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Team Wampus

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Everything posted by Team Wampus

  1. Bravo on getting in shape, and great pix! If chafing is a problem for either of you, there's a product called Glide that we recommend to our Boy Scouts. It comes in a roll on, like a deodorant stick, and it really helps. I also highly recommend trekking poles, and use two, not one. They've really helped my knees, and they're great for water crossings. You can get really expensive ones, but the $15 pair I got at Wally World are doing just fine. If you're looking for photo ops, search for Virtual Geocaches in your area. These were discontinued when the Waymarking site was begun. They show up on the geocaching maps as little ghosts. Some of them are as lame as McD's, but many were "placed" in National Parks and other special places that do not allow traditional container caches.
  2. A cacher named Shaconage has a series called He's Alive! in the Sevier County area near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. They're mostly small, even tiny mountain community churches. I've only done a few so far, but I've really enjoyed getting out on the backroads and seeing the sights. He also has a series called Restin' With..., which are near small rural cemeteries in the area...some long forgotten. If you're visiting the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area, these are both really fun series to work on.
  3. We just flew on Independence Air from Knoxville to Orlando. I asked the flight attendant on the way down if I could use my GPS and she gave me a sour look and said "They prefer you didn't". I didn't push it but got the impression I might get a different answer from a different attendant. Unfortunately, after a week of Disney, I was too darned tired to care about using the GPS on the return flight!
  4. My 8 year old is really getting to be a GPS hog...guess I'm gonna hafta get him his own if I want to use mine anymore. I've also put him in charge of the PDA when we're in the car. It's a cheap one. The PDA, I mean. Actually, it's a cheap car, too. Anyway, I usually have a pretty good idea of the general location where the cache is going to be. He uses the PDA and reads the cache description out loud when we start getting close, especially if it includes driving/where-to-park directions. That way, I get to keep my eyes on the road...always a good thing.
  5. What is so intelligent in discussing what the colour of your skin is when geocaching? The color of my skin changes when I'm geocaching. It's green with envy when I see another cacher with a really cool PDA. It's red when I spend half an hour looking and still DNF. It's bright red when I spend too long in the sun. It's blue when I'm too busy to go caching. In all seriousness, here's my kids on a cache run with our neighbor, who is really getting good at this game. My son's first question when I suggest caching is can his buddy come with us.
  6. Just because it's flat doesn't mean it can't be round...like a pancake!
  7. Welcome to geocaching and say goodbye to not having anything to do!
  8. The various answers in this thread are a perfect example of why I love geocaching...fun for the whole family! Our Team consists of myself (Dad), 8 year old son, and 5 year old daughter. Mom joined us for her first find yesterday. Anyone with kids knows how hard it is to find something to do that a pair of kids like this enjoy together. I just make sure I have plenty of water/juice boxes and baggies of pretzels or goldfish. When one of them has had enough, we stop...don't try to push farther than they're willing to go. They're going places and seeing things none of their friends have any idea about...unless they go caching with us! Oh, and one more piece of advice...when the 5 year old says "Gotta go potty", leave NOW!
  9. Lots of good advice already, and you may have just had a "light bulb" moment. I gave a geocaching presentation for my son's Cub Scout Den last week. After the presentation, I took them outside to hunt for 10 caches I had hidden around the church grounds. I handed a borrowed GPS to one of the dads who had never even seen one before. I showed him how to change waypoints and off he went with a couple of the kids. I checked up on him about 15 minutes later and he was getting frustrated, had given up on 3 attempts. He was holding the GPS to a bush and saying "It says 2 feet, but I don't see it!" After I reminded him about the accuracy, he started looking around and found that cache about 20 feet away. A little while later, his group had found all 10 of the caches! Keep in mind...if the GPSr got you to within 1 or 2' of the cache, what fun would that be?
  10. I just did a geocaching activity for my son's Cub Scout Bear Den this past week. I had a simple MS Power Point presentation, then took the kids out geocaching on the church grounds afterwards. Geocaching makes a great transition from doing arts & crafts of Wolves & Bears to doing more outdoor-oriented activities for Webelos. I had 9 micros hidden around the church grounds at various levels of difficulty, then a 10th cache that was an ammo box with their end-of-meeting treats inside. Each of the micros was filled with different colored beads for the boys to collect. We had a couple of glitches, but all-in-all, I think they had a really good time. I've already been asked to put on the same activity for 2 more Dens!
  11. OK, so I'm a Magellan guy, but I'd switch to Ladigimet if it was under $5! Heck, I'd switch to Garman for $10!
  12. I'm 45 and my caching kids are 8 and 5. Mom's been busy with school but hopefully she'll join our adventures in the summer. However, if I told her age I'd get in BIG trouble! Personally, I don't mind getting older. The alternative really stinks!
  13. The first time for us was on our first full day of caching. We only had 5 finds and my son and I had gone to a nearby town, trying to get our first FTF and also because there was a neat cache I wanted to go after because of its description and logs. We got our FTF, met the hider of that cache in his store, then ran into another cacher in a cemetery. I was going to keep driving past but I saw the GPSr in his hand and we had an enjoyable chat. The next time, I had both of my kids as well as a neighbor kid. We were looking for a cache just off a greenway, but it looked like a very thorny place, so I left the kids outside the treeline and went in after it. As I was coming out, a fellow cacher was coming down the hill holding up her GPSr and saying "I know what you're doing!" She had seen me as she drove by and stopped. I found that cache in just a few seconds, but when we came back by 20 minutes later, her truck was still there. That night she posted a DNF and jokingly accused me of misplacing the cache. The next weekend, she went back and found it...in a different tree that she thought it was going to be in! Just this past weekend, my son and I were caching in Gatlinburg and were going after one near a waterfall. We love hiking to waterfalls and were really looking forward to this one. As we neared the falls, I heard voices and told Jr we probably wouldn't be able to get that cache because of muggles. Then I saw a couple near the top of the waterfall and saw the GPSr in his hands. As it turned out, it was their first ever cache attempt and their 20th anniversary. We ran into them again a little while later at another cache in the area.
  14. I just went paperless a few weeks ago by getting an 8mb Palm IIIxe on eBay for $15.50 plus $5 shipping. Can't get much cheaper than that! It was used but looks brand new, only had a serial cable instead of docking station, but that's OK given the price I paid. I kept bidding on different auctions for a about a week before I got the deal I wanted. Just be patient and be willing to lose a bunch before you win.
  15. A few weeks ago, a local cacher and his wife were out on an ftf run at 3:00 in the morning (I don't think he works!). He lost a 2-way radio somewhere around one of my new cemetery caches and couldn't find it with just his flashlight, so he had his wife calling to him on the remaining radio while he searched for it by sound. I had this mental picture of someone else hearing her voice coming from the ground in this cemetery! "Dennis! Dennis! I'm over here! Come and get me!"
  16. Congratulations and Welcome! I bet the wife and 4 year old won't give up so easily next time! Isn't it great to find an activity that all ages in the family can enjoy together!? With a group as big as your family, you might want to try The Finders Tree method...that way, even the littlest one won't get left out (although my 5 year old is getting pretty good by herself). At first, my kids didn't care at all for micros, they wanted treasure. Now, they still like trading but enjoy micros just for the fun of hunting. Enjoy!
  17. Brian, aside from the obvious, being parks, how do you find out what land is public? I've often wondered this. There are tons of wooded areas around here that aren't parks, but I don't know how to find out if they're public land or privately owned. Thanks. In my area, the city and county and utility companies have developed a state-of-the-art GIS system for the entire county. You can go online and zoom/pan a map of the county. It has so much detail, I can zoom in on my house and bring up a satellite background image that I can even see my garden shed in the backyard. You can get info on any piece of property in the county..stuff like owner name and address. The one thing that I have learned about my area by using this is that the city and county governments own vastly more parcels of land than I ever imagined. Many of these are along the banks of the Tennessee River/Fort Loudon Lake. There are many more chunks of public land than those that have been developed as parks...they're just "raw land" with no facilities of any kind. Some are cut off from roads by private properties, but are accessible from the river. I've spotted a bunch of places I think are going to be good for placing caches, it's just a matter of getting around to exploring them. Even if your area doesn't have a GIS system like this, you can probably find a map at the local public library that will help identify publicly owned lands. You could also check with your county's parks/recreation department.
  18. So Zebra...are you saying that I AM an obvious dork!? Guess I'd better work on that whole geo-stealth thing some more! Actually, the kids come in handy...we've used excuses like we lost a ball, etc. Maybe we should try a family pack of HazMat suits! Glad you found that cache on your 2nd try...I was beginning to worry I'd done something wrong putting it back.
  19. Well, starting Friday after work, I went to son's soccer practice, made breakfast for the homeless mission, reformatted my wife's crashed notebook. On Saturday served the homeless breakfast, went to work for a couple hours, son's soccer game (lost 9-4), reloaded some of wife's software, took the kids and a neighbor GEOCACHING (4 for 4). On Sunday we went to church, then to son's rescheduled soccer game (lost 10-0, ouch), mowed the lawn, trimmed the redbud, dismantled a piece of play equipment that the kids had outgrown, then crashed on the lazyboy. I'm sure glad it's Monday and I'm back at work...I NEED THE REST !!!
  20. Now that I find scary. One thing y'all are missing about this particular aspect of the debate is...only a geocacher would say that he ran from someone for .2 mile. Hey Leprechaun...you probably could've easily outrun the guy if you hadn't been watching your nav screen so close! I can just imagine your log entry: TNLNSL and kept running like heck!
  21. Talio, I understand your concerns completely, but I also understand these other posts are correct that it's been going on for a long time. That does NOT make it acceptable. The city and county parks around here are paid for by the taxpayers, yet the taxpayers avoid taking their families there due to the activities of a relatively few. However, as public park land becomes more and more important due to urban sprawl, there ARE ways to take back our parks. Here's one way the local police helped put a damper on it. Take special note of the sentence "police target locations based on citizen complaints". Also, the local Civil War Roundtable got busy bringing this particular Park to the public's attention for its historical significance. For other areas, you might try to get a city councilman or county commissioner involved. If it's a state park, go through the department that oversees the park. Instead of trying to get the governor's attention, try to stay as local as possible, as close to the park's management as you can. Good luck!
  22. I tried that, and was joined by a guy in leather, a Sioux warrior, and a cop. I think the waypoint was GCYMCA... Oh boo...that was sooooo bad! How about a HazMat outfit? That'd clear out the muggles in a hurry, but I know a couple cachers that probably wouldn't budge!
  23. This is all good advice, especially about taking your son along. My 8 year old is getting really good at finding caches...he found all 3 that we were able to log as smileys yesterday. As for not finding caches, we had a big slice of humble pie this weekend. We had about 40 straight successful hunts, then 4 DNF's this weekend...ouch! Some days you find 'em, some days you don't...just be sure and keep it fun!
  24. Besides all the great responses above, it's a family thing for us, too. I have an 8 year old son and a 5 year old daugther. Mom's busy with school these days, so caching is a great way for me and the kids to get out of the house and give her some quiet study time. There are so few activities that can please both kids at the same time, but caching certainly does! And even without participating, Mom has already started saying things like "Is there a cache in that park?"..."Did anyone find your caches this weekend?"..."Hey, can you use this for a trade item?" When this semester is over, she'll be hitting the trails with the rest of us!
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