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Thanks for the all great links!

I guess terraserver-usa.com isn't too bad. What else it good?

Bought out by trails.com. http://www.topozone.com/ No more free topo maps for the Pegster. Where's the next best site for topos?

Welcome to Seattle. I'll just echo what the others said.

That sure looks like fun!

There are a lot of great caches out there. I guess I'm fortunate to be relatively new to this game and for having lots of great experiences to look forward to. I can see that the pickings will become slimmer as the cache count goes up. Caching should always be fun. If it's frequently not fun then you're probably doing it too much. If that has happened to you then here's a suggestion. Put your GPS unit down. Go back to the areas that you most enjoyed caching and explore them more thoroughly. I'll bet you'll have just as much fun as you did the first time you cached the area.

I hope the plow has tracks. There's a steep section at around 1700' that would be a pretty rough haul for a chained-up 4x4. Then again, a lot of snow could melt by Wednesday.

Great website, CCC!

This can't be repeated too often. Very good advice.

I did a training hike today to help get ready for McDonald. I climbed Squak Mtn. from the State Park parking lot on the May Valley Rd. up to the antenna towers. There's 14 inches of snow at the top and it was totally clouded in. I couldn't find the trail from the antenna towers over to Central Peak and I didn't feel like bushwhacking it thru 14" of snow so I came home cacheless. Oh, well. It was good exercise in prep for McD. and it gives me an excuse to go back up there on a nice summer day.

Thanks, Deuce.

Hoarders should have their accounts frozen to all activity except dropping the bugs they've hoarded.

I have a TB on my watchlist that I no longer wish to watch. I've clicked the 'remove' button several times to no avail. How do I remove this from my list? Thanks in advance, Pegster

I've heard of people tying small bells onto their shoelaces and carrying pepper spray to ward off bears. That might help for black bear but don't count on it for grizzly or kodiaks (which we don't have in western Washington anyway). The best way to tell what kind of bears are around is to look at their scat. Black bear scat will be dark and often contain the undigested seeds of berries. Grizzly scat will smell like pepper spray and contain small bells. But seriously, our black bears are very unlikely to trouble you. They really are scared of people. One time while out deer hunting I came across a mother black bear with 2 cubs. One of the cubs quickly climbed up a tree. The other cub ran away. The mother ran with the 2nd cub abandoning the treed cub. Cougars are a much more serious threat. This website has some good advice for dealing with cougars. Link to website

Great thread. I've added a few bookmarks.

The National Weather Service shows a chance of rain & snow thru Sunday. National Weather Service

Way to go, Rick!

Ignore the taunts. Forget numbers. Cache when and where you feel like it with the only goal being enjoying your day.

Welcome, Rick and Sarah. There are numerous ways to use your new Garmin. I'll describe one simple way to use it for a basic cache find. Scroll thru the menu until you get to display settings. Set the unit to read out in the following format, DD(D) MM.MMM, this is Degrees, Minutes and decimal minutes. Now switch your Garmin to Satellite mode. Your current coordinates should be visible (or they will be once your Garmin finds some satellites). Compare your coordinates to the cache coordinates. Each 1/1000th of a minute in North latitude translates to about 6 feet. Each 1/1000th of a minute of West longitude translates to about 4 feet at our latitude. When you come to a fork in the trail note which coordinate is further off from the cache coordinates, latitude or longitude. Try to choose the path that will be correcting the larger difference. Don't worry about your coordinates going in the wrong direction for a short time as the trail winds around. When you get within a few digits of the cache location put the GPS unit in your pocket and begin to search for likely places for a cache hide. Where in this vicinity would you hide an Easter egg? Check there! If you have more technical questions about accessing specific features of your Garmin then post them here for us. Happy trails, Pegster

Very cool. I love that area. I'll have to do this series next summer.

You can carry them but they can be rather cumbersome. This is an actual travel bug.

It's probably best to use something more durable than that chain to secure your tag to your bug. Zip-ties, split rings and keychains are good choices.

A VERY polite email is probably your best bet. Getting the hoarder ticked-off is a sure way to keep your bug from ever resurfacing. Bugs are gonna disappear. If you put one out there you need to accept that's it's most likely a goner. Just release a few more and hope for the best.

The tunnel doesn't open until May 1st.

Maybe we should start even earlier? Definitely need to eat my Wheaties that morning.