Team Panda

I'm with Ibycus and Team AO. Great creativity but I just don't think the idea would work out in the end. So I vote an apologetic "No."

NO! And for that matter, I'm not crazy about seeing catagories for McDonalds, Sushi Resturants, bars, or any OTHER commercial endeavor either. I didn't get in here in time to register my disapproval when it might still have been relevant and what's done is done so I'm not going to complain about the catagories already approved. People can sit there and make mildly clever and disparaging remarks about those who find something "offensive" but those people are usually the ones who want to destroy all sense of values in anything they do. I'm not getting on a soapbox, I've been to more than a few t***y bars during my military career and I don't find them offensive but I don't talk about them during family gatherings either! There's a time and place for everything. Neither Geocaching or Waymarking are the place for this kind of thing. If we post a catagory for Strip bars, what's next? Waymarks for favorite hooker hangouts? Said my piece, not going to argue about it, take it or leave it. Either way, my vote remains NO!

I think that's pretty cool! Another option might be to create a catagory simply called "Roadworks" and then include sub-cats for "Ghost Roads" as described above and "Dead Roads" like oldtime wagon trails and such? I'm sure with a little thinking, somebody could come up with at least one or two more interesting sub-cats for "Roadworks." yay nay?

I'm not pressuring anybody, (Jeremy!) but is there at least a tentative date for when WM will be released to the public? I'd rather have it "right" than "fast" and I realize this is a huge undertaking above and beyond GC, it's just that there are few cachers in my area and even fewer PMs, I'd just really like to see WM get going soon.

I understand what you're saying but then again, I don't take a TB unless I have one to leave. Trading TBs for TBs is inarguably an even trade, trading TBs for Geocoins isn't exactly "even" but Geocoins are rare and I don't have a problem with it. (Although after finding my first one, I bought two of my own so that I'd have something to trade even or up next time!) And sadly, I've learned the hard way to stop putting Silva compasses, Nalgene water bottles, and other nice things in my caches. I generally load'em pretty cheap now days and save the nice items for trade stock on those rare occasions when I find something nice in someone else's cache. Leaving a couple of bucks seems kind of callous and thoughtless. But either way, nobody's breaking a "rule" so there's not much to be done about it except complain. (Which I'm finishing with this post.) (Of course, there's also precious little that can be done if someone IS breaking rules!) I'm not saying what's right and what's wrong, I'm just saying that it bothered me. All it takes is a little ingenuity, creativity, and thoughtfulness and the issue will never come up but that's too much to ask of some folks and while there's nothing to be done about that, it's still a shame. ~shrug~

YES! Finally! A kindred spirit willing to brave the slings and arrows of contentious cachers in his quest to eradicate the use of "lame" from our language! KUDOS to you good sir, kudos I say! In an effort to match the courage and conviction you have thus far displayed in this thread, I heartily embrace the most worthy concept that we found an organization with the sole aim of removing "lame" from our insulting and aggressive speech! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I GIVE YOU... LINGUISTS AGAINST MEDIOCRE ENGLISH!

I've been kind of fuming about this very subject for a few days now and I hate to say anything negative about this game I love so much or the people who play it, but... (NOTE: "But" is a conjunction which can generally be taken to mean "Ignore everything before this word) Caches and cachers are few and far between in my part of Arkansas. There's a handful of us and we do our best to help the game grow as much as possible but progress is slow, it's a poor area in hard times. But when I put out a cache with about 40 dollars worth of goodies in it, only to see nice items replaced with golfballs and garbage, it's more than a little annoying. (May not be much to others, but 40 bucks is a big chunk of change to me.) Then when that cache isn't getting a lot of traffic because it's not a drive up, (you actually have to separate butt from upholstry and devote a couple hours to taking a nice hike through a very pretty area) and there's nothing but McGumf in it, I put a new TB in it, along with a USA Geocoin and what happens? The next cacher that comes along takes BOTH the TB and the Geocoin and leaves the incredibly valuable, creative, and thoughtful treasure of two whole dollars. Yes, I'm a little annoyed. Don't get me wrong. If you can't afford to trade even for the 6 dollar compass but you need a compass, TAKE it! I don't mind! But put something in the cache that shows me you cared enough to think about what you were leaving for the next guy!Or at least take the time to write something really interesting in the log or on the cache page! I didn't put that $4.99 TB in there so some unimaginative bozo could "buy" it for two dollars! If you can't afford to spend money on TBs and Geocoins and such, that's okay! Look around you! I don't care how broke you are, a little imagination and thoughtfulness goes a long way! Keep your eyes open for things that some one else might like to find in a cache. No, Geocaching isn't about the "payoff" at the end of the hunt, it's about the hunt itself. But finding something nice and thoughtful that someone before you has left for you makes the whole thing just that much more enjoyable. Besides, when a muggle sees your "cool thing" and asks you where you got it, you have a great opportunity to use a Geocaching story as a way to introduce someone new to the game. But nobody's ever going to go out and buy a GPS because they saw your extensive McJunk collection. Rant off, I don't mean to offend or anger anyone, I just want to see this game continue to live and grow and that won't happen if it devolves into a game of all "takers" and no "givers."

Thanks for the pointer, Rob. I'll admit the learning curve on this stuff seems pretty steep. Every answer I find leads me to four more questions but I'm sure I'll figure it out well enough eventually! Thanks again and rest assured, I'll be back with questions as soon as I narrow the field down a bit.

I'm hooked, this is very cool. I just found my first one today and no, it wasn't a hard one. (EJ1040) I didn't even need to know what an ellipsoid was! (Good thing too!) I found that I really did need to pay careful attention to the description but once I read the WHOLE description, it was exactly where it was supposed to be. The coords were only 47 yards off and that's pretty impressive considering it was done by a guy with a map, ruler and pencil! Logged it with GC, logged it with NGS, and now all I need to do is go out and find a few hundred more!

I've been into Geocaching for about a year now. There aren't a great number of cachers in my area so after a very short time, I learned that if I was going to find a lot of caches, I was going to have to drive farther and farther to find them. Obviously, with today's soaring gas prices, that can be a daunting thought. But then out of curiousity, I finally got around to looking at the Benchmark pages and this forum. I knew what a benchmark was from my backpacking days and my time in the military, but I'd never considered what it might be like to HUNT for them. Honestly, the more I look at it, the idea of having only scaled coords and a description to work with and the detective work involved in tracking down a location from landmarks that may be gone, underwater (In my area) or just plain lost and forgotten is a challenge that really appeals to me. I've gone out looking for one already, and every landmark mentioned in the description is long gone but I think I can talk to a few old-timers in the area and at least get a baseline to work from so I'm not giving up on it yet. So anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for all the great info I've found in this forum so far and I'm loking forward to my first find! And as always, all tips/hints/tricks/helpful links offered will be much appreciated and put to good use!

So the "Vertical Profile" and the altitudes listed when you create a waypoint are nothing more than data stored within the firmware? Huh. I KNOW the marketing description for the unit stated that it had a baro Alt. That's one of the reasons I BOUGHT that model! Ah well, live and learn I guess. Anybody know where I can get a good altimeter cheap(ish?) Thanks for the great replies guys, I knew I'd get good/fast response. BTW, Embra, I checked out the FAQ listed in your sig line and will be spending some quality time with it this weekend, thanks very much!

It was my understanding that the meriplat contained a barometric altimeter and checked actual altitude on a regular basis rather than just using the computed altitude attached to the Lat/Long data derived from the sats? Was I misled or did I just misunderstand what the fancy advertising copy was trying to sell,er...TELL me?

Is there any way to access the Barometric Altimeter built into the Meriplat as an aid in following Topo lines and tracking Benchmarks? Or do I just need to go out and buy a new altimeter?

Don't give up yet! (Geez, I'm 42 myself, I hate hearing stories like this. Makes me feel a little less immortal than I normally do!) If there's a website somewhere for Washington State Geocachers, why don't you go there (and here as well) and see about setting up a system by which you and others with similar difficulties can hit specific caches that are car/wheelchair/crutch friendly? I've seen some pretty creative caches that you can almost hit without getting out of the car! You're limited only by your imagination, but DON'T give up something you obviously love without a fight!

AWESOME replies, thanks to you both, VERY much! I think you've just increased the usefulness of my GPS by about 100%!

XTE? VMG? ETE? Sorry but these acronyms are too short for the search engine to accept them. I'm forced to ask what's probably been asked 200 times in the last month, but... What do these mean? The Magellan Owner's Manual is pretty much USELESS. Seems their idea of instructions are "This is how you turn it on. Now go figure it out from there." (Worst User's Manual I've ever seen!) Anyway, can someone help me out with a brief explanation of what these things stand for and what they DO? Thanks VERY much in advance, I suspect it's going to be a long answer.

A few thoughts... 1. The only time I'm considered "rich" is when the Democrats want to tax the rich and the Republicans make a graph showing how well the economy is doing. The rest of the time, I'm poor as a church mouse. 2. I still managed to save enough money to buy a Magellan Meridian Platinum. 3. I also bought 4 travel bugs and a nice new GPS sticker for the back bumper of my beat up 10 year old Dodge Ram and some "Official Geocache" stickers to go on the sides of ammo cans. 4. Including the sticker, ammo can, and contents, I spent almost 50 bucks putting together my first cache. I guess if you want to do something bad enough, you find a way. If a way can't be found, you wait. If you don't have the money now, save until you do. It's how I do things and my wife and I have a hell of a lot of fun! 5. I think I'm going to drop an unregistered set of Travelbug tags in the next cache I visit. Beats the hell out of golfballs and chewtoys. Maybe some other folks out there might consider doing the same. After all, they're CHEAP!

I see we cross posted, 4x4. As I said, it would be more of a polite request that I would HOPE people would honor, rather than a demand. After all, there are MANY boat only caches on the lake that people have no problem placing so that there is no way for me to possibly reach them and they see nothing wrong with making a cache that is effectively "Off Limits" to me. As far as worries of boats creating a danger to swimmers, the geography of the place I have in mind pretty much rules that out. The island is very close to land and there is only a narrow channel that seperates it from the mainland. Boats occasionally troll through at a "no wake" speed but they don't go any faster than that.

On the other hand, I asked people to PLEASE trade even or "up" on the cache I placed recently (My first!) and the FTF decided that a knotted rope "Dog toy" was a fair trade for a new Nalgene water bottle. Ahem. Gee. Thanks.

Thanks for the replies, y'all. I hadn't thought of that, Thot. (Thought Thot?) THOT! (sound of wife smacking me in the back of the head with a newspaper) Sorry, I'm easily distracted sometimes. ANYWAY... I've seen people make "rules" for their caches, things like Travel Bug Hotels and personally, I'm rather ambivalent about the idea. After all, it's a GAME! Any "rules" I'd make would be really nothing more than suggestions as I have no way of enforcing them, it would be more of a "Please?" than a "You must!"

Former Marine nutjobs like me! The wifely unit and myself have raised and re-intro'ed several squirrels that were rescued from dire straits of one type or another over the years. We're also suckers for lost kittens and puppies. Heck, we even like CHILDREN! (But I don't think I could eat a whole one!) Mix a little Karo syrup with the warmed milk or cream to keep the little critter from getting constipated. (Lethal to furry babies.) To keep it warm, the best place for it is in your shirt pocket. Yeah, they pee occasionally but it comes out in the wash and there are few things in the world more restful than having a tiny little bundle of sleeping baby squirrel in your shirt pocket.

Howdy y'all... I live in a very lake rich area and one of the things that really bugs me about many of the caches here, is that there are quite a few of them that are accessible only if you own or have access to a boat. (I don't.) I like the idea of caches on islands (owned by Entergy, maintained by Army Corps of Engineers, and open to public) and I know of a great little island that's within swimming distance of the shore for an average swimmer. What I'm wondering is this... If I were to place a cache and state in the rules that Cachers must SWIM to the cache, and that this is a "No Boaters Allowed" cache, would you as a cacher feel any requirement at all to play by the "special rules" or would you just take the boat out there and let me go peddle my papers? Edited to add... Distance from shore to island is not more than 50 yards at closest point.

shorts with zippered cargo pockets T-shirt good hiking boots and better socks Old "Boonie Hat" left over from my distant past. Coating of unevenly mixed bug spray and sun block. Oh yeah, and for the back woods caches, add a 50 pound "Camelbak" backpack with everything I could possibly need to survive in the wild for an indefinite period. I find that the shorts keep me cooler and besides, my wife likes the always sexy and incredibly manly/macho "Just-been-mauled-by-an-overly-affectionate-cougar" look.

DO BE sure to mention if the actual ground distance is significantly different than the Line Of Sight distance given in your cache description. In other words, if you give a description that says ".75 miles from trail head to cache" and it's actually more like six miles over two deadfalls, through three creeks, and across two ridgelines, maybe take a moment to mention that? Please? Pretty please?

On the Maggellan Meridian Platinum, (and presumably some other GPSrs) there is an option for orientation of the onboard compass. The User is given the option of "GPS Course" or "Magnetic North." I'm assuming that "GPS Course" is synonymous with the military "Grid North." Is this correct? Also, while I would prefer to stick with a Magnetic North orientation, is there any benefit to choosing "GPS Course" instead?