BlueMoth

Much better. Now you are informing and asking instead of telling. I know you didn't mean it, but that is how the first one read to me too.

I have had 6-7 caches stolen over the last few months. At first I thought it was random happenstance, until two went missing that no one but a geocacher would have looked for or been able to find. I know the maggot is a geocacher, I have my suspicions as to who they are. I would love to be able to catch them in the act. However, seeing as how hell would freeze over before the Portland police responded to a geocaching theft, my only satisfaction would come by identifying them., and I hope, putting a stop to it myself. So here is my two cents on cache maggots. If they (collective they) are caught, and charges leveled, and a newspaper article written about them, and their name plastered all over the internet, they have already been painted with a scarlett letter. No matter what excuse they come up with, or how contrite they are, that information will always be available to the public, and can be accessed at a moments notice. Public humiliation is a pretty powerful thing, and the personal repercussions will be like a fall of dominos. If they are convicted of a crime, and punished in some way, it will be another humiliating and (I hope) humbling experience. Whether they learn to mend their ways is another matter. This particular maggot has, imo, already gotten what he deserved. Whether or not the law says that he deserves more, is for the state of NY to decide.

Bittsen, lol, yer jaded. May we all be there when you fall again, because you will be here trying to figure out the same thing. The rest of you are too romantic to be real. GeoGeeBee, congratulations. edit to say, She did love it! I hope you will both be very happy.

Hey Scub, fantastic news. Congratulations. I checked out the cache in question. Amazing that it sat unfound for 18 months. I am glad that you were the one to find it first. I can just see the big grin on your face when you hiked up to GZ and uncovered it. Great job. I got a FTF, once. That was enough and a story for another day. I'll leave the rest for experts such as yourself. That game is way too high stress for me. Actually the best part of FTF for me is putting out caches (or seeing new ones listed) and watching which one of you FTF guys gets it first. My money is usually on you.

A quick look at the terrain and topo maps for your area sure don't show much of an altitude change, lol. Yeah, it sure does look flatter than the proverbial pancake. I did see what looked like some neat wetlands, meandering rivers and such. And I found what looked like three pioneer (since they were small) cemeteries, Popp, Wheeler and Salem cemeteries, that might be good locations for caches. I know I am always interested in the history of the area I visit, and what is more historical than an old cemetery? Two of those locations also had what looked like wooded areas next to them. I don't Indiana very well, as I only drove through it once. It was pretty, if I remember. There have to be some big trees somewhere! I hope you can find a place to either find or place caches that newly pique your interest. I know if I didn't get to look at the mountains and only had a flat, landlocked landscape to play in, I might get mighty sick of it too.

Thanks for the advice. I went out on a short cache run in Biloxi this afternoon and got some great caches. You have a very beautiful state. I feel like I got dropped into another landscape dimension though. Where are the mountains and fir trees, lol. Its so exotic and lovely here. I can't wait to go out tomorrow, find some more caches and explore more of the countryside. I'll take your advice on the caching locations. Thanks again for the reply.

Hi everyone. I am visiting from Portland, Oregon and will be in the South for 2 weeks, going back home on the 28th. I am staying in Biloxi but plan to visit Mobile and New Orleans, maybe even venture into Florida. I have a car so I could meet up somewhere if need be. Anyone want to go out and go caching? I noticed you just had a meet and greet around here. Man, if only I had gotten here a couple of days ago! This is my first time visiting the gulf coast and so far, I love it! Or if there is a local group I should ask, is there a link? Thanks.

Maybe he stole Dr. Who's Tardis. After looking at his stats I find the whole thing hilarious.

More news to report. I had to entertain the muggles in my group today and didn't have time to get the benchmark yet. However, I took one of them to the Gold Coast to play bingo tonight, lol, and when we were coming home, in the parking lot and almost to the condo, I pointed out where I was going to look tomorrow. My companion is a rock climber and she had me pull up to the mound. She was up it in a flash and down again, and reported that the benchmark and at least one of the reference markers is still there. I am guessing that it is marker number 3. She said that the benchmark was set in concrete, which was about as high as her knee. The top of the mound is not covered in coarse gravel as shown in the photo, but a fine sandy gravel. She also said that there is a gate on the Harmon St. (south) side of the wall (and mound) and the marker can easily be accessed from there if you don't want to climb up from the condo side. So I am going up either tonight or tomorrow and will take my camera with me.

Ok, I see what you are saying now. I had to go back to the listing and re-read everthing again. Here is what I can figure; there should be three survey marks up on that mound, two reference marks and one station/bench mark, (what you just said, lol). The fourth one, reference mark #5, would be or have been to the south, across Harmon street. The steel towers shown in the photos no longer exist, nor does the chain link fence. Except for the concrete wall that runs along Harmon, there is no fence around the existing single tower or mound at all. After studying the photo, it appears that it was taken from the NE corner, because the photo is looking to the southwest. You can clearly see the cement wall that separates the property from Harmon St. and the roofs of the trailor park buildings on the other side. Harmon runs east to west. This property is dropped down from the Harmon St. level. The top of the mound is not. I went out and really looked at it again this afternoon and the top of the street and the mound are level with the tops of the two story roofs here. I am wondering if the power company took out everything when they replaced the steel tower. It says in the survey description that the reference marks were set in concrete next to the footings. If those are gone, would they have saved the markers? I got interested in finding this because at first I was looking for nearby geocaches, then I started studying the topographic map for interesting terrain features. (if you do a geocache search on harmon and decatur las vegas, pull down the terrain map and look to the left, you will see the mark) I noticed a triangular mark on the map that said DODO 2278. I first thought that it was just an elevation mark and then wondered what the DODO thing was, and after some searching, I figured out it was a benchmark. All that led me here. My crew has just shown up and we are going to discuss whether or not to somehow see if the marker is still there. I'll try and get some pictures tomorrow and post them, whatever we decide to do. BTW, in logging a bench mark, I am assuming that it it proper to take a close up and a landscape shot of the mark? And thanks again for making clear what the difference between a reference mark and a benchmark is.

Well, thanks for the first part of your reply. As to the second: I AM a property owner here. I CAN legally be in here where the bench mark may or may not be. I am just trying to figure out the best way to go about it and get any opinions as to whether or not the mark is still there. The mound on which the mark sits is so high I am sure they posted the signs to keep the kids from climbing it. Not that that stops kids anyway. The signs were posted by the condo association, not the county.

I would like to start hunting benchmarks and just found out that there is one (maybe) in the condo complex where I live in Las Vegas. The PID is GR1943 and it was last found in 2006. So I have two questions. In the description and also on the topo map it says "Designation DODO". What does that mean? I feel like one asking this question. I looked all over the web, and all I come up with is references to the dead bird, lol. Second question is about accessing. It might not be there anymore. The photos of the power stations are different than what is there now. In the pictures it shows a tower structure, now there is just one huge pole. Is it likely that the benchmark was destroyed when they changed structures? Also, accessing it is going to be hard. The pole sits on top of a concrete mound about 20-30 feet (maybe more) tall inside the walled complex. The south side of the pole is next to Harmon ave, the north, west and east sides are open to the complex. There are signs on the mound that says not to climb on it and there are, get this, security guards in the complex that troll around on segways. The only way I can see getting this is to walk over to Harmon ave and jump the concrete wall from there. If I try from the inside I have to scale a 20-30 foot tall cement hill. Any guesses as to whether it is still there? Should I go for it or let it go?

Caching does tend to get interesting really fast when a LEO pulls up behind you. That happened to me in Virginia City, Nevada a few days ago. I always knew it was going to happen someday, but man, are you surprised when it does. My caching buddy and I laughed about this all the way to Las Vegas. I can't do it fancy, but here is the link to the found log. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...52-6da196431296

Hey, its great that you are caching with your kids and having a good time. Don't be too hard on your son. Geocaching has a steep learning curve and figuring out the swag trade thing right off the bat is a good thing. My advice is to get your kids their own swag bags. You can pick up canvas bags cheap if you have access to an army surplus store. If not, try the goodwill or salvation army for canvas or denim bags. No luck there, if you are handy with sewing, you can make some. Let your kids personalize them with patches, pins and buttons. Either give them swag to trade or make them spend a few bucks of their allowance buying a few trinkets, stickers or toys to trade. Or have them raid the toybox for things they don't play with anymore. If you don't have much money, you can make swag or signature items. Print out pics from your computer and laminate them, punch out a hole, voila, you have a keychain or luggage tag. Kids are sharp when it comes to the concept of trading fair or up and I'm pretty sure would love to rummage around in their own bags rather than trade what mom hands out from hers. A friend of mine has an 11 year old son who I made a swag bag for. I took an old army ammo belt pouch, filled it with stuff like marbles, lightsticks, toy army soldiers, a couple of whistles and matchbox cars and such and he was good to go. The last time I saw him he had personalized the bag with some pins and buttons. He showed me the swag he had traded for with great satisfaction, and when I saw what he had traded for, I saw that he grasped the concept better than most adults. So have fun, don't worry, and good luck geocaching.

Even though this isn't my thread, thanks everyone, for the help. I confess to being a bit of a luddite when it comes to stuff like this. I am probably going to need a couple of stiff drinks and a boat load of quiet time before I start fiddling around with the directions. Your back and forth already made my head spin. I never tried to download the gsak thing before because it didn't have D.C. on it. Why such a glaring geographical error? I don't think I imagined finding a goecache there.

I just looked at their maps and they do not have the District of Columbia on it. Am I missing something?

I get most of my gear from the local army surplus store. For micro caches I get little green waterproof plastic match safes that cost me a buck a pop. I also buy swag there. I get things like light sticks, small carabiners, hand warmers, mini compasses, zipperpull thermometers for 50-75 cents a pop. Garage sales are good places for picking up things like a thermos or old waterproof map case for a dollar or two. I also go to Michaels craft store. Swag is really cheap there, especially if you have a coupon and you root through their dollar bins. I have also purchased plastic waterproof paint jars there for a buck or so and they come in varying sizes. You can also find those at any art supply store, though they might cost you more. Unless I put out an ammo can, I never put paper in for a log. I buy sheets of tyvek at Art Media. It costs me $2.00 for a 23x35 sheet, which, when you cut it into strips, gives you an awful lot of logs for a micro cache. You never have to worry about your log turning into a soggy mess. If you have zero money to spend, like Bittsen said, use a peanut butter jar (or a pill bottle for a micro). Though i consider spending a couple of bucks good weather insurance. Good luck with your caches.

Heck yeah I webwhack. You have to in the PNW. Especially around this time of year when the little vampires have bodies grown to the size of thimbles. I usually pick up the nearest stick before I get started on a trail and wave it around in front of me as I walk along. I am sure I look like an idiot, but I don't care. It beats getting a snoot full of web and worrying whether or not I have a spider in my hair or down my back.

Well thanks Bittsen, for making me pee my pants with that picture. Now I can't read this thread anymore, . God, I hate those things too. Voracious little vampires. I have one named Elvira that I let live on my front porch. The rest get pitched into the neighbors yard with a rake. It doesn't seem to matter, they are all back the next day anyway. If I ever found a geocache that had a huge fake spider in it, I would probably keel over with a heart attack.

Sadly, nothing remotely as interesting as that. No aliens, no cammo dressed lurkers, no clowns. I do spit out my fair share of spider webs when I go caching in the dark though. The only time I kinda freaked a little was when I drove out to place the Samuel and Mary cache. I saw a black bear run across the road aways down and there was also fresh bear scat on one of the cemetery markers.

Go to the forum page for your local area. Give as much information as you can about the cache. Ask if anyone ever found it and remembers it. I found two archived caches I needed to log that way.

I just grabbed that cache a few weeks ago. Knowing where it is, how its hidden and what it looks like when it is hidden, I'm not surprised that the army guys and police went bonkers over it. It is a great cache. When I found it, I kinda slunk around and hid myself so no one could see what I was up to. I didn't want any army guys to come at me with guns drawn when I was sitting in the bushes holding a red ammo can in my lap. Kudos to anitaspinner who saved it from being blown up. I've been out of town, anyone know if this made the Oregonian?

To the OP, I feel your pain. I live in the city and people are always moaning about the lack of ammo cans in the city. So I went out and hid one. I had to make it a multi since there was already a cache 500 feet from the ruins of the old building, so I put it a couple of blocks away next to a concrete wall hidden in brambles and ivy vines. I went to the army surplus store and stocked it with really nice swag, an LED flashlight, a nice compass, a zippper pull thermometer, a map, other nice odds and ends, and it was so crammed full I could hardly shut the lid. Alltogether I spent about $30 to $40 bucks, thinking this stuff should last awhile. Well, I had five visitors before it was cleaned out. I randomly went over to check on it and the box was empty, EMPTY, except for the log book. Three out of the five people who found it logged that they took one item each. So what does that say about the other two who were silent about what they took and left? I dropped in a few more things, light sticks and keychain bottle openers and such, and noted that I refreshed the cache. I recently hid two more ammo cans and stocked them full of swag again. I asked in the listing that unless you were the FTF, please trade even. If they are cleaned out after five people, I don't think I will ever hide one again. Oh, yeah, wnat to add, that I don't believe it is muggles taking the swag, if a non-muggle around here found an ammo can, the whole thing would be gone.

Maybe they thought Portland is in Mongolia. Some people do, ya know.

Of the four people I go caching with, two of them have Never made an online log. They enjoy the journey, the hunt, finding the cache and signing their names, but just cannot be bothered to log online. I have given up pestering them to do so. I've explained that as a cache owner, there is a lot of fun reading what people have to say about your cache. Writing can be torture for some folks though, so now I just enjoy the fact that my friends make caching what they want it to be and come along for the ride.