countrymouse

My advice: Take a 10 year old boy with you. Actually that is good advice, not just being silly. Try taking someone new to the site with you, if you've been unable to find it the first time. I'm trying to remember how many DNF's I have...I think I have 3. Had three, that is - one of them really WASN'T there, but has been replaced and I just found it last week! There are two micros nearby that I just cannot seem to find. I KNOW where they must be, I even know what the container is supposed to look like, but I can't find them! I need to get busy, don't I?

I'm still kind of a newbie - been caching for 2 years but sporadically - so bear with me. This IMO depends on what the "prize" was - FTF swag or just bragging rights. If the cache owner wanted to offer an event-related FTF prize in the cache, he could have placed it right before the event, or handed it out to the winner at the event (put a FTF "ticket" in the cache that would have been worthless to anyone not related to the event). If anybody found it and logged FTF before the event, so what? But then, I am definitely not a FTF kind of person. I'm lucky to FIND it at all.

Oh my gosh...I am an EXPERT at "carefully avoiding trails.: Happens to me all the time! I do see your point about the "TB prison." There is one in a local park around here that seems to do pretty well with that concept, but I guess they're just lucky to have a good number of cachers around who enjoy TBs and coins. Me, I'm a bit shy of taking them nowadays because last time I had one I really messed up (somehow I let the TB get separated from the hitchiker and a friend's kid took it home...I got it back though) and ended up keeping it for months! I still feel bad about that one. My son and I have been thinking about a Pokemon cache; maybe that will inspire decent swag trades.

Gosh, this happens to me all the time, someone posts exactly what was on my mind and I don't read far back enough to see it! Still, I think it's kind of sad. I suspect that in many cases it's a matter of educating the local cachers who think it's OK to rob the cache, even if it's an easy find. This is an affluent area; we can do better than this. I really hate the idea that if it's easy to find, it won't have anything good. That says more about the community than the cache, and a good easy to find cache can really inspire someone who's new to the hobby. Also I have to say this: People in my area have really low standards about what constitutes a challenging cache. I found one recently that had comments like "wow, this is really a long hike!" and it took us about 20 minutes on a beautiful walk, with one small steep hill. Exhausting. ::roll eyes::

In my region there is a whole series of cemetery caches. "Spirit hunts," I think they're called, placed by a local caching group. I have found a few of them....um I think I've found 4 so far. At first I was creeped out by the idea of caching in a graveyard. Actually, one of these was the very first cache my kids and I found! It was right up the street from our house, and the cache was hidden in a rotting tree stump. Another cache was in a historic Quaker cemetery, in a hollow tree. A third was in the woods beside a very old, tiny cemetery that is on a private drive and nobody would see otherwise. My only concern is that passers-by might wonder what you're up to, traipsing around in a historic cemetery. Modern ones, well, people visit those normally anyhow. But it's cool. I think it's healthy to get over that "creeped out" feeling--old cemeteries are neat. Drawing attention to them in this way can help with their preservation, not necessarily add to their destruction. My parents are both dead. I have to say, if someone hid a geocache in the tree that's growing about 12 feet from their graves, I wouldn't mind a bit. Just don't step on the brass plaque, OK?

My 10 year old son and I are getting back into caching after a year or so of being too busy. It was pretty popular in our area two years ago, and now has gotten even more so -- that is a GREAT thing. But one thing we have noticed is that every cache we found has nothing good in it at all. Of course we are not in it for the "treasure" but he does like trading little doodads. We have a backpack full of stuff we like to trade - nothing major - Hot Wheels, action figures, Happy Meal toys that aren't totally junky, costume jewelry, things like that. We always try to leave something of equal value from what we take. We have a few higher value items we leave behind on the rare occasions there is something cool in a cache including TB's and coins. The last two caches we've found have had: a broken bead necklace, some marbles and plastic jacks, wet stickers, a pen that didn't write, a filthy bubble pipe, etc. -- basically crap. I mean, come on, why bother leaving junk? It's better to leave nothing at all than to leave something nobody would want. Now, my son doesn't mind so much (he says...) he just likes to get his name in the log book. Which is why he doesn't mind hunting micros; he enjoys the challenge. Sometimes I think I'd rather hunt a micro than find a big box full of trash. Getting good SWAG for these caches is easy! Go to the dollar store or even a yard sale. Leave a dollar bill if you can't think of anything else. One very cool, cheap item to find, I think, is a foreign coin. Could be worth a nickel and a kid would be thrilled. Now, my son and I would like to hide a cache of our own. But how do you keep it from falling victim to the same fate? It's such a shame. I think we would have to visit our cache every few months and replenish its contents, or else it would be embarrassing! I feel so sorry for the owners of the caches that are left with nothing but junk. What a disrespectful thing to do, both for the owners and the finders. One idea I've had is to do the TB hotel thing. In your experience, has that worked out? If you specify that to take a TB/coin you have to leave one, do people generally honor that? Or is it a waste of time? Any other ideas for getting people to be more honorable in what they take/leave?

Hi all -- I am a fairly new cacher, been doing it almost exactly one year. I bring along my enthusiastic 10 year old son "Cachepup" and somewhat less enthusiastic 12 year old daughter. We've logged 24 found so far, of varying sizes and locations. We use a Magellan Explorist 210 - an inexpensive unit, but it works great for us. The biggest challenge we've had yet is finding those caches hidden along trails in the woods. It's not such a big deal when there are only a few marked trails in the park, but there are a few we've tried to find that just drove us crazy. You hike to the trailhead, hike along the trail watching the GPSR, wondering if you're on the right trail because you go north, then northwest, then veer a bit to the south again...is it THIS trail, which might curve around the right way, or should you turn when it forks to the left...? Or is it a different trail entirely, 20 feet over to the south? Then you end up poking around in the woods with PI, spider webs and brambles, only to find out that if you'd gone another 30 feet down the trail it would have curved around for easier access. And GPS signals aren't that strong under heavy tree cover anyway. So what happens is that we end up hiking all over the place with me saying "wait, a little bit this way...no, let's turn around and go that way...I swear we're getting close, let's just poke around in the woods over there..." and we end up with frustrated mom and two sweaty, tired kids who wonder just how far mom is going to make them walk for no good reason. Any hints? Thanks!

Well I know now that the tag isn't supposed to travel alone, the hitchhiker was in the cache where it was listed, and the bug had been moved - possibly that day - to one further down the trail minus the hitchhiker. And that person didn't log it, either, either the cache or TB. I can see not logging it right away if they'd been camping as I was, but I'd think by now they could have done so. Oh well. I did finally get a message through to the cache owner, so we'll see what happens now.

That's a really good idea, and I just tried it, but unfortunately there's some glitch that isn't allowing my message to go through. Oh well, I'll try again later or tomorrow.

This past weekend we went camping at a state park about 1.5 hours from our house. I had brought along printouts for the 5 caches located within the park, but in the hectic chaos of preparing for the three-day trip, I didn't look real close at them. I knew that there was supposed to be a TB in one of the caches, but didn't check to see its details. So...Sunday we went caching with our two kids and three more we were camping with; the other three had never been caching before (and I really hope they bug their parents to do it again). There were two caches along this one trail. We found the first, and the TB was in there. It wasn't supposed to be in that cache, it was supposed to be in the other cache farther back on the trail. I took it, noting that it was odd that a TB was all alone, nothing attached to it, but figured maybe that's all it was and went on. Found the second cache about 3/4 mile down the trail. The kids went through all the goodies inside, we made some trades. We noticed this one weird looking, rather bizarre toy in there (I found out it was a Kinderegg prize, those are always a little strange) -- if you're interested, look HERE. But we left it, not knowing it was supposed to be with the TB. I originally thought one of the kids took it, but my son says the other boy left it behind after all. I'm going to call tomorrow to make sure, though. Now...I know this is kind of my fault for not looking up the TB in advance...but during a big camping weekend I honestly doubted the TB would still be in there, anyway and was really surprised to find it. And like I said, the TB was already separated from its hitchhiker when we picked it up, in a different cache. And neither the cache nor the TB have been logged as found since then. Except by me. What to do next? Assuming the hitchhiker is still in the cache, I could conceivably drive back over to the park (as I said, 1.5 hours away), hike over to the cache box (about an hour's walk down the trail) and grab the hitchhiker in order to reunite them. That's obviously the right thing to do...but geez, it's so far away! I don't think anybody else in my party is going to feel nearly as conscientious about it as I am, probably won't go with me, and I'm not thrilled about hiking alone. OTOH, I could use the opportunity to find the other 3 caches in the park I didn't have time for this past weekend. OR I could e-mail the TB owner and, after apologizing profusely, ask if he minds letting me substitute the original hitchhiker with a reasonable replacement. If I do go back it'd better be ASAP...what if I get there and someone's taken the hitchhiker? Yikes! But I have such an incredibly busy week, I don't know how soon I will honestly be able to make the trip. What would you do?

YES, I noticed that!!!! When I saw the post subject, in fact, I immediately thought "the LOGO!" ROFL!!!!!! Geez, I thought I was losing my marbles. Thanks for posting this!

I agree. Two weeks is very reasonable. One month is too long unless it's moving a long way. I think it's fair to send an e-mail and ask. But be nice. I currently have a TB and a coin that I need to move along, I've had them for about 2 weeks and really had intended to pass them along sooner. But then we went on vacation (I'd intended to find a cache for them then, but things didn't work out) and I got very sick, and am just now beginning to feel normal again. Bad timing. Things happen to people, they don't necessarily intend to be so lax about their TB passing duties.

I posted a similar thing about a month ago. I'd had a really frustrating few hunts; bushwhacked with the kids for one that was supposedly a nice big container and came home with naught but mosquito bites, hunted 'round town for 2 or 3 and never found a thing, hiked through the woods in a park that supposedly held 5 caches and didn't find nothin' but a virtual cache and forgot to bring along the questions that needed answering along the way. GRRRRR!!!!! But I am not one to give up easily. A couple days later I went out with my kids and found FIVE caches in one afternoon. Felt much better. My advice is this --- bring along a nine-year-old boy. I am serious. If you don't have your own nine-year-old boy, borrow or rent one. Boys this age are magical. This is a developmental phase girls do not experience. Trust me, I have one of each. Nine year old boys are typically persistent, extremely logical and possess a scientific mind with excellent observation skills. This is the age when boys fall in love with science fiction or sports, and either way, remember minute details that make you wonder why the heck they can't remember to turn in their homework. I know it's not just mine; my son's buddies are all that way too. Note -- Nine year old girls are wonderful too, but they're more into deep, probing philosophical discussions and contemplations than logical, scientific study. There have been hunts when I was ready to quit but my nine-year-old son insisted we look just a little bit longer, and he found the cache while I was busy picking dirt out from under my nails or something. My 11 year old daughter, OTOH...she's more interested in the ants, moths, squirrels, avoiding spider webs, and checking her text messages than finding anything. On a more practical note --- read the hints, decrypt the clues. Know what size the cache is. Take your time, sometimes it does take a while to find a cache even when you're right up on it. Especially when you're first starting, restrict your searches to mid-sized caches that have had recent finds. After a while you'll start to get a feel for how caches are hidden, sort of getting inside the mind of the cache owners, and it'll just click. Which doesn't mean every hunt will be easy. If it was, what would be the point? Oh, and keep in mind that your GPS may not work all that well under thick tree cover. Mine is even temperamental sometimes if the weather's cloudy and rainy. That's normal. Most importantly...don't give up! Wait...the MOST important thing....have FUN.

Not a dumb question at all. In fact someone recently asked me this very thing.

Let's see...I first heard of Geocaching about 3 years ago when I saw it discussed on another discussion board, or maybe a mailing list, can't remember. And I thought, gosh, must be nice...another hobby for the rich folks that I can never do. Then on the same board/list somebody mentioned Letterboxing, and that seemed like something I could get into! I mentioned letterboxing to the kids, at the time 6 and 8, and it didn't go over too well. Then DD's Girl Scout leader mentioned she'd started letterboxing with her family, and led us on a hunt which culminated in a bit of bushwacking for a worn-out Gladware box containing a stamp and soggy logbook; the girls were not impressed. I bought our GPSr for my DH who is terrible with directions, thinking at least I'd have some backup ammo next time we were on a road trip and he insisted that North was actually East. I thought *maybe* I could use it for geocaching but just as before, assumed my GPSr wasn't expensive enough. Fortunately I was wrong.

Wellll....depends on how you search for them. How are you finding your caches on the site? By the site's search engine by address or by Google maps? If you're doing it by map, I agree, it seems you can only do one at a time. But do it the other way instead. Say, you're going on a camping trip out of town and want to retrieve a list of caches in the area of the campground. An easy way is to find out the zip code of the campground/park and search that way. Or for a more accurate list, use the map to find the cache closest to your campsite, look at that cache listing and jot down the coordinates. Then go back to the search page and run your search using those coordinates in the Latitude Longitude search. You'll get a list that is ordered by distance from closest to farthest away, and you can build a nice list of caches to download that way.

No trade needed unless the coin/bug is in a "hotel" in which you're not supposed to take a bug or coin unless you also leave a bug or coin behind.

Your 210 should have come with a CD that includes a Geocache Manager. Install that on your PC. Now, for individual caches, you can click "download loc file" Or to download a group of them, such as the list that pops up when you search for caches within a certain distance, check all the boxes of the ones you want then click "download waypoints." Save this file to your PC - I put it on the desktop for convenience, but obviously it doesn't matter. If you do more than one page, they will save sequentially as geocaching.loc, geocaching(1).loc, geocaching(2).loc, etc. As far as I know, it's one page of results per file. You can then open this file in your Magellan Geocache Manager. A list of all the caches should come up. Then there is a menu item on the top to upload these caches to your GPS. Do that. Do the same thing for each file you downloaded. After you're done, unplug the GPS and it'll turn itself off. Restart it, go to the menu and select "points of interest." Select "geocache points." Now all the files should be listed here; you're going to have to open the files individually to see the list of caches and see them on the map, though I *think* all of them should show on the map permanently once you've opened each file. Hope this helps. BTW, one of the benefits of premium membership is that you can put hundreds of caches into just one file, which gets e-mailed to you, greatly simplifying this process.

FWIW, I'm not the one who said I had a lousy sense of direction. Finding my way around is not a problem, generally, but when you're looking for one tiny item, that's a little bit different. If I was going on a serious hike, you bet there is no way I would rely on a GPS alone. Where I live, though, it would take some real doing to go so far into the woods that a hike straight in any direction for 20 minutes wouldn't put me back in civilization. But no, I don't really want to put that theory to the test.

OOH! Cool! I never noticed that! That is actually a big help to me. Thanks a bunch! The moon's there at night too, I see...nifty! I guess it helps to RTFM....

No, my "lightbulb moment" is indeed correct, hon. My reference to "electronic compass" may not match your definition and the technical specifications of those units you mention. I am referring to the screen on my Explorist that shows an actual compass rose so, when I am moving," the little digital image of a needle points in the proper direction. It works fine. The problem is having to switch between screens constantly while matching coordinates; it'd be much easier to look at a regular old-fashioned compass for a quick direction check.

Went out again with the kids today (known as White Chocolate and CachePup!) and we found five caches! Including one I looked for a couple weeks ago on my own and couldn't find. They're better at this than I am. I have most of the caches uploaded into my Explorist, so every now and then I'll try to do it paperless. Sometimes it works out, not always. I brought my little folder with the printouts with me today though.

I feel...sadly...navigationally impaired. I have a relatively inexpensive GPSR, a Magellan Explorist 210, and I grant you that might be part of the problem. But it's pretty accurate and I've been happy with its performance. Just not happy with MY performance. Now, I'm not generally that bad at finding my way around. I don't get lost very often, driving. On foot seems to be another story. Telling N from W, for example, is not hard when you're in a car on the road. You can pick a direction to turn and figure you're headed in the right general direction. On foot, with a GPS coordinate to find, it really matters whether you're due N or a little bit NW, KWIM? I don't know about yours, but my GPS has a compass function that only works while I'm moving. Which means you might see me in a parking lot walking around in circles trying to get a good reading so I can figure out which way is actually East. (lightbulb moment -- bring a separate non-electronic compass along. ) So on a few recent cache hunts, I was hiking along with my two kids dutifully dodging spider webs in the woods behind me...and maybe it was due to tree cover....but I'm like oh, no it's THIS way....no, I was wrong, go THAT way a little bit...wait, here's the right top number, now let's get the bottom number....dang, that'd put us straight up that cliff... I have made my 9 year old son walk with me for a good half-mile in search of a cache that wasn't even within walking distance, but in a park 5 miles away. I have gotten both my kids to climb down a challenging rocky cliff in search of a cache that was on the OTHER side of the trail, on flat ground. Mind you, I have actually found some caches, including a couple of multis, so I'm not completely hopeless. But I've resigned myself to the fact that the only ones I can succeed at are ones that tell seekers where to start at - like, they're in a certain small park - vs. those you have to just kind of hope you're going down the right street or in the middle of the woods following a 20-minute hike. I need caching lessons...or I'm afraid my kids will get tired of these wild goose chases and burn out on the hobby.

I wondered if anybody had ever compiled a list of good & bad cache containers? Yes, we can buy containers from Groundspeak. And yes, they're not terribly expensive. Ammo boxes, I don't know what they cost. But many of us have limited budgets and still wanna play -- we have to use what we've got. As I prepare, along with my kids, to hide our first cache, I'm thinking about what I have on hand...this info might help many others! Obviously anything glass is out of the question. Any material that is not waterproof or is unlikely to stay that way after prolonged exposure to the elements is out. Anything that resembles trash is probably a bad idea. Some good ones I've found -- Plastic coffee can Old cell phone covered in camo tape, strapped to a tree limb! (the "prize" was in the battery compartment, actually one stage of a multi) 2-gallon round cooler wrapped in camo tape The ubiquitous Ammo Box PB Jar wrapped in camo tape The ol' standard Key Box Micro Film containers, Pill bottles ONE Lock-N-Lock Some not-so-good ones: Gladware Box (my first find a couple years ago -- actually a letterbox, in really sad shape) Film container missing the cap NO container, just a log sheet stuffed in a fence pipe Paintball jar (lid was hard to open and leaked) Thanks in advance for reading & commenting.

Weirdest for me so far was a micro hidden behind a guardrail on a main road through town next to a very popular store. I had to park in the store's lot and walk over to the rail. I just KNEW that someone would recognize me and wonder why I was poking around over there, looking like some kind of weirdo over by the roadside with all the litter. Best thing I could think of was to just do it...get down to business, get the container, write my name, put it back and be gone. And if someone should mention to me that they saw me and wondered what I was up to, well, there's a potential convert to the cult!