k5hokie

I have to chime in, Pretty sure I'm not now or ever have been a geek. Nothing wrong, with people who feel that they are, more power to you. An early post implied that everyone who does this was shoved in lockers and such. I was never slammed into a locker, I was actually an all-state athlete and dated the snooty cheerleaders. Never seen Star Wars or the Lord of the Rings. I know nothing about video games, computers or such. I've always enjoyed outdoor activities. In school I would teach a Wilderness Survival course at the local 4-H camp and Boy Scout camp. During college I became seperated from most outdoor activites. It was hard to find time with parties and such. Now, I spend most of my time in offices and hotels. Its boring. I miss being outside and the sense of adventure. Geocaching, and I am very new to this, gives me a great excuse to go for a hike, or go kayaking. I really hate posting this, It sounds like I have to list my past activities to justify myself. I have lot of hobbies, I stumbled across this one recently and so far it has been fun. It takes different temperments, talents, and convictions.

I can give my newbie opinion, yea, thats always welcome . I only have one find, yesterday, first time I ever went. I've checked out a lot of the caches near my place and my parents house, where I know the area much, much better. Last night I was looking at cache locations near my parents. I knew exactly were three where just from looking at the discription. I plan on finding them, next time I'm that way, but pretty easy locations. thats cool. I want to find some easy ones and hard ones. When I learned of Geocaching earlier this week, told you I was a newbie, I called one of my friends who I thought would like to try it sometime. He had seen a special about the sport on cable and seemed excited about it. His first thought was of places to hide caches. We both know that area very, very well. and immediately thought of some great hiding places. Now I'm trying to find as many caches as I can, until we can get a chance to hide one. I'm also trying to learn what to use as a cache, what to put inside, how to hide, what type of directions and discription should I use. The only way I can learn is to find caches, read this board, and ask questions. I plan on hiding a cache, by the time I do I'll probably only have 5-10 finds. If someone is crtical of my hide, then I'll learn from it and do better next time.

I bought my first GPS unit today, a Garmin etrex Legend. I have no prior experience with using GPS. The accuracy remained at least 30 ft. and often was above 75 ft. I do understand that this is due to the number of satellites picked up , and it was least accurate when few sats registered, and when these few were in a straight line. My question, was this due to tree cover, it was not a thick forest, actually a suburban park? Could it be because I used weak batteries?