Jennifer&Dean

I see what folks are saying about micro logging migrating to larger logbooks all the time. A few years ago folks still wrote in logbooks most of the time- unless busy trying to kill skeeters or in a pouring rainstorm. I have changed my logging practices myself. I catch myself putting the date and my name in the book all the time and then adding my comments and notes. A while back I realized that I loved reading my old logbooks and the little stories in them. Thus, other cachers must also enjoy reading logs in their books. So I promised myself to be a better logger and always try to at least thank the cache owner for placing the cache when the logbook has room to do so. Now it is kinda funny to see one of my logs- often the page has a series of 4 or 5 single line names and then I take up the rest of the page with my date, name, note of thanks and any comments I have. I always wonder what cache owners make of these when they see them now. Most newer cachers probably don't understand that logbooks are for more than names sometimes. One of my favorite logbooks asked finders to write a poem or short story based on some random words you drew from a baggie in the cache. It wasn't an ALR and you didn't have to include it in your log, but it was fun. I've also enjoyed logbooks made of sketch books where the note on the front of the book asks for a quick drawing or sketch in addition to your log. Those can be lots of fun to look through! Jennifer

I learned to take photos of trackable numbers, now my cell phone is full of photos of them. I'll probably log them someday...

We had a blast! Got to meet everyone, see everyone, stayed busy at the Cache Advance Booth and got the Ape cache! Now all I gotta do is talk my folks into being OK with us skipping next year's 4th of July. And the 2012 better be on the 4th because there is NO way I can skip Memorial day in Missoula that year. Jen

Wish we could help. We head out from Missoula, MT after work on the First of July. I hope you can work something out! Be sure to post on your local forums! Jennifer

I just realized, you need to check out my WOW bookmark list. All the caches I now want to recommend are on there. Dr Who in Portland is supposed to be cool, it is on my to-do list for next week's trip there. Ring Those Rocks has an EC next to it, bring a hammer, don't attempt if muddy. State quarter is a mystery in Oregon, used to have a great view of the Trojan cooling tower, is a newt spot to explore. Teddy Roosevelt Cache is in the Black hills and Totally worth stopping for the views alone. The Feathers are in Washington- rocks, views and desert combine for a pretty near area to wxplore. The Secret of the Lock Returns- in Spokane area, evil puzzle cache, once you get to the location... Skeeters can be nasty though. Trail Ruts- in Wyoming. One of my favorite places we have ever visited. Bookmark link in signature below. Jen

COOL! I bookmarked and Earthcache of yours already. Cool that you want to do our EC! I just re-read one of your posts and realized you were "cut loose" for this section of the trip. If you need a place to crash and aren't afraid of Star Wars stuff, we have a spare room. If you are allergic to cats, you can put up a tent in the yard instead. I have to fly out on July 7th for work but we should be leaving from Carnation on the 4th, in Spokane that evening and then home late on the 5th. Just outside of the Gorge in Gorge are some pretty cool caches, I'll post a link soon to one that has some near rock formations you should like. Now, I'm gonna start looking for the real fun hikes that aren't totally family friendly. If you don't mind skeeters, our cache Ingenuity has been well likes by most finders and is a flat 3 mile walk. Our Maclay Ponderosa Plantation cache is along the way- it was our first placement. Jen

Depending on when you pass through Missoula, MT you might enjoy the following: Pirates of Dragon Hollow is right next to the Carousel and in a playground. Evil but the family may enjoy stopping here. Smoke Jumper Central is near the Smoke Jumper Museum. A fast multicache and if you have read Young Men and Fire you will find it interesting. Montana's First Cache Revisted is a nice quick cache, not far from the parking area near the hwy. First in Butte If you haven't seen the biggest hole in the US, you might find this interesting. No swimming though, kinda acidic down there! Missouri Headwaters is the oldest active cache in Montana and a nice walk in the park. There may be a fee to get into the park as you are from out of state. Watch for ticks though. The Crazy Painter is a quick find just off the hwy. Statue and some views of the mountains here. God Bless America Travel Bug Bunkhouse is another quick cache near the hwy, big enough for TBs. Have fun! If you want to, I'll give you our cell #s and we will happily meet up with you along the way (if possible). Jen

I've eaten hard candies and mints that were in wrappers in newer and clean caches. And a local cacher leaves PEZ dispensers in caches and we've shared the candies with friends after a long day of caching. Worst thing I've ever found food-wise was when someone left a hard boiled egg in a cache on a sunny slope about 4 months before we were the next finders We backed away about 20 yards after opening the ammo can... just to recover our sense of smell. Then while Dean went back to the Jeep for some paper towels and cleaning supplies, I emptied out the cache and signed the logbook. Luckily the egg had been in a ziplock baggie all by itself and hadn't actually managed to do anything but stink up the contents pretty badly. We trashed out everything but the logbook and put in some new goodies, then tied the trash bag to the outside of the Jeep for the drive back down the hill into town. Found some other caches with food over the years, usually we trash it out and don't even think about considering it edible. But sometimes... the candy hits the spot. J

I've had a similar thing happen. Twice! First, about 2 years ago I was geocaching in an area of PA that I know my family is from. I was exploring the area using an old map to find the original farm. After finding the farm (now a school), I went caching and I found a cache about half a mile away. As I pulled away from the cache and came around a grove of trees I noticed a big old Mennonite Church. So I pulled in as I knew the family had been Mennonite. The first row of stones I walked down were the graves of my GGGGrandfather and his family. The other time was 2 months ago in Mystic, RI. There was a cache in the graveyard next door to the hotel and I started reading names on the gravestones that I had to step over and around to get to the tree where the cache was hidden. The Dean family was buried there. About 15-18 of them. My husband is named for his mother's maiden name- Dean. And these folks are related! Was totally awesome to literally stumble across this group of stones. Jen

Baton Rouge- The cache at the Rural Life Museum is in a pretty garden if you like flowers and greenery. A nice little walk. Burden of Beauty New Orleans- you've got Vieux Carre, that is one of my favorites. I also enjoyed the virtual cache at the Michoud Nasa facility- Fly me to the Moon It is really neat if you like space stuff! If you want to visit a scary cemetery, check out the virtual Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen but be warned, the cemetery is a host for crime and can be dangerous at night and sometimes during the day. I could recommend a few caches in Huntsville, Alabama- the Monte Sano park there has some great hikes. Bowling Green- KY- definitely grab the Cache Across America- KY if it is active- Dean still talks about the cool museum it is near. Stop at Mammoth Cave NP in KY to check out the earthcaches and maybe take a tour, be prepared they can take quite a bit of time up. Louisville- Oldest cache in KY- Tom Sawyer, lots of other caches in that park too! In Cincinnati- if you like hikes and seeing nature, the caches in MT Airy Forest are pretty nice. Lots of older ones there. If you have kids with you, check out GCYWR2- the Treehouse Grande for a quick leg stretcher near bathrooms and playgrounds. Can you tell we did a road trip through there a few years ago? Jen

It's great that you have people along to help you with your caches. However, how exactly is it a "find" when he watched you place the cache? Should I log all the caches I've placed, because I "found" them? Have helpers if you like, but for them to claim a find on a cache that they didn't actually find seems less rewarding than if they'd gone out and actually hunted it up. I suppose it's no different than a whole group of people claiming a find because one person found a cache, though. This is why I prefer to cache alone -- I enjoy the sense of satisfaction from finding caches on my own. Umm... usually we would make him wait a ways away from the hide area, down or up the trail while we hide the cache. Sometimes we let him help us hide it but since we can't be co-hiders, we let him claim a find so the cache doesn't show up as an unfound cache for him when we pull PQs of caches he hasn't found. We have helped him hide his own cache as well. Being present and assisting with the taking of coordinates and confirming that they will work. We logged a find on the cache after it was published as we couldn't get listed as a co-hider and have it count as a hide for us as well as him. Noone complained about the logging method. What would you have families do when the little kids want to hide their own cache? Should they not test the kid's coordinates and hide for issues before publishing? What if every child in the family has their own login name and all the kids help hide it. You may need to be a bit more open minded about how logs are used in some cases. FTF is a side game that isn't part of the original focus of Geocaching. The original idea is basically to go find something hidden and sign the logbook to prove you were there. Timing really doesn't matter once the cache is placed. I've heard of caches found and logged by muggles before they were posted. FTF is not played by all cachers the same way. Jen

Usually the Beta tester has had to do the same amount of work and hiking as you. Most of the time with the ones I have seen, they don't claim FTF but just claim the find as present with owner when placing or as the Beta tester. Do you mean that if my brother is with us when we place a cache 3 miles up a trail that after he field tests the coordinates for us and confirms that they work for him in his GPS, he can't claim a find until he returns up that same trail after the cache is posted? That would be a little mean to do to him. (I should try it someday and see if he will be stubborn enough to do the hike again just because some folks on a forum think it isn't fair.) I've been FTF on a few caches and puzzles that weren't beta tested and really needed to be. It sucks when the owner doesn't bother testing the whole process or assumes something makes sense and you have to spend all your time trying to figure out what went wrong. I would prefer if the cache owner works the kinks out before publication instead of after. Let the Beta testers and co-cachers have their logs. J

Perhaps you didn't mean it that way, but that bolded bit comes off sounding rather self-righteous. Because someone is inspired by a puzzle they've seen, and use it to make one of their own, certainly doesn't mean they're "stealing ideas". Stealing suggests that the person stolen from has had a loss of some kind. Since caching is not a business, how does someone lose from having their cache copied? I was going off briansnats post #2 in which he freely said that he steals ideas. Then post #3 said that briansnat stole their answer suggesting that they also freely admit that they steal ideas. Heck, briansnat skipped the part about being 'inspired' to create his own cache from another cache and went straight to just copying it and putting his own stamp on it before submitting it as his own. I think those two posts set the tone for what 'steal' meant in this thread. In that sense, I don't steal ideas so I said I don't. I gotta remember to put in smileys when posting in any thread you might post too. I will freely admit to stealing an entire cache write-up. In the definition that the theft was of the concept and write-up but not an physical theft. I stole the write-up with permission of the other cache's owner as I loved the way it was written and wanted to share it with folks who, after his cache was archived, would never see the beautiful use of words. (my cache Meet me in Greenough...) For the most part, the ideas we have stolen are used as concepts that we then bring into puzzle cache planning. Perhaps the word stolen is wrong and another can be chosen, but it would be the the best way to explain some of the process that I can come up with easily. I guess you can call it learning through experience and becoming more devious in our puzzle hides as we work our way through puzzles placed by others. Incorporating pieces and concepts in ways that may or may not resemble the original puzzle. Ingenuity was inspired by a cache in Delaware. I would have stolen ( ) the complete idea but the cost was high and the replacement issues would have made it more work that I was interested in investing in the particular concept. J

Gotta try that one for my 20+ state 2 country round trip geodysse to GW8. THANKS! Plus, I plan to post a helper thread as soon as I have the route locked. Ya just can't beat word of mouth IMO. Post your route Geckodude. I bet the real gems shake out then. Gonna hit The Trifecta (Original Stash/Ape Cache/The Lilypad) AND pick up the GPS Adventure Maze in Redding, Ca. as well as doing cache maintenance on my caches in the Sierras along the way on my trip. I also plan to hit Mingo (the oldest active cache) on the way out. When do you plan on going through Redding and heading north? I just scheduled 10 days in Medford, Oregon on a business trip before GW8. I fly home to MT on the 30th of June to drive to Seattle with Dean on the 1st of July. If you can, be sure to hit the Cache Across America-Oregon as you pass through- it is just off I-5 north of Grants Pass. Quick find when I found it in January, not much but if you are collecting CAA caches, don't miss it! Also, the Valley of the Rogue cache just outside of Rogue River, OR was a nice walk in the park- GC856. Older cache, from 2001 with a bunch of other fast caches to grab nearby. One method of finding caches that are usually cool is to look for the oldest around. I have found that going for the older caches brings me into contact with groups of caches along nice trails and in cool park areas. They are also usually a slightly longer walk into the woods than a P&G type micro. Jen

If you are using GSAK, try searching for caches older than 2009 and whose size is larger than micro. You will usually end up finding decent caches. Narrow it more with a terrain of 2 or greater and you will take a lot more walks in the woods. Popular, maybe not, but most of them will be in pretty spots. But your mileage may vary. Jen

As I have no idea who those two persons are, I'm going to have to go with Shackleton as well. Sir Stanley would also be a very handy person to have along. as would Sir Edmund Hillary.

Brian stole my answer. Honestly! When we see something we like, I give it a try and see if I can make a cache that I would enjoy which is similar. We have also been challenged- take something that would be really hard to make a puzzle out of, and make a puzzle out of it. Check out our OB-Noxious cache for an example of how to teach cachers about invasive plant species. I have also taken tangents on ideas and made caches that grew from puzzles I have encountered. Our Ingenuity cache is loosely based on a cache in Delaware that had folks using a geiger counter. It got me wondering how to make folks use their eyes and ears and hands and noses to identify the correct next coordinates. Jen

I'm going to link you to the Geowoodstock forums Ape Cache section. There is an event on Friday before GW8 with busing provided to the trailhead as parking there is very limited. Check out: Forum link -Jennifer

Your choice of how you limit yourselves. What about when the little Aardvarks are older and want their own logins? We cache as Jennifer&Dean. But I travel for business and get caches while on trips. Those are still logged under our name, usually with the log saying Jennifer of Jennifer&Dean at the end so a reader would know only one of us found it. My brother caches with us, I finally made his premium membership part of his birthday presents so I can get him his own PQs. The $30 a year ended up being worth the bother as he has different finds than we have. On the plus side, you can log premium caches through the backdoor method. But PQs are different. Although, if you use GSAK, you can do a weekly update of caches in your area from your main account and filter out caches that you have logged before doing an upload for yourself. Takes a bit of work on the front end, but it is possible. Jennifer

Auntie said it best. I've got a bookmark list of my favorites in my signature below. Some are simple but fun, some are complex but fun. And Vieux Carre is definitely a part of that list.

And good luck to your cousin, I hope a donor can be found. I donated bone marrow and stem cells several years ago and it was an amazing experience. Jen

We've found one mobile Event cache. Many, many years ago Clayjar drove from Texas to Alaska and back, with folks updating a tracking page of his locations every few hours. If you contacted him as before he passed through your area, you could arrange to meet up with him. We drove 90 minutes to meet him in Butte, Montana on the day he drove through MT while heading back to Texas. Unique as far as I know of events before and since, this event was pretty cool but very time intensive. Jen

Great! Can't wait to see your logs on caches again! Jen

I was trying to find all the event caches near an event in PA so I could figure out if my changed schedule makes it possible for me to attend another nearby event. But it won't search for "caches of this type" anymore and give me just the list of events near the PA event. GC24R5Y is one event and I needed to know what other events are going to be in the same area this weekend. I figured out a work-around, may actually be able to attend one in New Jersey! But you may want someone to look into this search issue. Jennifer

We would love to attend the CM but GW was already on our plate. Hope to see everyone at the September CM!