Horticulture

Fascinating thread. Looking forward to hearing the official answer from the county surveyor lady. The Google Maps for my area incorrectly show dozens of private lanes as roads. Fortunately, the counties here mark every public road with a road sign, even the grass lanes, so it's usually easy to tell the real roads from the private ones.

I really like the clipboard and safety vest angle, but I often have a preschooler and a baby with me, and in that case, I think the clipboard and vest would make me look reaaally suspiscious. Most of the time, I just go brazenly to GZ and the few times someone has asked what I'm doing, I just explain geocaching. Everyone I explain it to thinks it's neat, and no cache has ever gone missing afterward.

I have a pretty Type A personality, so by the time I went out to find my first cache, I had spent a couple weeks researching the hobby and already knew a fair bit about the ins and outs. I went with my brother (his first time, too), and we went 8 for 9, I think. Any way, our first cache is still one of my favorites. It was a warm day in late winter, so there was little underbrush and almost no bugs. We had a nice, short hike along the top of a bluff in the woods, with some of the best views of the lake around here. It took about 5-10 minutes of searching to find the ammo box in plain sight. We hadn't brought any swag with us, but when my brother saw the foreign coins, he left several Subway coupons from his wallet, and he was pretty excited when another cacher logged shortly thereafter how excited s/he was to find the coupons. I think we may have to revisit that cache again soon. Maybe in honor of our 100th find.

In my town of 1300, there are two other serious cachers that I know of. However, we just gave a geocaching presentation at the library, so we've got a few n00bs now. One town over, though, there are probably a half dozen serious cachers in a town of 3000 people. Caches in town or on main roads are found the same day, but caches out in the country or in the woods might take a couple days to get a FTF.

We found this TB that had been missing almost 3 years. His goal was to visit architectural wonders, so we took him to the St. Louis Arch. And this TB wanted to visit highways and byways, so we photographed him on the St. Louis interstate.

The first time I found a TB locally, I logged it wrong, choosing "discovered it" instead of "grabbing it." A local geocaching veteran saw my mistake, contacted me through my profile, kindly explained my mistake, and walked me through logging it correctly. So, I say contact them! Sure, you run the risk that they'll get snippy, but I think most people actually appreciate it.

I just saw this on CNN.com today about a drug ring that was busted and thought it was semi-related to the topic at hand: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/21/drugs....rica/index.html Color me naive, but using ammo cans like this had never crossed my mind. Sadly, I could see that happening around here. I'd hate to see governmental agencies banning geocaching from grounds because of people using ammo cans like this.

Oops, I posted a few times before I saw this thread. I'm Jen in central Illinois. I started geocaching three months ago and have almost 50 finds and 5 hides. Sometimes, I almost like hiding more than finding. I just really like sharing my favorite stomping grounds with others. I started caching with my teenage brother, and now my 5 year-old loves it, too. Haven't been able to get the hubby too interested yet, but I'm working on him.

We were driving through a local town here with a lot of caches in it and saw one of those signs where you make words by putting up individual letters. (There's a name for those kind of signs...it's escaping me...) Any way, it said: AMISHFU FURNITURE I'm picturing Amish Kung-Fu. I think it may have been pranked by kids because it was fixed when I went back a couple days later to get a picture.

When I plan ahead, I like beef jerky, dried apricots, and roasted almonds. But as it stands, we usually grab Doritos and Gatorade. I keep energy bars in my Geo-backpack in case I do some spur-of-the-moment caching or just forget to properly pack a snack. I also keep a case of bottled water in the car trunk at all times; besides geocaching, it also comes in handy for T-ball games and sneaking into the movie theater.

Same here.