Ralfcoder

These are different from the access plates. I think you're right - the access plate covers the point at which the wires going up the light are connected to the wires coming from underground. If so, it would be dangerous to put a cache here. Here's a couple of links to some pictures of them. https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/UGEAAOSwi-dbryLk/s-l300.jpg https://cdn2.bigcommerce.com/server2200/5b16a/products/2527/images/12284/round-pole-square-base-cover-1__34576.1476458412.480.480.jpg?c=2 I see them around here - I'm in Michigan, USA. To me, they seem like the hider did only the minimum amount of work into placing a cache. I usually give them a pass if I think this is the case. It's just my opinion, others may like them.

Light Post Cap. The little metal cap at the base of a light post that covers the big nuts that fasten the post to the base. Sometimes it seems like these are more favored by newbies. These also serve as a ready made place for wasps to build a nest, so lift carefully if you try for one.

Early in my caching career, I once put out 4 caches at once, and asked the reviewer to hold off publishing 3 of them for a day or two. In the one that was published, I left 3 envelopes, marked for 1st to find, 2nd to find, and 3rd to find finders. FTF had the names and coords for all 3 of the others; 2TF had 2, and 3TF had one. I figured I'd give the first finder a chance for a stack of FTFs if they wanted them. At that time, there were a lot of people chasing hard after FTFs. There was a lot of chatter about it in the logs about leaving home at 10 PM to go make the find, or being late to work that morning, and so forth. I haven't done this again, though. First, it was more work than it was worth, IMHO. Second, after a while, it seemed like there were 5-6 cachers who seemed to collect an inordinate number of these, making it hard for the ordinary cacher to get them. I realized that what I had done contributed to that.

I had an odd find yesterday. I stopped at a small cemetery to make a find, and there was an SUV already parked maybe 100 feet from the cache. A man was standing behind it, bent over a boxy object. It turned out to be a live trap covered with a cloth, and he was shaking out... something. Then a skunk popped out. The guy calmly put the trap and cloth back in his car, got in, and drove away. The skunk waddled down the fence line at the back of the cemetery property until it found a hole big enough to get through, and it disappeared. I didn't talk to the guy - he looked like he wanted to just be gone. I assume he trapped the skunk in his back yard, and didn't want to kill it. The land behind the cemetery is heavily wooded, and unused, so I think it's a fine place for a skunk to make a new home. The man is a braver man than I am - I would have never put a live skunk in any vehicle I planned to drive ever again.

I've found a couple of weird things: - The body of a deer, with the head cleanly cut off. Someone wanted the head for a trophy, I guess, but didn't want the meat. - 3-4 syringes, and the damaged remains of the box they came in. They looked similar to those used by a diabetic. They were within a few feet of where a cache was supposed to be, so I bundled everything up and hauled it out for disposal. - a 2nd cache container, about 3 feet from the original. The log showed a DNF, so the owner apparently dropped a new container without looking for the old one. I signed both logs, just to be safe.

Not approved yet. Only Ipad. As for the Australian drift, there's also a drift of the magnetic north. Our local (EBBR) 2/20 runway was renamed 1/19 last year. Most used 25R is still 25R. Sounds like the continent is not only moving north, but it's doing the twist as well! Is this the real reason that water drains counterclockwise?

I did one awhile ago that I've since archived, and don't have pictures of. But I'll describe it. It was basically a cache for tool users. I called it "Dave Ulmer's Tool Box", GCVXM2. It was a 3-stage where you needed different tools for each stage. The first was a small chunk of log maybe 3 inches thick and 8 inches long. I sliced it in half lengthwise, hollowed out enough space to put a film can inside, and fastened the halves back together with screws. The 2nd stage was a stack of logs, where one had a long tube stuck in a drilled hole. The final stage was an ammo can, but I drilled through the front top corners of the can where the lid overlaps, and ran a bolt through from side to side. I listed the tools needed to make the find, and generally got positive comments. I had a few problems with it, though. First, bugs infested the first and 2nd stages pretty quickly. They can find their way into any hollow space, no matter how small. I tried to drop a few moth balls in there, but they tended to fall out when people made the finds, and not get put back. The moisture also did a number on the paper containing the coordinates for the next stage. I need a moisture-proof way to do this next time.

Mine varies. If I'm driving a fair distance, I may look for something along the way to break up the drive, or gives me a good place to stop and stretch my legs. I also like finding TBs, so I will look for a cache that has some of these. Gotta be a bit careful with this, though - there's a lot of these that have been lost over the years, but not marked as such. So I check the TB log to see how long it has been in the cache. Once I find a target cache, I look around for what else is in the area. I like the historical ones as well. I've been working on the 25 oldest ones in my state. One I went after one a few years ago ticked off several of my desirable boxes. It was large - a 5 gallon bucket; - it was old - 10th oldest in the state at that time; and it was way back out on the back side of beyond, instead of next to a busy highway. But when I got there, I found a clear-cutting crew had come through the area within the last week, and drove over the cache with heavy equipment. I think I found a few scraps of plastic from the bucket, and nothing more. I also like the ones that have a little challenge to them. One historical cache I want to get to is on an island a mile or so offshore. Some day, I'm going to take my kayak out and go after that one. I also consider the size and type of cache, too. Nanos and micros are generally a waste of space, in my opinion. So are LPC hides. Granted, there are some that will bring me to an interesting location, but generally a magnetic key container under a light pole cap in a Walmart parking lot is going to be ignored. And I don't usually find anything interesting in yet another bison tube hung on a tree branch, or those itty bitty magnetic containers about the size of my little fingernail, tucked under a picnic table in a crowded park. I tend to ignore urban caches in busy or crowded places as well. I don't really feel like explaining why I'm crawling under a picnic table to yet another muggle. Power trails are sometimes interesting, if the caches don't fall into the dislike categories above. I'm not a huge numbers person, but sometimes finding 5-10-15 caches while out riding my bike is a good way to spend the morning.

Nano - a tiny form of cache, sometimes so small that they can be measured only by using angstroms as a unit of measure. The larger ones make excellent ammunition for slingshots.

Good suggestions, thank you. I'll pass it along.

I have a TB called "Sparky" that's currently in Bavaria. The cacher who found it most recently wrote me to say that he found it in a cache other than where it was last logged in. The log entry options won't let him do anything other than write a note, or to say that he discovered it. Does he have to place it in a cache before the options will change back to normal?

I put out a set of 4 caches, but initially published only one of them. Inside were 3 envelopes, labeled "1st to Find", "2nd to find", and "3rd to find", for the first 3 finders. The "1st to find" had the coordinates for the other 3 caches, "2nd to find" had 2 of them, and "3rd to find" had just one. I figure the FTF hounds would love it, and it would drive a bit of traffic to the other caches. I waited a day after submitting the first cache to submit the other 3, figuring it would give the FTF-ers time to make their finds. They earned them - there was about 20 miles separating the 2 widest spread pair of this set.

Even if you apply multiple layers of a marine grade finish inside and outside, it will eventually degrade. Ask anyone who has a boat with wood trim, or look at a wood deck, as someone else suggested. Moisture will find its way into the box. So will bugs. I'd say save the box for keepsakes, and use an ammo can or a lock-n-lock.

I had one that was somewhat akin to your idea, but I gave the cacher a list of tools to bring that were needed to make the find. It was a multi-stage cache where the first stage was a film can hidden inside a hollow I made in a small log. I sliced the log in half on a table saw, made the hollow, and fastened it back together with a couple of screws. The film can held the coordinates to the 2nd stage, which was another film can fastened in a hollow knothole in another log. They needed tweezers to retrieve the coordinates. These led to the 3rd stage, an ammo can bolted shut, and they needed a pair of wrenches to open it. I got some very good comments from people, but I had bug problems with the first 2 stages. Ants got into them and nested there. I tried putting moth balls in them, but they often got dropped when people made the find. I eventually archived the cache. There's an old one here in Michigan where you need to bring at last a quart or 2 of water to the first stage in order to make it give up the location of the 2nd stage. I had heard of this style before, so the find wasn't too difficult.

Only you can answer the question "How much is too much". My caches tend to be done on the cheap. I've put out a couple that probably cost less than $3 out of pocket, including container and swag and log. I've done a couple that might have approached $20 and an hour or two of work. My average is probably $10 and less than 30 minutes prep time to make or camo the container. I have one in the back of my mind that I'm mulling over, but it'll take some time to learn enough technique and some specialized knowledge to design it, and some more work and a few dollars of materials to build it. I may get to $30-50 all told. If you put a dollar value on my time and effort to research and learn and practice what I need to know to make this work, the cost could easily go over $100. I have seen some very creative hides, and I can appreciate the work and / or cost that has gone into them. But in my mind, it's the creativity that makes the difference. To me, being able to take 3-4 common household items and craft a container that is hard to spot, can survive exposure to the elements, and make me chuckle is better than finding one where someone spent 3 figures on a big Pelican case, for example. Finally, you have to factor in the fact that your cache may not survive a week in the wild. If you put it where muggles can find it easily, some teen-aged kid may think that your fancy Swiss Army brand imported ammo case is the perfect thing to hide his stash of weed in the back of his dad's garage. What's your tolerance to the risk of loss, both of the cost of the cache, and the time you put into it that was now wasted?

There's a couple caches in my area that use youtube. One has videos of (I think) the cache owner's daughter playing short sections of music from different songs. You use the title of each song to derive a number that goes into the final coordinates. The other just shows a pair of hands typing on a keyboard. I think the idea is to figure out the keys that are pushed as he types out the coordinates for the cache. I'm guessing on these, though, because I haven't tried to find either one yet.

Here's a few thoughts on the subject, in no particular order. I'm not criticizing those that put out caches I've panned here, only saying that I probably won't look for them if they're in my area. I like medium size or larger. I like to have some loot to sort through, and like to trade TBs and coins. To me, micros and nanos are more irritation than anything else, for the most part. There have been several times where I've dropped the tiny little top of a bison tube or those little magnetic nanos, and had to search through the grass or snow to find the damned thing. I finally got to the point that if I see something in the listing saying it's a nano, I'll usually just skip it and look for a different cache somewhere else. I like creative hides. This might be a fun container, or an unusual puzzle to solve to get the next step, or a mechanism of some sort to get the cache to reveal itself. Or it might be a themed cache where the owner has put some thought and originality into the choice of location, or into the comments in the listing. I like hides in unusual locations - in the woods, in little pocket parks that I never knew existed, in lonely places that I wouldn't otherwise go to. I put out one cache (Stormy Weather, GCWTPE) to bring people to a place where not all that many get to, even though it's only a short hike from a paved road. I like hides that I can find on my bike. I rode the DALMAC - a bike ride from Lansing to Mackinac City, MI - last year, about 340 miles over 5 days. I looked for a few hides along the way. I also found some last summer while training for the ride - it helps break up the monotony, sometimes. I like caches in roadside rest areas. When I'm travelling somewhere, if I have time to do a bit of caching along the way, I'll map out caches near my route and stop and look for them. I found The Spot (GC39) and Beverly (GC28) this way. These are the 2 oldest caches in the US east of the Mississippi River, I think. Both were interesting finds, and I rode my mountain bike into the park to find Beverly. I did an end-over in a rut too, and landed in front of my front tire - its all part of the adventure and fun. I like historical caches, both those that are from the early days of caching, and those that take me to historical places. I'm slowly working my way through the 25 oldest active here in Michigan. And I like going to places where the cache brings me to a place where history took place. I don't care for LPC hides. They generally don't have that much creativity. I'm not out to try to boost my find count dramatically. After not quite 7 years, I've found a little over 830 caches. I do this for have fun, not to inflate some arbitrary number. I don't care for micros and nanos, as I said earlier. The ones with logs that are 1 inch wide and 15 inches long are a pain to work with, especially on a cold day. I've done them, and did two this weekend, but usually I skip them.

There's one like that near me in a rest area on the interstate. It's got a decent sized chain on it that's bolted or screwed into a log. Someone could still take it, I suppose, but they'll need tools to get it free, or some really strong arms to break that chain. I second the idea to take it back into the woods somewhere. Look at the satellite view of your area, and zoom out a bit. Look for an area with no caches, and see what's there when you zoom in. I did that with my latest cache almost a month ago, and it has only 8-9 logged finds so far. Usually around here, a new cache can get that in a day or two. I tried this using your "Jersey Fresh" cache, and saw the Old Bridge County Park a few miles north of there. It looks like a nice wooded area about 2 miles long and roughly a mile wide. Surely there must be somewhere in there to make the hide, assuming the county allows caches there.

I've done the same thing, except that I get my coins at a local coin and precious metals dealer, also here in Michigan. He has a tray of probably several hundred or more foreign coins from all around the world, sitting out on the counter. They sell for 5 or 6 coins for a buck, and he doesn't mind if I sort through to pick out interesting ones. I've also come across small tools and such at Home Depot, Lowe's, etc. I once got half a dozen 6' tape measures, some knock-off copies of Vice Grip pliers that were about 4 inches long, and some small ratcheting screwdrivers, all for about 50 cents apiece. My caching backpack was kinda heavy for awhile.

You don't have the decoder ring yet? Humm, I got mine out of the cereal box this morning. Sneaky of them I think. Can you post the coordinates for your cereal box, or at least your kitchen?

I couldn't have said it better. The cache is still there to be found. I assume you'll still have fun finding it. You'll have to scramble up the same hill, ford the same river, solve the same puzzle. If you want to do the FTF dance, you'll have to upgrade your membership to premium if you haven't done so, then set your profile to be notified of new caches in your area, and then be ready to drop everything and run out after new hides. It's what the others do, I assume. Unless someone drops a new cache in your lap or you watch someone hide it, you have to be ready to do what the big-time FTF hunters do.

This might work well depending on your laser pointer. I've had several of them that pointed just a bit off center, though. If you rotated it 90 around the long axis, at 100 feet the beam might make a circle 10-20 feet across. That's not bad if all you need is the general location to search, and it's not far away. But if you needed it to point at a *precise* location, it might not work well. Unless you provide the laser pointer, of course. And then you may end up having to replace pointers on a regular basis.

Illinois - Beverly (GC28) [5/13/2000] New York - The Spot (GC39) [05-26-2000] Michigan - Geocache 612 (GC36) [8/21/2000]. I missed finding Osceola (GC772) [4/21/2001] by a week. It was destroyed by a logging crew, apparently.

Illinois - Beverly (GC28) [5/13/2000] New York - The Spot (GC39) [05-26-2000] Michigan - GC612 -

I seem to recall reading about a cache in an official looking cabinet. The outside was labeled "Geocaching monitoring station - authorized personnel only" in bold letters. It was a classic case of hiding it in plain sight. Make it the 2nd stage of a multi, add a combination lock with the combination in stage 1, and you could have a great TB hotel here that'll have cachers chuckling at the inside joke.