Jennifer&Dean

Some of those handwarmer thiings they sell at sporting goods stores might work. They get pretty hot and can be placed around it to melt the snow.

Hi! Glad to see you are still around! Things to remember around here: Wilderness is off limits to cache placements. Check with the local reviewers to make sure your placement will be OK if you are concerned at all. Don't expect alot of finders. For example, Asatruar's Ride the Rat is one heck of a bike ride/hike and gets hit only a few times every year, if at all. If it is possible to drive and cut out part of the hike, there is a chance someone will. We once got a ride to the top of MT Sentinel with the Hang-gliding club- it was awesome! Check the FS maps to make sure you haven't placed in one of their research and testing parcels. At one point they were asking that we avoid those but Dean and I only know of 2 in our area designated as such. Definitely spend some time checking out Asatruar's caches- he doesn't stop until he gets to the top and even then may keep going.

Cool new feature there... find cacher rank by location. Of 49854 Geocachers with > 200 finds: TheAlabamaRambler Total Finds: 2591 Location Rank Alabama 20 United States 1242 World 1690 That is a cool new feature. I love numbers and stats. J Jennifer&Dean Total Finds: 3066 Location Rank Montana 3 United States 913 World 1202

We are hoping the same thing as PP. Our current plan is to attend the CM and then on Sunday drive to Seattle and Monday visit the maze and then head back across WA towards home. Would be a hard choice for someone from the Seattle area to have to choose a CM over the Maze event.

Geo bingo is a great game for events because it encourages mixing. Any game that encourages mixing is good. I'm not crazy about activities that send everybody off on their own or in small groups. What really disappoints me is attending an event, then watching the attended logs roll in and seeing name after name of people who were there but I never met because they were off caching, on a poker run or whatever else. I have to agree with Brian. We throw our events as social events and folks can cache before and after them. Our only exception is one event which is co-thrown with Mr Grubstake every year involves a hike to a cache placed on the cliffs above his restaurant and usually a few other temp caches placed in the area. It can be hard to get everyone together for talking when they are all out chasing caches so we always set a time for the hike to the On The Edge cache and then an beginning time for dinner and it works out decently well. Geo-Bingo is alot of fun, other fun we have done was speed solving for ROT-13 readings and puzzle solving for real puzzle caches local to the event. (with their owner's permission and participation) If the event ends at dark we always try to plan a group night-caching trip as well. Jennifer

WooHoo! We are registered and plane tickets purchased. This is gonna be great! We are flying into Buffalo, NY and driving south to hit a bunch of caches and see family and friends. Then after GW7 we keep driving and fly home from New Orleans. This is gonna be a blast!!! J&D from MT

I was through there earlier this year. There are a few pretty close to the airport that you can get if you can get a ride to them. We got there pretty early and did not have much to do while waiting for our flight. There are some neat sculptures of "paper" airplanes in some of the atriums there. Cleveland is a pretty fast airport to get through from my experience but remember that your flight boards 30 minutes earlier than the take-off time so you may only have 3.5 hours to wander. Given time to exit and get back through security you probably have about 2 hours for caching at the most. J

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We hope you all find wonder in your wanders this year!

We did a great one called UofC Bees in Calgary, Alberta this spring. It used reflective stuff and took you on a short tour of campus. Worked well and was fun. We are looking at doing something similar to the Rhode Island cache mentioned earlier along a bike trail in our town.

Thanks for sharing that email. We subscribed because of this thread and the forums and to see what would happen next. To read that they no longer check the thread or forums tells me that they no longer try to keep up with what is going on in the Geocaching community. You can learn a lot here if you just skip anything about micros and/or by Vinny. I'll expect the next issue to have an article about Geocaching on the AT and another about how great Nano containers are! J

I CAN walk to the top of that mountain. Given enough time, water and M&Ms. Beauty will jump out at you when you are least expecting it. Even an uninspired micro can become an adventure. -Jen

After using Lep's Bookmark list to focus in on a cool cache while on a business trip, I created my WOW list. It is my favorite cache finds from across the country. Some are simple, some are painful. All will take you somewhere worth visiting either for the location or the cacher's creativity. Jen

Wow! The weather has definitely been great for caching the last month or so! And a congrats back to Trevor and Kate who got #3500 on September 27th! WooHoo!

Look at geocache pages. A Lot of club members will put a link to local clubs on their cache pages. Beyond that, post this same question in the region section of these forums or ask that this thread be moved there. Knowing what town/state you are in without having to check your profile would help. Jen

Great posts and photos! Such a cool place to visit!!

Saturday afternoon Dean, Swolf12000 and I turned around at the bottom of that hill and headed into Glacier NP instead of going for that cache. We had spent some time looking for the right trail up and decided that no matter what direction, it was gonna be a scramble. Dean didn't feel like unpacking his knee braces and Swolf wanted to get to Glacier. So, we decided to try for the cache on the way back to our hotel later. We got back to the hill just as the sun set. After another look at the deer trails up the hill decided to bag the search and return again another time. I can't wait to tell Swolf that the bear he spent all weekend looking for was at that cache he didn't want to do in the dark!!! Jen

We have a local group- MOOG which is basically a loosely knit group that shows up at events and CITOS and is connected by a Google Group mailing list. It works so far as having anything more formal would cause angst. Also, there is a forum that was kinda set up for the state and a few of us post things there to keep all the other groups informed of goings-on. Online there are 2 Yahoo groups for Montana cachers, 1 google group and the Great falls group uses a mailing list but is being solidified into a more focused group at an upcoming event. Things that can tear apart groups- too many events, too many requirements, too formal, too informal, etc. Good luck! Jen

Thank you Shauna! I have recently had the opportunity to visit the NE and take a short hike on the AT (and find a few geocaches in a cool park I used to access the trail). It was very neat as I often daydream of taking a few weeks off and hiking a section of the trail. It saddened me to read the postings about the caches being archived as I find they are a great way to learn more about an area. And they give me a place to head for when I am on a business trip and don't know where to go hiking. I hope the NPS will become more open about geocaching in the future but for now I only hope that the mis-identified caches can be un-archived and any mistakes resolved. Jennifer

I believe it only screws up the name if you create it with that character. If you edit the name after creation, the ampersand issues disappears.

In our case we started caching almost a year after I joined the site. Is there a chance you signed up, didn't see any nearby caches and waited about a year to actually start caching? Jen

So... when you post that cache, are you gonna give "Don't Park HERE!" Coordinates? J

Something that makes me go "WOW! I just did/saw something totally cool and I never would have done so without this cache!" Check out the bookmark list in my signature! Jennifer

I think it depends on the person who is looking at the activity. Older folks tend to think this is a game for youngsters, men may assume gender neutral names are men, and women may assume that gender neutral names are men. Personally, I know more women who cache than men and I think our area is pretty balanced. So many login names are neutral that you never know what gender the cacher is until you meet them. When dealing with unknown cachers I try to use neutral wording until I get more info. And I usually sign my online posting with a -J so folks know it is Jennifer and not Dean posting. I started our account. When Dean wanted to start caching we changed our name to the joint name so we wouldn't have to log everything twice. It has worked out for the most part, except every now and then he asks why we have to have a female avatar. -J

Congrats to Trevor and Kate for # 3400! Slow down y'all we'll never catch up at this rate! And a Congrats to Allanon on # 2000 And to Raynebeau for #1000 just before the WSGA campout. Gotta get her onto the forums sometime...

Finding: Given enough free time, we will try to find just about anything. With limited time we tend to go for clusters of caches in parks and on trails as a way to see more of the area and get a bunch. I usually skip caches that are at fast food restaurants and near dumpsters. Dean will go for them if we are close but not if I am with him. FTF: It can be fun but we don't always have the time to go for them so we don't even watch for new caches to pop up. Almost had a few Sunday but we ran out of time to do the 6 mile hike. Where I cache: EVERYWHERE I CAN! I travel so my goal is to find one in every state. Then, once I've found one, I try to find as many as possible. We set a goal of someday having at least 50 finds in every state. Puzzle caches: Dean solves them before road trips, I usually skip them on my trips. Unless I hear good things about it, then we will go for it. Travel bugs: I love to move them across the country when possible. Events: Oh YEAH! If possible, I will be there. I once drove 50 miles in a Delaware snow storm and associated traffic to attend one when out of town. I love throwing them and attending them. Just never have enough time.... Hiding: Fun but not my focus. Hiding means maintaining. We aren't home enough to do a ton of maintenance. Dean loves coming up with creative ones and we like hiding puzzles and multi caches. But only if we think we can maintain the cache. Forums: I should post more often. I read them a ton but lurk more than anything. Jen