Team Dromomania

I thought all the ticks in the state hitched hiked out with me on my last trip there. I did an island cache with my niece in tow. She had HUNDREDS of tiny ticks on her when we got back on the boat. The ticks are bad but I really hate the chiggers. There are no chiggers out here in California but I do usually end up with a tick or two whenever I do one of my frequent caching hikes. This summer I got one tick in the belly hole and couldn't get it out. A doctor, knife and 2 stiches later we showed that tick who was boss!

I've searched the internet and these forums and didn't find any info on the best way to deal with stickers when hiking for a cache. Sometimes my pants and socks look really furry! A few times I threw away my socks. Is there some sort of socks or pants which resist stickers? Or, do you have any hints how to deal with this problem?

I really enjoy caches which require lots of hiking. When I'm with one or more other cachers we almost always note who drew "first blood." This year I had no Poison Oak (it pretty much leaves me alone) and I did reach deep and grab hold of a 6 button rattlesnake (and let go faster than he could strike - it was cold) but I've had many, many cuts and scrapes and had several ticks take hold including one in my belly hole that took a doctor, knife and 2 stiches to remove. Yet, I can stll say - I really enjoy caches which require lots of hiking.

I can think of two cases in my local area of road crews thinking a cache container was a bomb and the CO was sent a LARGE bill for the reimbursement of the bomb squad responding. One got out of paying but I think the other is still pending. I don't like large bills so I pulled most of my roadside hides after the second bomb scare (A pill bottle hidden in the bore hold of a road sign).

I visited the cache page and it looks like the cache hide is back up and going. I know several officers who cache and have cached with them. Once an off duty officer was searching for one of my "evil" hides in front of a business. An employee saw him and went out to give the cacher a hint or two. About then a fire engine parked in front for a routine inspection and reconized the officer and asked him what was up. This is when I drove into the driveway and saw the fire engine with all those people milling around my hide. "Could a bison hidden inside a rock cause a bomb scare?" was going through my head. The officer made the find but with a muggle or two watching <G>. Just a few months ago on a back road two CHP stopped where I had pulled over to search for a cache. They made sure I wasn't having in problems and I told them about geocaching. I didn't have time to find it yet and they join me in the hunt for several minutes. I had to DNF it that day. The next day I stopped again and found the hide about 5 feet where we had been standing. It was an ammo can covered with dayglow paints. I still don't know how in the world we missed the find on the first attempt. Of the more than dozen times I've interacted with officers on my hunts I've never had a bad experience.

If you must have a "fuzzy" location for your cache then hide it at the exact coords but at a cliff. Is it on top, bottom or on the cliff? Trees and storm drains will work to a lesser degree. There are several hides like that in my area. It makes the hide hard to find but the coords are right on.

I don't keep a running list of my FTF's and if a new cache appears near me I usually give it a week or two before attempting to allow the FTF to go to those who care about them. A few years ago I took a road trip and a couple of thousand miles away (much to my surprise) I made a FTF. I had no internet access so it was 2 weeks later after I returned home before I could log it. Otherwise I do try and log my finds as soon as possible. I like to tell stories of the interesting finds and I want to get that story out while it's fresh in my mind. Many of my hides take a rather long hike or requires some climbing, wading, ect. so finds are not common. This last week I had a couple of new logs on my hides. They waited over 2 years to log the finds. None of this brothers me. This is a fun activity and we each enjoy it in our own ways.

Or maybe from the former manager who was too flustered from being laid off to remember to pass that information on to his superiors. I recall reading about a cache hidden inside a pizza shop with the owner's permission. It was an employee who phoned in the possible bomb scare. I guess it wasn't in the training manual.

I might suggest the Rockville Hills Community Park in Fairfield. You could park and start at Potential Survivor's first stage (GC11Q0W) and hike in to find one or two dozen others in the park. The trails are mostly easy to follow with some steepness here and there. Take plenty of water. Most of the containers are small or regular. There is a $2 per person fee to enter the park payable at the trailheads - cash and credit cards accepted.

Dogs have become prey for mountain lions so keep your dog close by. Hmmm...I wonder if that means that dogs could draw mountain lions to you. I haven't check that part out.

Are you using Windows? If so bring up the Task Master (CTRL/ALT/DEL) for a list of running files. If you see one named wcescomm.exe then end that process (it is used for sync. devices). That should free up your com port. At least that works for me with my little yellow e-trex.

Thanks for the help but it's not working. The program is looking for the Garmin on Serial ports or USB. This isn't going to happen since the Oregon is normally detected as a storage device on the PC. It does look like it will some day support the Oregon.

I have the Garmin Oregon 400t (got as a gift from my work place for 30 years of service - WOW!!) and I matched it up with the Garmin Heart Rate Monitor (010-10997-00). The heart rate can be viewed in real time but I don't know how to view the data collected so I can view how I did on hills and climbs. The Oregon nor the Monitor came with any software. I do have MapSource from my old 60CS and I read where one could view the data by viewing the track properties. But I haven't been able to get that to work either. Have any Oregon owners figured out how to view the heart rate data? It would be nice to see how fast the heart rate goes up when the cache is finally spotted. Thanks in advance.

SmokeysRedheadHelper has adopted part of Hwy 20 around Clear Lake between Glenhaven and Clearlake Oaks in Lake County, Califorina.

On the other hand that pull box might be a hoot to place inside a rock boulder "cave".

Interesting. If I enter Ithaca, NY into the "Address" search on the Hide and Seek a Cache page I get: 42.444586, -076.4999259 If I enter "Ithaca, NY 14850" I get: 42.406709, -076.518425 That's no where near the center of town. If I enter 14850 in the zipcode field, the coordinates are not displayed in the url so I don't know exactly what coordinate is used as the center point for the search. finally, if I go to any cache and click on "other conversions", the select list includes "Geocode Address", apparently a geocoding web service by Yahoo, which gives me still another location. I just did a zip code search on 14850 and it returned 42.4471 -76.4957. That's a third set of numbers for you to use.

For me the hint is meant to nug you into the find. Puzzles are ok - easy or hard. For example, I have a difficult hide under a small rock and my hint is, "Capital of Arkansas". You can't make hints work for everybody. A visitor from Germany might be clueless with my Arkansas hint just as I'd be clueless about a (insert geocacher) hide hint when I'm out of my area. I have returned home many times to look up the clues given in hints. I don't consider this a problem when caching in my normal travel areas. But if I'm on a road trip and need to make my stops timely I do check the hints BEFORE leaving to help with the time issue. If needed I can look up more info for the hint and be ready when I arrive at the search site. This is the one area where I agree with you. All that being said, My first attempts are usually done without hints. If I'm looking for a difficulty 4 cache and the hint brings it down to a difficulty 2 it just somehow seems to cheapen my find. Yet everybody looking at my finds will see me making a level 4 find. That hide with the hint, "cheater" might be getting a little too close to the truth.

I would say that the Nemesis (GCRZBD) in California is a true 5/5 cache/hide. I am one of the finders. It took miles of steep mountain hiking, puzzles, tree climbing and cliff hanging over several trips to nab this one. If anybody has the time and enjoys this type of hide I'd say, "Go for it."

Wish I was a kid again.

I do a lot of hiking but have yet to find a pot garden. But if I ever do I shall report it! I'm sorry, but growing illegal weed in our public lands is no different than planting it in my own back yard. I should be able to enjoy all the public lands which are open to us the same as I can enjoy my own back yard. Caching is a family activity. What are you telling your children if you look the other way when somebody is doing something which could harm or kill others (even if it is the drug itself)? What if another family is hurt because you didn't report the illegal site? Here in Northern Califoria are we to allow the Mexican Mafia marijuana gardens to continue their takeover of public lands? If somebody passes me at 100mph: unless a cop is nearby he's gone and will do it another day until he kills himself (and hopefully not others) then the problem has taken care of itself. Meanwhile, yes, make that phone call. Maybe you can get that nut off the road! Somebody cheating on taxes: They are hurting themselves and not out to hurt or kill others. As for the (only) 12 plants....Was that all that were viewed before leaving (more over the hill?)? The owner of those 12 plants should have choosen another non-public place to grow thier stash. Are they the one who may be high on their private stash and doing 100mph on the roads? As far as I know the same laws apply to him and I will report it. This is a nation of laws. Way too many people look the other way. Let's keep our public lands safe for our families and safe for caching.

I've had my Dell Axim x51v for a couple of years and never had it crash. You must have had another problem with your unit. On the other hand before my Dell I had a Palm Tungsten which worked great but was poorly construction. The off/on switch kept giving problems. For my Palm I had to convert the data (this takes time) to something that the Palm could read but for the Dell I can just load the GPX file direct which saves a lot of time. As for the OP, if all you want is going paperless then almost any PDA will do the job. Just pick out what works best for your price range.

I just try to act like I belong there at the GZ. Once I stopped for lunch at a fast food place and parked right next to a new cache which turned out to be a lampost hide right at the drive through enterance. I had the perfect cover - an electrical company van, an electrician uniform and a tool belt. I got out and made the quick grab and returned to my van to sign the log. At that point a man looking angry knocked on my window and wanted to know what I was up to. His company takes care of those lights! He learned a little about geocaching and left with a smile since I didn't take his work away. I knew that was too easy.

I'm about the same age and wonder the same thing except for my caches in CA. I still enjoy those terrain 3, 4, and 5 hikes.

Do you have ZoneAlarm installed? Google .ZM9 for more answers if that is the case.