Grey Dragon

Myhusband is military, and we relocated to Germany about 6 months ago. I have been working on downloading coordinates and translating the cache pages so we had some idea of what we were looking for. What I found was that within 20 miles (not kilometers) of my home coordinates there are about 650+ caches. Given that you are limited on time, you might want to do the "caches along a route" option so that you can not only see the sites, but pick up the caches closest to them. Part of the reason I suggest this is, since no one has mentioned it, at least in Germany and the Netherlands there are paved or really good dirt/gravel hiking/biking trails all over the place. I can bike all the way from my home in Germany to a small town in the Netherlands (about 1/2 hour by car) without ever really being on a road used by cars. If you can get a bike map for the areas you are most interested in, you could work your route along those and probably find that's where most of the caches are anyway.

Think of each category as a locationless of sorts -- the owner defines the target and the requirements for posting a waymark (as opposed to a find). The waymark is not exactly like a locationless find, because it can be posted by someone who hasn't necessarily visited it, depending on what the category requirements are. But in general they work much the same as reverse/locationless, and each location can only waymarked by one person within a category. Then think of the resulting waymark as a virtual that can be found and logged as a visit by many. These visits have to meet logging requirements as well (which can be the same or different as the requirements for posting the waymark), but in all cases I've seen (so far) do require a visit to the location. Finally someone has explained it in a way I can better understand. Thank you Bear Paughs! I am new to geocaching, just became a Premium Member, and Waymarking e-mail was the first to hit my inbox. I was becoming confused, and somewhat disgruntled, over many of the posts from people who are complaining about how it differs (or seems to) from the locationless and virtual caches on the geocaching site. Since I've never done either of these (though I did finally look at a couple that seemed they could be fun to do), I'm glad there is something in the works to expand my caching skills in the future. Also, being a military dependent, there are many places I have been, and hope to go in the future, that I could add as either categories or waymarks. The biggest thing I thank Bear Paughs for is stating that each waymark should be physically visited (if possible) and some type of "proof" should be required for a visitor to a waymark to log his visit. Some, I'm sure, will say that is not the point, but for competitions sake, that could be the "check and balance" that someone was saying might be missing. Instead of leaving it up to whomever makes up the category or waymark whether physical proof will be required, I say make it a standard rule for the entire site. Else even I could find coordinates for all the places I've visited in the past and have pictures for and never even leave my couch or computer. What's the fun in that? And, where's the health and wellness portion as well as the CITO that is so much a part of geocaching.

Sscanned down through most of the replies to this picture, and did some research of my own. It is a garter snake, specifically (I believe) it's called a Checkered Garter Snake (Thaumophis marcianus). At first I, too, thought it was a juvenile water moccasin/cottonmouth because they can be brightly colored when young, but you can see it has round eyes, not slit eyes which is one of the primary means of distinguishing poisonous snakes from non-poisonous snakes - the not the only means and not always a valid means. Coral snakes also have round eyes, but are brightly colored. Anyway, I grew up between Cincinnati and Hillsboro, and despite what the books say, copperheads and cottonmouths are quite plentiful in that part of Ohio, so probably also in southern Indiana. Cottonmouths are one of the few snakes that are aggressive and will attack without any true provocation, so beware of any snake that stands up to you. The nice thing about a cottonmouth is he will generally open his mouth before moving or striking, and he has earned his name quite well. Having done SAR for 9 years with a fairly well-known national volunteer organization, I have had to learn to spot potentially dangerous snakes in many areas of our country, and prudence is the way to go. Haven't run across any while geocaching - yet, but I'm new to this "sport" and am sure I will have close encounters with all kinds of wildlife in the future. I just remind myself that I'm in their "home," their guest and have to remember the rules - don't mess with their "stuff," try to be quiet and polite and leave when appropriate. Hope this helps some of the other newbies out. Grey Dragon