KKTH3

Officially, seven states - Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Nebraska. However, we were introduced to caching while assisting our brother in law with a cache find in Washington. We also have driven by a few caches in California that we knew where they were, but didn't have the time to stop and therefore have missed the chance to claim a cache in that state yet. This summer we will probably make a day trip to the black hills to get some south dakota caches and we might have a couple of weekends in montana, idaho, and utah to add those states to the list as well.

I just put a note on the outside of my caches that says "Do not mind the ticking - this is not a bomb" so no one gets upset that they can hear my signature travel alarm clocks I leave in all the caches. This way I know my caches are safe from a bomb squad call.

Sounds like it is archived. One way to find it would be to look at the geocaches found for some of the people who had signed the log book. they should still have the cache in their stats and that will link you to the cache page. There you should be able to locate who the owner was and maybe gain some insight as to why it was archived.

We usually log our DNF's online, but we NEVER, EVER log our DNFs in the physical log - sorta runs against the point of it all.

We have one park in town that always made me wonder. The name is CY Islands park, and as you can guess it is a series of 4 or 5 15 foot wide medians in the middle of 4-lane CY Avenue. There are no sidewalks or crosswalks or any logical legal access points to any of these islands and no stopsigns or stoplights to restrict the traffic on CY Avenue in this area. In fact, the only clues one would have that this is actually park land is the huge City of Casper Parks and Recreation Department signs declaring the area as CY Islands Park and one other odd object on each island..... a huge concrete picnic table! I've never seen anyone having their lunch at any of these picnic tables or people playing frisbee there or walking their dogs or any other recreational activities, but I have often wondered if anyone has recieved a jaywalking ticket for using that particular park. So far, I have passed on the idea of placing a cache in that particular park. I have a number of better places to bring people to rather than there.

We have found a number of easy ones. Off the top of my head, I remember finding one in Nebraska that was a decon container sitting by the base of a fence post by the side of the road. It was all flat grassy fields here and absolutely nothing to conceal any kind of container. Once I saw the GPSr arrow pointing down the fence line I already knew it would be at the base of one of the posts, and it was. I also remember finding an ammo can underneath a ramp to a visitor's center for a plantation house just outside New Orleans. It had no cover at all and was in plain sight if one were just to stand to the side of teh ramp rather than go right up the ramp and into the gift shop. Also, there was a cache at the visitor's center in northern Oklahoma City.... go inside and ask the lady at the desk for the geocache - she pulls it out from behind the desk and hands it over - easy peasy!

I've found caches in both the USA and Texas. Does that count as 2 countries?

HAHA! Yes, I understand. Our notification is set out to 100 miles out and it is very rare to get one of those emails. over 80% of the weekly newsleters say "And now on to the caches.... There are no new caches in this area." and most of the few that do list caches post hides by Rubicon down in Rawlins (about 95 miles away in a straight line.) I was happy to see a new cache pop up about 1/4 mile from my office a couple months ago and went home on my lunchbreak - grabbed the GPSr and tracked it down before the hour was up! That was the last cache in the area someone other than ourselves has placed - but that's OK, its better than nothing! Congrats on having something new to search for locally. We are going to have to make another trip out east for caching once the weather becomes a bit more reliable for frivilous travel.

Considering the number of caches in the area and how rare it is that someone else places a new cache within 50 miles of here... I'll just say that I prefer A cache. I'm not going to be picky on it being easy, hard, well kept, muggled, stocked, microed, with a view, or on the center median of the freeway. I can't even remember the last time I had to choose which cache to save for later anymore.

I accept your apology.

Before placing our first cache in a city park, I asked the Parks department if they had any geocaching policies and handed over a brochure explaining our activity. They said there were no such regulations and hadn't heard of geocaching before. Then they asked if I was requesting a liquor permit for geocaching in their parks. "No ma'am, liquor is a prohibited item for caches." "OK - no problem! Have fun!" I did get a chuckle out of that exchange.

I wonder if there is any leniency to let someone know if they are close or not - like "within 50 feet of correct coordinates" or "within 12 miles of correct coordinates." I have a cache that requires some estimating and the point is that if you guess closely you should find the cache without being bang on correct. It would kind of suck to be off by only 0.001 degrees and only get a "Sorry, that is not correct" response when the coordinates are actually good enough. Granted, this would definately make brute force a much more likely solution route, but maybe there are ways to still prevent that - within 50 feet response is actually within 30 feet and within a half mile is 31 feet to a quarter mile, so on.... so that people dont trianglulate proper coordinates. Then again - that might be more difficult to do than to just solve for the proper coordinates in the first place!

Interesting idea - took me a few minutes to figure it out. I'm not sure why it would be needed for most caches, but if part of the way to find the cache is intentionally using the ROT13 that way it certainly provides some added challenge. BTW, the last apostrophe is probably not needed as I am assuming it is supposed to be a plural word rather than a possesive word. Come to think of it, the first one may not be needed either but I'm not sure if that word is properly spelled as a contraction or if it is its own word. I really don't know, but it certainly makes enough sense as it is.

I grew up in the area - just off the highway 50 corridor near Placerville. I spent a good deal of time hiking, fishing, and in the wintertime cross-country skiing in the forest. Although it gets a lot of relative traffic - ironic for its name - the Desolation Wilderness is really an amazing area to spend some time. I prefer to access it by Loon Lake or Wrights Lake though. The hike just along Loon Lake itself is pretty nice for a short trip. The other area I would go to a lot is the Carson Pass area. Elephant's Back and 4th of July Lake are some pretty nice treks. For fishing, one of my favorite spots is Caples Creek in the Government meadows area. The best way in is to take Silver Fork Road from Kyburz all the way past the Silver Fork campground. The road crosses the Silver Fork of the American River just past there and there is a small dirt road that goes upstream for awhile - there should be some parking just before the spot where caples creek and the silver fork merge. I guess its possible to hike all the way up to Kirkwood from there, but we usually would just go up to Government Meadows and back. Way back when, there used to be an event every winter that was basically a cross country skiing / winter survival trip that went from Echo Summit to Carson Pass. I can't remember what it was called and I have no clue if it still is done, but I remember that being one of the most demanding journeys that one could do at the time. It really isn't a long distance, but the terrain is pretty intense and the conditions in the winter are usually far from ideal. I wonder if people still do that event. The other extreme event I remember was a bike race based out of Markleevile called the Deathride 100 or something like that. From Markleeville the route does 5 mountain pass climbs - to the top of Luther, Carson, and Ebbetts Passes, then over Monitor Pass and all the way down to Topaz Lake before turning around and doing the grueling climb back to the top of Monitor Pass on the way back to Markleevile. I never did that ride, but I always imagined trying to attempt it.

Wow! 30 families caching up in Gillette now? We will have to make another trip up there when the ground thaws out. Hey -- send some of those people down here - our caches are getting lonely. We still have one we placed last summer (with a white jeep even while the contest was still going on) that hasn't been found yet. You know you are in a sparse cache area when you can get away with that.

We used to live near Pinnacles about 10 years ago - It was one of my favorite hiking areas on the Central Coast, along with the Pozo area and Montana de Oro. I definately liked the east side better, plus the drive to the east side is a lot nicer. My best recommendation is to BRING WATER - it is deceiving how dehydrated one can get in the caves and up on the rocks.

That's cool! We took a trip to Scottsbluff last summer for two specific reasons: To visit the zoo and geocache! We even found your cache located just outside the zoo after they kicked us out of the zoo (stayed all the way until closing time) We might have to do a similar trip next summer now.

I had planned on going over to Bitch Creek once the weather warmed up, but now I am thinking I should just stick with caching on this side of the divide for awhile.

Big caching days for us are 5 or more in one day. However, considering the driving distance between caches here, that doesn't necessarily mean those are short excursion. In fact, almost every day we have bagged at least 5 caches also means we have driven over 350 miles. Our longest driving caching day was six caches over 980 miles. Our most caches in one day was nine caches on a 440 mile drive through eastern Wyoming and Western Nebraska. I can't even imagine how many miles we would have to drive to bag more than 50 caches in one day - probably would require severely breaking the speed limit repeatedly.

My lord! sounds like a travel bug to place in "The dessert"

Yes, 3 of my caches were archived during that period However, 2 others were approved (and both found within hours) Best of all, the caches archived were micros while the approved ones were ammo cans.

We have put a few interesting items in caches as starter items (crockpot, cordless phone system, lead crystal Mikasa picture frame, wireless phone - all items in new or prime condition) but rarely do we carry anything like that for swag so we haven't retrieved anything along those lines. Some of the better items we have found have been books, umbrellas, RC cars (the boy likes those) and I still use a swiss army knife I rescued from a cache a while back.

We had one of our caches muggled recently. It was placed in the summer, and when I checked on it awhile back I could see approaching the area that the cover was a lot thinner in the winter and I already suspected it would be way too visible. Turns out I couldn't see it at all until I noticed one of the trade items from the cache on the ground about 40 feet away. After searching around the whole area all I was able to recover was the lid, the log pencil, and that one trade item. Oh, and a lot of broken beer bottles. I figure it got spotted by whoever used that particular lake as a party place once the leaves had fallen off the bushes it was hidden in. Too bad, because it was one of our favorite caches we had.

My three caches with the longest streak of no finds suffer mostly from very few attempts. The two with the longest running streaks (GCP9NM and GCPTW2) are both puzzle caches - I figure most cachers never even try them. The third (GCQWHE) has had a few attempts, but all DNFs. It has been in the wild for 4 full months now (I check on it regularily, so it hasn't dissappeared) and has yet to get the FTF log. I'm guessing it will be found before it is a year old, but the other two may not be found again for a considerable amount of time.

We have two caches done in that fashion. The first one we called a "mystery cache" and the second we called a "multi-cache" but the method to do each of them is basically the same. I would argue that it is easier to get the information for the final coordinates for the one labelled as a "mystery" cache, although neither of them are terribly difficult at all. However, plenty of people visit the "multi-cache" and it has been found dozens of times while the "mystery" cache has only been found twice and currently is our cache that hasn't been found in the longest amount of time of all 22 we own. People flat out avoid puzzle caches here - even if it is a simple task to obtain the final coordinates (in this case it isn't even a puzzle, but just a walk through of a disc golf course to get the final coordinates - playing disc golf on the way is encouraged, but optional) But there at least is enough interest in multi-caches to draw people to them.