps depicting it as an island, entire of itself. Below we have featured our pick of these glorious seventeenth- and eighteenth-century aberrations, from a collection of hundreds held at Stanford.

The intriguing story of how the maps came to be deserves a little mapping itself. In the 1530s Spanish explorers led by Hernán Cortés encountered the strip of land we now know as the Baja Peninsula. They mistook it for an island and called it California.

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Dan Q found OK0372 Mandala

This checkin to OK0372 Mandala reflects an opencache.uk log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

A moment of joy and serenity on my otherwise-uninspiring cycle to work. A wonder I’ve never been down this end of Plantation Road before, given that I’m a fan of the Gardner’s Arms further along it and there are certainly journeys I’ve taken to or from there that would have been just as easy to take via this end of the quaint street.

I tried looking at the mandala image in two different cardinal directions, and saw that it appeared in two different ways. Upright, it seems as though an infinity symbol divided (but you can divide infinity forever and still have an infinity), but rotated 90° it’s more like an hourglass suspended in a rotating frame (and so able to be flipped and started again). Either way, the metaphor to me is one of time.

Thanks for the cache; I hope more people get to find their way to this magical little corner.

Dan Q found OK0022 Copdock Hill

This checkin to OK0022 Copdock Hill reflects an opencache.uk log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

A planned break from my journey from Oxford to Preston gave me the opportunity for a sunset hill climb in this beautiful setting. Almost as if to congratulate me, the second I returned the log to the cache container somebody far to the South West started setting off fireworks (barely audible from this distance, but definitely visible from this altitude!): I must be doing something right! TFTC.

Dan Q found GLVVQ0XX Copdock Hill

This checkin to GLVVQ0XX Copdock Hill reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

A planned break from my journey from Oxford to Preston gave me the opportunity for a sunset hill climb in this beautiful setting. Almost as if to congratulate me, the second I returned the log to the cache container somebody far to the South West started setting off fireworks (barely audible from this distance, but definitely visible from this altitude!): I must be doing something right! TFTC.

Dan Q found GLVVQ1AY Not up or Down

This checkin to GLVVQ1AY Not up or Down reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

On my way back down after finding GC18RNH I thought I’d try my luck at this cache, too. The sun had set and I thought my luck would fail me, but the hint (though a little cryptic) pointed me in the right direction. With the help of my torch plus a little bit of feeling-my-way I was able to retrieve the cache and sign the log. TFTC!

Dan Q found GLVVKH3G Oxford-we-go – Geolympix legacy

This checkin to GLVVKH3G Oxford-we-go - Geolympix legacy reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

I’ve had two previous trips to the GZ to look for this cache: turns out that the hint in the Wherigo cartridge is completely inaccurate and mislead me quite a bit! To reiterate what others have said (I should’ve looked at the past logs sooner!), you’re looking for the kind of thing you’d normally expect to find given the cache size and location, NOT a combination lock.

Enjoyed the Oxford tour but ending on the edge of an industrial estate-turned-building site puts a dampener on the whole experience! Perhaps this final stage could enjoy being moved elsewhere? It’s possible it’ll have to anyway, once construction is complete here.

TFTC.