[Designating a cache as a TB/coin 'portal' to another state?]

As I'm closing in on Cache #100, I'm preparing for my first hide. I've selected a local landmark that has a cool story behind it, and I've obtained the property owner's enthusiastic permission. I'm headed over this weekend to scout the location and find the best possible hide location.

 

Turns out I have a geocaching buddy who lives in Michigan. I thought, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if folks could use my cache to drop off their TBs/coins and once a month I'd mail them to Michigan for reseeding?" I'd heard about Stargate caches, but I'm within the 500 mile range of the NorCal Stargate.

 

If you wanted your TB/coin to head to Michigan, you'd stick a note in the log for the cache and I'd go collect the item for mailing. Other coins/TBs would stay put for locals.

 

Has this proved feasible in the past? What do you call this kind of cache....a TB hotel, or a wormhole, a portal, or what?

 

Advice?

[Playground Caches]

Being a 32 year old male in a park seemingly scoping out playground equipment without my child present makes me and other park patrons a little nervous.

 

Ooo. I see your point. I'm an over-the-hill female, so I don't get stinkeye the way males do. Plus, none of the parks I've gone to so far have had the cache near the playground itself....usually it's out by the softball field.

 

But I do worry about being a female poking around in strange bushes in secluded corners. We have a lot of homeless folk around here, and I don't particularly want to get in an altercation.

 

I've been seriously considering purchasing an orange safety vest, orange cap (like the one from geocaching.com) and one of those trash sticks. Most people ignore the lowly folk who are obviously picking up garbage and sticking it in a bag. As long as you ignore the kids and continue picking up the trash, you shouldn't have creeped out parents glaring at you.

 

As for satellite photos.....I've been pretty pleased with Google Earth. I've been able to zoom in on the backyard of my house and friend's houses to the degree that I can see the cars in the driveway and even mailboxes. We used Google Earth to scrutinize the area where a pilot friend of ours met his demise on a mountain. Provided the playground was built in the past five years, it ought to give you a pretty good idea if there's playground stuff there.

[Pocket Queries and Blackberries]

Offcially no such thing as a nano. Anything size of a film can or smaller is a micro by definition.

 

You get the idea I'm an old lady, and my eyesight's been shot since high school. Them teeny things make me crazy.

[Pocket Queries and Blackberries]

Noob here (just bagged my tenth tonight). I'm using my Blackberry Pearl 8130 as my GPS unit.

 

My question: I'd like to make a pocket query and have it talk to my Pearl to upload the list of caches to hunt.

 

I tried using CacheBerry. It was....ok. I absolutely hated having to upload all my files via the cable. And the interface left a lot to be desired.

 

Downloaded the trial version of GeocacheNavigator and fell in love. I AdORE the Find Near Me feature....but I can't find an option to let me filter out nanos from the search results.

 

I *could* flip between the browser app to access my bookmarks/pocket queries and snag the cache ID, then feed that into GeoNav, but it's rather slow. Any other ideas or apps I should investigate?

 

Thanks!

[Affordable tracking numbers?]

At the bottom of the welcome page at sigitem.com, it says:

If you would like to have your signature item hosted on this site, or would like to have a sigitem.com subdomain point at your webserver, drop me (Marky) a note at geocaching.com.

That's what I did for my sig tokens.

 

Yup. Did that. No reply yet. Maybe I went into the spam folder.....

[Affordable tracking numbers?]

Noob here. How can I obtain affordable tracking numbers in quantity?

 

I'd like to leave behind signature items that are cool enough that folks would want to keep them....or move them. At my first cache I found a 'sigitem' that has tracking #s and various homemade items at sigitem.com. I also checked into travel bugs, but phew, travel bugs are a bit more expensive than I'd like. I'd rather just 'mint' the tracking number into the item as its made so it's a permanent part of the piece (and so I'm not consuming more metal with the dogtags).

 

Suggestions?