Wallydraigle

I haven't found very many caches yet, and still consider myself a total n00b. I usually don't trade, but if the cache is somewhere where kids are likely to find it, I'll almost always leave whatever change I have in my pocket just as a freebie, without taking anything. Is that cool or not? I can see how some would consider it "geojunk" but when I was a kid any money I found was like finding hidden treasure.

My first cache was a couple weeks ago, and I didn't have a GPS yet. It was less than a mile from the house, and I was really familiar with the area, so I entered the coords into Google Earth to get a good idea of where it was and drove out there. GE actually indicated that it was on the north side of the road, but all that was there is a power pole and an empty corn field. On the other side was the edge of a forest with signs and fence posts and stuff, and my spider sense told me it was over there. First thing I noticed was a bird house on a fence post which I had minimally noticed before from driving past all the time. What caught my attention was that the hole for the bids to get in was just scored in, so I knew that's what I was looking for. It took a second to figure out how to open it, but no problem. I didn't know fake birdhouses were kind of cliche, so I thought it was cute.

By "somewhere else" I assumed he meant on a private website or something. So while it's probably still illegal, there's no one really stopping him from posting coords. Would I search for it? Depends. I'd have to see it. I've been in an old tunnel on a seldom used line before. While there was very little chance a train would come, and there was probably room to get out of the way if it did, I was still pretty nervous the whole time I was in there. Counting the rock walls on either end of the tunnel, there was probably close to a quarter mile where clearance would be iffy. It was longer than it looked from the end. I wasn't caching, just exploring local history. All in all, this sounds like a bad idea.

Figures, got mine today.

Okay, thanks. Before I missed the link on how to get MapSource if your GPS didn't come with it. The manual should have explained a little better, or else just send the program with it.

The base map is terrible for my area, so I need better maps. The manual and online tutorials I find seem to assume I already have MapSource. My unit shipped with something called Trip and Waypoint Manager, which as far as I can tell doesn't actually do anything. Do I really have to go buy this program before I can buy and install new maps, or am I missing something big?

I'm still a total n00b. My GPS should show up tomorrow. I do have a few finds already, which I've gotten by cherry picking easy or familiar places and using Google Earth to get close enough. But I'm checking stuff out, and there's one on there that's a bottle cap on top, with a place to put your log sheet, and then it goes down into the ground with the bottle cap on top. First, that's a buried cache. It's in the ground, and there's not really any way to argue otherwise. I get that other listing sites might be more lax with their rules and allow it, but that doesn't change the fact that something similar could be done without burying anything. But it's going to get covered with leaves or grass clippings, so it might as well be buried. Raking leaves isn't fun. There's also one that's a realistic piece of crap. I mean literally, it's made to look like a chunk of feces. Playing with poop isn't fun. What if it's in the park and there's dog poop everywhere? I don't want to have to check all the poop in the area to see if any of it is fake. Number one, it's poop. Number two (heh) what if someone I know sees me pick it up and thinks it's real? Word would get around and I'd be known as "that guy who plays with poop". Why would people do this? That's not fun, it's just mean. I wouldn't even look for a cache like that, but you usually don't know.

It's not friendly. It's obnoxious. I can't believe that people really feel this way. I feel that if I make a find, then the find is mine, and it's mine to log the way I want to. I wouldn't feel obligated to anyone else to log it any particular way which suits them.