Fritz_Monroe

All depends on the area. In my short geocaching career, I've been in areas where you felt like you were wading thru the dump and just down the road pristine park. Don't sweat it, pick up what you can, at least that trash will be gone. Maybe you can organize a CITO event there. F_M

You are soooo lucky. I wish I had an excuse like that. "But honey, remember I have a punctured ear drum." Maybe some day. F_M

Thanks for the clarification, and the humor. Takes a lot of mystery out of what's going on behind the scene. F_M BTW, I think that I saw the original poster's cache show up this evening.

I would hazard a guess that most (99% or more) of the registered Geocaching.com users don't have a problem with GC.COM - but they are not usually the vocal folks. Also, I would assume that only a small percentage of GC.COM users actually post anything to the forums. In any organized group, there will ALWAYS be someone that it upset about the way things are run or feel that they have been treated unfairly. Most just ignore the perceived "injustice" and go on with the rest of their lives. However, there is that vocal minority that feels it's their duty to right the injustice. Nevermind that everybody else has already forgotten about it and moved on.

This is pretty much the way I do it as well. I always leave more than I took. If my 5 yo son is with me, we trade. If I'm alone, I leave my current sig item and usually a trinket and take nothing. I figure that it will help keep people with kids in the sport. It keeps the kids interested. I can only imagine what I'd have been like if this existed when I was little. I'd want to go caching constantly. I also agree that it's fine for each of your kids to trade an item. As long as they are trading even or up, it's good. F_M Edited for clarity

Or they happen a lot if you are talking about the week between Christmas and New Years. Got at least 20 of those last week. F_M

I've seen many threads where someone says that they carry a cache repair kit. As I'm just starting out and getting some experience, what should I carry in a cache repair kit. What do you put in one of these? I would think that Ziploc bags and a spare log book, but what else? Thanks F_M

Here's another that nobody has gone after. Been there since July 2003 The Pines On S.I. It's in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay.

Newbie to newbie advice here. I started just under a month ago and at this writing have 21 finds. These are all from 1 to 3.5 rating. Here's some suggestions to keep going. First, have fun and try not to be discouraged. Easier said than done, but if you don't make the find, take in the scenery. Hook up with an experienced cacher in your area and ask them to take you to a park with a large number of caches of all levels. I connected with mrkablooey and it has made all the difference in the world. When you do caches on your own, don't go for the hard ones. Stick to the 1 or 2 star caches. Build up some confidence to be able to tackle the harder ones. Take someone with you. 2 sets of eyes are better than 1. Try to get a friend, co-worker or family member interested. Make sure you take a print out with you. Look for it and if you get stuck, decrypt the clues. Re-read the name and any notes. In my area, the name is usually a clue on it's own. I've noticed that the caches hidden by any 1 particular cacher tend to have similarities. This isn't always the case, but many times it is. Last piece of advice. Have fun. That's the whole point of the game. If you don't have fun, there's no point in doing it. Hope this helps. F_M

Along these lines, how do the approvers to their job? Do you actually visit the cache? Do you look on a map to ensure that it's not private property? Just curious as to what goes on behind the scenes. F_M

What's the name of it? Post a link when it's approved. I'm not in Annapolis, but it's not too far from Baltimore. F_M

Well for my newbie perspective. Navicache is the first site I used regularly. The reason is that I didn't have a GPS receiver yet and was researching. Geocaching.com had their forums down for a period and Navicache didn't. The tone coming from MANY of the posters on the forums is that they moved over because of being fed up with TPTB. So it seems that the majority of the bigtime Navicachers are disgruntled GC.com users. Since the forums are back up and I have my GPS, I have little use for Navicache. I do look on there from time to time to see if there's any increase in caches in my area. As it stands, there's 1 cache listed less than 25 miles from my house. Not enough to play the game. I do hope they stay around and get stronger strictly because competition is good for any industry. Without competition, the sport will stay exactly as it is now. No improvements at all. Just my 2¢ F_M

I've got a question on this. I've got a Magellan, so don't know how Garmin does the cable thing. Is the an auto adapter power cord? If not, why do you need a combo power cable/data cable? When I'm sending coordinates to it, my GPSr is on a total of at most 5 minutes. Thanks F_M

I had to log my first ever DNF because of the muggles around. They were everywhere. I didn't see the cache, but am pretty sure that I was no more than 10 feet away. Didn't want to expose and have it disappear. I'd hate to be the last re-hider of the cache only to see that it disappeared the next day. F_M

I work with a guy that's obsessed with what I've found in the caches. Has no interest in making the find, just wants to know if I made anything doing this. He'd be one of these types. Luckily, he's not smart enough to figure out how to turn the GPSr on, let alone make a find. Maybe you should get him a GPS and turn him on to this. Might change his tune.

My first ever FTF and my first ever Travel Bug find were both on the 1st. Starting my new year off right. F_M [edited: Turns out it was my 2nd DNF, not 1st]

Did you try going here?

I located a couple music trading caches close by but haven't had the time to go find them. They seem to have a lot of people visiting them. My main use for something like this is to try out a different type of music than what I'm used to. There are also a couple that the initial contents were movies and tapes. I do like the idea of a movie inspired cache. There's been several movies filmed here in Baltimore, but most were in the city and not that many places to hide a cache big enough to hold a bunch of videos. F_M

Yea, and where can I get one? F_M

Being new, I've been pretty lucky. I haven't had to log a DNF yet. I did go after one and didn't find it, but that was because I had to leave before I could start searching. If I would have spent any amount of time looking for it, I would have logged it. Personally it wouldn't bother me to put up a couple of DNFs. I feel that it's a good tool for the owner. If he sees a bunch of these, he should go out and ensure that it's still there. F_M

You can also swing by your local Staples, Office Depot, etc. They usually have a rack of really cheap software. It's usually about $10 or so. I've seen a label maker program there. If you want to download and use Windows, you can check Tucows They have pretty much any type of shareware software you could want. F_M

Only thing I can think of that you forgot is: They aren't all on the ground. F_M

KerryG See if there's a club in your area and hook up with them. mrkablooey took me out on a multi cache search in our area and really got me hooked. Trick is to have them help you along without doing it for you. We hit 9 on saturday and he gave me a lot of pointers and when he saw I was really stuck, gave me a hint. Don't want to get frustrated with it before you really get into it. If nothing else, you can probably do a search to see if you can track down some people in your area. Everyone I've spoken to has been really helpful. You'd probably have someone step up to help you get going. F_M

Yep, he beat me by a couple hours. As for the log, I checked back right after posting this and he put his log in, so this just answers my questions for next time. F_M

I tried to get the FTF for a new cache in my area. I was beat to it probably by less than an hour. The FTF hasn't yet posted his log. I want to put mine in, but I don't want to infringe on his "right" to post his first. After all, he found it first. What's the etiquette here? If I put my log on, would his show up before mine? Should I just wait until he posts? What the courteous thing to do here? F_M