woodsters

good idea haffy...it is a lot of fun. This is our first week of doing it. We have found a total of 8 so far. Would of had 9, but that's another story. The 6 digit waypoint names (GC****) are easy for us to manage. We take the print out with us and then reference the id from the print out. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

I would at least like for the person who placed the cache to instruct on how to get to the parking location. Tried to go after a new one today and there were no instructions on where you could park. An access was through private property or on the side of the road, that didn't a parking place. Even tried a round about way on a trail for a shortways, but ended up in peoples backyard. But it was the only way of a trail leading in that direction that had a place for you to park. At least give some coordinates of where to park and don't make it in such a place where you could get hit or towed away. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

The Honda sedans are great cars. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Ordered some TB's a few minutes ago. What's been the experience of timeframe that you received yours? thanks! Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Hammack, design a seperate page with the photos and then go as if you are uploading a photo and instead of the graphic image file name, use the website URL of the page that you made. He may of done it differently. I like how Bartacus did his, but can't figure out yet how he did it. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Looked at the Honda CRV's back in 1998. They weren't right for us at the time, too small and then the quality didn't seem very good for the price they wanted. We looked at the Passports instead, but never could get a price we were happy with. So we went down the road and looked at the Isuzu Rodeos. Ended up buying one of those, fully loaded, for less than 22k out the door with tax tag and title. They wanted about 5k more for the Passport. We went back to the Honda dealership and raised the hood on one of the Passports and it said Isuzu Motors on it. My wife at the tiem was insisting on the Honda instead, because of the name. Once that she saw they were made by the same people and the difference in price, she abruptly changed her mind. It's funny how many other "car makers" don't really make the cars. Like Mazda's trucks are ford rangers. Isuzu's trucks are chevy s-10's and etc... Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Feel like your conducting criminal activity? My son and I were out yesterday and did 2 caches. On the first one we retrieved a TB which happened to be a Shrunken Head. Now here we are walking down a trail with a camera bag and a plastic bag with a shrunken head, and low and behold some guy comes by on a bike and starts talking to us. I'm thinking this guy probably thinks we are retrieving drugs or just buried a body and kept the head. Then driving down the road I look on the backseat and the shrunken head is sitting there in the bag. I start thinking, you know, this won't look very good if we got pulled over. My luck we will have Roscoe P. Coltrain pull us over. Then at the second cache, we were walking down a trail, headed back to the car and we pass an older couple. Here we are, with our legs all cut up from the previous caching site thorns and a mile away from the car. I can just imagine what they were thinking. How about you? You ever start to wonder how people view you while out caching? Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Thinking of putting a camera in our first hidden cache. How many of y'all had pictures that were inappropriate, at least to post? lol Next their will be a game of "adult" geocaching... Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

If you want value and you want a vehicle that wild the best resale value around, then get a Jeep Wrangler. I have a 2000 Jeep Wrangler and get around 20 mpg. You can buy a bike rack for the spare tire in the back or get a hitch and a hitch mount rack. Plus you can go topless when you want. Doorless when you want. My in laws are nearly 60 and bought one this past fall to pull behind their RV. They love it. Wasn't sure of how they were going to react when I bought mine, because they didn't like my wifes Chevy Tracker that she had bought in '99. But they liked mine. I think it's because her father knows Jeeps dependability and ruggedness. plus when you drive around and see other Jeepers, you have to wave to them, it's the law. It's a Jeep thing, you wouldn't understand. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

wvabackpacker, I think he meant days down the road. Perhaps he is traveling somewhere and finds the cache details here on geocaching.com. Then while on vacation or something he goes and gets the cache(s). When he returns home to enter his finds on the site, he might not remember the exact zipcode of where it was. I believe Eeyore and Shadow answered it pretty much by using the GC**** code on a search. You could also do it by state, then local city and find it that way. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Congratulations! We had our first find this past sunday and then just got back from our 2nd and 3rd finds. Just the son and I went out today. Made it a little easier and quicker without the toddler. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Son got home from school today and wanted to go. So we went out and got 2 done. Put around 4 miles on our legs between the 2 caches. Got a travel bu and dropped it off in the other cache as well. Now we are up to 3 cache finds ! in less than a week. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

I looked at that Steve's Digicam Review and he knows what he is talking about. I would recommend staying away from Nicd batteries and go with the Nimh. Don't know much about the Nimh, but I can tell you from experience in Law Enforcment and the use of radios with rechargeable Nicd batteries, that they degrade quickly. The problem is people placed them back in the charger after they used them and even if the battery wasn't dead. The Nicd's have a memory in them somewhat. They need to be drained all the way down and then fully charged to prolong their life. Of course this didn't happen and I guess they felt it was easier or cheaper to continue to buy batteries than buy a battery drainer. Those Nimh batteries on the page said they can be charged up to 1000 times. So if you look at from the standpoint that an 8 pack of duracells or energizersrun about $5 sometimes more. The charger charges 4 batteries at once. So you are getting 4000 batteries basically. 4000 divided by 8 (8 pack) is 500 packs of batteries that the rechargeables will compare to. Hmmm...Get a charger, 4 batteries, car charger and more for $75 or less. Thats 15 packs of batteries. Still got 485 more to go to catch up. Rechargeable are definitely the way to go in the long run. As long as you take care of them. And then if your rechargeables flop out on you, you can always purchase more for a fraction. I have rechargeables and a charger for my digital camera. I do believe those batteries last longer than the Duracells Ultra I use to use in them. You could also throw a pack of batteries in your daypack when going out for "just in case" . Of course the rechargeables are usually 4 batteries and I know my GPS takes 2 batteries, so you will have an extra pair with you anyway if you take them. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

quote:I also have one daft question - I assume with the cheaper models, you enter the coordinates from the website and drive to the location and then the device will guide you to those coordinates, yes? So why would I want a device with waypoints? These are not given on the website are they? Otherwise you would be following the path of the person who created the cache instead of making your own personal way to the cache? Frank, First of all the margin of error is low. But I guess it depends on you. When I enter the coordinates, I double check it. What I have done, and have read that some others do is: I print out the page of the cache I want to find. I then input the coordinates into my unit manually. You can do this immediately or later. Or perhaps right before you hit the door. I drive to the location on the print out. I take the print out with me as well. Sometimes people will even put the coordinates of the parking areas, which is cool. The printout sometimes tells you which way to head from there. On the unit, you just set it to go to the waypoint(coordinates) of the cache. You head that way till you get relatively close and then start looking for it. The waypoint is the actual spot or coordinates of the cache or anyother place. It's just that, a place. Others spoke about track logs. They track the way they went. Personally I wouldn't care which way someone else went. Right now, I don't see the point of me tracking the way I go, as I am only seeking out the cache. If you were doing some studies for the USGS like Dustyjacket, then it's more feasible in my eyes. I've only been to a few cache sites, but i've read many logs on here and the major concensus is that most of them are pretty much a guided way to them, usually by a path most of the way. And then the last small leg may have you bushwacking. So for the most part, you will be following in the tracks of others. Of course I'm sure people bushwack their own path. lol I'm sure some of the higher terrain difficulty paths may be a little different though. Entering the digits manually is very easy. Most people say they only do one a week normally. Or average that amount. I don't see why entering them manually would be a chore or hassle. If they enter only one or several a week, it is very easy. Another thing is the units store different amounts of waypoints. The Gecko 101 stores 250 waypoints while my Gecko 201 stores 500. A bunch of the others I was lookign at only went up to 500 as well, but they were more expensive. The Gecko 101 would of been more than enough for just going out to find a cache on the weekend. I have 7 in my system right now. One of them is my house. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Og's Outfit, No we were on the right track. There was no other way too it. I noticed that people stated you had to climb the hill after rereading their logs on here. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

That is a good number in one day. My son and I are going to possibly go out by ourselves this weekend and see what we come up with. We went to do one last night. All 4 of us. and we got stumped. Actually according to the GPs we were about 130 off of it, but we were stopped by a very steep hil. Wasn't sure if it was up there. Went up about 15 or 20 feet but it was getting very difficult with the thorns and brush and all and was a little muddy from the rain in the previous days. Add the fact that the mosquitos were very bad, we called it quits on that one. Came home and saw others logs that it was on top of the hill. So hopefully he and I can go get that one this weekend for sure if not sooner. Will be easier without the toddler. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

I agree 100% Kite & Hawkeye.... We haven't used the WAAS on ours. Does it really make that much of a difference if you are in a WAAS area? Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Given a typical weekend, day or evening, how often do you cache? How many do you normally hit in a day? On the weekend, how much of the day do you spend caching? Come one, tell us you Cache junkies. Enquiring minds want to know! Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Ok, now we are getting somewhere. I agree that a cable can be useful for different things. But to just go out a hit a cache or two on the weekend it's not really needed. The way you work with the Pocket PC or PDa Dusty makes sense for what you do and for the USGS bit. Team Shibby, see my post about 4 posts up. I answered that already about entering it manually. As far entering a whole day or weekends part, how many caches do you hit on a typical day? Or weekend? Thats a good question for everyone, think I will start a topic on that. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

No recommendations on the cable. But I feel your sentiments about the trouble you had. Be glad, yours wasn't a $430 canoe trailer! I ordered one after having talked to the manufacturer and was told a week and a half I would have it. After 2 weeks of nothing, I called the online place I ordered through (not the manufacturer) and I went throught the wait while they called. Then a short time later, the girl comes on the phone and said it was shipping out the next week which would be 3 weeks after I ordered it. They didn't ship any out for a 2 week period to work on another project and just let the orders build up. They didn't even bother to notify anyone. And they still didn't send it on the day they promised in the end. It got here finally though...4 weeks later. Good luck on the cable! I'm sure there is a reputable place somewhere out there. May pay a little more. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

elfranko, thanks for letting us in on the budget! With that amount you have more options. You can stil lget a basic unit or you could opt for one at your budget level with a bit more stuff like the legend they spoke of. You have to decide for yourself as to what you will need and how much you want to spend. Dusty, that's why I take the printout with me on the trip. If I can not find the cache, then I check the coordinates on the sheet with what I have entered in my unit. Also when entering them, I always reread them to make sure I have them correct, before putting the next one in. It's not brain surgery. Yes there can be errors done when entering them and I could originally overlook. I am human. But data cables can malfunction as well as computers and the GPS itself. I really don't think that whether I've found 20, 50 or 100, a data cable is not a necessity. Honestly I don't need another cable hooked up to my computer as it is. I already have a printer, scanner, webcam, digital card reader, etc... Just adding more to the computer adds more headache and a cause for conflict. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

I would go ahead nad have him sign up with his own account and enter as well. If he decides not to continue, he will just merely be lost in the shuffle... Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Dang GPS_Brian (like the name by the way), I couldn't find anything you said to "argue" or "disagree" with. I stated the 7 or 8 in 10 minutes and that was being generous. I was counting the time I took to print out the pages also I think. chii, you are right as well as everyone that stated about the Legend being the price it is. At least the "in the longrun" price. Rebates tend to change our attitude towards things. We see $50 mail in rebate and we just think $50 off the price, which are 2 different things. If someone was on a budget and $149 was "pushing it" already, then an original purchase of $199 is out of the question, even thought in a couple months you should have the $50 back. One could wait and try to scrounge the $50, but it may take them longer than some to do that and the rebate will be over as you stated it ends in July (July 6th I believe). I agree the Etrex Yellow Basic model would probably be a good one to start off with. I think it and the Gecko 101 are probably 2 of the lowest priced around. They are lowest priced of Garmins at least. Guess it all depends on what you want with it. I know when I was looking around on the internet at them and asking for suggestions that many people suggested the Gecko 201. Some of the more experienced people liked the smallness of it and I have to admit it is small. Fits in my pocket easily like my tiny flip cell phone. The screen is small as well, but amazingly has a good resolution with it. I was worried about that at first as the size didn't matter. It all depends how you want to go about it. If you want a map on your screen then get one with the maps. Speaking of that, there probably needs to be a little clarification. When they say maps, they mean actual road map type. The ones that aren't map GPSr's do have a "map" feature ,at least my gecko 201 does that once you input the waypoint it will plaace it on the map, but there are no indicators as to what road or anything on there. It's a blank screen with your waypoint and your home base. Mine has a little man that walks as you move on it. The closer you get to the waypoint, the closer he walks to it on the screen. But it won't tell you if you are on a road or anything or a trail. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

Also, you are correct. Updating could be a costly thing later on. So why buy one that costs more? Also the fact that the person may do it once and hate it. Or that they may no longer be able to do it. I would rather be out $5 than $10 in the long run. And when they upgrade, they may want something bigger and better than the one you stated they should get. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com

I agree Brainerd. We were at one that was down a flat dirt road about a 1/4 of a mile. Maybe a tad further. But the cache was not right off the road. You had to "bushwack" around a 100 ft or so to get near it. It was rated a 1/1. Terrain was more of a 1.5 in our opinion. It was not strenous, but as you stated, a wheelchair couldn't get to it. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com