vanm

Big milestone event, eh? Congrats!

900 makes 400 seem so, well, insignificant! Maybe gas will still be affordable by the time I get that many caches! Congrats!

Great caching! Do you get royalties when others use "Found it" in their logs? I probably owe you some money...

Fast finding. Bravo!

Last night a bear took out my bird feeders... it did not seem that sluggish as it walked away! I've seen bears on the trails (sometimes on the caches), but mostly in my own back yard. I tend to think that "alerting them to human presence" often is probably a good idea, if they are on/close to trails, so that they might get the notion to move further away from the trail for their regular haunts. Of course, where is a bear to go? We're overpopulated with people and bears and deer here. I think we need to get some grey wolves, too, but then again most people think I'm a nut job. Most importantly, we need something that will eat lots of chipmonks.

And most of Harry Dolphin's finds should really be credited to you, right?! Without you, he'd be at, what, 237 by now? Congrats. Now, fess up what an odd picture of a barge has to do with a puzzle!

I took up geocaching to "stay healthy"... the doctor always says to get exercise... I am so shocked, and hope there is something that we as a community can do for the Mueller family. I'll always treasure the "Skully & Mulder" chip I scored early on in my caching career. I hope that knowing that Helmut was so important to our community gives the family some comfort.

Congratulations, especially because so many of your finds are puzzle caches!

Woo-hoo! I guess the ice wasn't thick enough today to try for "Island in the Sun" for #700, eh? Are you on track for a century mark this year?

Thanks everyone! I guess I'm not on probation anymore? Some of these 300 have even been GOOD caches, too, so thanks go also to many of you for hiding them!

You bunch of lilly-livered land lubbers! Let's see who has YOUR back next time you encounter a bear on the trail... Well, at least BOLP I has ONE log for 2005 !! Indefatigable, however, looks like it may require an amphibious vehicle, chest waders, or something inflatable. Happy caching in 2006!

Where to meet? I have not seen the signs on Edwards Road, but it seems there are potential access points either from the west (maybe meet at the shopping center at Beverwyck & 46), or from the east (meet somewhere off Ridgedale near Edgemount), or from the south (Troy Meadows rd, that access did not seem promising to me). If you've been scouting, what are your thoughts?

I was actually just at III today. The water level is very high (I seem to have had more trouble reaching this cache than other loggers); also the ice is too thin to support anything. I tried to see if there was a way via the power lines to get from Troy Meadows Road north to alongside rt 80 - this seems arduous if not treacherous. My next thought is to try to gain access to the meadows close to Beverwyck and Rt. 80... Good luck! Or, wait until a very cold spell. I'm busy that week, but post the day & time , and I'll see if I can break free!

Where next?

It would be nice to have a resource to know a) what "jurisdictions" have a "permit policy", and what hoops to jump through if there is a permit process in place for an area. Most of us are "hit & miss" with placing caches, but mainly because even if we thought maybe we should try to get permission, it would be difficult to figure out who to ask for permission, and what to say to "permission givers/land managers" if they have never heard of geocaching (or, what to say if the HAVE heard of geocaching in a negative way). I have tried to bring up this subject on the NNJG website forum, but have gotten only one response.

I just released Robert Wilson. Don't think he was a NJ native, but he did find the Big Bang in a cache in Holmdel. Now he's out looking for more big bangs.

Would not have qualified, but Wednesday I unfortunately did not have my camera with me when I encountered two black bears sunning themselves at Rockaway River Ridge Cache (right where the cache was hidden). Should be a lesson - always have your camera with you, or nobody will believe your stories!!

I'm impressed by the number of people out & caching in this not-so-gentle drizzle! And not just cache-n-dashes! Beware of flooded roads & flash floods in streams, and keep the log sheets dry!

I think it rains out there more than here. Now that it is raining here, we got nothing better to do than some useless forum posts too?

How about a "sadly gone" category? I'll put MI6.6 in for this one, even though it is not yet officially gone from the cache pages... ok, now it is officially "sadly gone"

Caching in NJ in the summer, in work clothes, at lunchtime (i.e. The Forgotten Forest), and no car air conditioning. People were giving me funny looks when I got back from lunch for some reason... Thank God for fall and spring in NJ. I love those two weeks!

Mark, your description had me in tears. Too bad I'm at work (but they already know I spend all my workday figuring out where to cache next). NJ has both Black and Turkey Vultures. Probably >85% of the vultures you see in NJ are TVs. Black Vultures are somewhat more common near the Del Water Gap area, but I have seen about 30 roosting in a tree down by Jake's Landing way down south in that other area they also seem to want to call NJ. Both are FREAKING HUGE up close. I think you need to be rotting for a day or two before they will come in to eat you.

Thanks avro, I logged. Note the picture of the WMD at MI6.5 - it looks highly radioactive. Thanks again for this great series!

An excellent cache series. I highly recommend trying this one (especially stages 1 and 6) in work clothes! [i'm still waiting on replies from HQ to log 3 and 6].

Great caching! I'm picking up some speed, but have a long, long way to go.