NutmegsPeople

Eagle is right. There simply are too many lame caches. While the tools that are being produced are a great help, they are also masking the issue of inappropriate caches being approved. I've had 3 cache boxes sitting in my room for a few years now. The ids got me all sorts of things and some containers for Christmas one year, but I have not found a good location to place the cache that means something. I too have many caches near my home, although nothing like he describes, and I try to cache when traveling. It is a great thing to do on vacation with the kids, and we've seen some great places along the way. Historic places, beautiful places, quiet calm hiking trails... all good . Walmart parking lots ? Give me a break! My latest PQ for our summer vacation is full of micro caches telling me to bring a pencil. What happened to actually caching something? And these all show up as regular, traditional caches . Not a single one shows as a micro. The problem seems to be more along the line of the approval process and rating. Is a STAR rating required to solve the problem? Sounded like a bad idea when I started reading this forum, but after seeing the flood of advice on how to filter out the problem instead of fixing the problem - I now agree with the original post. I'd rather see the types properly listed. Break out the micro's, make a traditional cache a traditional cache again. Let us get back to trading worthless items and watching travel bugs roam the world.

I've got one cub scout and one boyscout in the family... and both love geocaching. I found a site recently with a discussion of a major geocaching event. It appears Garmin was lending units for the event... might be worth looking into, I'm going to encourage my older son to try and get something like this done in our area where the boyscouts can teach the cubs on one of the co-ordinated camping trips... http://www.kaiserklan.com/roundtable/ There are a few links reagarding 'geoscouting' on that web site. Goodluck!

As you look into these things, work with the HAMs. Start with a look at what has been done already by a couple of hams looking to integrate the Rino with the APRS system: http://www.hamhud.net/rino-frs.html http://www.radio-active.net.au/web/rino/rinospec.html Nothing 'on the market' that will do what you want, but the HAMs are looking at taking Rino signals and processing them into the existing APRS systems. Also, work with your local HAM operators, I'm sure they would be willing to help out a great deal. Lastly, has anyone approached Garmin and asked if they would be willing to offer a specialized unit for your situation? If you never ask, they'll never make it.