SimbaJamey

Well...apparently I did (Two actually...my caching partner that day also took a rock. I took a blue one and she took a green one. FTR, we left a bunch of Off wipes in case anyone else forgot to put on bug juice before heading in like we did.)

I think they're pretty cool. I traded for the first one I found in a cache. Probably can't go by me though...the last thing I traded for was a rock.

Very cool! Congrats!

I'll have to point her (My NJ friend) to this thread when she gets home from work...Now that you mention it, she may have been talking about the WMAs. I haven't searched/found a virtual cache yet so that wasn't something I think either one of us thought of.

Oh...and as a side-P.S. ... I have a friend I'm also getting into the hobby who happens to work for Fish and Game for the state of NJ and she was talking about it with some of her big bosses the other day... She said the real big whigs comment was that, "It's actually an illegal activity because you're leaving something in the park." I told her to pitch it as a CiTo so what's going out is more than what's going in...haven't heard back yet if that one is going to fly (I figured, matter of degree...how much is left vs. how much will be removed).

Same thing happens where I live...Caches have to be township approved or they are archived. (well, older ones were, new ones don't get approved without the seal of the power (yes, singular) that be.) There are a ton here in town, makes me wonder if the person you have to email the request to is a cacher. There's even an approved one that requires the cacher to remove part of the bottom of a fancy lamp-post. A couple of people I've mentioned it to asked about fees...they charge for everything else around here but I think caching is still free. One approved one in a local park that's still stumping me at a middle stage was actually set up for an intro to geocaching event that was put on in a local park (long before I found the hobby).

Got me one at REI for $259. A nice all-in-one package.

I've had NO trouble with the compass on my Vista HCx, always seems accurate to me (after the obligatory calibration). Today I'm returning a 60CSx...one of the issues being the "Hold Level" message NEVER goes away unless I'm moving (And as I mentioned elsewhere, I even used a carpenters level to make sure I had the unit perfectly level!).

Sounds like it's time to cache and make up. (sorry...couldn't resist)

Just curious...I live in a small town that has a "Main Street" but it isn't the main street through town (It probably was 150 years ago)...which one would it go on?

Ok...I'm new here but I have to say...this seems silly. A find is a find. Someone posting hints that will help others bypass stages falls under the spoilers heading and that's up to the next cacher to read or not read. I choose to not read the logs and hints (other than learning a quick check of the logs to see if the last bunch were DNFs and possibly a note about something wrong with the sequence). Maybe a simple editing of the find log to not be such a give-away? As for the archiving of the cache...sounds like a bummer to me because it sounds like a really cool one to work on (so the only people being hurt here really are the future cachers who don't get to try this one...and isn't that what it's all about?) and ok...not exactly the same thing but somehow in my head it seems to relate enough that I kept coming back to it as I read all this... Last week I was trying to find a local cache. I looked for close to two hours one evening...while I was looking the park ranger came by because he wanted to close the gate down the hill. He asked if I was geocaching and I said yes. I asked if he had any kind of hint for me and he said, "I didn't even know we had one." He gave me another 15 minutes to keep looking before he locked up but I still didn't find it. I went back the next day with a friend and spent another hour looking all around GZ to no avail. The cosmic coincidence came into play when the cache owner showed up for a Spring checkup on her cache. Once the introductions took place she told us we were looking in the right place...after 10 more minutes of searching she ended up telling me I actually had the cache in my hand but tossed it aside without realizing I'd found it. When she pointed that out, we quickly saw the micro inside the stick I'd tossed aside. Upon opening it she asked if we wanted to sign the log. I said no thanks because it just didn't feel like a real find to me (I think I only had 2 or 3 at that point). We chatted a bit and I naturally complimented her on a cool hide. I didn't sign the log, nor did I log it as a find online...it just didn't seem right to me. In another of my first finds...I found the first and second (final) stages of a multi but because of a muggle I didn't sign the log in the final stage...my online log entry was deleted (I was shocked at first but then caught on to the idea of having to sign the real log before logging the find)...so I went back the next day and signed the log, re-did the online log and it stuck. So...how does this relate to the cache in question? Um................I'm not sure....it's kinda late and I'm probably babbling. But the point I'm trying to make is....Please leave the cache out there...it sounds WAY WAY cool and with (maybe) some slight tweaking or editing of the cache page (or the 'found' log) will still be a ton of fun for future cachers. I'd probably suck at it, the only 2 TZ episodes I really remember are the Burgess Meredith broken glasses one and one where at the end you found out the people were living in an alien zoo. I may be an altruistic dipstick here...but this is the second time today I've read about a cacher archiving their caches because they're mad at a cacher or a reviewer...I'd just ask one simple question....who does this hurt? The reviewer in the other thread certainly doesn't care, I bet the finder here doesn't care....the only ones who are hurt are the hider (because they'll be internalizing the angst) and the future cachers who won't get the chance to go after the hides. Just seems like one of those times when the (former) therapist in me wants to tell everyone to lighten up, this is supposed to be fun!

ok...so yins are saying it's not waterproof enough to be mounted on one of these holder dillies? Boat Mount

Washington and Jefferson were among some of those that owned hemp plantations. Dupont lobbied the government to make it illegal to eliminate the tried and true competition for their new nylon rope.

I'm returning my 60CSx partly because of that issue. Drives me crazy that it jumps all over the place when I stop moving...and totally screws up the trip page...side by side with my Vista HCx for example on a 2.5 mile hike the Vista shows a moving time of 2 hours and stopped time of 1 hour...the 60CSx has only 8 minutes of stopped time and shows 3.2 miles traveled. And reading everything on here for the past 2 weeks totally talked me out of going for a Colorado until they come out with the next hardware/software version. Oh...and as for the compass on the 60...I have NOT ONCE gotten the "hold level" message off the screen even if I use a carpenters level to make sure it is in fact being held level.

Although I'm a noob geocacher...I've spent most of my life hiking mountain trails and in forests plus kayaking streams and rivers the past few years...oh, and many thousands of miles on my mountainbike as well not to mention all the 4-wheeling in my Jeep. I'm sure my feet odometer has tens of thousands of trail miles on it. I have NEVER seen a single pot plant growing anywhere outdoors. Sorry to seem like a tool here, but I think if I did find a crop I'd just chuckle and move on. I'm almost surprised I've never seen a pot plant out in the wild, I've been reading for 20+ years how it's the #1 cash crop in America. And I saw on one of those news magazine shows several years ago how they use those cameras on helicopters in Hawaii...I thought that was pretty neet how the plants show up as a completely different color from almost anything else. Crazy watching the guys dangling from the choppers on ropes to cut down the plants!! I remember hearing from friends that grew up in Vermont that it's a pretty common plant growing wild along streams and stuff all over the state...dunno the validity of that though, like I said, I've never seen a pot plant growing anywhere (And I've never hiked in Vermont).

So wait....does this mean the film canister I stuffed into a dead deer carcass (roadkill) yesterday isn't a good hiding spot for my first cache?

Too bad it's just a bit too far off my summer vacation route--looks like a nice place to go and the caches would be a definite plus! I'm almost considered rerouting. I looked around a bit and didn't see 400 caches--is the park larger than the outline shown on the map? The number of caches I came up with by looking on the nearest caches map was 286. I also didn't notice any that seemed to be that close to each other. Care to point out some examples? I'm guessing they are examples of a good place for exceptions (such as one at the top of a cliff and one at the bottom, or two that are across a stream from each other with no close bridge between them). Might be worth the side trip for scenic views and a good hike. I'm looking at the google map search page. The highest concentration is in the West end of the area (check around route 206). With the map set at the 2 mile range (6 tabs down from the top) it's showing 277 caches and I only count 10 outside the green borders of the forest, at this zoom level I'm seeing about 1/3 of Wharton. When I zoom out one more step to where it barely shows the whole 'forrest' I get a "too many caches to display" error (over 500). I chuckled when I read the cliff idea...That part of NJ is flat as a pancake with no hill being more than about a 50 foot rise (and those are few and far between). I'll have to really search through again to find the ones I saw that were only about 200' apart, but I found 3 different groupings at first glance that had several in very close proximity. Again, this is NOT a complaint! I'm WAY WAY excited about the prospects in there!! Although I'm new to geocaching, I've been a kayaker for years and my two most favorite rivers to run within an hour or two of my house are the Mulica and Batsto which both run through Wharton (most kayak 'tour' books list the Batsto as the best kayak trip in the state). They can get crowded with rental yaks on weekends but for the most part it's hard to find a more remote feeling location to kayak. And that will be even more true now that I'll have a GPS on the boat so I'll be less worried about getting lost in the swamps when I go 'off-river'.

Same here with the topos being off by 500'+ I have a Vista HCx and a 60CSx and they both show the same error. Annoying when I'm driving on a road and the GPS shows me driving in a line 500' off to the side of the road (yes, if I zoom in below about 200' it doesn't even show the road (and we're talking major interstate highways here) that I'm on!). In neighborhoods it doesn't even put me on the right street with that big an error. And before the, "You should be using the 'road' maps" comments begin...this problem is WAY more annoying when I'm hiking or caching. I ended up having to cross a small creek in the woods several times the other day hunting a couple of caches because the maps were off and showed the cache on one side of the creek when it was hundreds of feet on the other side! And then of course there was the issue of navigating myself out of the woods once I got in there...got dark on me (more than once) and the map was saying I was back on neighborhood streets when I was still buried in the thicket. And yes, when on the road i have both settings set to follow (lock on) the road but it seems to make no difference, nor does the offroad setting when I'm in the woods. And why aren't any of the 'rails to trails' trails on there? I've yet to REALLY take it out in the mountains...I'll be interested to see if the fire-roads are in there and whether or not it knows I'm on them.

Look at Wharton State Forrest in New Jersey and then tell me that these rules are followed. Granted it's not a small area...but there are ~400+ caches in there and in some areas there are 4 or 5 within 200' of eachother! And no, this is not a complaint...In fact, now that I saw how crowded it is in there I'm gonna strap my kayak to my Jeep and go see if I can have a hundred find day I do agree that with the price of gas, having areas where a nice little hike will yield several finds is WAY more tempting than one lone cache in the middle of nowhere. It's something I'll have to take into consideration since I'm starting to run out of caches I can walk to from my house.

Finally an answer I can understand!!

Noob alert: For the most part I get the swag concept and although the fun for me is the find, I do take stuff with me (when I remember) and hope I'm leaving something cool when I take something cool. My question, however is this: In a cache last week I found a wooden 'coin' that a previous cacher had left, it's printed with the cachers name and their avi drawing and on the back has the geocaching URL, etc. I thought it was WAY cool and took it as my trading item. Did I commit a caching faux pas? Was I supposed to leave that for the cache owner? If that's the case, I can put it back...but if not, what a COOL souvenir!!! As an Artist I have to say, this thread has made me think about what I've been leaving...when I run out of glow stick type goodies (earrings, tongue clips, etc) I'm going to have to come up with something a little more personal. And I read here that travel bugs "don't count" as trading items...I grabbed one that I'll be placing this weekend in a cache more likely to help it move on to it's destination. The question here is one of etiquette, I left something in the cache when I took the bug...was that correct?

I had a similar experience with my Vista HCx last week. The barometer suddenly started reading thousands of feet (18,000+ IIRC). I tried the auto-calibration and it was right for a split second before again adding the 3+ miles. I knew I was at ~193' based on previous readings and topo maps so I calibrated it to that. Again, worked for a minute and then went South on me (or North I guess since it went up). I haven't really looked at it since then so I can't say if the problem is persistent. I will add though that the Vista was side by side with a 60CSx that has shown none of the altimeter issues.

Congrats on the find! I'm a newbie myself and have already learned to be way more observant....it happens after you find one or five and start to get an idea of what to look for. I've been taking a friend along sometimes...One one micro he actually knocked it off it's hiding spot, bounced off his shoe...and he still didn't notice it! Today he was finding all the 'micros' faster than I was! This is quite a little obsession

I ended up with a VistaHCx and a 60CSx temporarily (one's getting returned) and the Vista is WAY faster on the initial lock and getting the accuracy down. In fact, when I turn them both on cold sitting here at the computer, the Vista will lock and switch to the map page in less that half a minute (about 90' when I got back to the sat. page) whereas more often than not the 60 will fail to get a signal (error message after what, 2 minutes I think?). Just did them both on a warm start (they have only been off about half an hour) and they both performed almost exactly the same. Both units have the latest updates.