Cliff's Notes

That sounds great! And you may even get lucky and find a whole set of outdoorsy stamps in a dollar store. Or whatever images appeal. You can buy UV invisible ink stamp pads (and pens), too. I'm not sayin' I'm just sayin' . I have had a ton (figurative) of custom stamps made by www.stamp-connection.com they are awesome and make an acrylic stamp you can see through. The see through stamps make the placement easier. You send them links to line art images you found on the net. Tell the folks what you want written on it and they send you proofs before you pull the trigger on the order. I use them all the time with my other hobby wheresgeorge.com and the georgers swear by these folks they do a good job The turtle in my avatar is one of theirs.

It's not because you are a nØØb, it's a phenomenon referred to as "cache degradation". A particularly nasty happening that seems darn near inevitable. I'll see your 2¢ and raise you 4¢. I recently got back from Japan and all the caches I found over there had no "Cache Degradation" also the owners over there took such good care of their caches it was unbelievable. I swapped out for some cool stuff. Of course the culture over there lends itself to cool small things. They have "Gachapon" machines everywhere. There is also a culture of courtesy and behavior different than us. I usually dropped my siggy swag, not grabbing most stuff cause I wasn't sure about comparative values of items, that and I was trying to cut down on personal clutter. Did get some comments on my dropped swag.

Some people collect the wooden nickels. And you can make a bunch using only a sharpie and blanks, real inexpensively, if you like. Those are often very cool, too. I sure don't find them around here much. I've seen a few turn black when soaking wet at the bottom of a container, but maybe part of the deal is to find and rescue them before they're in too bad a condition. Snooze ya lose... If you get blank wooden nickels, you could go and get a couple of custom made round rubber stamps that fit the nickel. Then stamp them to get a real good and repeatable design you could color in or leave as a line drawing. Once you have made the first couple of those rubber stamps it will become easier and at ten dollars for a stamp that aint bad. The ability to change designs without being stuck with a massive amount of one design cuts down on "siggy regret". If you do this you can also reuse the rubber stamps for the cache logbooks that are larger than micro scrolls as well.

I imagine how I would feel if there is some tricky or clever hide in my area that I have been bashing my head in trying to solve and finally getting the ah-ha moment getting the smiley. Later telling the story of my struggles to find GCXXXX to other cachers only to find that someone had posted a YouTube video walkthrough that everyone (other than the hardcore cachers) had been using. Like climbing a mountain to discover an escalator going up and down the other side. Takes the challenge, and mystery out of it.

"I call this one TINY"

This is why I take along my little black book. While out caching I jot down the name and the GC code of the cache, along with notes about swag I drop cache condition, etc. This way I can go caching for a couple of days straight without having to rush on the logs. Before too much time goes by I get online and with my book in hand log those caches. In my logs I mention things like is the logbook dry is the logbook full (did I have to write over someone elses faded entry) cache condition = full of water - or - dry and clean - or - packed with firecrackers (once found one packed with fireworks for real) did I drop something in the cache did I make the search harder than necessary * This is a common thing for me sometimes I not how far off my GPSr had me when I put my hands on the cache* This sometimes is quite some distance I have a smartphone, it is really smart. But when I go out caching all it does is play my audiobooks, check my e-mail, and make phone calls. P.S. Those tiny film canister scrolls in the larger peanut butter jar, I use two or three lines for my siggy stamp and my TFTC.

Mine started with my other hobby Georging which is tracking money through the website www.wheresgeorge.com which I started before coming here. Think of it as making geocoins for free. When I first started I had not seen all the Georgers had cool names so I was just Clifford. *Yawn* But soon after starting I got to attend a gathering. The Georger meet and greets and met all the guys with cool names so I got up and told them I did not want to be boring anymore. So I started to run ideas by them. Cliff's Notes was what we settled on and this works in both hobbies With my Georging the paper money is often referred to as "Notes" When I go out caching I always bring along my journal to keep track of my activities, and I always try to leave more of a message than TFTC in the online logs so it works for my notes in this game as well. And anyone who needed help with Shakespeare or War & Peace knows it also kind of sounds like a yellow and black study aid as well.

Could you take a coconut husk half like pictured and pull back a strip from the middle on the outside, do the drilling and strapping then glue the pulled back portion before scuffinng up? This way there is no visible bits of plastic.

I sliced the rubber tube that is used to hold screens in the frames down the center and glued the half around the seam to try and waterproof it. But if I find it leaks, I'll have to use some foam weather stripping to seal it better. If you want info on how it locks, let me know. I would like more details on the locking bit of the design. Looking at this I was thinking about something similar with magnets cause they are good too, especially the neodymium ones.

I was very polite. No name calling, no threats. I told him the reason why I would like it removed and I thanked him and signed my name. When he replied all he wrote was the reason he wasn't going to remove it, basically because of the "spoiler" warning on the Geocaching website. I don't believe the spoiler warning was put there to give cachers the right to place spoilers in their logs or photos. Instead of asking for him to remove the picture try asking him to blur out the cache in the picture. That way the only thing folks will see is him posing next to some pixels, which now that I think about it is kinda cool.

I created a challenge at the mast site for airships in the Tokyo area. It is city property that makes it hard for a traditional cache. But the requirement is for the acceptor to have a pic of themselves with GPS. This is definitely a location based cache requiring them to be there. But once accepted could someone photoshop themselves into a pic for the shot and how do I go about calling fooey on the logger if they do fake the completion? Also on a different note what happened to the dates for caches found?

I did the same thing here in Tokyo, Japan got two here but there was no way to look further afield. Do I need to enter every darned town, village, and intersection shouting "MARCO!" to find these? How about some kind of mappy thing?

My problem is I can't find a map showing location challenges. I may not want to see them when I am scoping some tupperware to find but just to look around it would be nice to see if there is a photo challenge that is cool. I am in the Tokyo area and saw two in Tokyo, but there is no indication of any other challenges I wonder how far out from a starting point for a search do they list caches challenges. Does anyone know if there are plans for a browseable map for challenges. Specific location based challenges make it seem like a scavenger hunt. like Park next to a car with a different state plate than yours at "X" monument get both cars and monument in pic. That is kinda quirky and cool. And with the new camera/phones this is a great little sidegame while out caching.

Gummed paper??? Are we talking ZigZags cause "Dave's not here" Fine I grab the "Gummed Paper" to make room for my dayglow orange acrylic dice

I would grab an obsidian arrowhead and drop off acrylic dice *Both items do not need to be bagged as they stand up well to moisture

With some of these parks with the fees and regulations a thought has occurred to me. If the park is being irksome instead of one person at a time going in saying please, you get the geocachers in the area to form a group. The "______ Forest Geocachers Group" can then as a group go in with a proposal. Come up with a plan that the group takes responsibility for the caches placed in the park. All caches in the park will be published under the group's name. There are specific people that can be contacted in the group to cover issues. The group can have a yearly get together and raise a reasonable fee to cover paperwork on the park administration side. If you go in as a group the fee may be a one time yearly fee for the group as a whole. Make a PayPal donation site to cover the groups fees. I know that if I was in a park or natl. forest and had a good time and saw a groups website and a link to support the group I would toss a few bucks their way. I am sure I read somewhere that property managers allowing placement on land are given a premium membership as well, if this is the case mention that they will be able to have an account for monitoring activity for all the caches. Offer to help them with the account. Give them detailed info on all caches container pictures, take pics of cache in situ and stuff that they can keep in their offices. This way they know all there is to know. This way you would be going as a group to the park officials saying we will do what you want (within reason) and will police our own. On all the cache pages for the park you can have an explanation of the rules the group has agreed to for the access to the park that way out of towners passing through may catch on before dropping a guardrail cache on their way out of the park never to return. And if they do drop a cache in the park as part of the groups agreement you would get the reviewer to pull it and retrieve the cache as part of the groups responsibility to keep park management happy or at best tolerant of the GPS wielding hordes. This is not the best solution but it might be the best way to get the park on the map. If you have enough people in the group you can all find some of the other cachers hides in the park. Also once a group member has found a cache once they have the ability to maintain the cache at a later point should something come up.

I have one of them that I bought at GWS 7. I keep it in my backpack and dip it into the caches as I go out to mark my travels. I love to discover these at the events. When I see them I gotta get the numbers They have a special "LACKEY" version of this tag as well. I got many of the LACKEY tags at GWS last year and the Groundspeak event as well.

That is the smallest cat I have ever seen!

Wow! Let me tell you if I found this I would be favouriting it. Couple questions First: Did you place this there? Second: If you did not repurpose an abandoned artifact in situ, where does one go to find things of this sterling character? Third: The child looks a bit too large for the cache to comfortably wait to be found, I have read about the leaving of hamsters which may also be frowned upon same as leaving children, though maybe not as confining.

Here is a question Has anyone made a logbook out of that TYVEK paper? These logs with the stab bindings make me think that may be possible. A book made out of that stuff with a rugged cover would be nigh immortal right?

The swag factor is not the greatest weight in my geocaching equation. I have had a great time seeing the things that stay in a cache I found a pair of yellow sunglasses and was able to trace them to the dropper who had dropped them three years previously. I then contacted them and showed them a pic with their log entry for the shades and the shades beside the entry. They loved this little reminiscence and gave their geocaching battery a boost. The glasses were terrible but the story they are generating is cool. The larger factor is getting out of the hotel my blimp crew is staying and doing something. I like the larger caches for the opportunity to look at stuff. I have a bag loaded with swag to drop, I am always in new places so I know that the signature items (pens, chips, dice, eh..... and something else) will be a blast to find. For me the first cache capable of holding stuff will get loaded down. But I really love to leave my signature swag in as many caches as possible. I have met a few people who actually recognized my handle and showed me "X" (X is what ever I had left) that they had found. What depresses me is the largeish lock and lock with a rolled up scroll for a logbook. Hey! I like to say a bit more than date and signature. I like to use my signature stamp and leave my turtle to be seen by finders later down the line. Swag = look but leave mostly unless a personal link to another cacher Logbook = That is the real thing for me Kid Factor = We all have that otherwise why are we playing in the mud looking for the next adventure?

Get with the manager of the nature preserve and see if you could build a bench. Then build and install the bench at GZ and incorporate the container into structure. Finders can sit down to fill out the log.

You know what would be cool too is some way of telling if the guy who gave the favourite has unspent favorites. Like if he had 60 points available, but has only awarded 25. Those 25 favorites could have more weight don't you think? Prestige percentage????

Take the message and copy go back to said cache page and paste it as a post message with an explanation of how you got the e-mail If others in the area do the same thing maybe cache owners will start to be a bit more cautious More likely is they will just delete the log but if you can get other local cachers doing the same thing maybe the CO will get tired of whack-a-mole and just put out better caches.

Been thinking about PB jars. You know what would help those? Some of that artsy foam matting (the thin stuff) you can get at Michaels. Just lay the lid down on the stuff then x-acto around. Glue that in to act as a better gasket material than the cardboard that was there originally, wouldn't this keep out the moisture? That and a hiding place out of direct weather/ water. This could work with any jar and probably make them more able to stand the test of time. Of all the jar caches of plastic I have found it is the moisture getting past the seal that is the killer.