CoyoteWhips

Man, I can still remember the smell from winter '84. There was an inch of ice on the *inside* of the windows. That was a joyous little trauma to launch my Navy adventure. There's nothing like a few years of military service to make you appreciate being a civilian. I still got my boot camp blues in a box in the basement. Gonna try 'em on next year to see if they still fit.

Becoming a popular fad is not the worst thing that could happen to geocaching. It'll go through a CB Radio adjustment and leave better cachers in the ranks when the fad fades. Ultimately, exclusivity policies by any groups will not change the trend in any appreciably way. Best you can do is ride the wave or become increasingly irrelevant.

I have an eTrex Legend ($150 at Circuit City) I use in the car. It's good for finding the nearest highway. The benefit of paying a little more for the Legend, is that it includes a serial cable. I like to create directions in Google Earth, save the file, convert it with gpsvisualizer.com and load it in with EasyGPS as a track. Using the track, the compass arrow indicates my exits and turns, even if the road isn't on the base map. It's a bit complicated, but cheaper than buying the maps. I subscribed to the premium Google Earth, so I can directly load my track logs and review where I've been. I miss having a color screen. It'd be a lot easier to see a track in color while driving.

My phone easily goes two weeks if I'm not using it.

I found a Outdoor Products Cyclone hydration pack at Walmart, $30. I bought it as a daypack, but with my hammock in the mesh pouch and bedroll wrapped under the compression straps, it works well for overnighters. I've yet to see it in any online catalogs. Figure it's one of those odd big box store versions. Limited internal space, but it's got a 2L Cyclone bag, hip belt and comfy yoke shoulder straps.

The flip side of that is that rent a cops can easily turn it into a trespassing situation. Parked legally or not, if you don't leave when they ask, you're trespassing.

Oh, ok. I use them for work, but hadn't though to bring any on the trail. Thanks!

What are the hemostats for?

I'd originally bought my GPS unit to log my hikes so I could upload the tracks to Google Earth for friends and strangers. Turns out they're also good for geocaching.

I'm not a lawyer, so take this for what it's worth. In the United States, if the land is unfenced, unimproved and not posted, you are not trespassing until somebody comes along and tells you you're trespassing and you don't immediately leave. Of course, in some states, the owner is allowed to use a shotgun to tell you you're trespassing.

Yeah, I tried the same thing with another translator; it came up with "good dusting". At this point, we're not unlike those Muslims who were incensed by a tire tread that looked much like the script written name for Allah.

I'm thinkin' I'd look up from my GPS with the most anguished expression I could manage and whine, "I need more bars!"