sunriseoverwater

I was in Girl Guides, but quit after Brownies. We never did very much outdoors stuff - the leaders thought it was too risky to let me get my cycling badge. And we had to wear skirts. Not my thing... My dad was in Scouts until his family moved from the farm to the city when he was 14. Most of what I know about the outdoors I learned from him. He said his Scout group was the best at knot competitions because they were a bunch of farm boys who had to tie up their cows properly. I said, "You had knot competitions?" Scouts in Canada is co-ed now. I think it was when I was a kid, but back then my mom must have still retained some hope that I would be a girly-girl, so they enrolled me in Brownies. I wish I had done Scouts. It would have been a lot more useful than crafts and selling cookies.

I'm curious, has anyone ever used their SPOT to send a 911 or need help message? I bring my dad caching with me sometimes, and we fish and hunt together often. A couple years ago he developed a potentially life-threatening beesting allergy, so we got him a SPOT. We've used it to send "I'm okay" messages to my mom when we're travelling and are out of cell phone range. It's worked lots of times, but for some reason it didn't manage to send an "I'm okay" message once last week. I have no idea why, and it's an older model that doesn't tell you if the message has been sent successfully or not. We were out in the backcountry last Friday, doing our first real canoe trip with a 45-year-old fibreglass canoe that weighs about 125 pounds (this is more than my body weight, so portaging is difficult!). We have a small outboard that we used to increase our travel speed and we had travelled about 10km (7ish miles for you Americans) along a small river. We had just finished our first portage EVER (only 300m, but when you're a 60-year-old guy and a small young woman carrying a freaking heavy canoe, that's a big deal) when my dad slipped on the rocks, fell, and dislocated his left shoulder. We debated using the SPOT device, but we didn't know what kind of help would come or how long it would take to get there. In the end we had to pull the canoe back, scratching the bottom, with me dragging at the front and my dad lifting at the back with his one good arm. Once we got past the rapids and into the water, we were in the clear. It took us three hours to get out of the backcountry to the truck and another hour to get to the nearest hospital. I'd be interested to hear about anyone using their SPOT device to signal for help - would that have been the fastest way to get my dad to the hospital? Is there a cost if they have to send a helicopter to rescue you? For those who are concerned, I have decided that trips requiring portaging, when I can't carry the canoe by myself and my dad could only carry it himself for a short distance, are probably too risky to attempt as a two-person team in the future. I think I need to acquire a boyfriend with large muscles.

We don't have any seriously scary snakes here in Manitoba, but there's a very cool Earthcache at Narcisse, which is a big garter snake hibernaculum. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...86-5b7e751778e8 I went to the cache a bit too early in the spring to see many snakes, but some of the pictures in the gallery are worth a look. Or google "Narcisse Manitoba".

Both my parents have been immune all their lives, although my mother doesn't go into the woods enough anymore to know if her immunity has worn off. I was immune as a kid and a teenager - my whole cabin at summer camp would get poison ivy and I would be fine. That wore off unexpectedly last summer, and I had poison ivy all over my legs from geocaching in shorts. It took a month to go away and left marks that lasted for several weeks. This year I'm geocaching in long pants.

I'm 19, female, and cache solo regularly. I started caching at 18, without any parental involvement. I drag my dad along occasionally now and he seems to enjoy it. I've taken a few friends geocaching, but I usually enjoy the caches with a decent hike the most, and my friends just don't seem to be into that. I know I'm more nerdy than most kids my age, but I find that school and lack of money stop me from caching much more often than partying does. I'm sure there are some other young cachers who would say the same thing.

It sounds like it should all be OK with the stuff I'm using. Thanks for the replies!

I'm planning to get my own computer and move all my geocaching stuff off of my parents' computer. I'm currently using an etrex Legend, and the programs I use are GSAK and Garmin Mapsource version 5.4. The computer I'm using now runs Windows XP, and all these programs work fine. It looks like I'll have to get a USB-to-serial adaptor when I switch computers. Has anyone had any problems making these work with Vista? Or any problems with GSAK or Mapsource? I don't want to buy a new computer until I'm sure that everything is compatible. Thanks!

This is my first winter of caching, and while I didn't originally plan to hibernate, I haven't been out since late November. Right now Manitoba is just emerging from a 6 week or so cold snap, with temperatures consistently in the -35 or -40 Fahrenheit range with the windchill. I just don't enjoy being outdoors when I can get frostbite while trying to sign the cache log! But quite a few people do seem to cache through the winter. I think they're nuts, but maybe they're just tougher than I am.

Thanks, I will give that a try right now!

I received Mapsource Topo Canada for Christmas (yay!) and have been trying to send maps to my etrex Legend. I can get a map of one area on there with no problems; however, when I load another map on, I lose the first map. The GPS said I was only using 3% of my memory after the first map was loaded, so I'm stumped as to what I'm doing wrong. Any ideas? Thanks!

My etrex Legend is a fairly old unit and I've had both those problems in the past few months. I found that the quickest way to fix the vertical lines on the screen is to hit the unit gently against your hand a couple of times. It doesn't always work, but it's a lot faster than sending away for a replacement. I had the joystick problem too. I searched it in the GPS units forum, and someone said to try rotating the joystick counterclockwise a few times and clockwise a few times. I found that that helps sometimes. If that doesn't work, I just let the GPS sit for a few minutes, and often it fixes itself. Maybe it just needs to warm up? Try searching for "etrex legend" in the GPS Units and Software (or something similar) forum. I don't know how to link to it here, but there's plenty of information there.

I'll vote for the matches, book.

I love that geocaching gives me a reason to go see places I might never have seen otherwise. Most of the new spots I've discovered while geocaching have been really neat, and I'm glad that people hide caches in these places so that the rest of us can enjoy them too.

Thanks for the info. I think that, when I do get around to placing a cache, I'll put the basic directions on the cache page and encrypt any more detailed info that some people might like.

Lately I've done a bit of caching in a Provincial Park in my area. I've noticed recently that some of the cache pages will state "The cache is off of trail X in provincial park Y", and some won't even mention that the cache is in a provincial park. (These are all fairly low-difficulty hides.) I was initially surprised by this, but now I'm wondering, is the lack of information intentional? Maybe some people like the added challenge of using online maps and such to figure out where to park and where to hike, and I just didn't realize that. I'm hoping to place my first cache sometime soon, and I don't want to give away too much information if most people would prefer to figure it out themselves.

Thanks for the info, I will have to read the cache pages for some local multis more thoroughly and see if I can figure out what to expect!

I'd like to try a couple of multi-caches sometime in the not too distant future, but I'm not sure exactly what hunting a multi would involve. Are there rules regarding the distance between stages? eg: If the first stage of a multi is in a particular park, can I expect all the other stages to be there as well? Multis sound like a lot of fun, but I'd like to know if I'll be hiking one mile or ten before I set out!

I heard about geocaching from a friend in high school. She wanted to try it, and my dad had an etrex Legend for hunting and fishing, but we never actually got around to looking for a cache. But a couple of months ago I was working at the local Canadian Tire and a customer came in looking for camo tape. He mentioned that he was using the tape for geocaching, and when I said I'd heard of it but never tried it, he told me to check out the website. I borrowed my dad's GPS and found my first cache in a park close to my house the next day. Now, when the walleye aren't biting and the mallards aren't flying, I still have something fun to do outside!

Thanks for all the tips! I'd forgotten that there are crazy people who disguise their micros as pine cones, etc. Hopefully next time I go looking for a micro I won't be quite so frustrated!

I've been geocaching for about a month and have had pretty good success in finding caches of regular and small size. But every time I go looking for a micro, I have no success whatsoever. I've been checking the logs on these caches to make sure they've been found recently, so I don't think the problem is that I'm searching for caches that have been muggled. The problem is more that I have no idea what I'm doing when looking for a micro. If you have any tips on finding micros, typical hiding spots, etc., please help me! Thanks!