TinyMoon & The Pumpkin King

You're hoping that HUMANS don't find your cache. What's to stop an errant woodchuck, skunk, coyote, porcupine etc. from coming along and finding it? And don't forget Mother Nature and the occasional flood, forest fire, earthquake...okay 'nuff said. Things can happen to your stuff even if no one else knows it's there.

I've seen funny little wind-up "generators" for sale being hawked as "emergency cell-phone batteries", they can supposedly power your phone for 10 minutes or so...they're based on the same principle as the wind-up emergency use radios. I'm guessing if you can make such a device for a cell-phone, you can make one for a GPS.

Not counting the GPS, my 3 most valuable tools are a flashlight, basic BoyScout compass, and a hiking stick. The flashlight gets you out of the woods when you realize you've been having way to much fun and weren't paying attention to the fact that the sun has already slipped over the horizon. The compass keeps you going in the right direction when the GPS loses satellite contact. Sometimes it can take several minutes for a GPS of any brand to "find" itself, esp. if you are deep in a gorge, or in a forest with heavy cover. The hiking stick is good for flipping over rocks or poking in holes where the cache may be... along with a snake or porcupine! You'll find that the best hiding spots are quite often used by animals as well as cachers!

Here in our neck of the woods the sun goes down around 4:30 pm during the Winter so any caching you do after work is going to be a Night Cache no matter what.

Why, were Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson part of your caching party?!?

GCR55N This is a cache near a fishing hole that we found last weekend, it's a decon container that was frozen in place and we gently wiggled it free. You'll find that winter caching is quite different from summer caching, in that ... A~ caches are buried under several feet of snow B~ caches, once uncovered, are frozen solid in place anyway and sometimes unretrievable We've found that a long-handled flathead screwdriver is great for chiseling and prying caches free of their icy tombs. However, if the cache is so frozen in place that you risk destroying it in order to get at it, just let it be. Log that you found the cache but were unable to sign the log due to Old Man Winter.

Absolutely one of the FUNNIEST replies I have ever seen on the forums!

Neat! I never knew the legend of the Tramping Grounds was based on a real site, I thought it was just an old generic legend. Here's a neat flash media website we've had bookmarked, based on the legend I suppose? http://darkartsmedia.com/DevilsTrampingGround.com.html

One other time we were caching with my parents in Pennsylvania, and my Mom reached in a tree knot for the cache and accidently disturbed a nest of newborn baby mice. She jumped back and some of the babies fell out, we scooped them up and put them back. She was greatly disturbed by it, she was afraid the mother would not return now that the babies had the scent of humans on them.

We were looking for GCRDHH "Billy Goats Gruff", a deep woods cache. It was the dead of winter with lots of snow. And oh yeah this cache is in the same forest as GC13F4 "Porcupine Den", the place is full of the huggable little guys ! We found the tree we thought we were after, dug around in the snow at the base of the tree and found a good sized hole and we could see the ammo box waaay back in it. My wife went to stick her arm in and I said no wait, let me poke our hiking stick in there. I poked the stick in the hole and SOMETHING GRABBED THE STICK ! It barked out a quick "gronk! gronk! snarggle! snarggle!" kind of noise and needless to say we didn't sign the log! We never knew for sure if we had disturbed a hibernating skunk, porcupine, or something else?

I think there's more but I've lost track!

GCYGF2 N 42° 58.242 W 076° 14.946 Haunted road and geocache in Cedarvale New York GCT6HK N 43° 02.955 W 075° 55.764 Haunted road, cemetery and geocache in Chittenango New York GCKT9T N 43° 02.286 W 076° 19.432 Two Haunted cemeterys and geocache in Warners New York GCJV67 N 43° 01.474 W 076° 14.560 Haunted mines/quarry and geocache in Split Rock New York GCJR0J N 43° 03.111 W 076° 13.040 Haunted train tunnel and geocache in Solvay New York GCKQ27 N 43° 01.705 W 076° 14.493 Haunted warehouse (and archived cache!) in Split Rock New York GCJB9B N 43° 07.083 W 076° 23.518 Haunted cave and spooky woods with geocache in Baldwinsville New York Can you tell we like haunted places ?

We've found live ammo (shotgun shells and high-powered rifle shells) on a few of the "deep woods" caches that we've gone in search of. They were left by muggle deer hunters (they even signed the logs!), we're guessing they weren't quite sure of what they had stumbled across, but they at least knew it was a treasure hunt of some sort so they left something to try and be a good sport. Of course we "trashed out" the shells.

Why do you think he always has that huge ornate hiking staff with him ?

"In my opinion only idiots carry firearms on trails. They are not needed and poorly compensate for survival knowledge" An idiot is the person hiking down the trail and thinking "My oversized cranium is what keeps me at the top of the Food Pyramid". Survival knowledge is knowing "Critters of the Forest may find me very tasty indeed, therefore I carry my Dan Wesson .357 strapped to my side..."

Moving caches were an idea that started during the very beginnings of Geocaching but were eventually "outlawed", there were a few that were "grandfathered" in, but to my knowledge you can no longer create one. The idea being that if you want a cache to move, what you really want is a Travel Bug (and they were originally called Hitchhikers).

We had placed a cache in what we thought was "deep in the woods", but it was unfortunately near a party site for kids with ATV's and 4x4 trucks. Cacher's logs started to mention finding unusual trade items like bras, thongs and condoms. Needless to say we have moved the cache.

Carry a clipboard, and ... wear a Blaze Orange Hardhat! "We're with the County and we're laying out the line for 3-Phase Padmount Transformers, ma'am"

Fuzzy critters! Feathered critters! Slithery critters!

Save your money! (and oh, by the way, welcome to the group! ) The forums here are HUGE, and they are also FREE !!! No need to buy a book. Any question you have is already here, and there are thousands of us fellow cachers ready to answer it for you!

My wife and I have each have a wooden hiking staff that we use for most caching activities. I have two "funky" knees (courtesy of a motorcycle accident) the staffs are great for going up and/or down hills and for poking around in bushes and snowbanks looking for ammo boxes. However...they don't exactly fold up well and therefore don't fit on our motorcycle. So we each bought a folding trek pole at Wally World and they work just fine. As far as having TWO trek poles, one in each hand, that's A) kinda dorky and dumb. If you ever go for a tumble down a hill or whatever, you'll need a free hand and not a trek pole!

A few years back there was a thread posted in these forums...a caching team from Florida (I forget their team name) did a "Most caches in 24 hours" experiment and even documented the efforts with pictures. The amazing feat made it onto several Internet blogs and newssites. Do a search on it and see how they did it! They hit a very cache-dense area in (Orlando?) spent several days mapping out the grand search and forming strategies...they logged something like 400 finds and 100 DNF's all in one 24 hour period (don't quote me on this, I might be wrong on the numbers!). Very stunning tho', and if you are serious on your Guinness record you should look these guys up.

In the "Olde Days" you could put sounds and animations on your listings. Many of our early cache placings have sounds and animated gifs. But that all came to an end about a year ago, when the Powers That Be decided to streamline the website.

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...01-ac284c04f08c It's a multi-stage cache in 2 rural historical cemeteries. Stage 1 is a realistic gravestone with Stage 2's co'ords carved on the back of it. Stage 2 is the actual cache, hidden inside a cleverly disguised grave marker.

When you're out wandering around in the forest, sometimes the animals forget that we're Top of the Food Chain. Telling yourself "I don't need to be afraid of these wolves" would be stupid or even suicidal in my opinion, no matter what any "Official Scientific Study" reports.