groundhog123
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Posts
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Posts posted by groundhog123
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For any caches on state right-of-ways, permission would have to be obtained throught the department of transportation. If you are in a larger city, there should be a a local Ohio DOT maintenance office nearby that maintains the rest areas and other highway appertenances.
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I will often leave a card from our outdoor camping club. This card has contact info for folks interested in joining a family oriented hiking/biking/canoeing/camping club in our area. I hope no one finds this offensive. I just use it as way to drum up interest since many people that geocache also enjoy the aforementioned activities.
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Thanks for the warm welcome. I'll definately check it out for any local events...been lurking the board for a few days and thought I should introduce myself.
LURK NO MORE!
Welcome to all the newbies. Now get out there and start finding some caches!
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Welcome. Are you planning on trading TBs?
What are TB's? and how do i trade them?
TBs are Travel Bugs and are trackable items owned by a cacher. Most TBs have a specific mission ie traveling the US or the world or getting to a specific destination. To learn more about trackables, click on the tab on the right side of Geocaching homepage that reads "trackables". There yoiu can find a lot more info on trackables such as travel bugs and geocoins. Good luck and have fun. Geocaching will take you places you never would have thought about going before.
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Guess I am having a stupid moment. For the life of me, I cannot figure out how to post pictures of a bugs travels after dropping it off in a cache and logging it. Thanks for the help.
I want to post the pics on the bugs page.
Never mind. Found it. Thanks!
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Guess I am having a stupid moment. For the life of me, I cannot figure out how to post pictures of a bugs travels after dropping it off in a cache and logging it. Thanks for the help.
I want to post the pics on the bugs page.
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I’m compiling a list of appropriate units. How does this look? Feel free to vote for your favorite or add/delete as you see fit! :-)
From Amazon (is there a better place to shop for these?):
Garmin eTrex H ($93)
Garmin eTrex Venture HC ($162)
Garmin eTrex Summit HC ($195)
Garmin eTrex Legend HCx ($210)
Garmin eTrex Vista HCx ($238)
Hey Jerie,
If you are thinking of spending as much as 238 bucks, I have an idea. Buy the Etrex H for your friends at $93 and then buy the Venture HC for me at $162. That would only be 255 dollars, just a wee bit more than the Vista HCx. You would be happy, your friends would be happy and I would be happy!
Just kidding. All units would be fine except I think the Etrex H has no mapping capabilities. All the others do. 238 dollars will buy a receiver that is no more accurate than a 93 dollar receiver on the other hand. If I am wrong, someone will set me straight. -
I did a little cache maintenance this afternoon on our TB hotel and pulled out a nail, an empty bubbles container and some random paper, as well as a few other pieces of generic swag that don't fit the theme of the cache. The generic swag gets placed in other caches. The trash goes in the trash. Why would a cacher leave a nail? I am pretty sure that rustynail didn't stop by. Why would a cacher ever leave garbage in a cache? It just doesn't ever make any sense to me.
The kind of person who would leave trash in a cache are the same types whose caches are placed in trash heaps (or have degraded to such a point, they might as well be). The only way to defeat these people is to stop spending our time at their caches and to clean up other's caches that they trash.
The nail could have been a junky cheap swag item, or it could be someone's unmarked swag item. The trouble with unmarked sig items is sometimes they are seen as junk. All it takes is a little ziploc baggie (you can get about 100 for a buck at the craft shop) and a sticker or a tag that you print out to make the item meaningful. The nail might be from a carpenter, construction worker, or someone who owns a bar called the "Rusty Nail". I'm not saying it is, but you can see how something you thought was trash could actually be a nice personal piece of swag if presented properly. I keep saying this on the forums hoping that I will convert people to this method of thinking....but who knows.
The empty bubbles container was probably full when they put it in. Those things leak like crazy and make a mess.
I have a few rusty nails. Actually they are the small dated spikes I removed from railroad crossties (No, not that were on the railroad). On the head, they have the year stamped on them, i.e. 31 for 1931 and so on. They are cool and are worth a few bucks to some people. Hope it wasn't a "nail" like that.
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Thanks guys for the great ideas.
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poor-womans' GPS mount... just cram it between the dash and the window!
BTW, briansnat, is it a Honda?
I've used that method in my Chevy truck and it works well, but it will not work in my wife's Mini or my daughters Datsun. The dashes are too small. Every time I have tried it in the cars, the unit just winds up in the floor. Maybe I drive a little too crazy sometimes.
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Just curious as to what some of you have made for a GPSr holder to mount on the dash of your vehicle. I have been trying to think of some way to build a holder for my Garmin Etrex but have been coming up with a blank. If someone has a good idea, I would like to read about it or see pics.
I did a search, but came up empty.
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i have seen some of these, there are some good ones out there
I like your signature cashking. There are plenty of folks out there that need to read and understand it.
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I think I can understand your frustration. One person with 650 is just over the top, I could care less what anyone else writes otherwise. There are a few cachers in my area with quite a few hides (less than a hundred), but I will often not concern myself with rushing to their new hides. Most are park and grabs which take one to uninteresting spots and which I despise for the simple fact that there is no challenge to them. Still, I will hunt them when there is nothing else to do. I only have 2 hides myself and am trying to come up with something very difficult and at the same time interesting and rewarding. But I also do not think there should be a limit. Most responsible cachers know their limits and will not oversaturate an area. The town I live in has no caches, so there are many opportunities for new hides.
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Well, a few days after making this post, I got my very first taste of urban living and the criminal world.
I was going with a friend of mine to Walmart at 10:00 at night. Just as I turned the corner leaving my safe haven neighborhood (or so I imagined) with constant safety patrols and such, I saw a police officer flying down the street with his lights on.
Then I saw him turn off his lights and pull in the back entrance to the complex where the 7-11 is. I stopped at the stop sign, then turned the corner. As I passed the front entrance to the 7-11, a pickup truck came out in the lane beside me.
Then I saw the cop pull out behind him and turn his lights back on. I stopped in the middle of the road not sure what the cop was going to do and there were cars behind me. The light at the end of that very short street leading to a very busy road was red. I see the pickup truck slow down, and then the door opens. The driver of the truck jumps out of the vehicle while it is still moving!!!
My mouth dropped and I started yelling to my passenger to lock her door, as I fumbled to lock mine. The cop runs after the moving truck trying to stop it before it runs out into the busy intersection. The guy that jumped out of the truck stopped in the middle of the street and looked right at me. I didn't know if he was going to come after us or what!?! Then luckily he started running across the street. I waited and saw the cop got the pickup under control, and saw that the guy was walking on the sidewalk, knowing the cop could not leave that abandoned vehicle in the middle of the street.
So I proceeded to drive down the street in the direction the guy was headed. I pulled into a commuter lot where I couldn't be seen by him and watched the guy go down into the woods on the other side, so I called 911 to tell the cops where the guy went because he was out of site of the first cop. Within two minutes there were about 20 cops in the area, and they told me to wait so they could get a statement from me as a witness. They had search dogs and the whole nine yards going after the guy in the woods. It was just like something I had seen on "Cops" a million of times but never imagined it would happen right in front of me.
What really made me think was how the night before at about the same time I was at a commuter lot alone just down the street looking for a cache. I think even though this scared the poo out of me, it was also a very good experience in the sense that it showed me that even close to home, even in a brightly lit area, things can happen. I think it will also help me to be more aware of my surroundings, now that I have seen some sort of danger. Having never been in danger ever in my life, I didn't really pay attention to what went on around me, but I think that this was just what my mind needed to teach myself that I do need to be very aware of what is going on around me.
I don't know what the guy did, if he stole the truck or robbed a store or what, but the cops were very appreciative and thanked me for helping lead them to him. They said that most people would just keep on going and pretend like nothing was happening. I can't fathom that. I can't imagine seeing someone try to hurt others or doing something bad and ignoring it. I believe that if you are a victim you have to fight back with whatever means you have, and in this case it was notifying the police where the criminal went. I can't imagine not doing anything to help if something is wrong.
Anyway, long story short, I learned a valuable lesson from this experience.
Good story Jen and thanks for doing the right thing. It is a shame that so many people are afraid to do the right thing. At any rate, keep caching and you will find a freind soon that loves the sport as much as you. With your training, I can envision you chasing down the criminal, tackling him, probably putting a few karate chops upside the head just as the cops arrive to throw the cuffs on. Now that would be a cool episode of COPS!
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I find it really curious when someone asks a question and then the question is answered correctly why do others assume that their experience is the definitive answer. Perhaps you have not had to declare anything leaving the country because of the difference in value between what I carry and what you carry. If you go to
http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/vacation...ister_items.xml
Don't recall anyone writing that your response was incorrect. Others were just giving their experience traveling abroad with expensive electronic equipment........Oh excuse me, I forgot, you carry much more expensive equipment than myself.
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So the entire state is coppermouth habitat, .....
So whats a coppermouth? Is that anything like a rattle-headed copper moccasin?
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The form you need is the Certificate of Registration for Personal Effects Taken Abroad, Customs form # CBP Form 4457, available in PDF format Here Make sure that you ahve a customs official sign it, and they will want toe se the items and verify the serial numbers. I usually don't get asked but I have enough stuff between cameras, and other elctronic eqipment to not want to pay tariffs. Good luck, I love PV and own property there at Bahia Banderas. Great place to visit.
I' ve never declared any of my electronic gadgets while traveling abroad. Never had a problem. I always carry my cameras, GPS etc. in carry-on. Been to Germany, Japan, Mexico, Bahamas and always zipped right through customs. Maybe I have been lucky.
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For a geocache container, particularly in a wet environment, I prefer to use a used quart-size or gallon-size ziplock plastic bag, so long as it does not have too many holes in it. And, for the logbook, I use the back of any handy receipt from a convenience store or from a fast food restaurant. For swag, I will often throw in a few french fries from a fast food restaurant or a broken toy or something that I was able to scrounge from a nearby dumpster.
NOT suppose to put any kind of food in a cache.
Don't you understand? He is being sarcastic. So many caches degrade to the point that many are found containing items almost as he describes. Many geocachers simply will not trade up or even. They take good swag and leave crap. That is the gist of the post by Vinny.
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Hmmmm.... I must confess... I got a bit carried away with designing a cache based on solar power, and..
I ended up designing and building a Star Gate type-device which is preset to transport the user to a spot on a habitable planet much like earth and 55,000 years in the past. If you leave the portal at the other end and walk just 140 feet straight ahead into the canyon which you will find there, toward the copper-tinted black wall, you will find the cache container in the small cave to be found there. Once you have signed the log, you walk back to the still-open Star Gate portal (the portal stays open for 20 minutes after you exited it) and whoosh, you are transported back to your starting point on earth. The Star Gate device, located in a wilderness area, is entirely powered by 34 solar panels and a small array of lead-acid gel storage batteries.
The only downside is that the entire project cost me $120,000 to build. Could you please raise the amount of the prize from $50 to about $200,000 to cover my costs and still have a bit left over for my efforts? Thanks!
Just curious. Of your over 2,000 posts, have you ever posted anything that was vaguely sane.
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04 Mini Cooper
68 Datsun roadster
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I logged my first geocoin today as "discovered". I made sure I was logged in in to my account and on the geocaching homepage, I clicked on "trackable items" in the column on the left. On that page, which list Geocoins, Travelbugs and Promotionals, you will be able to enter the geocoin tracking number and log your visit.
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Now, you can free climb a 1000 ft cliff if you want but you can't jump off of that same cliff with a parachute. Does that make sense?
Er....Ummm A tad confused here. Does this mean that you can jump off said 1000ft cliff without said parachute ?
And they allow this ? Or is there just no ruling on it at present ?
One of their reasons to not allow parachuting is danger to persons or property on the ground. Do you think that someone free climbing(climbing without a rope) poses that same danger if they fall?
Absolutely! Either case is a single object falling from the sky!
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I found a 30 pack of Busch beer cans buried in the snow near a cache in Utah. Whooray!!
hmmm.... Isn't that technically a cache?!!
More like a stash!
I have found several snakes, acres of poison ivy, devils thorns, catclaw briars, numerous ticks, thousands of fire ants and a couple of mudholes.
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HHHHMMMMM, this thread evolved from bushwacking sticks to hiking sticks.
Strange distance errors?
in How do I...?
Posted
The only thing I can think of right off is that maybe the unit does not have a clear view of the sky at all times. It could be obscured by heavy tree cover or maybe you are somehow shielding it from view at times, therefore it is not calculating the total distance. I know my unit will stop recveiving if I stick it in my pocket or walk into thick vegetation.