smithdw

We have one here in southern Oregon that can only be done in the dark. It's called Afraid of the Dark (GC10E7). I did it last year and it was a lot of fun, especially with lightning off to the east that night.

I look at almost all the cache logs within 25-50 miles or so almost daily. It's interesting to see what someone took/left and what they write up in the log sometimes. I would like to have people write something more besides "Found it" though. Also, I read the logs for caches that I haven't found yet before going out into an area to see how much difficulty people have had in finding a particular cache. Another reason is some signature items are really sought after by everyone in the area, so if they put one in a cache that I haven't found yet, then it motivates me to go and find that one. One recently was a 8-way multi-cache that I hadn't found yet, but the owners had put in a really cool signature item that I really wanted to get. It took about 7 hours to finish, but was well worth it.

Ok, I understand now. I haven't loaded any other maps into my Garmin III+, so I can't speak for any other map sources. I do know that the roads, lakes, etc. are off from the actual location. I'm not sure by how much, since I really don't pay much attention to what the gps has for a map except for the general location back to the nearest highway from out in the woods somewhere. Most of the caches I have been to, I just jump in the Jeep and start driving towards where the waypoint is. I get some turns wrong and end up on dead ends sometimes, but I have a lot of fun anyway.

One thing that you might do is find a nearby benchmark that has been placed or verified using a professional surveying type of GPS. There are several benchmarks around where I live and their accuracy is much better than the commercial GPS's.

Just noticed the question: The m125 uses a different connector for the cradle than the m105. You can get a standard serial cradle for the m125/m515 though. I saw them at our local Staples store. Also there is a web page at http://www.angelfire.com/super/m505/ which details modifying a USB cradle so it has a standard serial interface also.

At work I checked out a Palm m515 with a Palm portable keyboard and additional hotsync cradle. "I am going to use it to store the LAN & user info and phone system info" (Yeah, right - MobiPocket here I come, heh, heh) I have one cradle at work on my computer there and one at home. I also went out to Staples and bought a aluminum case made by RhinoSkin that is only slightly larger that the Palm itself. It is padded on the inside, folds open to use the Palm without having to remove it and fits in my pants pocket. I figured that if I'm going to be carrying around a $500.00 Palm & 64MB memory chip in my pocket out geocaching, I wanted something more durable than a plastic cover or thin leather or nylon case. I would highly recommend one. BTW, I love the TFT active matrix color display on the m515. Also, the m125 uses the same connector as the m500-m515 so they use the same keyboard and hotsync cradle. They do make a serial cable that you can connect to your GPSr serial cable, but I haven't tried that out yet. I really love having up-to-date cache info and logs for all the caches around my area in one little device. Really cool. I can look up cache info, go find the cache and then type in the log for the cache all right there on the hood of the Jeep.

I have spent probably $35,000 on computers over the last 25 years, $15,000 on tons of tools, $5,000 on books, and probably a lot more on several other hobbies and interests. I spent about $330 on the Garmin III+, and probably $100 or so on the caches I've placed and for a label maker and other stuff which isn't necessary, but makes the cache clues a lot easier to read. I spend about $100 or so extra on gas and about another $50-100 for munchies and extra pepsi per month. So far I've found about 170 caches, had a whole lot of fun, seen many different places that I would have never seen without trying to find a cache in that area, met quite a few really good people that I would have never met, put about 10,000 extra miles on the Jeep, spent several evenings out finding caches in the middle of the woods until 10-11:00 (which irritates my girlfriend), found out a lot of history of our area because of the many virtuals, and lost about 40 pounds, reduced my triglycerides by 1/2, reduced my blood pressure by 35-30 points, dropped my blood sugar readings by 30-150 points, and reduced the amount of diabetic medications I have to take. Overall I am in much better shape that I was at the beginning of the year which is priceless. Geocaching to me is something to do that is a tremendous amount of fun and I get a lot of health benefits because of it. One note, a lot of the caches in our area that I have found require some hiking to get to and a lot of them are out in the forests, not in town where you can drive to within 10' of them. I admit we have quite a few town caches, but I really like the ones that are out in the middle of nowhere surrouded by trees and the fresh air.

I would not move it. Last week I was at several caches here in southern Oregon and was surrounded by mosquitoes. The last cache of the day was found at 9:30PM and I had sprayed myself with Muskol DEET repellant quite heavily. The bugs just found every place that I had missed. Mosquitoes and other insects are just part of the summer months. They are most active at dawn and at dusk, especially when you are carrying around a bright flashlight to attract them even more. Just spray down with repellant. The insect suit that was mentioned sounds like a very good idea.

I would not move it. Last week I was at several caches here in southern Oregon and was surrounded by mosquitoes. The last cache of the day was found at 9:30PM and I had sprayed myself with Muskol DEET repellant quite heavily. The bugs just found every place that I had missed. Mosquitoes and other insects are just part of the summer months. They are most active at dawn and at dusk, especially when you are carrying around a bright flashlight to attract them even more. Just spray down with repellant. The insect suit that was mentioned sounds like a very good idea.

I added these caches to my watch list, except for Need a Ride. I'll help keep an eye out for them.

Any time you need some maintenance on your caches, give me an email. Glad to help out.

I played around a bit with the coordinates. At this location: N42 13.450 W121 47.900 the first 25 caches are within 0.9 mi

Sorry about the productive statement. I think that it might be a good idea to turn off the date stamping too. We normally use the camera for other things like taking pictures for our website and of our son. I just was slightly irritated about someone questioning my honesty and integrity. I have been through about 4 criminal and other background checks for things like my job which requires federal background checks, adult foster care, ATM servicing (seeing about $50K in cash in an ATM inside a bank is quite a sight) and our sons adoption. I regard myself as being very honest. I would never fake a pic just to get a cache. Now on to more fun finding and placing more caches. BTW, the Klamath Falls/Medford area has a ton of caches in case anyone wants to find a whole bunch at one time. Everyone is welcome to try out some of our sometimes very unique clues and caches. There is about 310 within a 100 mile radius of my house, with about 100 or so within 20 miles.

I guess that some of you have a lot of extra time on your hands. The reason that the date was wrong is that the camera needed to be reset after the batteries died a couple days earlier. At the time the picture was taken, I didn't notice that the date/time was reset to it's default. We didn't even have the camera until I gave it to my girlfriend on her birthday in August of 2000. In case you want to know, it's a Kodak DC280. If you REALLY want to, I can drive over to the other side of town and take another picture with the date and time set correctly. Like I said, you people have too much time on your hands. Go out and do something productive with your lives. Me - I'm just having fun finding geocaches in my spare time when I'm not working and taking care of my family and my house.