slapshot52

I have to update to my earlier post of a couple of years ago. In 2005 I was recalled to active duty as a US Army Civil Affairs Officer and just returned from a tour of duty on the pointy end of the spear in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan, so guess I need to revise my previous post for the last time I served!

I have a mini-fleet of VWs in my driveway (’72 Super Beetle. ’02 Diesel Turbo New Beetle and a Jetta) so I carry a bag of small die-cast VWs I pick up cheap at places like Wal-Mart. Kids seem to like them and adult “Vdub” fans are always excited to find them. I even have one starting on a long road back to Wolfsburg as a Travel Bug this week.

I think the best rule of thumb is to leave something you would like to find. What’s great about geocaching is that all kinds people do it and that brings great diversity to the types of caches that are hidden and what you find in them. I wouldn’t worry so much about what you think people want to find and leave things you would like to find. If you like to leave stuff for kids and pets, by all means do that. For example, I’m a big fan of all three of my VWs and have a bag of small die cast VWs that I leave in caches. I see several other “signature” type items as I cache and I’m always exited to find something new. Don’t think so hard about it and trade stuff that makes you happy you went looking for the cache in the first place.

Does anyone know if the Garmin Street Pilot c330 has a display to show just a digital compass and heading in degrees? The rental car I had last week had this gear in it and the map display worked well, but when I’m hunting a cache I tend to look at my GPS to guide me in the general direction by watching the heading change in degrees. If I could change the display from the “map & arrow” to a compass and heading display on one of these things it could find its way onto my dash. Thanks

What about the new plastic coffee cans? The Folgers decaf even comes in a green can.

This is what I'm talking about!!!

We seem to go through this quite a bit. As the concerns about the security risked posed by unidentified and hidden objects intensify after the London bombing last week I think we will be seeing even less areas open to regular to large caches. At first I really didn’t like micros because they were so hard to find for a new cacher. I now appreciate anything out there I can hunt and find (yes, even if it is in lamp post micro cache in a Wal Mart parking lot!). Nobody was conscripted in the Geocaching Corps, so have fun with it anyway you like, just don't limit how I play.

Been at this for a almost a year and have never bothered to check this out! The coordinates I get from MS Maps and Streets come in this format, so this tip was very helpful!

I’m in the market to upgrade my venerable Magellan eXplorist 100. The one feature I would like to have is a display screen that has the location coordinates (lat/long) and digital compass on one screen. I realize that I can determine which direction I’m moving by watching the change in coordinates, but the two bits of info I want when caching is my direction of movement and location. Has anyone come across a GPSr that had configurable displays or a screen that has both location and a digital compass? When I’m caching I don’t care about elevation, date & time, or any other info.

I haven’t found anything that Gorilla Glue wont stick to, but be careful it tend to “foam” during the curing process and can make a mess if you use too much.

Don’t you have to be a premium member to work with the online maps like this?

It only gets a name when the accuracy is bouncing around between 126 feet and 12 feet in the middle of a field of rocks! If I repeated the names it gets called when it does this, I would probably get banned from this forum!

"Backpacking: The unfortunate need to justify the thousands of dollars of equipment that someone bought at REI over the past few years”

Thats just down right hallrious I dont care who you are thats funny! …and if you order before midnight tonight we will even send someone out to find the cache for you, log it in your name and send you email with confirmation of your find.

I hadn’t thought about that. Come to think about it, I would be thrilled if I had the problem of my caches being too full!

This would be my pet peeve as well. You can’t control what people do when they find your caches, but we can all control what we do. If you do regular maintenance on your caches, you can clean the coins out of them, service the logbooks and check the hiding places. I would imagine that people leave coins because they want to share with other, but if it bothers you, by all means, put the instructions on the cache page.

I like the 35mm film can Idea and even made a couple of dozen that I distributed, but I started a thread looking for a larger label format. I think the 35mm film can idea works for people who are aware of CITO because they are small and easily overlooked. I would like to build a card or label that explains to new cachers what CITO is all about and get their attention right away when they open the cache. Those of us who CITO as a matter of habit and conviction usually have a bag with us, it’s the newbies I’m trying to reach with a larger label.

Thanks! The Avery looks like it might be a winner. I'll play with some stuff and post back here when I have something.

This idea gets better the more we talk about it. There are number of places (like city parks and such) that have restricted caching. This could be an excellent selling point to convince land managers to allow some form of geocaching on the lands they manage.

Does anybody have a format for some nifty labels that promote CITO that I can tie to trash bags that I leave in caches I find? Thanks

I try to CITO everywhere I go, even if I’m not caching, but avoncacheheads has a point. As much as people decry the fact that for many ‘cachers it is “all about the numbers” and chasing stats, for many people it is true. If there were a cache type for CITO that added another icon type on a cachers stats page, I think it would generate a lot of traffic to littered areas. I think to get credit for the find you provide proof (picture?) that you carried out a bag of trash. Just a thought.

I remember reading a short news article in National Geographic Explorer Magazine a couple of years ago and scribbling down the web site. I didn’t do anything for some time and then one lousy day at work I was sorting though a pile of notes for web sites I had collected and logged onto to geocaching.com and poked around. The rest is history… Like most people I know how who this, it is now an addiction worse than crack! I bought a new GPSr, a premium membership and wife says that if we stop at another cache along the interstate while we are traveling she is going to leave me. I told her if she will email the coordinates for her new location, come looking for her! Seriously, it has been a great time over the last year. I have found places in my own backyard that I would never have known existed and met some wonderful people along the way. I’m hoping as that as more people join us, our reputation as a group and word of mouth will be our best advertisement.

Thanks! That worked like a charm!

You did the right thing, but it is disappinting that the owner did not maintain it better

What they said......