Nuwati
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Posts
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Posts posted by Nuwati
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Graduate to the highest degree of GPS handhelds, with mobile navigation extras, plus an MP3/Ogg Vorbis music player, in this innovative new Lowrance waterproof GPS handheld! Includes an electronic compass, barometric altimeter, and microphone (for voice notes) too!
Voice notes. Very interesting.
Nuwati
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I can't wait to go to Nashville. I have found a couple of micros here in North Carolina that were copied from Nashville caches. All I can say is they maybe micros but they are hard to find. I love a challenge. Keep it up Nashville. Don't quit. This sport is a fun one because of the diversity. Lets not limit ourselves by short changing the efforts of other cachers.
Nuwati
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But if you do head to the mountains the pisgah national forest holds many treasures and wonderful hikes. Just do a zipcode search (28768) and look for the Cold Mountain Cache, Sam's Knob cache, Searching Far and Low, Johns Rock Cache, Blueberrie Hill, Shining Rock Cache: these are all hikes with a view. There are quite a few hikes around the Turkey Area that allow you to hike and build numbers. check out www.ncgeocachers.com and connect with the western north carolina geocachers association for more info. There are just to many to name.
Nuwati
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Hold the phone. Lets forget about the numbers. Put some focus on the cache owner. I have been known place a cache check my e-mail almost hourly. For me receiving the notice that someone has found my cache is just as important as finding caches. It lets me know folks enjoyed or did not enjoy the hunt. The log also gives me an idea of the caches condition. Now I am not perfect I have forgotten to log a cache, but I don't go out of my way to log them. Last week I got an e-mail from someone who found one of my caches, but I never reveived aa log post. I checked their stats but they had nothing at all listed. The e-mail said "thanks for the cache, check the newspaper on friday". So now I have no clue which cache was found or where I can get that paper. Selfish is the only word I can think of, a total violation of cacher and cache owner relations. Don't forget there is another human being on the other side who wants to know about the experience.
Nuwati
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I have hidden a few caches some multi, some traditional, and some micro. I find that most folks would rather find the ordinary traditional cache. I like my caches to be found and if traditional is what the majority wants traditional is what they get.
Don't get me wrong I enjoy hiding a multi cache, but I can only keep one multi going at a time and still feel as if I am providing the cachers in my area with a good experience.
Another point is that many caches that are wilderness based go unfound because of the extra time dedicated to finding them. These seem to require an increased amount of effort. It seems that many people are like water; they travel to the area of least resistance. Let us be real I don't think there is a single geocacher that is against the rise of their cache numbers. Why would a hardcore cacher spend 4 hours finding one multi when they could find ten traditional caches. I love multi caches please don't get me wrong.
I hate riding in the car. I would prefer hiking on a single trail that is "saturated" with creative cache hides. I think cache trails are a great idea. Here in Western North Carolina we have a great cache trail (Turkey Pen). There are well over ten caches hidden. Over the past couple of months cachers have come out and added to these caches. It has become a game of leap frog. Compare cache GCJ7JB (Turkey Pen) with GC4VF (Pisgah Nat. Forest) to see the difference in the level of participation. Today I hid two caches in an effort to bring another trail into the picture. Sometimes it is just nice to have places where you and the kids get worn out before the caches. I would rather have my kids on the trail then in the back of the car. And still have "treasures" to find.
Sorry for the ramble.
Nuwati
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Hold on a minute. I was a Backcountry Ranger for about 5 years. I worked for an International Biosphere Reserve located in the mountains of North Carolina (Grandfather Mountain). This is a privately owned mountain that has one of the few paid trail crews in the state. We charged folks $5 a day for access to the Mountain's backcountry (12 miles of trails) and $10 a day for access to the developed side of the mountain. I think that it is easy for folks to observe nature as an entity all its own. That it does not need to be managed or cared for. The folks who work in these parks are highly motivated, over educated, and under paid individuals. It is honestly a labor of love. The sacrifices that I had to make because I feel that the environment has and is being neglected due to complete ignorance would be incomprehensible to most folks. I worked my first year making a mere $4.75 an hour. This was hard back breaking work. Just imagine hiking a minimum of 6 miles a day, digging out over 1500 water bars, building steps out of heavy stone, conducting search and rescues, recovering dead bodies, building new trials, refurbishing old trails, picking up other peoples crap (sometimes literally), issuing citations, administering first aid, teaching interpretive programs, selling a hiking permit to someone who has no clue about all of the above and therefore does not value what you do. There would be days where I would come in and not leave until the next afternoon because some frat boy decided to step out of his Dad’s Ford Excursion (dump truck with bench seating in the back) along with his frat boy friends and get lost in the Linville Gorge Wilderness Area. I am not as angry as this post sounds and I realize that I could have quit and done something more profitable, but my feeling was if I quit then who would take my place. It was hard work with high emotional rewards. It is my personal belief that we don’t pay enough.
Now I work for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission as an Education Specialist. The money is a little bit better-24,000 a year-after taxes and insurance that amounts to about 1100 dollars a month to support a family of four. Like I said the pay is a little better. After tens years of working in the environmental field there is one thing that I have learned; the people who need us the most, who need to recreate, who want wide open spaces to play seem to be our greatest obstacle. To say that we are loving our Parks to death is an understatement. Our parks are lacking funding, they are understaffed, and more importantly their staffs are overworked and underpaid. Lets face it folks you get what you pay for. At some point you would think that I would realize that trying to run through a brick wall just will not work.
If communities can use Geocaching as a means to increase eco-tourism then so can Parks. Maybe that is a good way to sway some Park Admin. to allow caching in there parks. Something to think about
Nuwati
PS: Sorry if I rambled.
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I use cachemate with my palm zire 31. I also read e-books on my palm. After you by the e-reader ($10) books are about as expensive as paperbacks if not less. Don't get me wrong if you want the newest release you will pay the same price as you would in the book store. When you read these things there is no need for bookmarks. The cool thing is that you can read in bed at night and not disturb the wife. E-reader.com has a wide selection of books. Today I downloaded acrobat reader for my palm so that I can read today's cacher on my pda. Way Cool. Not to mention that I have the new Beasty Boys CD to listen to when I need my moment of zen. I also keep a few reference materials like the clingon dictionary (Not a Trekky, not that there is anything wrong with that) and the cherokee dictionary to help with clues for finding and hiding those multi-caches. Soon I will be connecting my old Sony Clie to one of my old GPSrs. Don't no why, I guess just for kicks. At any rate if you buy a palm keep in mind that you want something that will grow. I love using my palm for geocaching, but I really enjoyed all the other things that it can do.
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I have had more luck with the non-expensive US road and recreation map. They have nice detail. My topo soft. leaves out alot of names that the road and rec maps have.
Nuwati
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I bought one of these Clies off of E-bay and was wondering if I would be able to connect it with my Garmin GPSr. Has anyone ever use a GPSr with the Sony Clie
PEG-TJ25/U? Thanks for any input.
Nuwati
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I love my Palm. In the past I used it for storing PQs from Geocaching.com; you just can't beat having all of that data in the field. The last cache I searched for was High Water in Western North Carolina (rated 5/5). Although I did not use the Palm as often other than to check clues; there was an element to this cache where the palm would have come in handy. Clingon, now I am not a Trecky so this is new to me, but the cache hider used it to hide coordinates. Fourtionately OzGuff had taken the time to print the Clingon Alphabet. I thought it would have been easier if it were on the Palm so I checked it out and low and behold there it was on the computer a downloadable palm app the Clingon dictionary. Well this opened the flood gates and before you knew it I had downloaded a cryptology program (for those encrypted coordinates), eReader, a couple of books to read, and music.
One thing I always tell my friends when considering large purchases like GPSrs or PDA is to buy something that has room to grow with your needs. So far I believe that my PDA has done just that...well almost.
When I purchased my PDA (Zire 31) I had hopes of conecting it to my GPSr. I understand that I should have done my homework on this one. USB connections are great but they will not do you any good when you want to use them with a GPSr...now I know. I am a state employee in North Carolina and I have not received a pay raise in 4 years, so the $140 was an investment. An investment that I have to eat and make do with. Had I known that the PDA would not connect with the GPSr I would have not purchased it. If you write anything for palm please let the rest of the un-educated know without a doubt that these USB handhelds will not work with a GPSr. Better yet come up with a solution for this problem.
Nuwati (Matt)
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So what does this mean?
An Error Has Occured
The process cannot access the file "e:\caches\xml\161146\161146.xml" because it is being used by another process.
Nuwati
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No go. Are you using the most recent beta firmware, or are the 60C's not compatible with the waypoint manipulation. Thanks for the help. I wish that Garmin and Groundspeak would get to work on a Geocaching Software CD like the other mapsource products.
Nuwati
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I have 60C and it will only let me grab a screen shot. Am I missing something? This sounds pretty cool.
Nuwati
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Lisa,
I have a 120 and a 60c. The 120 is a great unit and I have enjoyed using it. The radio is cool but you kinda need to have an addtional 120 to receive the full benefit of it's function. I think that it is wiser to buy a GPSr that you can grow with. My 60c is a great unit because I can use it for a number of things other than geocaching. Autorouting is so cool and the color screen is nice. If the 60c is to expensive then take a look at the Legendc.
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Way to go Magellan. I know that last years game had a few bumps in the road, but not all caches are perfect. At least they are willing to try. I don't see Garmin or even Groundspeak taking chances like this.
Nuwati
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Try quakemap. Great software with a cool waypoints manager.
Nuwati
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I own a sony clie and a palm m100 that I purchased from e-bay. They were all cheap so there was no real loss. They came with there own little scratches and dings and corks. The clie came with an incorrect cradle and I had to modifie it to fit and the palm m100 just lacked storage.
Well I discovered that the pda is kinda cool and versitle. I wanted a pda that could grow with me and my geocaching experience so I purchased a palm Zire 31. This pda comes with a nice color screen, 14 MB memmory, expandable memmory(I bought a 256 MB SD card), and a whole bunch of different bells and whistles. For the money this is a nice setup. I now tell my friends that when you buy a GPSr or PDA look for something that has room to grow with you. It was also nice just to own something with all the right parts and to get it through free next day shipping you can't beat that.
Nuwati
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I placed a topo map of geocaches on the National Geographic map exchange site. I guarantee that these maps may be out of date as they were made last year. Just look under North Carolina state series and you should find Caches of the Pisgah National Forest. I live in Brevard NC, let me know if I can help you further.
I think you can use GSAK to merge your files. Maybe quake map can help?
Nuwati
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I am from Western North Carolina (Brevard). I live minutes away from the Pisgah National Forest. I also work on the Forest at North Carolina's largest cold water fish hatchery. What a commute. When I explain Geocaching to other folks, I say that it is a "The Coolest Places in WNC Interactive Field Guide".
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I think I would post myself as a cache only to be tourned down by the approver because they are convinced that no one could possibly live there so there would be no one to maintain the cache. Besides we all know that vacation caches are not allowed.
Nuwati
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Wow I wish I had seen your post earlier. There are a number of campgrounds on the Pisgah National Forest (Transylvania County). One in particular is right along the Davidson River. There are in adition a few wonderful bed breakfest to stay at. I will research this for you.
Nuwati
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I think that this is a great GEOCACHING software package. I have used this program to develop some cool trade items, and $10 is definately a gift. Besides no one is complaining about cachemate (another for profit program) being discussed in the forums. Great program. I have enjoyed it. Thanks
Nuwati
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I have a rino 120 and have exchanged positions with the 110s. I would think that this would work fine with the 130s as well. Talk abouts work great with this unit.
Nuwati
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It seems that the feed back from cache hunters was positive. Everyone liked the final clue. I don't know about you, but I am always trying to find something different to do with my caches. Don't let this scare away creativity. Sounds like a great training exercise for the man.
Nuwati
Weed Out Unmaintained Caches?
in General geocaching topics
Posted
Diversity is the key to productive growth. I am concerned that if we place restrictions on caches that get hit once or twice a year due to their location we will loose diversity. All we will be left with is park and grab caches(not that there is anything wrong with them). In addition you can't judge a cache by the number of DNF's, just last week I went after a cache that I swore had to be gone only to see that two had found it after my search.
I think it should be the geocaching communities responsibility to assure cache quality. It is easy to bring along a few containers and extra log books and I don't know of many cachers that would have a problem with the replacement or care of a cache container. I have done it for other cachers in my area.
I am a little bit concerned about caches that are located Wilderness Areas and receive a lot of visitation. These caches form social trails that increase the impact on the area. They are associated with high traffic areas and cause major headaches for the Land Managers. My cache was there for almost one year and had been visited 15 times. The trail was beginning to form so I closed it down. I have found a number of caches without the GPS just by following these trails.
I don't think we need any more rules. I think we need a little more participation from the geocaching community. If there is something wrong with the cache then fix it. If you can't contact the owner. Or leave in the log that if any one is headed for this cache would you please bring the following....
I hope that I have been constructive. Sorry for the ramble.
Nuwati
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