admo1972

Bit by numerous ticks. Came down with Lyme and did the whole 3-week anti-biotic routine and am 100% better. Was also stung by a yellow jacket last weekend, while reading a log by previous cacher who got stung at the same cache.

Hey, ThirstyMick, look forward to discovering your cachemobile if you make it to Third Tuesdays Free Beer and Burgers in Sept (now that it is going to be on Tuesdays again). We've have two cachemobiles there already: Mine: TB1FBGB TwoCat's: TB1D0FY

I guess it can vary from park to park. I suppose that parks can consider anyone further than 25' of the trail as tresspassing, but I never heard of such a thing. Many parks do have regulations on geocaches, usually the max number that can be in the park, and that geocaches can't be further than a given distance from a trail. Maybe this is what you were think of?

I've always marked caches as found in cachmate to begin with, so I have not set caches as found in GSAK and then transfered them. However, when you have a cache page up in cachemate, go to OPtions -> View Options, and make sure you have the option checked to move the record to the found category when marked as found.

poked a stump and got stung by a yellow jacket. Just one though. Apparently, a previous cacher poked the same stump and got stung by three.

Hey, I think 20 is indeed a mini-milestone. When I hit 20, it was then that I knew that geocaching was for me. I felt less noobish, and finally felt ready to tackle some more difficult caches. I finally got some hiking boots for my 73rd cache.

#1 main difference is pocket queries. They're a little confusing at first, but the learning curve is not steep at all. With pocket queries, you can get lists of up to 500 caches emailed right to your inbox. Then you can throw those into Mapsource, into your GPS, into your Palm, into GSAK, etc etc. Best way to get all the closest caches to you with minimal effort. Other difference is being able to get info on "member only" caches, which are invisible to you as a regular member. Being able to post in the Off Topic forum. Lastly, feeling that you are supporting this site and team of individuals that make geocaching possible for us. Some of the ads on the website don't show up when you are a premium member. That's all I can think of right now...

I think some kind of rating system would be fine. Sure, not all caches are for all people, but a rating system will help to filter out some of the "less interesting" caches. If I am travelling far, and I want to just hit a few of some of the best caches, caches with lots of high ratings would be the first one's I'd look at, and go from there. Sure, I may miss a lower rated cache that I would have liked, but at least the ones I do do are more likely to meet my fancy. It would just be another tool one can use to determine what caches to go after.

Well, check your notifications area. You should be signed up to receive notification fo rpublished listings, and make sure you have a suitable distance selected. The last thing could be that your ISP thinks it's spam, and the messages are being sent but you are not receiving them.

TFTC - Thanks for the Cache TNLN - Took Nothing, Left nothing FTF - First to find Someone else will post a lint to the geocache lexicon that has these and many more commonly used abrievations.

I too had the thought of a darker, underground geocache website. One that accepts, no, encourages dangerous caches. Caches on top of power lines, on private property (with no knowledge or permission of owner). And the most extreme, in National Parks!

It's fine to take them yourself as long as you move them along. That said, many cachers like to take TBs and move them along. So if you are always taking them as soon as they show up in your cache, you are limiting others in the area from doing the same. Again, nothing wrong with it, but maybe let some sit a few days before you move them along to give others a chance to help TB's along if that is what they like to do.

No. It sounds nice to me at first, as a way of contacting geocachers in my area, but I would find at least two problems with this. First, if you are one of very few cachers in a given area (or maybe even the only one in a small rural town), you would be getting contacted all the time by others because your the only one in town. And maybe you just want to be left alone? Second, what if you live in New York City, and your username is Aardvark or something like that. You would probably the top listed name in the list, and would be getting dozens of caching requests every day from people all over the world who will be traveling to New York. Even if you are a willing group cacher, the volume would be too much. Perhaps this could work, but users would have to opt-in in order to be listed.

You could enter the waypoints manually, and just enter the waypoint name without the the first two characters (GC). You can also download GSAK, which can do that for you automatically. It's free for 21 days, then gives you a nag screen unless you cough up $25 to pay for it (I only downloaded it yesterday and am trying it out now). Another alternative is to use GSAK to give the caches a smart name, using 6 characters to give each waypoint a unique name, but also making it somewhat meaningful. This is what I plan to use GSAK primarily for, I will just need to see if it is worth $25. However, I have a etrex Vista, which allows 10 characters for waypoint names, which gives me a little more room to have a meaningful name for waypoints.

Just last weekend, I flew Continental (Continental Express actually, which is operated by ExpressJet airlines), and I left my GPS in my luggage because I read on the internet somewhere that Continental does not allow the use of GPS on the airlines. However, in the in-flight magazine, they have a page in the back that details the kinds of equipment allowed and not allowed on the flight. It specifically says that GPS units are allowed once the plane reaches 10,000 feet, along with iPods and other approved electronic devices.

I agree with those that love the electronic compass. Being able to stop and have the arrow point towards the cache comes in very handy for almost every cache I've located. Plus, for those hard to find caches, it is nice to be able to triangulate the location simply by picking out a point to sight from, and just walk there w/o having to look at the needle on the GPSr at all on the trip. Just concentrate on getting to the spot, then sight the line.

It's a special kind of log option you can choose on event caches. It let's the organizer know how many people are planning to attend the event. After you attend an event, you can choose to write an "attended" log, which gets added to your find total.

I'm sure someone will post with a much more technical response than me, but here is what I know, in laymans terms. The accuracy depends on a lot of things. The more sats it is receiving, the better the accuracy will be. Tree cover will reduce the accuracy a lot (especially on your legend and on my vista). Other natural barriers will throw off the accuracy. Not holding the unit level (parallel with the ground so that the globe logo faces the sky) will reduce accuracy. As some sats drop below the horizon, the accuracy can drop. If all the sats your gps has a lock on are roughly in the same area of the sky, your accuracy will drop. 10 feet is pretty much the best you can get. My vista, when it gets a WAAS lock (which can further increase accuracy) gets usually 10 to 12 feet. Rarely gets better than 20 feet without a WAAS lock. Remember, when the cache was hidden, the owner used coordinates that only had some degree of accuracy as well, and this is compounded. So, without getting into lots of math with pi and such, if your accuracy is say, 10 feet. And the owners was 20 feet. You've got to assume that the cache can be roughly 30 feet in any direction of your current position. Generally, when you get to what your GPS says is ground zero. I lay the gps on the ground in that spot, stick a stick straight up there, and start searching the area. If I can't find it after a while, I'll pick up the gps (which I leave on to keep trackign sats). I walk away and come back from a different direction. Sometimes it brings be to a wildly different location. But if it brings me back to roughly the same spot, I feel more confident in my search and keep searching.

It can be. There is a cache near where I work, where I was the last to find before a string of DNF's. The owner disabled it, then later archived it after he couldn't find the cache himself. One afternoon I took it upon myself to stroll over to the cache site and I found it relatively close to where I last hid it, except it was buried under a few inches of soil from a previous rainstorm. I rehid the cache in a somewhat safer, logical geocache spot and emailed the owner that I had refound it and told him where I hid it. I am happy to report that the cache is unarchived, and has a string of found it logs now.

GCQ2WX It has been archived

I noticed that I had 50 finds, and 49 unique finds. itsnotaboutthenumbers pointed out that I had an event logged twice, which was fine and dandy, since each time the event is held (it's monthly), it used the same GC#.

We leave out the leading zero in the US as well. 08:45pm just looks weird. What you see is simply the way the board is displaying the time

I think it's fine, but as others have said, be prepared for few cachers. One thing to think of as for placement of the stages: 10 minutes can be a long time to complete a puzzle when out in the field. If there isn't a comfortable place to sit and/or lots of bugs, then what is a fun mystery/multi turns into a day of torture. I wouldn't worry too much about the bugs, hopefully people brought spray. Just make sure there is a nice place for the cacher to sit (a large fallen tree is good, a big boulder is better).

To get the hints, you need to become a premium member. Hints are included in the gpx file you can download for each cache. Also included (which you say you don't need) is the description, cache size, diffuculty rating and terrain rating, and past logs. That's off the top of my head.

My GPSr shows my max speed as 244 mph. I am 100% certain that I never traveled at that speed with the GPSr on.