TnAMurphy99

Hello! My husband and I are moving to Ohio from Vancouver, Washington at the end of September, and have 2 local, active caches that I'm hoping to find someone to adopt them rather than have to leave them until they disappear. They are: GC1XC78 and GC1ZAZE. I just did maintenance on both of them, one of them placing a new cache in a more secure spot. If you're interested, please send me a message! Thanks so much!! TnAMurphy99

I went to go upload some new caches into my (several year old) Garmin etrex Legend H today and for some reason it's being read as NOT detected. I uploaded the new drivers (several times), and have tried it on both my laptop (with windows 7) and my pc (with windows xp). It's plugged in and is getting power from the computer (it shows the little plug symbol letting me know it's plugged in). Any thoughts to what the problem is? The last time I uploaded any caches was the end of April and it worked fine. It's still working perfectly in every other way, just not registering as connected on geocaching.com AND on the Garmin website when it does it's test after installing the reader program. Any help is appreciated! Thanks in advance!

I completely agree with this. With physical caches, there are many times where people just 'run in', sign the log, and 'run out', never taking the time to really appreaciate the place they've been brought to thanks to Geocaching. Whereas Earthcaches give you an opportunity to do just that. They have you look around, learn something about the place this great game has brought you to. Why is it so wrong to not only have a cache with a log to sign, but also an opportunity to walk around the area and learn something new? There's also a lot of times where the area is so big, that the physical cache is showing you one area, and the Earthcache is teaching you about an entirely different area or aspect of the place it's brought you to.

I believe the car GPS's are more "general direction" where the hand held devices are more precise. So finding caches would be a bit harder with the car GPS's. Don't 'quote' me on that though, as I've only ever used a handheld for caching. Where you're looking (urban vs rural caches) will make quite a difference when knowing what to look for. Try making your first ones 1/1 - 2/2 (in that range), and caches that are not micro's (those little buggers can give the most seasoned cacher a hard time, let alone someone who's just learning the game). Read the recent logs, a lot of them will mention something that you'll notice when you get there, helping you narrow down where to look. Once you get a good idea of the area the cache is in, look for 'geotrails' (pathways made by people walking the same path over and over), piles of rocks/sticks/leaves. Look for spots you would maybe place a small cache. A lot of cache placers will have hints, don't be ashamed to use them! They are there for a reason! Some hints are still fairly vague, where some will take you to the exact spot. If you're still having problems finding the cache, I find it quite helpful to stop, take a few steps back, and just look at my surroundings. There's been many time's doing that that I've noticed something that I just wasn't seeing when looking 'close up'. And, if all else fails and you just can't find it, mark it as a DNF. It could be missing! I'm a big fan of the caches placed in your local neighborhood parks, especially when caching with kids. They make for great 'cover', and when you're done finding the cache, you can take a few minutes to play too. I've found a ton of small parks that I never knew were there thanks to Geocaching. And the caches placed in them aren't too tough to find. On the nicer days, you may need to keep more of an eye out for 'muggles', but most of the time, they don't pay much attention to you, especially when you have kids with you. Hope this and all the other 'pointers' posted in this thread help you! And good luck!

I too was having issues with my Iphone Geocaching app today (Sunday March 21), it also wouldn't work on my wife's phone as well. After seeking you location it just fails to find your location and any access to geocaches. It worked fine on Friday, not sure what was up. Its a good thing I had my main GPS with me or it would have been a very sad GPS day indeed. Sounds like this glich is starting to grow! There's a thread about this exact thing in the iPhone apps forum. Seems there's a lot of us who are having this issue today, so don't worry that it's just your unit (as was my concern before I found the tread lol).

This made me LOL I take my 3 year old niece with me as often as possible. She loves diving into all sorts of places, and it's been quite helpful on several occasions, as people will look at adults a with interest that's searching a hedge, but a 3 year old poking their head in is just being curious. Also a great cover for the neighborhood park caches that she and I both love to find. We haven't had much of a chance to go out to any 'tougher' terrian, but we have gone hiking on a few easier trails and, with her at least, as long as we don't go too far off the trail and watch our step, we haven't had any close calls The more succesful caching days include stopping to play on the play ground, watching birds, clouds, air planes (whatever's in the sky catching her attention). Just remember that you're doing it for fun, and to teach your kid the same, and everyone involved will have fun

Awsome! Thanks so very much!

I've been using my Garming eTrex Legend H for the couple of months I've had it to do local caches around my neighborhood. I hook it up to my comp and download caches right into it off the site so I have them sitting in my GPS for when I'm out running errands and have a few extra minutes here and there. I'm going over to a friends house to show them some of their local caches to get them sucked into it, and am downloading some of the easier ones in their neighborhood. And that's where the fun starts, I had 3 or 4 of them put in, and after putting in another, I noticed when making sure it went thru, that not only was it not there, but the 3 or 4 I had just put in weren't on my list anymore. I've tried over and over to put one of them in again, but no matter how many times I put it in, it's not showing on my list of Geocaches. It's actually not showing any caches that are 10 or more miles away from my current location. I tried putting in a newer local cache, and there it is, right where it's supposed to be... but still no cache further than 9.94 miles from my current location (my house). Any ideas/thoughts would be great! Thanks in advance!

I'm new to geocaching myself, and have been using a family friends out dated garmin etrex for the handful of caches I've been able to find while waiting to buy my own. I, like everyone else, is on a budget, and am looking at either the Etrex Venture H or the Geomate Jr. For the most part I'm just doing caching in my local area, but am planning a few road trips over the next few months from just and hour-ish away, to as far away as San Francisco and am planning on doing caching the entire time. I'm very much a planner (especially for the road trips) and have no problem doing PQ's and route plans for caches. A few quick questions; 1. I live in the NW, so caching out of tree cover isn't really much of an option most of the time, how good is the reception in 'wooded' area's? And cloud cover for that matter (it kinda rains 'a bit' too lol) I'm more curious if the mate is more friendly for the 'lets go to the neighborhood park/sidewalk/shopping center/etc' and find a cache, or can I go into the state parks/hiking trails/etc and be able to do the same thing? 2. With the update kit, is it just going to be a new 'random 250k' or will we be able to choose the area/region of the caches? 3. How wide of a range is the 'closest 20' (if there is one)? With driving down the freeway, how often am I going to be having to turn the mate off and on to reset the closest list? Also, in several previous posts, it was discussed about people buying the geomate not getting onto the geocaching.com website; might there be a possibility of maybe having like a free month subscription with purchase? Not only will it get more people on the site, but I'm sure a lot of people who are buying this specifically because of the low cost of it would love the free month. Thanks in advance, and sorry for the bit of rambles...

A similar thing happened to my friends and I just last weekend. We were out caching in a huge park/camp ground area finding multiple caches thruout the day. Just as we were hiding our last find of the day, one of my friends stumbled upon another cache just a few feet down the path. I made note of it when logging the last cache we (purposely) found, and have been checking to see if it has since been added.. but still nothing. It had SWAG, a log, everything but a "you've found a cache!" note or any id/name/etc noted anywhere on it. The log was clear... so we signed it as though it was a log (not realizing that it was an unlogged one at the time), marking it as FTF... lol. So, we signed the log of a random "cache"... so we'll see if it's ever listed. lol.

Just earlier today I taught a friend of mine what Stinging Nettle looks like... sadly it was after he walked thru about 30+ feet of it. lol You should also know what poison oak looks like if you're caching on the west coast

camera, spare batteries, water, granola bars and/or trail mix, plastic shopping bags for CITO, pen/pencil, swag, hand sanitizer, small first aid kit, sunscreen, bug spray

I'm very new to geocaching myself, and have been looking around at inexpensive/easy to use gps units. I'm currently leaning toward this one myself (the price and ease to use are big selling features), but am only seeing that the cable is not included. Is this cable a "special garmin only cable" or can i go to any store and get any 'fitting' cable?