loungelions

I'm not sure why it is but when you solve a puzzle and put in the corrected coordinates, it has a nice icon on the geocaching.com map that shows you the actual cache site. However, when you go out and find the puzzle cache, it jumps back to the fake coordinates on the map. That makes it hard to figure out where you could place a new cache in certain spots by looking on the map....you have to download the pocket query of your finds and the local caches you haven't found in order to get an idea of where an open spot to place a new cache might be. It seems odd to me why the map would be designed that way.

I was searching for a geocache in a meadow in one of the local parks overlooking a lake near some trees. I was a pretty new geocacher (probably under 100 finds at that point), so when I came to a grey container near where the coordinates were, I assumed that was the cache. Imagine my surprise when there were some ashes in a plastic bag inside. Apparently that was a favorite vista of someone and the person in charge of their ashes decided to place the ash container there....within about 10 feet of the cache! I warned other people about it in my found log. Strange that they wouldn't have just spread the ashes around instead of just leaving the whole box there.

I usually place micros since I live in a large city so usually there isn't any swag. But in the larger cache that I have done, I put about 5 things that pretty much filled it up. The geocaching waypoint is the GC# that your cache is assigned by geocaching.com (example GC10H67). I wouldn't put your personal name and phone number on it. I usually just put my geocaching name and sometimes I put my e-mail address as a contact number but usually, I just leave that section blank.

My first hide was after 100 finds and I made it a micro near my home. It was disguised as a pinecone hanging in a cedar tree and actually won a prize for best first cache in the cache blitz that year. Unfortunately, it has been muggled 3 times already and since each fake pinecone was taking me about 6-8 hours to build, I have disabled it. I did it that way as I live in a big city, so it needed to be disguised well to last anywhere near our home. I am planning a different kind of hide to replace it this time that hopefully won't be so attractive to muggles. I suspect it was the kids from a nearby school that likely took it but don't know for sure.

I find that the little black plastic containers that diabetic test strips come in are great. They are made to be totally waterproof which I tested by leaving it underwater for an hour and they usually have some dessicant under the top lid. They work great in Vancouver on the wet coast and their black color makes them tough to find in most situations. If you know a diabetic or works somewhere like a medical clinic that tests diabetics, ask for them. The lid has a larger lip as well which makes them easier to open.

I used one of these as a container for the first cache we put out. It has been out for about a year in Vancouver on the Wet Coast of Canada and only now I am getting comments about the log being a bit damp, so they do keep the moisture out very well. I cut pieces of paper and stapled them over a partially flattened out paper clip that I then cut off to fit the container. The paper clip is an L shape with the foot of the L on the bottom of the log, so people can grab the top of the paper clip and pull out the whole log which is rolled up to fit inside the container. (kind of hard to describe, but it works). I highly recommend them and consider them much better containers than the old film containers. loungelions

If they have been "temporary disabled" for a long time, the only way to get someone's attention is to ask for it to be archived. The reviewers apparently don't see the "needs maintenance" requests, only the "should be archived" requests. If you have a spot that you might want to put another cache into and it is being blocked, then perhaps you should request that it "should be archived". Then the reviewer will look at it and try to contact the cache owner. If the owner doesn't respond in a reasonable length of time, the reviewer can archive it and then you could put your cache there.

Batting .500 isn't too bad for your first day. We did a couple in Stanley Park about 2 weeks ago and managed to find them but one of them took a long time due to the tree cover. Welcome to geocaching in Vancouver...there are some ingenious caches out there.

While geocaching on a rock slide, I managed to gouge my screen a bit. Does anyone know how to get gouges out? Would clear nail polish work or maybe one of those CD scratch removal liquids? Any help would be appreciated.