Lasagna

Congratulations! Within 20 feet is good. That's within the normal accuracy of a GPSr. Uh, you were kidding about the machete, weren't you? Yeah ... a machete would be too obvious ... you need some "official" looking safety vests and long handled pruners and a hat marked with something like ... "Forest Maintenance Service" ....

Note however ... that while you can place YOUR stages of YOUR cache as close together as you like, no one else can place ANY cache / stage of ANY OTHER cache within 0.1 mile of ANY of your stages. So ... if you cover a park with stages, no one else will be able to put any other caches in that same park even though your initial starting point and final may be all in one small corner of the park.

It's never bad form ... if you've given it a good search and still came up empty, ask for a hint! I've been caching long enough in my local area now that I have many cachers cell phone numbers (and they mine), so I will also occasionally even call the owner (or a fellow cacher who has found the cache) for a hint while in the field.

That sounds like a corrupted database on Cachemate ... are you using cachemate? Perhaps you downloaded and imported the new caches into cachement using the SAME data file as you did on a previously run BUT you didn't first delete the entire database. I've also had this happen when I deleted the data file or my memory card popped out. Delete all of the data in Cachemate and then copy down the new PDB extract and reread it into Cachemate. (If you're not using Cachemate, then obviously this is not your problem).

Actually ... reading the description since there's no benches and you mentioned fencing ... I'm thinking it might be a container inside one of the fence posts. Got a mirror?

Don't forget to purchase a cable if you're going to download coords to the yellows instead of inputting the info manually.

Tell the owner of the TB ... since they have all the info about the bug to release it initially, they should be able to grab it and drop it where it belogs. I did this not too long ago myself...

Plain and simple ... Navigator has larger map segments to take into account the larger memory sizes available with the newer models. Select has smaller segments since you needed to be more selective with older model GPSr's about what you loaded. Select is essentially being retired and will no longer be offered by Garmin. I've heard larger segments also makes route calculation more efficient and accurate -- particularly in areas where you cross map boundaries -- since with Navigator there are obviously fewer such areas. Since you have the newer Csx, you should be buying Navigator.

Are you sure you're still in "goto" mode? Sometimes if it thinks you've arrived at your destination, it will exit "goto" mode. You need to do the "find" again. Also, are you navigating using "follow road" mode? If so, when you get to the parking, you need to "recalculate" and put the GPSr into "off road" mode. Otherwise it keeps trying to get you to the road nearest the cache instead of point at the cache itself.

So... how about when I was just getting into Geocaching and I was having a particularly difficult time with one specific cache so I decide to read the profile of the individual who placed it to see just "what kind" of warped individual this person might be .... click on the profile and up comes the picture of a co-worker who I work with on a daily basis. Absolutely no clue he was into Geocaching! Of course, now that I was aware of his alter-ego, we've since gotten another co-worker into caching and now have redefined the meaning of "lunch hour" so that we can go caching just about every day at lunch.

If, when you get to the "Find Geocaches" page, you hit the menu button on the left side, you'll see an option to change the search from "Not Found" geocaches to ""Found" Geocaches... if you switch modes, you'll see all the caches you marked as found. They'll also show pu on the "Find Waypoints" page.

You can also upload coordinates to the yellow eTrex -- the cable is not included, but can easily be found on ebay. You only need on of them. I'd say go with the yellows. Bec That's true ... maybe one legend (for the person leading) and 9 yellows (that way you'll get the cable you need to drive all the units with the Legend as part of the package).

If you're going to preload coordinates in the GPSr's, then I'd say the eTrex Legend. If your going to have them entered manually, then just the basic eTrex (Yellow) will do fine. They're good basic units which provide the firm knowledge of how to work and use a GPSr (which can then be used on other more advanced models).

Yep ... filters ... when you export to Cachemate, GSAK will only export what you have selected in your filter. Typically the filter shows all caches. You can setup a custom filter, or for your specific requirements, you may find the builtin ones sufficient. Try double-clicking on the "white" box with a number it in in the bottom right of the GSAK screen (four colored boxes are there white, yellow, green, and red). If you double-click on the white box, it will set a filter showing only the caches which have not been "found" by you (provided you defined to GSAK "who" you are). The yellow box has the number of caches you found (double clicking it shows on the caches you found), Green are those owned by you, and red are archived (that GSAK has somehow found out are archived).

I agree ... I found I had accidentally logged the same cache twice one time -- fortunately just before I reached a milestone and not right after it. Would hate to have all my planning for doing a special cache for a milestone ruined and replaced by a lame micro find because of a miscount. Same applies to TB's and other trackables ... would be nice to be able to avoid accidentally logging the same coin (such as a personal geocoin at an event) twice.

If you're looking for small, compact, and good reception ... you can beat the Vista C/Cx. The older eTrex series suffered in their ability to obtain / maintain a quick lock on satellites, but the newer "C" family (Cx if you want the expandable memory) are great. The Garmin 60/76 families have better reception in dense foliage because of the change in antenna type and have a slightly richer feature set, but at more cost and a larger size. For it's size, the eTrex are great.

Further to what ImpalaBob said ... on the "Geocaches" find page, you can hit the menu button and change the option to "Show Found Caches" and see the "open" treasure chests instead of the "closed" ones. Handy for extracting the list of caches you found on an excursion.

Hmmm...I'm not familiar with that one...unless it's the one I've been saving for a milestone. Oh ... there's none around here ... really ... there isn't!

Even better would be to have about 30 or so stages and have the last stage point back to the first. All these lightposts look the same and it might take some a while to realize that they're in an endless loop! Guess you couldn't really do that however since you do eventually have to get to a log book somehow ... maybe a puzzle cache that the real trick is that the actual coords are hidden in the writeup -- or better still the layout of the order the light posts are visited when viewed from the air are the coordinates -- and the exercise in the mall parking lot is to see how silly you can look?

You're right ... it's likely not a "brand new" unit, but a "refurbished new" unit. A return or a former unit that had failed and they repaired and brought back to factory spec (new faceplate/case, etc.). They'll likely do the same to your old one and pass it along to someone else who has a problem in the future. When they replaced the unit, they do a bunch of testing to insure it will pickup satellites, etc. (that checkout was on the paperwork that came back with the unit). They wouldn't want to return a "broken" unit to you -- that would be a major goof.

Setup a gmail (or other) account and use that to send all your notifications to. On the gmail account, configure it to automatically "forward" all messages to the list of email addresses you mentioned.

Read your GPX file into GSAK and then export as HTML (just like you would do with Plucker). Then run SunriseXP and give it the index.html file as the starting point for your Sunrise run. The resulting PDB file can then be downloaded to your handheld just like you did with Plucker and read using the Plucker reader (you still user the plucker reader on the handheld).

If the caches are disabled and have been for sometime, a reviewer should usually flag them for archival if they aren't reactivated after a reasonable period of time. So, I would say that if they are still disabled (and it's truly been that way for over a year), that you either propose adopting any of the caches which are of interest to you or you post a "should be archived" note on the cache so it'll come to the reviewers attention and be removed.

Here's the link for the Sunrise XP converter ... it works where Plucker Desktop fails ... http://www.sunrisexp.com

I will second the comment about the old Vista ... it's terrible at acquiring and maintaining a lock. The newer Vista C however is very quick and maintains a good lock. Whatever Garmin did between these two versions of GPSrs (besides the obvious addition of color and other features), they did right. I also agree with the color comment ... you really do want color!