AckerAce

Unfortunately, our experience is that most travel bugs are just kept and the cachers who have possession of them don't respond to friendly emails. I've sent a lot of friendly emails and never hear from people. It's truly disheartening. I wish there was an authority that would help us with this problem. :-( I hope you have a different experience: good luck!!

We lost a travel bug / coin to a guy that has admitted he still has it, but he just won't do anything with it. He has logged many many finds since he stole our bug two years ago AND he falsely promised to snail mail it back to us. I wish there was a governing body to turn him into. Jerk.

Shortest distance was 0km for my son's travelbug The Kozzy Bug-gy that we placed last august. Path5inder found it a few days after we placed it and he has not been logged since. In addition to shortest distance, you at least got "a few days" so I can beat that with a few hours. We placed one in the Niagara Falls area. Someone took it a few hours later and it was never heard from again!

We love releasing trackables but have definitely learned to pick something "ugly" that no one would be interested in keeping. We had one coin travel around Europe and the US and return to a cache less than two hours away, so we actually got it back and put it in a display case. That was really exciting. We had one get lost when the area flooded two years ago. I'm hopeful that one will show up again in the future. Our biggest issue is with one particular cacher who got ahold of one of our coins over two years ago. Our coin "visited" a few caches with him after that and then all activity stopped. We've had email contact with him where he admits to having our coin, but he refuses to drop it. He falsely promised to snail mail it back to us but after I supplied my address, he fell off the face of the earth again.... yet all the while, he continues to log caches that he finds. This is actually what brought me to the forums today. I'm wondering if there is any kind of governing body that can help me reach out this .... jerk. Or if anyone has any ideas of what we can do. We just want our coin back. Or confirmed to be back in circulation.

We are learning to use pocket queries and our new Oregon 450 tonight. We figured out how to download the caches onto the Garmin, however, the caches we've already found don't show that status. We like seeing a smiling face or open treasure chest. Is it possible to make this happen? Thank you! Paula

Wow, thanks everyone, you have given me hope that maybe they'll turn up again someday. We do try to buy "ugly" coins so they will be less tempting. I think the most frustrating one was a bug we dropped in Niagara Falls. A woman admitted she took it the SAME day....and we never heard from her again. So we know who has it, but there's nothing we can do about it. Did I mention it was the SAME day we dropped it for the very first time? *sigh* Another frustrating one....not to do with human nature....just "nature".... we dropped a coin in Oklahoma and a week later, they had flooding... the entire cache swam away. We've disabled the coin, but I'm still hoping that one will turn up some day, too. Thanks again for the encouragement. I'm going to look at the two coin links that were posted. Paula

Thanks Kunarion. I just edited our profile so our email address shows and I will go check my junk mail to see if anything is in there. I really hope our trackables show up eventually; it's very disheartening to lose so many.

I'm wondering if anyone is having trouble contacting other users. I've sent four or five emails to other members asking about the status of our trackables and none of them have responded. If it was one or two, I'd assume they are just not caching anymore (or just jerks who are going to keep our trackables), but it's all five emails -- not one response. Am I the only one having trouble?

We've released seven coins/trackables out into the world. Three of them have been taken and kept, never to be seen again. Why do people take them if they don't intend on placing them again? It's so frustrating. That's almost half of our trackables! Just want to vent!

Wow! Thank you so much for all these responses- VERY helpful. You've all cleared up the facts for us: NO, we don't need a PDA. YES, we can see the entire cache (or close enough) on the GPS while we're out in the field. YES, geocaching.com supports paperless. And you've given us a number of models for us to research. We welcome any other information any one wants to add, but at least now we can move forward with some confidence about what we're trying to do. THANK YOU! Paula & Charlie PS Edit: One more question: what does having the SD card do for a person?? :-)

No. See above. What are you using now??? We are using the Garmin eTrex Legend HCX, but we aren't paperless geocaching right now. Some of my research lead me to believe we needed a GPS AND a PDA in order to be paperless. If that's the case, we wouldn't be interested.

And another question.....do we have to have a PDA in addition to the GPS in order to go paperless??? Thanks!!

Before anyone yells at me, I searched for "opencaching" and "paperless" in the forums and did not find the information I want, so I'm posting a new topic. Please don't yell at me. We are tired of creating manual notes when we want to Geocache, but find the information necessary. It's actually a deterrent to us getting out to cache. We'd like to upgrade from our Garmin Legend HCX eTrex to a GPS unit that can go paperless. But the research I've done leads me to believe this can only be done at opencaching.com. We want to stick with geocaching.com. I only looked at Garmin units, since we already have a Garmin.....is Garmin just directing me to THEIR site when in reality, we could use a Garmin at geocaching.com and still go paperless? If we use our premium membership, can we use any device to go paperless? And what EXACTLY do we get with paperless? Logs? Descriptions? Maps? Can we log our find on the spot?? We'd be willing to spend anywhere between $200 and $400 for a new unit. Can someone make this more clear please? I just don't "get it." Thanks, Paula

Nevermind everyone, I found a phone number on Paypal. The order shipped and everything is fine. Yay.

Hello, Does anyone have a telephone number for USAGeocoins.com? I placed an order with them on May 27th and paid for it through Paypal and they have never acknowledged it. I sent an email to them last Friday asking for a status on my order, but they have not responded. I'd like to call them but I can't find a telephone number. My next step will have to be to contact Paypal and get my money back, if it's not too late. Thanks in advance, AckerAce.

We'll be visiting New Mexico next week and would really like to find a cache or two when we ride the tram to the Sandia Mountain crest. We're finding the number of available caches in the area to be overhwelming and aren't sure which ones are actually at the spot we want. Can anyone give us some guidance? Can anyone suggest some actual caches that are at the top? Thanks in advance.

We have a GeoCoin out there in the world and it is making its way from cache to cache. The problem is that the miles it is traveling are not being logged in our Tracking History for this item. There is one log that has the distance traveled, but none of the other logs have it. Any idea on how I can fix this so our coin will log all its miles properly? Thanks! AA

Hi, we'll be hiking Cowles Mountain next month and would like to know if anyone can suggest some caches we might find while we're there. Looking at the maps of where they are all placed is overwhelming - there seem to be so many. Maybe someone who is familiar with the area can recommend specific ones to help us narrow it down. Thanks in advance!!

Please pick a dog that works well with your entire life, not just the geocaching aspect of it. Good for you for getting a dog from a rescue!!

Oh my gosh, I wonder how long it would have taken me to figure that out!! THANKS!! ha ha I'm almost to the point of being able to read those clues without checking the chart!!!

We ordered the same unit and expect it to arrive on Monday. Thanks, Blorenges, for that tip...I'm sure we never would have figured that out!!!

Is there a way to search for Trackables without being a Premium Member?

Thanks everyone. Based on your input, we reconsidered the compass feature and decided to go with the Garmin eTrex Legend HCx. We ordered it this morning and are really excited. Thanks again!

We are also new GeoCachers and this morning we ordered the Garmin eTrex Legend HCx. We liked the expandable memory through disks and the USB cable is included in the box. We hemmed and hawed between this version and the Vista but finally decided we didn't need the compass. Someone mentioned the electronic compass is a battery suck, so that turned us off. We figured we could buy one of those little auto compasses if we find we need one. Good luck with your decision!

Hi, we're looking to purchase our first GPS unit and we're wondering what everyone thinks of the Garmin eTrex Vista HCx. I searched the forums and there doesn't seem to be much talk about it. We like the idea of being able to download the coordinates (gosh knows I'd get impatient and enter the wrong numbers if I had to do it every time!) We're not sure how the microSD cards are going to affect us.......we won't be climbing any huge mountains to GeoCache but some turn by turn instructions would be nice so we stop walking into rivers - ha ha. How much does everyone rely on their compass??? Thanks in advance.