Firespinner

Edit.....just realized my comment belonged better in the "have you ever been caught out" thread.....moving it there

I did a keyword search for "hotel" and came up with tons of them. Here are some fo the ones that clearly state that you must leave a bug to take a bug are below ( with the state in brackets just in case there are prisons near you) GCHE7Z (Wisconsin) GCH04W (Wisconsin) GCED9B (Florida) GCJCBF (Minnesota) GCNXD5 (Oklahoma.....on this one it's very politely suggested) GCQKWV (Idaho....this one is for premium members only and the rules are even more strict!) GCQX8A ( New Hampshire) GCVHHD (michigan) GCXP56 (Wyoming) GC18235 (Kentucky) there are lots more, but these are good examples. if you need more, just search "hotels" if you have the keyword search option. If you dont, feel free to PM me with your area and I'll see if I can find some close to you.

From what I've learned so far from the web and these forums, a cache owner is NOT allowed to make rules regarding travel bugs. Now, this owner is probably looking at this as making rules for the cache/hotel but essentially they're making rules for the bug itself. I think the reason they do this is that they don't want it to constantly be empty because there are those who will take all the bugs in a cache, but honestly, a bug is supposed to moved by ANYONE, not only those with a different bug in their possesion. I would feel fine taking some TB's if I could help them move along their way, but I probably wouldn't take all of them so that the next person coming to the cache at least sees a bug or two when they get there. I've seen this talked about on the forums a lot and most people agree to liberate the TB's and ignore the cache owners requirement. I agree with this because the rules and nature of a TB. The one thing I'm surprised to see however is that in these threads, I never see suggestions to POLITELY email the cache owner and explain this. I'm sure many are aware and don't care, but some may just not realize that their cache rule infringes upon the rules of the rightful TB owner. I'm also surprised that reviewer would allow the cache to be posted like this. Reviewers should ask the cache owner to revise their rules to somethign like "please don't take ALL the TB's in the cache at once" or something like that instead of making a take-one/leave-one requirement on TB's which are by definition exempt from the swag rule.

I think a note was more appropriate than a DNF. I use DNF only if I made a reasonable hunt for it while carrying a GPSr. I have even been in the right area according to yahoo maps, didn't find the cache, but still didn't use the DNF button (used a note instead) because I didn't have a GPS unit with me and so I wasn't CERTAIN that it was the proper area. Since many cache owners consider several DNF's in a row to be an indication to get out there and check their cache, a DNF isn't warranted unless you were actually in the right area. "not worth the smiley" could have been taken 2 ways. It sounds like the poster meant it to convey that it was too hard for them. The other way it coudl be taken sounds like the way it came across to you, that the cache itself wasn't worth the hike. It could have been worded better, but a note is more appropriate than a DNF in this case. ****edited because I re-read the thread and had misunderstood the first post myself***

It's harder and it won't help for some of the harder hidden ones, but it can be done. I don't have a GPS yet, and I have 7 finds to my name. :-)

*laugh* Nope! Seriously, think about what would happen if they did an Xbox 360 remake or summat! After seeing your post, I searched! Lo and behold......I found Hunt the Wumpus downloadable for the PC! :-) It plays just like the original! I don't think I'm allowed to post the website in teh forums so I'll PM it to you.

I couldn't have said it better! I am very new at geocaching, but that doesn't mean I don't have anything of value to add to a discussion. And as a new cacher, the forums have taught me TONS. I have posted questions and gotten quick answers and great information that wasn't covered in the basic FAQ files. That is an invaluable resource for a newbie! :-) And....I have only 7 finds to my name and have had to take a break because of the holidays and a knee injury. Chatting in the forums, responding and getting responses has helped to keep me from going stir-crazy at not being able to physically get out and hunt right now. There are some topics that I've seen (and posted to) that have gotten filled with negativity and ick. There have also been topics that have been positive, friendly and down right fun to read and respond to. Basically, if a topic gets icky, I tend to back out of it. From what I've learned in my own life over the years, there are those who honestly do get entertainment out of arguements and debate and belittling others, and there are those who hate that attitude. Which ever you are, you can find what you seek in the forums. I back out if it gets negative because I've learned that I don't deal well with agressive debate or "my way is the right way" mentalilty. I only respond to things like that now if its a topic that really is important to me. Most of it, I stay away from. Just because something is posted doesn't mean we're forced to read it or respond to it. Ignoring the negative ickyness is the quickest way to make it go away. That lesson took me a LONG time to learn, but once I learned it, I was alot happier. :-)

I saw a great TB idea in one of the forums the other day. Someone had made a bicycle into a TB. They chained the bike to a tree with a combination lock. The combination was on a paper inside the cache and you were to take the bike as a TB, ride (or haul if you had a bike rack) to another cache, lock the bike to a stationary object and put the combination on paper inside the next cache. I had so much fun reading the log! It seems as the bike was traveling, the people taking it along were also fixing it up. :-) It was awesome. Also, I don't have any TB's out yet, but when I get my first set of TB dogtags, I am going to attach it to a tiny blank journal. My goal for it will be to travel to every state and get a sticker with that state's name on it, and then return to me eventually, full of stickers and hopefully some great stories. :-)

There have been a few times that I did not find the cache but didn't use the DNF feature. It was a personal choice though. In general if you hunt and don't find it, you should log a DNF. It doesn't mean the cache is missing. Multiple DNF's in a row might indicate a problem......or it could mean that its very well hidden. :-) I chose on a few to log a note instead of DNF because I was hunting without a GPS and therefore felt like DNF wasn't fair since I wasn't "officially in the game" yet. Ok...so i know there's no 'official' but I felt like i wasn't fully playing yet. lol.

I wasn't injured while geocaching, but I seem to have made an injury worse by geocaching instead of resting. Two weeks ago, my knee was slightly ouchy. It felt strained. I put a brace on, ignored it and went geocaching. It hurt a bit more after that. I ignored it further and performed in a firespinning gig. It got much worse. Now I am awaiting an MRI and my Dr is failry certain I have a torn ACL. It was likely already injured before the geocaching and firespinning because it was already hurting a bit and felt awkward, but i could still walk fine with the brace. After doing both, I can't straighten it out, must walk bent-kneed, it hurts all the time, and sometimes it tries to bend backwards or to the inside. :-( Now I just have to convince my husband to drive me to PnG's. as i can't stand the thought of a surgery and long recovery keeping me from the geocaching thrill. lol.

I am hoping to get a 400 when they reach local stores in my area. The thing with the cords...it was a mistake, yes it was irritating to lots of customers, but it is being fixed and any Triton you buy in a brick-n-mortar store can easily be checked for a cord before you buy it. :-) I don't know much about the unit myself as I don't own one yet, but a general rule of thumb I've learned with other forums is that while you should listen to the complaints, and consider the information, don't let it totally convince you NOT to do something. Basically in business, for every one irate dissatisfied customer, there are 50 more perfectly happy satisfied ones. You just hear the horror stories more becuase its human nature for 'bad news to travel faster" than good. A good example..... Last time you went to a mechanic for your oil change, did you like the service? If so, did you race out and post about it, tell your friends about it, blog about it, and how wonderful of an oil change it was? probably not...because you expected good service and so you didn't find it out of the ordinary that you got it. But if your oil change took 3 hours, you discovered the mechanic stole your change from your ashtray, his honky-tonk music disgusted you and he farted on your seats and the smell won't come out.....you would ABSOLUTELY complain, loud and long to the manager, your friends, and everyone you know and warn them to NEVER go to that mechanic. However, the very next customer might have gotten the nice smelling, polite, efficient employee instead of Billy Bob. Basically, the horror stories on here about Magellans are probably very real, but you don't hear all the good result stories to be able to counterbalance the bad.

I'm sorry this happened. :-( I hope some geocaching hero see's your car and calls it in!

oh! I am TOTALLY going to use this next time my husband starts harping on me about not keeping the car full! :-) Thanks!

I'm new here too....I haven't bought a GPS yet, but I've been researching them. There's TONS of good information on these forums regarding many different manufactures. From what I learned, I 've made the following observations: Tom Tom seems to be more specifically for driving naviation, road directions. etc. Your number one priorities for a GPS to use while geocaching should be ruggedness, waterproofing, waypoint storage, basemaps and what method is used to enter data into the unit. The two biggest brand names for handhelds seem to be Garmin and Magellan. And then its a HUGE debate. lol. There are die-hard Garmin lovers who will bash and trash Magellan. There are die-hard Magellan lovers who love to argue that theirs is better and Garmin lovers are wrong. It almost seems quite like the Mac vs. PC debate, thus it's very specific to the individual as to which is best. I would suggest you go to a couple stores and actually play with the ones they have in stock. My personal observations (and i'm sure there will be Garmin lovers who disagree) so far from my research is that you get more features and capabilities for your money with a Magellan, but you could sacrifice customer service if you develop a problem. Garmins will cost you more to get similar features, but their customer service seems to be the best. When it comes to working through a problem and having patience about troubleshooting, I am pretty good with that, so I have decided to wait and get a Magellan Triton when they ever show up in my local stores. My friend who is also new to geocaching has less tolerance to deal with troubleshooting and customer service, so she went with a Garmin because she was afraid that Magellan's customer service would make her too irate. I hope this helps. There are several links throughout these forums which give good info as to what features are best for geocaching. I hope this helps some.

I wasn't sure if this should be posted under GPS units, or under regional since it invovles both, but i decided to put it here because its' first and foremost about the Magellan Triton. Does anyone know where to get a Triton in Ohio? Have you seen them in stores yet? I want to get a 400. According to magellan's website their retailers in my area are radioshack, best buy, dick's sporting goods, walmart, sams club, and target. However, none of those retailers even show the Triton on their website and when I call, they all say that the Triton isn't in their system and they can't tell me if they'll EVER carry it! I know that it's early and that they are just now making it to retailers, but I have a hard time believing that they will get them soon if they don't even know yet if they'll carry that item. I want to buy it at a brick-n-mortar store, not online. I could travel anywhere in the Cincinnati, Dayton, Springfield and Columbus areas. Does anyone know of a store who is carrying them or who plans on carrying them in these areas? BassPro's website says they have them, but the Cincinnati store has no information at all and doesn't know if they'll get them. I'd greatly appreciate any info.

ah ha! Finally, i can stop worrying about incriminating information being in my desk drawer! General location: under the renovated soccer fields Exact location: N 39° 52.879 W 089° 95.323 Hidden date: 3/22/1980 Item: the decayng corpse of Jimmy Hoffa, complete with concrete boots, drivers license and passport. Thanks! It will be a wieght off my mind not having to worry about field agents finding this if they bust in my house!

the one's i've seen online are pop caps with a miniature centrifuge vial glued underneath. These are 'micro's" sometimes even called 'nano's". Basically you set the cap on the ground. If the vial is glued vertically, it pushes down into the earth. If it's glued horizontally under the cap, the person placing it puts a couple twigs, leaves or dirt over the vial so only the bottle cap is visible.

Unfortunately what you found was the result of a combined sewer system. This is a hazard that all geocachers should be aware of. I used to be a combined sewer investigator (co-op job...environmental engineering major). This occurs when a city sewer system combines both sanitary and storm sewers. In the past, many storm sewers (ie, the sewers that take rain water from streets, parkinglots or sloping driveways) were constructed to flow the collected water into the sanitary sewer system along with the household and business sewage. It was easy to use these systems since they were already in place. As populations increase, the amount of sanitary sewage increases also. The existing systems are reaching capacity just handling the sanitary sewage. Then the increase of parking lots, roads and paved surfaces cause an increased amount of rain water to be diverted by the storm sewer systems. During heavy rains, the storm water draining into these systems basically overloads the system and you get places like this where the combined water has no where else to go, so it overflows from the sanitary sewers. You get this happening more in what looks like natural settings because typically, the natural areas of creeks are lower in elevation than other places on the sewer system, so rain water continues to wash in to the system at higher elevations, combining with the sanitary sewage and this combined water outflows of the 'manholes' at lower elevations. I have seen this in what looks like pristine wilderness, and I've seen a 'sewer guyser' in the middle of a parking lot, complete with TP hanging from trees where it shot 25 feet in the air! Geocachers (and anyone who enjoys the outdoors in areas near cities towns or suburbs) should be aware of this. If you come across an area littered heavily with items that would normally be flushed down a toilet, make a note of the area (and you have that handy dandy GPS to get specific about it) and report it to the nearest city sewer department or health department. Many cities are currently mapping where their storm and sanitary sewers combine and where the overflows occur so they can begin to take steps to seperate them. And of course, if you come upon a scene like this....STOP caching in that location and let the cache owner know of the situation as well. Caching in areas like these are dangerous because of the bacteria and pathogens nearby. There are ways homeowners can help too. Check your downspouts to see where they drain to. If you have the kind that go into the ground, then consider changing to a 'splash downspout'. This is the type that have a little runner that lays on top of the ground and splashes the water into your yard. If yours goes into the ground, consider breaking that connection, capping the break with concrete or PVC and installing a splash. If you have an outside stairwell leading to your basement and there's a drain there, consider putting a 'roof' on the stairwell to limit the amount of rainwater going to that drain. Yet another reason that TP cache's are NOT a good idea.....because sometimes it's REAL TP with REAL pathogens/ diseases and bacteria....even way out in the woods!

I can totally relate as I am finding myself in a similar situation. I am a newbie (only 7 finds and still don't own a GPSr) but am already totally addicted. I am eagerly awaiting the purchase of my GPSr (waiting for a Triton to make it to a local store) and I was all gung-ho about racing out and geocaching immediately. But then my right knee started to bother me. I put a brace on it and thought it woudl get better. Two weeks now and it gives out, tries to bend the wrong way and hurts if I try to straighten it. I have a Dr appt on Friday (holidays are HARD to get an appointment!). I have decided that I absolutely CAN NOT stand to stop geocaching until its all figured out and healed, so I am going to do park-n-grabs as long as I am allowed to drive (or if I can convince my husband to take pity on me and drive me to them). lol. Now, the decision was easier for me, because i'm not near an important milestone. It would be harder if I had made plans for a specific milestone. I guess it comes down to which would bother you more in the long run?. It's obvious that you can't complete #1000 with both goals. Would it drive you completely insane to have to push your plans back until you're recovered....or if you go ahead and do PnG's will you later regret your 1000th find not being an extreme sport experience? Maybe you could do something else to make your 1000th just as memorable but in a different way. Like, get some friends to take a pics of you with your 1000th find on your crutches, or celebrate the 1oooth with a milestone geocoin or other reward to yourself, along with vowing to do the 5 terrain cache on your 1500th instead?

While i don't like those type, there's no rule against them. I guess it falls to "to each his own". I personally don't like them because they ADD to litter (ok...it IS a cache....but it looks like litter and would likely be treated as litter). It could give geocaching a bad rep if caches like this catch on and become more popular. I wouldn't want geocaching associated with creating litter. I would be afraid that someone would be CITO'ing and accidently throw it away without knowing it.

HOLY CRAP! I remember Hunt the Wumpus! I thought I was the only one that played that.! :-)

This one is complicated in my opinion (hope it doesn't disqualify for that) but its TOTALLY worth it. Its the best cake I've ever tasted in my entire life! I make at least 2 each holiday season and it gets scarffed down instantly. Yule Log Cake 1 cup sifted cake flour 1/4 cup cocoa 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 3 eggs 1 cup sugar 1/3 cup cold brewed coffee 1 teaspoon vanilla Line jelly-roll pan with waxed paper and grease. Sift flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl; set aside. In separate bowl beat eggs until thick and creamy. Gradually add sugar, beating constantly until mixture is very thick. Stir in coffee and vanilla. Fold in flour mixture. Spread batter evenly in pan. Bake at 375 degrees for 12 minutes. Sprinkle kitchen towel with powdered sugar, invert cake onto towel, remove waxed paper and roll cake and towel jelly roll fashion. Cool. When cake has cooled unroll, spread with filling, reroll. Filling 1 1/2 cups heavy cream 2 teaspoons instant coffee 1/2 cup powdered sugar Beat cream until stiff. Add instant coffee and powdered sugar. Frosting 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 1/4 cup strong coffee 1 cup butter 3/4 cup light corn syrup 4 egg yolks Melt chocolate chips with coffee over hot, not boiling water. Cool. Beat butter in small bowl until light and fluffy. Beat corn syrup and egg yolks into butter. Stir in cooled chocolate mixture. Note: I don't own a jelly roll pan (whatever that is...lol) so I use a cookie sheet lined with wax paper and oiled. It works just fine but when you roll the cake, the ends will need to be cut off since they'll be jagged.

This is something that I believe in wholeheartedly. :-) It's perfectly OK to not all think or believe the same thing. That's what makes the world great. :-)

Thanks for that pic! That helps a ton. :-)

I hadn't heard of those yet. (I'm still kind of new here). Anyone with pics of those next to any of the others would be great. I 'd really like to see the pics of several types in the same photo for comparison.