Etrex Pirate

Garmin 60CSx - Awsome GPSr. Just used it today for the first time Garmin Vista - B&W have had power probs but see a fix Plenio 7-inch Touchscreen - for the car Previous Garmin Yellow. POS traded it for the Vista after a few days of caching. I bought the 60 CSx by reading this thread so it isn't useless.

When I started caching 4 years ago I did a very difficult cache. I was on the side of a very steep hill and after I climbed up 200 feet and barely able to stand let alone walk around, I was within 100' of the cache but didn't have any idea which direction to go since I had the original yellow garmin without a electric compas. I gave up on the cache and returned the GPS and bought a Vista. I went back a few days later and found the cache. I had the power off issues on the Vista that others have had and lost interested in caching but recently decided to start it up again. I bought a 60CSx and tried it out earlier today. I say the elecrtic compas is a must when caching.

I take a lot of pictures, many of them while geocaching so I will add my 2 cents. First I have a Canon 300D 6.3 Mega Pixel Digital SLR. I have a few lenses and the stock one is best while geocaching. I have had it for just over a year and have taken over 3600 pics with it. I have had 3 other digital cameras including a Nikon 800 3 MP and a HP 1 MP. I agree with others that have said to buy a camera from a company that builds cameras as their main product. They have more to invest than a company that also builds vaccum cleaners or washing machines. The priority I would go by. 1. Lens. Optical Zoom good Digital Zoom Bad A good quality lens will make much more difference than any amount of mega pixels. 2. Mega Pixels Although posting pictures on a website may require much less than your camera can create, you can always crop or reimage a picture down to fit it. With a lower mega pixel you are stuck with what you got. With a higher mega pixel you have a choice of how much of the picture you want to present. You are also more likely to have a better lens and CCD with a higher mega pixel camera so you will get better fucus and better colors while you are at it. I think of the old saying "You can't polish a terd" 3. Power type Make sure the camera uses either a standard battery like AA or has a removeable rechargeable that you can easily purchase a second or third to charge when your current one is dead. Stay away from A camera that use a propietary battery. 4. Media Type Compaq Flash or a Mico Drive is the most popular. CF is the most sturdy. You can have it in your pocket and not worry about damaging it. Micro Drive is simular to a CF but is an actual hard drive and can be damaged by aggressive handling. SD is the second most popular but is limited in size and while thinner is less sturdy. There are many more types of removeabe media. All have there pros and cons. I only used the most common types. The main differences I have noticed is that the better digital camera you have the better pictures you will get. I'm not saying that every picture will come out perfect but you will more likely to be satisfied than if you go cheap. I have retaken pictures with my latest camera and there is a major difference in quality between cameras. Whenever I am geoching I take about 3 pictures of every cache I come accross. I am going to get at least one that looks good. I then reimage/crop it and add it to my list of found caches.

Not Geocaching, but summit notes, like caches are dissapearing. Kind of like the Cache Pirates last year. Sac Bee

I have been driving my 2000 Maxima to my cache places for the last year and have taken it to too many places it should not go (fire roads and the like). I bought a stock 1990 Ford Bronco and have kinda turned it into another new hobby. This is it so far.

The Puzzler, They look like very interesting puzzles . If I saw one I would definately trade for it. I like that you included directions with each of them. I started another batch of my Geo Tokens today. I start a two week vacation this week so I should have time to finish them and do some caching.

Using the Pirate theme I created about 20 2" square "GEO Tokens". I used Oak, stained them, placed Pirate themed artwork on them, burnt the edges, glued the artwork on the laquered them. I spent some time creating them thinking they would be a hit. They sat in the caches I placed them in for a long time and I thought I had wasted my time. Then they all kinda got picked up pretty quickly. I have been waiting for the tempurature to cool down in my area since it has been in the mid 90's for a long time and now that it has cooled down I plan on placing more as I return to caching.

Yes I am a Paying member! Yes you can run pocket q's Yes now the type of cache is shown by an icon (great improvement ) Yes now the direction has a tiny icon (also a great improvement ) I was thinking of this like the channel guide on my DirecTv receiver. I can remove channels from my TV guide that I have no interest in. I can switch between channels I recieive or all channels. Using that format I could casually search and filter out the caches I am not interested in. By location: There is about a 20 to one ratio of caches that are not in the direction I prefer. By type: I really don't like micros. I know there are others that love them but just have to bash others that don't feel the same way. Why are you so opposed to cachers that want to filter them out? I know that there are many of you that are so into caching that love to spend hours downloading megabytes of data, running it through every program you can possibly download, printing out reams of paper and placing it on as many devices as you can get your hands on. I like to think about an area I would like to take my dog on a walk, place the zip code in having my prefrences like my original post saved in my profile and get what I would like to see. What is so hard about that?

If adding preferences to your search results could be possible it might put an end to cachers bitching about too many micros in there area or whatever type they don't like. I would also like to sort caches by direction since I live near a very populated area and have to sift through a lot of unwanted caches to see the ones I am interested in. I created a picture I would like to see in the prefrences section to filter the results when you are seeking new cache to find.

sorry for the bad humor, but this is the first thing that came to mind when I saw a photo of the waterfalls.

This was built from the data of 19 jumps and someone that had a lot of time on thier hands. There are more interesting GPS data pictres at gpsdrawing.com

I was on a business trip to New Orleans last month and after about 10 miles of touring the town and getting a few caches along the way I made it to a regular cache where I could fit a pair of travel bugs I created. There were a lot of muggles around so it wasn’t easy to sign the log, trade TB’s and the rest without being spotted. I shoved my GPS in my pocket while attempting to stuff everything into this tight fitting cache (a funny side note one of the TB’s was a squeaker toy that kept squeaking when I was closing the lid). I carefully replaced the cache and was about ¾ mile away when I reached for my Garmin Vista and it wasn’t in my pocket. I was so tired from all that walking and was sure it would be gone but decided to make it back to the cache. Surprisingly it was still there. It was lying on the curb but face down so I guess it didn’t attract that much attention. I am now more careful about keeping track of it after I leave a cache.

I was recently on a private flight on a Cesna and saw a reverse cache when we were landing at a local airport to refuel. Water Towers are not usual in SO-Cal since most are located on hills and stilts are not needed. I took a photo as we landed and later returned for the GPS photo and the coords. The Tower

I have had to pull many tics off my dog in the last 10 months since I started bringing him caching with me. The best tool I have found to remove them is a toe-nail clipper. I have one that is at a 90 degree bend and the way it is shaped gets you between it's head and the skin. You close it just enough to grab it without cutting it in half and gently pull until it lets go. Last Saturday I went off-roading and broke my Bronco (see the Bad day of geocaching thread) and was under the Bronco at night. The next day I was getting in the shower and discovered one of those disgusting bugs sucking on my stomach. After doing the willies dance I grabbed the clippers and pulled him off. He climbed into the clippers to get away so I filled my sink half way and dropped the clippers in. when I was done with my shower and full check for more ticks he was floating in the sink. I squished him with pliers and ended the episode. Oh yeah, The oil based tick and flea stuff works wonders for preventing ticks on your dog. The only drawback is that it smells and makes your dogs fur a little greasy.

Unfortunately the Bronco transfer case is not a locker type more like a differential. Even in 4x4 Low range the rear shaft would spin since it had less friction. I use to have an old Nissan 4x4 that had a FWD option. The Bronco does not. Like BAF I have pulled out many Ford, Chevy and Jeeps when I had the Nissan unless they were burried too deep in the sand. I knew the limitations of my truck, others thought there were no limits to theirs. I don't care if it's a Jeep, Subaru or a Yugo that helped me out as long as we made it back to the truck.

Yes but the ride back in the Ford was much more comfortable

Funny, I almost posted a note. Since I didn't actually walk up to it I decided to post my story here. What started out to be about an hour trip just after noon turned into a long hike and ended around 10:30 at night. I'm glad I actually had the sense to bring the drinks and cell phone or I would have had a much harder time getting out of there. I’m also grateful that I was able to get a-hold of my brother and my neighbor was home and willing to help me retrieve my Bronco. I will be back to log it once I get my truck in shape.

This is my story of a bad day of geocaching. I recently bought a 1990 Ford Bronco partly to do some of the off road caches in my area. I have driven it around for the last two weeks including a little bit of off roading to make sure it ran well. Saturday I decided to go for my 100th cache and make it an off road one to make it more special. Luckily I decided to bring my cell phone and pack a backpack and a cooler with drinks “just in case” something went wrong. I was going to invite my neighbor who just bought a Jeep to join me but he was working on it so I thought I would let it go and ask him next time. I got my dog and headed out. I went to a couple off road caches that were on about a 14 mile run off the road but rated pretty easy. Everything was going great until I got within .15 miles of the first cache and while driving about 15 MPH on a relatively flat dirt road and heard a loud bang. I stopped the SUV and looked underneath to find I had broken the U-Joint to the rear drive shaft. I spent about 45 minutes trying to remove the rear drive shaft before realizing it would not move regardless since the transfer case would not run on front wheel drive only. This is where the fun began. Luck was on my side since I brought my cell Phone and car charger. I was able to get a signal on top of the hill and after trying to get a hold of many people I was able to get my brother who lives about 100 miles away to meet me at a lake that was in view. I gave him directions where to meet then headed out on foot to the long hike to the meeting place. I grabbed the backpack, drinks from the cooler and my dog and headed down the mountain. It ended up being about a 10 mile hike to the meeting place and since I could not get a signal in the canyon I had to walk all the way there so he wouldn’t miss me. About 30 minutes after I got there he arrived with drinks for the dog and I and we went to the auto parts store that luckily had the U joint which I bought two of just in case. We then went to my house where I fed the dog grabbed all my tools and luckily my neighbor was finished working on his Jeep. I explained what had happened and he was more than happy to help out. We collected all our tools, flashlights, etc. and headed back to my truck. The best part of the story is all of us were mechanically inclined so we were able to fix the drive shaft in a couple of hours and make it home in one piece. I owe my brother and my neighbor a lot for their help and things worked out in the end. I did not get the cache but I will be back after going through the whole drivetrain since the previous owner had let the u-joints go completely dry. I’m sure it could have been worse but for me it was still a bad day of geocaching.

I bought a laminator at Costco a while ago for a project I was working on so I laminated the travel bugs I started so far. I made a 2 sided sign with a picture of the TB on one side and a story with the mission of the TB on the other. Yana Likes to Run Little Buddy Likes to Lfy I also made a custom "What is a Geocache" sheet for the caches I have hidden which I have also laminated. I figured that it would make them last longer.

My 2000 Maxima was taking a beating on a few "off road" caches I have done and I need it to get to work so I recently bought a 1990 Ford Bronco for a little weekend off road fun and hauling stuff around for home improvement. It's a little beat up but it runs well. If it was too pretty I would have to worry about scratching it. The best part is the top comes off on the weekends.

I have 5 Locationless and have found them to be more of a challenge and more fun than most micro caches in my area. I have 4 more that have been previously logged so I have to wait to find another. I would like to see them return. I see people complaining about them being "stupid" but many other types of caches could fit that statement. I like a variety, depending on my mood. The more caches the better, I can decide for myself what is a worthy find.

I ended up buying another one today. It is Chipper Brand beef Jerky. They even have a web site. Chipper. Here is a pick. Remember what other cache container comes packed with beef jerky to eat on the way to your hide

My last cache was originally a beef jerky container purchased at my local 7-11. It is about 1 1/2" in diameter and about 8” long with a screw on airtight lid. It is clear thick plastic with a black lid but I gave mine a camo paint job. I don’t remember the name but they do have a smaller size that is about 1 ¼” in diameter and about 4” long.

Testing Premium Membership to look for changes

Yana (Bear) goes nuts when I start fiddling with my backpack. He know it's time for a hike. He actually pulled me to this cache. I'm sure he smelled the cachers that were there the day before. FYI He is a German Shepard / Boxer mix