PurpHaze

Great tale... loved it. I've had one recently investigated by the sheriff's bomb squad and I'm still waiting for that knock on the door from the FBI or Homeland Security... but who the heck would want to blow up a lousy sign? Hopefully they have caches near GITMO that I can look for.

Scare the Holy Heck out of them... then come clean and have some fun together on the Group W bench.

Four of my favorites: (1) empty Protein Shots containers (my wife is into them) with camo tape around them. They're tubes and approximately 1-1/2" around and 5" long. I classify them as a large micro container and they will hold small items. (2) inexpensive water bottles from the 99 cent stores. These are the types where the entire lid unscrews (no sippy hole on top) and they're pretty weather resilient. I remove the lid attachment and camo tape them. (3) empty medicine bottles of all types/sizes. They're practically water tight and can be used as micros to smalls. Again, I use camo tape to disguise the natural colors. (4) empty paintball tube containers. Can be found at Wallyworld for about $2. All of these containers can be converted to "hangers" with the addition of wire taped to the outside or they can stand alone depending on the hide. I prefer camo or colored Duct tape for all my caches because it's easy to use, molds to the containers and doesn't chip away from the plastic surfaces of the containers like paint will. After a very short time the colors/camo fade a bit and they look real natural.

Firstly... although I've seen some local "geopolice" who rant about a "10% rule" where one should hide caches at the rate of 10% of their finds to help out the geocaching community as a whole... there are no set rules. I hide caches while my wife does not hide very many. So be it! Secondly... there are several ways in which to handle caches that you are moving away from. Many suggestions have already been given. We had a prolific cache hider move from our area to Oregon last year. Some caches she took with her since the containers were so unique and she wanted to place them near her new home. Many of the areas where these caches use to be were then taken over by local cachers who hid new caches in the area. Other caches were adopted by local cachers who have taken the challenge to keep them going. Still other caches remained under her ownership from afar and when the caches suffered from excessive DNF's she just archived them. Many of these areas are then checked by local cachers who will look for geo-trash, remove it if necessary and then take over the area with new caches.

I've seen some strange logging stuff out there and it's all dependent on the cache owner. I've seen some caches in the Las Vegas area where the cache owner will log a find when they go to one of their caches to do maintenance. In my opinion... that's very strange. I agree with the others where a note would be appropriate. I've seen "bug drop", "bug retrieval" and "bug dip" (where the person is with someone else who hasn't found the cache yet and is dropping/retrieving a TB or coin just to get it some mileage before moving it along to a different cache). I too had a cache with the same exact coords that I changed (contents and container) in honor of the passing of our longtime canine friend. Since the original cache hadn't been out there very long I posed the question to one of our reviewers. He suggested just changing the cache name and indicating to previous finders that it was OK to revisit and log again as a new find. That's what I did and all was well.

In all honesty... until this thread and the responses it has generated from reviewers I had no idea that we could even submit potential traditional cache coords to you or Krypton to check and see if they would be too close to the final stage of a multi or puzzle cache. I will avail myself of this service in the future to save some grief. That indeed, is a very nice gesture of concern from the cache owner! I know it would be a PITA but when dealing with urban multis and puzzles... to have a shorter leash on them would be nice. When I attempted to set out two new traditional caches along a popular walking/biking route only to have them disallowed because a puzzle cache had been placed there with its starting coords over 1-1/2 miles away it totally discouraged me from setting any more caches along that pathway. Perhaps one indicator of multi/puzzle caches in an area is a blank spot on the map and asking the question, "Why aren't there any traditional caches in this area?" and then submitting potential coords to you guys. As always... thanks for the tremendous work you guys do for the rest of the caching community.

Sheesh... I don't believe I was TELLING anyone HOW to do their job. I was expressing that I know how tough a job these volunteers have... especially when inundated with new cache hides. I fully appreciate these volunteer reviewers because without them we wouldn't be able to have the fun we enjoy. Just another cryptic response from the gods to be when concerns are raised??? Perhaps... since this subject can be such a heated discussion... the guidelines to submitting a new cache should be updated to include all this great advice regarding submitting coordinates to a reviewer, etc. when there's the possibility of interference from a multi or puzzle cache? The guidelines address supplying additional info and how to appeal a cache but nothing regarding this discussion. Might save some from receiving the file notice of cache death???

Whatever floats your boat. Some like them... some don't.

I'm backing my San Joaquin Valley brothers and sisters on this issue. I've encountered the problem of trying to set a cache too close to the final leg of a puzzle or multi-cache several times which can be up to two miles away from the starting coords. There are many areas where a great hide might be set but I've passed them up because puzzles or multi-caches are too close. The reviewers have a hard enough job as is... especially in a state as populated as ours... to be reviewing potential cache sites. I'll just move along to another area where "what I see (on the map) is what I get" and place my caches there.

Our Northern California volunteer reviewers (Nomex and Krypton especially) do a fantastic job and I've never seen a submission take anywhere near 24 hours to be reviewed. Sometimes there are questions involved or other things (like being too close to the final stage of a freaking puzzle cache with starting coords nearly 2 miles away) to consider... and we don't always see eye to eye... but they still do a great job. Had the opportunity to meet them at GW-VI and it brings everything into perspective... they're normal people with normal lives VOLUNTEERING their time so we can have some fun. Weekends are especially busy around here and I've seen caches published by the volunteers really late on Friday/Saturday nights. Additionally, I've had caches published as early as 5:00 am as at least one of the reviewers is an early riser. Thanks guys!!!

Boy... if someone's getting Hedera helix (referred to as English Ivy here in North America) confused with poison ivy... need to do some research. (Just good ol' "kiddin' around" fun now... don't take offense.)

Don't know what the official explanation is but some cachers prefer to go "stone cold" without any hints or other spoilers contained on the log page. Some cachers use paperless caching and programs that automatically decrypt encrypted hints and other things... some prefer to use paper and decrypt while on the trail. Many reasons for/against encrypting. Some cachers will go through a "step-up process" where they use no encrypted info to start with, proceed to decrypting the encrypted information and then on to reading past logs for little clues to a cache's information. Guess it all depends on what one wishes to accomplish with a certain cache.

That's exactly what happened to me when I was a newbie and had made my first FTF. I was so overjoyed that I took some "revealing" pictures and added them to my FTF log. The owner politely emailed me that although I had them encrypted most cachers immediately immediately decrypt everything and that the pictures would give away too much. He politely asked me to delete them from my log which I did and it helped with my learning curve. We're now good caching friends and laugh about the whole thing. Since the cache is so creative and my camera was better than his he asked for copies of the pictures in their original size.

Here's a picture of a cache in Shafter, CA which is one of my favorite finds. Some have found the large container not realizing that you open it up and although it's empty inside there is a magnetic keyholder stuck to the upper inside in the shadows that contains the log. It's called "George of the JunkMail (GCX0A4) http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/21733...host=good-times

One of the hardest caches we located was a fake tortoise just sitting among some landscape rocks up towards Yosemite. We must of walked past it ten times before slowing down and actually seeing it. It didn't have an orange back like the one in your picture... rather a green/tan back similar to the tortoise's in our area.

One of the worse areas we found for "missing TBs/Gcs" was this past spring when we were in the Las Vegas area. Seemed that 90% of caches that had them in their inventory were actually not there. These tended to be the ones closer to town and not those out in the boonies where a good 4X4 and some hiking was involved. We're sometimes a little leery about dropping TBs/GCs in caches where a bunch are in inventory yet nothing is actually in the cache. But... could just be a combination of things... newbies not correctly logging their TB/GC finds, cachers on vacation where it will take them awhile to make the proper logging, TBs/GCs logged in/out of the wrong caches, muggled caches and yes, even stolen coins and TBs. My wife and I are in the habit of indicating on our find logs that there were no TBs/GCs in a particular cache that had them indicated in their inventories. We've received many emails from TB/GC owners thanking us for investigating a cache where their traveler was located and indicating that it wasn't there. Some have showed up later in other caches while some just totally disappear.

Maybe it's akin to some cachers that use stamps or stickers to LOG their find?

Please forgive me if this topic has already been addressed here but I didn't have the time/desire to search all the topics. There's been a lot of confusion and problems with the Garmin Communicator program interacting with GPSrs that do not use memory cards, have internal memory and connect to computers via a serial port connector... such as the Garmin Legend H that I own. There also appears to be a lack of info coming out of Garmin and even incorrect info, such as telling us to remove the memory card (when there isn't one) and plugging it directly into a card reader. Some folks are experiencing problems with computer card readers and printers acting as a Garmin unit and creating communication errors between their computers and the GPSr. Here's a work-around and you don't even need the Communicator program. 1. Download a copy of EasyGPS (other programs may work as well but this is what I used) and install it on your computer. 2. Connect your GPSr to your computer via the serial port connector. 3. On a Geocaching map page click on the cache you want and pull up its main cache description/log page. 4. Click on the "GPX eXchange" gray box (may only be available to premium members) and a "File Download" box appears with the cache as a GPX file. 5. Click "Open" in this box and your EasyGPS program opens with the cache listed in the Geocaches area. 6. Right click on the cache line and choose "Edit Geocache" in the box that appears. 7. An "Edit Geocache" box appears and you can rename the "Waypoint" to what you'd like to call it such as "Onions", "Bridge", "WtrTower", etc. but you are limited to 10 letters. (If you want to keep the identifier as it appears in Geocaching then skip steps 6-8.) 8. Click "OK" and the editing box disappears. 9. Go to the top bar of the program and click the "Send" button. When the "Send to GPS" box opens click "OK" and the cache waypoint is sent to your GPSr with its new name you gave it instead of the Geocaching "GC" identification.

Join and support the cause. Although new to geocaching I realized within three days all the listed advantages of becoming a Premium member. We got it for me, my wife and our 20-year-old son who goes out with us so we're all on the same page.

Depends... My wife and I both own Garmin Legend H GPSrs and downloaded the Communicator plug-in. We both have the serial port to GPSr cable. When we tried to download a single cache waypoint from the mapping screen to them we'd get the notorious "Windows Error 21" and it always showed drive "F" instead of the COM1 connection. Even using the drop-down menu and manually changing it to COM1 did no good as it errored out again to the F drive. We knew that on both our computers (she's running XP and I'm running Vista) the F drive was one of our memory card slots. Because her computer is older than mine and has an add-on front card reader she popped it out effectively disconnecting it from the computer and everything started working fine. However, my computer has permanent card readers and this is not possible. I'm waiting for a reply from Garmin but I won't hold my breath. We're both using EasyGPS also and this program communicates just fine with my computer.