meralgia

I add hints about 50% of the time when I'm publishing a cache. Sometimes after the cache has been listed for a while and a few cachers have had trouble, I'll either up the difficulty half a point or add a hint. (It's hit or miss if cachers who have gone the first time will see the hint before the second try or just use coords only and/or the old page they brought with.)

Perhaps you could find out which cacher left the leg, find the other five caches they did that day, and end up with a brand new barbie. ; )

I disagree with mandatory archival. I have four caches in an area that requires that you pay for parking. Unless people bike over or are willing to pay, they don't get visited very often.

A brand-new, full-sized slinky for my son--he earned it! We had just slogged through the muddy mire to find an island cache. It was recommended as a winter cache, but to the foolhearty, it was available at any time. Here's our log on http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...d3-dbdf85a7fb6c, GCYCKJ: "Thankfully I didn't lose my son in the muddy mire. He says that 'it was very, very, very, very ticklish in the muddy muck.' We giggled as we slogged over there and walked barefoot on the island. (I think it's the ONLY way to travel!) My son, however, says 'it was very hurtful for my feet.' We were able to find a little bit of path but ended up crawling under much of the undergrowth. I told N that we were briar rabbit and that we'd have to read it to him sometime when we got home. N found it first (thankfully one of us did!), and although I wanted to put my travel bug in it, I feared that nobody else would venture out to the island before it froze, so I held onto him for another cache."

I was out of my usual area the other day (white woman in an african-american man's park, basically) checking for places to hide a cache. Apparently I stuck out like a sore thumb whilst putting my hand in a tree hole above my head. The guys called out, "what are you looking for". I tried to ingore them (at first, I really didn't know they were talking to me). They called out again, "what are you looking for??" I thought about the best way to answer, and telling them "robins' eggs" didn't sound legit enough. So I pretended I was my son and said, "nuthin'" and apparently that worked. I walked off without further questioning (whew)!

I've got a cache that keeps falling out of the dang tree. I downgraded the terrain rating only to have a guy say, "I adjusted its altitude to where I am assuming (based on the logs) it should have been." No big deal, so I simply adjusted the description to read, "Apparently the cache can't decide on which terrain rating it prefers. It's been in both locations recently. Good luck... this is as close to a "moving cache" as we'll ever get!". Bad form??

I was looking for a letterbox the other day (same difference, right? )and found a squishy black, plastic bag. Sure 'nough... poo. It was pretty deep in the woods and not close to a walking path. Why bother to bag and tie it when it would decompose rather nicely on its own?

We were looking for a cache in a pine tree when a guy walked up and introduced himself as a fellow cacher. He said something like, "Are you sure it's in the pine tree?" I told him that's where my gpsr put me, and he motioned for me to come out of the tree. He said that it was his cache, and he came to check on it (on his way back home). After he redirected us slightly, my son found it quickly. My coords were about 60' off of his. I asked him if he was going to update the coords, but he said that enough people had found it as is, so he was just going to leave it the way it was.

Do you mean that somebody stole my film canister idea??!!! (and I'm guessing you meant to say "archived"?)

Have you been to a cache in a public garden during full bloom? What state is it in, and do you have pics, a fun story, or a GC#?

I do a mass download about once a month so that I have caches in hand if we find ourselves in an area unexpectedly. I "find nearest" and hope for the best. Sometimes the caches are archived, so we're out there without a paddle, so to say. But sometimes they're still there and it fills time quite nicely. It's also nice to have a broad area downloaded just in case we come across a nice park with no cache (and there's a good spot to place one). If my son and I have more time, I'll do a map search for an area where they're all in one spot (a large park or lake with a walking path is nice). I like the map view better than the list; I can get a better feel of how far I'll be walking and how many there are. I don't mind driving to an area; I just don't want to get in the car eight times if I can help it. I bookmark them from the map view, download them so I can print them, upload them to GPS and run. That way we have a little info on each of them--size, terrain, etc.

If you choose to have folks grubbing around your property looking for a cache, sure--go ahead and drill holes in anything you like. Good luck getting it approved by the reviewer, and don't be surprised when the tree huggers don't look for another of your caches.

Slight correction: this thread is about playdoh being food for animals and you should not put food in caches period. What children do with playdoh is not our concern. What animals do to caches is.

What is it with third grade? Anthony used to eat flies. Are flies food? I wonder if he caches! ; )

Try craigslist (if it's widely available in your area) to avoid the shipping and handling costs. We got our blue for $60 (after driving 10 minutes to the guy's house and caching all the way back).

Am I reasonable in wanting to grace my dinner table with flowers or am I helping the plant by allowing it to put more energy into the foliage... I digress. I don't believe in asking permission of inanimate objects--I don't ask the flowers in my garden if they'd like to be cut. Likewise, I don't cut flowers that aren't mine. I think the big issue here is what we're trying to teach our son: "if it's not yours, don't touch it." If you'd like to research who the tree belongs to and obtain their approval, go for it. Otherwise, find another place to hide the cache. BTW, how can someone be <i>humane</i> to animals when animals aren't <i>humans</i>. Hmmmm...

why do any of you want to screw trees? that's just sad, sick and wrong.

Technically, it's not wheat that could kill you but gluten. And if you eat ONLY wheat all day (which would be STUPID), you still won't die. You might get cancer, but that's about it. Get your fill of veggies, fruits, meats, geocaching, and gluten-free foods; you'll be just fine.

Are you sure this guy didn't get to it?

Oh yeah. We found bones. Rabbit bones. There was absolutely no flesh left on the bones, so we brought them home, bleached them for about four hours and spent the next few weeks superglueing the whole mess together:

i usually look for their gps and say, "i get the feeling you're looking for the same thing we are."

eventually i'll get one, but I've got a family that I'd have to ditch in order to run to a FTF. hubby might "let" me if it's during the day, but he gets concerned when i want to go at 11pm. ah well. i did, however, recently drop everything near midnight (with "permission") upon getting a tipoff (thanks again, you-know-who-you-are) that a moving cache was in my area. it turns out that the owner was going to archive on 10/31, and I was the last hider for that four-year legacy.

i found a wallet that was lost two years prior. when i called the guy at the last known address, he chuckled when i told him that his high school id and cash card were inside (albeit very dirty). the dollar or two in the wallet were quite disintegrated (my son was quite bummed about that). we cut everything up to be on the safe side and disposed of the wallet (which was too disgusting to save)--too bad. i offered to drive the whole mess out to him to reminisce, but he passed. ; ) We also found two checkbooks (both from the same owner) and tried to contact him at both address telephone numbers without success. my friend found a really nice scope while walking back from a trail just yesterday.