K0BKL

Amen to all the comments. I maintain 14 caches and 3 of them were tampered with by animals without any food stuffs in them. Again, no to the food!

I have had to remove candy from a cache. Newbies need to be reminded that food of any kind in a cache is taboo! I have had trouble enough with animals bothering caches without the added attraction of the smell of food! Please! NO FOOD, EVER!

One can find interesting stories by making a news search for geocaching. I have, and it is fun reading all the stories about the hobby. I just now searched Google News and found some fine recent stories. Thanks should go to the reporters who write the stories. The Burlington Hawkeye (IA) has had some fine articles about the hobby.

Caches should be maintained, but it is hard to do that if it is hundreds of miles from the owner. I live within a half hour of all mine, and they do get serviced. I did take over one in a state park, but later pulled it to replace it with one in a county park. I have more locations where I could place them, but I would like others to use those locations. I want some to hunt, too. My view on contents is that the log is the thing, anything extra is just that. I have had to pull stuff out of mine because of dampness after a number of months with no visits. I replaced one whole cache because of dampness, which was the fastest way to clean it up. Mine are rural caches and will never have the number of visits of ones in city locations.

I have had to remove items from my caches when they became too damp. Mine are rural caches with few visitors. I have replaced some items after they dried out at home. I still have some items at home that I can place, when there is room for them, but leaving items for a year in a cache to get moldy is ridiculous.

I took over and later removed one in Geode State Park in Henry County over a year ago. Nathan Welch and I have been talking about putting one back in that park. Meanwhile, there is a cache in a nearby county park, which I placed. See "Maple Hill" which is under a maple on a hill !! At present, no caches are in either Geode or Lacey-Keosauqua parks in southeast Iowa

It took me 3 trips and a tip from the owner, before I found one cache! Too bad that this owner no longer has caches, but, I have used some of his better locations, with a slightly different hiding place.

For something strange near a geocache, check out my Maple Hill site. In the gallery you will find a picture of some bottles connected with tubing. The thing, whatever it was, was gone before I got around to check the site. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...eb-e3c00248ba79

I have removed the only cache which I managed which was in a state park, and placed a new one nearby in a county park. County parks in my area are much more numerous and much more used than Iowa State parks, which suffer from too little services, and for one year, even required fees to be paid! So, at the moment, I am not considering any caches in state parks at all. When the DNR gets their act together, and provides useful services, and allows legal caching without a lot of red tape, I may consider using state parks again.

I have disabled my cache in Geode State Park, and recovered the cache. I don't want it seized, as I understand that they have others. I have written the DNR, but have not had a reply to my letter.

As a cacher who has taken over a cache in a state park, I am interested in any new rules. Geo Welch has written to me about proposed new rules and said he would send me what he found. I have only one cache in a state park, the rest are in county parks. I hope I don't have a problem with them.

Another geocache is among the missing. Ammo box with lots of goodies, including a one-use camera, missing from Oakland Mills park, near Mt Pleasant, Iowa I notified the owner, and posted a notice. I was the last to find it, and visited twice since, so it has become missing in July

What is a phone booth, or for that matter, a pay phone? Those do not exist here in Iowa!

I carry a set of big binoculars and occasionally look through them. I am a birder, as well as a geocacher, and that satifies most folks.

I am a new geocacher, and I do it just for the fun, sign the log and TN/LN. My one placed cache has a few plastic rings that were laying around, but otherwise, just the log and pen/pencil. The hunt is the thing, not the loot. Batteries are short life, here in the hinterlands, they would rust before being found and used.