deb3day

Well, they have to be somewhat hard to find or they might be found by muggles and removed. No one wants that to happen. So you need to look in places not readily visable. That is what makes it fun!

Don't forget a Maglite. A pair of gardening gloves is a good idea for pushing away brush, leaves, rocks, sticks, and other cover. A pair of tweezers to pull tiny logs out of tiny caches (I need to get one of these).

My best example of why to use Googlemaps is the cache that was hidden under a pine tree in a long row of pine trees. I knew exactly which tree to look under. Didn't need my GPS for that one. I try to look at the satellite pic whenever possible to get the lay of the land.

I very rarely take anything except for TB's or geocoins. But I do have a bag full of unique little doodads that I leave behind in caches. The few times I have taken something (usually it's my son that finds something he'd like to take), I haven't really pondered on the value for value thing. I just make sure I'm leaving a thing or two to replace what I'm taking. I buy up unique items at yard sales to leave behind. I recently got a whole bag full of foreign coins and some cute little carved Buddhas. I also have some vintage wooden nickels from 1962 that I leave in the smaller caches. Most of what I see as swag is junk. I try to leave something that is at least worth looking at.

Even tho I am a premium member, I prefer to just follow the map screen and see what is along the route I plan to travel.

In my area we have a pretty even mix. There may be more guys, but we have a large number of females caching in this area. Several of the new cachers are women, so our ranks are growing. This is NOT a hobby just for guys!!!!!

Certainly you can email them. You're not always going to get an answer, depending on how closely the cache owner wants to guard the secrets of the cache. But most CO's will throw you a hint.

Someone at work is trying to get rid of 4 hamsters. Anyone want to stock a new cache???? She's giving them away for free!!!

I haven't figured out how to delete them either so I just leave them there and reuse them. You can delete everything out of it and rename it when you need a new one.

I got a really nice unactivated geocoin as an FTF prize on a multi that took me 4 visits to find. Several others had DNF's before I finally found it. It was really nice to find that prize because I didn't expect anything but a blank page which is usually good enough for me especially on a tough cache that others have tried and failed. I don't see all that many prizes, but then again a lot that pop up are micros so no room for prizes. I agree that most FTF hounds are most pleased by a blank log and aren't really looking for a prize besides that.

My legend occasionally does that, but then it will suddenly start working again. You can tell when it's doing it because even tho you're walking the direction the arrow is pointing, the distance keeps getting higher. I just ignore it and follow the distances so they lessen. Often after several feet, it gets it right again. I've also found that when you get close, suddenly it will jump from being close to way off, or the arrow goes to one side, or generally becomes erratic. That's when I know I'm close. Since I'm on a very limited budget, I bought this used for cheap and I'm learning to deal with the way it works. I'm sure there are better units, but I can't afford them. I found my first 150+ using my car TomTom, but this is surely better.

A few months ago I purchase a used Legend. I got my USB to Serial adapter from Radio Shack. It came with a disk which they told me I had to run to get the adapter to work. It has worked fine. Did your adapters come with disks? I'm no geek so I can't help more than that.

http://www.geocaching.com/about/guidelines.aspx#sat I used to own a physical cache near a historic marker. I (or you) could also have used that marker, very nearly the same coordinates, as a "question to answer" stage of a multi-cache. Thank you, that's exactly what I needed to know!!!

I want to do a multicache that requires seekers to visit sites around the county to find clues toward completing the cache. Am I able to use places that might contain a cache to use for this purpose? I would not be placing anything at this places, just requiring seekers to go there to see something in order to answer a question. I have at least one place in mind where I know there is a cache. It would actually be good for the cachers because they could pick up some caches along the way.

I agree that there may be newbies that just don't know that they should be logging. I recently had a large bug go missing from my cache. I have a whole family that signed my log book, but they never logged their find on the website. Since the person before them was the one that left the bug and the finders after them were veteran cachers who are friends of mine that I know would have logged properly, they have to be the ones that took it. Since the bug was a big furry monkey, I'm afraid one of their kids kept it. Maybe they didn't even realize what the little metal tag meant. Hard to say.

One of my own caches is at the edge of a vacant lot. I pulled in to check it one evening about 8:30pm and before I even got out of the car I saw a police car pulling in. He turned on his lights and then walked over to my car. I opened the window, smiled nicely and explained that I had a geocache at the edge of the lot and asked if he knew what geocaching was. He said he'd heard the term, but "Please explain". I explained, he smiled and said he was only checking because sometimes there are cars in this lot and he likes to be sure they're not doing anything they shouldn't be. He also said he would now know in the future if he saw anyone rummaging around at the edge of the lot. After I left, I had one of those "Oh man, I should have..." moments. I should have offered to show him the cache. Oh well. A caching acquaintance of mine recently told me that you're not a true cacher until you have: 1. Gotten Poison Ivy while searching for a cache; 2. Lost blood to thorns; and 3. Been questioned by a cop. I've done 2 out of 3 now, but I don't get poison ivy.

Really??? You are completely wrong!!! In a simple search around a particular local point where I know all 20 caches have people watching them, the only ones with an eyeglass on the search page are the ones that I am watching. You see the caches in YOUR watchlist, otherwise that icon would be absolutely useless. I agree completely with this answer. It means that the cache is on your own watch list. If you go to the "My Account" page, the first item is "watchlist". That will show what you are watching and anything on that list will have the little glasses. In fact if you put your curser on the little glasses a message will come up saying "watching this cache".

Perhaps a signout sheet nearby so that if someone takes a trackable they sign up saying what they took. That way you, as the event host, could follow up on the trackables and if they're not logged, you can send a friendly reminder. Maybe set up the sheet with a sign in for who brought the trackable and then sign out for who takes it home. After setting up a sheet, I'd mention it on the event page so that folks dropping and taking trackables know what to do. I know the feeling because I had a bug that wasn't logged until a good month after an event that it was dropped. I thought it was gone for good, but fortunately someone finally logged it.

I was just reading the rules and see that as a cache owner I can mark a TB as missing. A TB was dropped into my cache on Dec 14. On December 30, I stopped by to check the cache and that TB is no longer there. It looks like a family stopped by the cache, signed the log book saying "Merry Christmas" along with a bunch of people's names, but no obvious caching name. They never logged their visit on geocaching.com. I have a feeling they took the TB and haven't logged that either. Should I log this as missing? It still shows up in the cache and I don't want it to seem that there is a bug here when there isn't. What are the implications of marking it missing? If it shows up, can it be unmarked as missing?

I found over 150 caches when I started by using a TomTom. You can put in the coords. But you have to use coord numbers to zero in on the cache, no arrow pointing the way once you are offroad. But it's totally possible to use this unit to cache.

Judging from the hint I think you should be looking on the menu board. Probably one of those tiny black nanos stuck in a spot that makes it hard to see. Wish that was near me, I'd love to look for that one!

I enjoy the ones that take a few visits. I never give up after one try unless the area makes me uncomfortable in some way. But I don't mind the P&G's either. It's nice to see a variety and in my area, we have both. There are a lot of local cachers that put out quality hides. I don't see our area becoming all P&G in the near future. We have a lot of places for good caches.

"It may have been innocent enough, but it really spooked me out that this guy came back after having left the first time." My son and I had a similar sort of situation. We call the offending person the "Creep in the Jeep". We were looking for a cache on an old stone bridge. As we looked a Jeep drove by. At the end of the bridge was a stop sign and you had to turn right or left. The Jeep turned right. We kept looking for the cache. Then the Jeep came back and drove slowly past the end of the road, heading off to the left of the bridge and down the road away from us. So we found the cache and the next place we were heading was to go over the bridge and to the left, the direction that Jeep had gone. About a mile down the road, in the woods, parked along the road, was the Jeep. After I drove past and got a short distance away, it pulled out like it was following me. Now I'm getting paranoid. So instead of continuing toward our next cache location, there was a turn and I took it. It was another winding road into the woods. I watched as far as I could in the rear view mirror and sure enough I saw that Jeep turn the way I did. So I zip along like Mario Andretti and get some distance between us. After a while I realize we're going way out of our way, so I find a place to turn around and we head back. After about a half mile, who goes by in the other direction...... the JEEP! So we went to our next cache location, which was a covered bridge and every time we heard a car approach we expected it to be the Jeep, but we never saw it again. We still talk about the Creep in the Jeep! As for your original post, I enjoy finding other cachers at a cache site. In our area we have frequent events, so I know a lot of the locals. It's especially nice to meet new people, even better when they are new cachers. I recently met two guys from Italy at a cache. It's fun to find others who share our hobby.

As owner of a hotel, I have to add that if you decide to host a TB hotel, then you have to be willing to scout out trackables to populate it when it is empty. I try to be sure that at least 1 trackable is present at all times. It's nice to see that folks do drop off more than one at times. People often trade which is nice. But people do take them and it does run low sometimes. Then I make an effort to go find a cache that has a trackable that I can put in my hotel. I also try to pick them up at events and when I do, they usually go into my hotel.

I had the same problem with the link taking me back to the main page, so I saved them to my computer and opened them there. They are really easy to see. I had a bit harder time seeing the brown, which I tried first. Then I brought up the blue and saw it almost immediately. I think that's a great puzzle cache! Is the software you used for this available for free online or something you have to buy? I would love to do one like that in my area.