ipodguy

Did you lift the skirt on the pole you were searching? Bet it was in there!

<nevermind>

You want to load 3 pocket queries onto your 450? I assume they're 1000 cache queries. Yeah, your 450 can handle that without the card.

How about "Don't Keep Me"?

I love the idea of photographing your bearded dragon while geocaching. If you're concerned about giving away the container, you can usually find a photo opportunity or two on the way to the cache - a stream, a neat clump of moss or a weird stump. Your beardie could pose on those instead. I do this a lot with Travel Bugs. Also, beardies make great pets. I used to have one and he'd just chill on my shoulder for hours. Definitely a mellow type of lizard.

Welcome! If you have a smartphone, you could try Groundspeak's app. It's $10 but worth it. My first GPS for geocaching was a Garmin eTrex Vista C which I got on eBay for $100. They're very basic, but they get the job done. After that I went with the Oregon 450 and I like it a lot. They're coming down in price now since Garmin has some newer models out.

Yes, especially if they're mine!

Doesn't bother me, but I'm basically a walking chemical anyway.

I'd be all over that! One of my favorite caches actually is at the site of a downed Radiosonde.

I use a Garmin Oregon 450 and couldn't be happier. They can do so much. The price on Oregons have gone down since I got mine, so you can find one in your budget I'm sure. The 550 model is the same as the 450 but it has a camera. That's useful if you don't have one already. I'd say to stay away from the 450T and the 550T models - they come preloaded with topo maps which you can get for free elsewhere and load on the unit. Also, with the Oregons (and many other Garmin units) you can wirelessly share caches with other Garmin GPSr's. That's another useful thing if you meet up with friends. Good luck!

An alternative to GSAK would be to use mygeocachingprofile.com You can personalize the list of stats any way you want to and the site will generate html that you can put in your public profile to display your achievements. I keep track of my FTF's this way because I don't use GSAK. To do this, you enter a specific word on the website and when you upload a My Finds pocket query it will filter your FTF's and make a nice list. Or, you can enter them manually. I mark my FTF logs with this: °°FTF°° and people who view my public profile can see them.

Take really big steps.

Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to take any trackable from any cache anytime if you want to help it on its journey. That being said, I have found at least 2 caches that had trackables that were intended to remain with the cache. Both were fixed to the cache in a way that made removal a nuisance and documented on the cache page. Also, if you run across a cache (such as a TB Hotel) where the cache owner states that you must only exchange trackables (like only take 1 if you also leave 1) you don't have to follow that either. Sometimes these kinds of caches are called "TB prisons". All trackable owners are happy when you can take their trackable and help it along with its mission.

I usually wear some old jeans, a t-shirt, old workboots and a Carhartt jacket & hat when it's cold. I used to wear BDU pants a lot because they're practically indestructible, but a couple of cachers noticed the pattern and teased me about it. When it's really really cold, I have warm camo coveralls and boots a friend gave me after his trip to hunt polar bears in the Arctic Circle. They're comically enormous, but my toes are warm!

I only read the original post, none of the replies but... it's in the lamp post.

I met a cacher who changed their name. When he registered his account, he chose a name that had already been taken. So, he used the same name and added "666" after it. The original account had never found a cache, never logged in after creating the account and had been inactive for quite some time. He contacted Groundspeak and explained the situation. It took forever and a day, but in the end they deleted the old account and allowed him to drop the "666" from his name.

This is where I bought my Oregon 450: http://www.gpscity.com/garmin-oregon-450.html Can't say enough good things about it

Just coming back to say thanks again! I recently hosted an event to begin a travel bug race and I used your tip to create a gallery of all the participants on the cache page. Take a look: My TB race

Can you find a TB and scan the tag?

I doubt that 'roos or koalas know what coyote urine smells like. You need to use dingo urine! Just get an ammo can. Problem solved.

You can also use the Waypoint Averaging feature on your 550. It will take sevral readings and average them together for a really tight set of coordinates. Just an idea. When you say about setting a route, what I would do is take all the coordinates of your traps and enter them into Google Earth. Then I'd use the path drawing feature to draw the route that I wanted to take from one trap to the next. I'd save it to my computer (it's a .kmz file) then I'd convert it to a .gpx file for free using this website: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/ The new .gpx file goes into the Garmin/GPX folder on my unit. Next time I turn the gps on, pushing the Path Manager button will bring me to the path file. Select it and select "Go". On the map screen, there's the triangle and it will follow you as you trace the path. If you use the compass screen with "Small Data Fields" enabled, you can see stats such as distance you have left to go to follow the path to the end. An alternative, if you prefer to navigate from one trap to the next, you can open up that path file in Path Manager and set it to show on the map (and set a color). On the map screen, the path will be visible and you can still follow it, but you can set the gps to navigate to the trap directly instead of navigating along the path. Another way to save a path is to set the 550 to record your path as you're walking. You can enable it to show on the map and that's helpful when you're trying to find your way out from the middle of nowhere. I often use both ways to navigate with my 450.

The only way to kind of do what you are asking is to use pocket queries. For instance, I set one to run every day. It downloads the closest thousand caches by my home coordinates. I have it set to exclude my finds and caches that are disabled. I use the two files included in my pocket query to overwrite the older query that I have saved to my GPS. That way, I always have the closest and most up-to-date information on my GPS.

Happens to me occasionally. It's fun! A quick geo-chat, maybe you team up, maybe you go your separate ways. Just last weekend I was just starting down a trail and some teenage kid looked at me and asked if I was a geocacher. He noticed my GPS and said he was a cacher too. He asked me for a little help with a cache he couldn't find, and it was on my way so we hiked there together. I helped him find it and then we said our goodbyes. He went back the way we came, I continued on and that was that.

Here's what I'd do: If there's room for two logs, I'd leave both behind and say so in my log. If it's a micro, I'd take the log, leave the new one and message the owner and offer to mail it to them or give it to them at an event.

Chino1130 - what kind of paint do you use? Anytime I paint a keychain the paint scratches off a lot.