klossner

At 7 years, you have to replace the battery at a cost of several thousand dollars. That supports your decision to purchase the non-hybrid.

The Jeep Patriot has poor reliability according to Consumer Reports. The only Jeep with decent reliability is the Grand Cherokee 2011 or later, a new design based on a Mercedes platform. I love mine but it gets 15mpg.

It's 1000 feet of net elevation gain. The trailhead is 160 feet above sea level and the tunnel is 1200 feet. Eagle Creek is one of the most popular hikes in the gorge, and rightly so. There are six active caches on the trail. You need a federal Northwest Forest Pass or equivalent to park at the trailhead.

The only rails-to-trails path with a tunnel I can think of is the Mosier Tunnels, but dogs are permitted there on leash.

Dogs on leashes are allowed throughout the Columbia River Gorge Scenic Area. They're also okay in most urban parks. Portland has a few wildlife sanctuaries where dogs are not permitted.

Today, sure. But the post you're responding to is nine years old.

It used to be, if I logged a cache but forgot to select the log type, I would get a nice message telling me I forgot to select the log type. Now I get the generic "an error has occurred" page.

To plan a group trip, I used to pull up the "all logs" page for each cache and search for the members of my party. That's how I knew who had visited. Now I can't do that -- the URL modifier "&log=y" no longer works. The TOS forbid me to ask the group to send me their "found" PQs. So I can't plan these trips anymore.

All of my "Profile Information" has disappeared. It was my list of first-to-finds and last-to-finds since 2003. It would take me several hours to recreate it.

I have the opposite problem. I just got email telling me my premium membership would expire in one week, but in fact I have one year and one week remaining: I pay annually by check well ahead of time specifically to avoid losing access in the middle of summer vacation, sigh.

No. Rock Creek Park is owned by the county, not the state. http://www.skamaniacounty.org/facilities-rec/homepage/parks/

Post a note on the forums at http://www.georegon.com.

You bought an annual pass that isn't needed until July 1 and they gave you only 11½ months on it? So we should take a scan of the pass so we can print a fresh copy whenever it fades. Hmmm ...

The $30 annual Discover Pass is on sale. But it costs $35 when purchased from "a license dealer, by phone or online." The only other way to buy it is "When you renew your vehicle license (beginning fall of 2011)."

That's Wild Canyon Games. They bought the old Rajneeshpuram ranch and have private (non-listed) geocaches as part of their offerings.

For the old vehicle use permit, DFW regulations specified: Vehicle Use Permits may designate up to two vehicles for use. Permits must be placed in full view from outside the vehicle. Please have the license plate number(s) of the vehicle written in the space provided on the permit. That web site has been taken down but, for the next few days, you can still see it in the Google cache. We can hope that the new permit won't impose this same restriction, but it looks like we won't know until July 1.

If you buy the expensive national park pass (the "America the Beautiful: National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Annual Pass (Interagency Annual Pass)"), it works anywhere a Northwest Forest Pass is required. But neither is sufficient in winter if the trailhead is a snow-park location.

4. Sno-Park permit ($40)

Back when it cost $5/day, Beacon Rock State Park was all about collecting the fees. I once emerged from my car to be greeted by a park ranger proffering a permit form.

For comparison, Oregon has 187 state parks. 25 of them charge a fee of $5/day. An annual pass costs $30 and can be transferred among vehicles.

I spent $100 for a Washington and Oregon Recreation Pass so I could use state parks. According to the WTA FAQ, I was a chump.

The "decrypt" option by an encrypted log no longer decrypts the log. For a cache like GC2H2RN, this is really painful.

One reason it will do that is if you're preparing for a trip and all the caches you downloaded are over 50 miles away. Switch from "Find nearest" to "Find by name" to see them. A less likely reason: if you've downloaded only geocaches that you have found, they won't appear unless you switch from "show unfound caches" to "show found caches." In this case, I use "find waypoints" instead of "find geocaches" to see them.

Oregon City is part of the Portland metropolitan area. From the air, it's all one big city. They were separate cities a hundred years ago but they and a few dozen others all grew together. I live here so I haven't stayed in a hotel here and can't recommend one. But when I need a hotel in another city, I start with a google search (in this case, "oregon city hotel") and look at the review sites (such as tripadvisor.com).

About the most fun I've ever had was four days chasing The Infinity Gaunlet. Dark Spirits and Mental Jiu-Jitsu Challenge Cache is not to be missed. Great puzzles, family friendly hikes. There are lots of great caves to explore but the locations are generally secret. One of the best ones is near Derrick's Other Treasure. The Adventures of W. Smith (Light in the darkness) is a favorite. Colorado Jones's caches are worth pursuing, especially Crack of the Gods, Lost Boys, and the mystery unpublished cache in the Coast Range. You could climb Mt St Helens and/or South Sister in August when the ice has cleared off. Hmm ... I can't help you with the foreign dialect. There are kayak trips, caving adventures, and gonzo hiking expeditions coming up this summer. Normally I would tell you to follow the PDX Geocaching forums but they've gone strangely quiet. Look for discussions in secret corners of Facebook.