Madav42

We're CO's on a cache that's not difficult, but for some reason newbies think they should find it. It's a nano, and we've had a whole string of DNF's on it - mostly by people with 10 or less caches. It took us 3 tries to find our first nano - mostly because we had no idea how to find it or what we were looking for. A nano was the only type of cache that would have lasted in this location, and it's at an interesting site. If there hasn't been a found posting after a few DNF's, we'd head over and check on it. Every time we checked, it was always right where it should have been. We've since made it a premium cache, and upped the difficulty rating. That seems to have fixed the DNF problems. Now, if there are DNF's by experienced cachers, we're more likely to not wait for multiple dnf's. When we're caching, if we're looking for a cache has a few dnf's and they're by experienced cachers, we would take that under consideration when we're looking. We would probably end up posting a DNF on that after our first search on it. If there are no recent DNF's, we would go back at least one more time to look before we'd post a DNF. We seem to have the most trouble with "easy park & grab."

Let's see... We decided to work on the PMC Lite series. When we had most of the puzzles solved, we finally started to go after the caches. Got to our first - in another state - and were so happy to find it we neglected to write down the clue. Doing another PMC Lite cache, we got hopelessly turned around in the woods - we were just going to dash in and grab this cache, so didn't take food, water, or note where the car was parked. Seemed like we were in there forever, and when we came out, we were a long hot walk away from the car. New rule for us - waypoint the car. Stopped at a rest area to pick up a cache, got in the car and drove on. Stopped for another cache, and found out that Mr.'s phone was AWOL. Mrs. called the phone, and was surprised when it was answered. Seems the phone was in a car headed to Florida - someone had picked it up at the rest area and actually mailed it back to us. Now we do an electronics check before we leave a location. Hey, it gets us out of the house!

We look at the cache descriptions, terrain, logs, and maps. The logs sometimes have clues in them to the difficulty. I wish CO's would put attributes in, but not everyone does. Any lengthy hikes are out of the question generally, and we'll probably never do a 5/5. No kayaking either. Oh, and we can't climb trees. We keep teasing that we are going to start packing a grappling hook and rope to help us get back out of places. We are a married couple, and sometimes I (the wife) wait while my husband goes down slopes, places with not so secure footing, etc. At present I have arthritis, some slipped discs, sciatica and bursitis in one hip. Some days I wait in the car and watch my delightful spouse do the drunken bee dance. But I am an awesome navigator and map reader, a pretty good puzzle solver and I have some geosense and common sense about where things might be. We've gotten pretty good at weeding out caches that are beyond my capabilities. Sometimes we fail, but that's part of the game.

I'm trying to dowload information from pocket queries/bookmark lists...it allows me to do it one at a time, but I would like to be able to download the entires query/list...I've played around with it a bit, with no luck...can anyone help...thanks... Madav42

I kept it secret for a little bit - then my coworkers saw me working on some puzzle caches, and they seemed very interested. My boss asks me every Monday if we cached over the weekend, and my office roomie tries to help me solve puzzles. Now we tell anyone who asks what we really did over the weekend when we were too busy to do their silly things!

Totally not GC, and don't know if they still do it, but NH used to have a "road kill auction." I believe they'd freeze the carcasses they found and then auction them off - I hate to think that people ate the stuff, but I suppose some did. I'd prefer to think they just used the pelts or something... A Google search says Idaho does this, perhaps other states do as well.