Sean Connery

A lot of what you carry in hiking/geo-pack will depend upon where you live, the expected terrain of where you'll be hiking, and the needs of others in your party. Besides what has been mentioned so far, you should also consider a whistle for signaling your position if hurt or lost, and a goog hiking staff or pair of trekking poles. If you consider exercise an important part of your lifestyle, it's best to carry a little extra weight in water or food to give your body and excellent workout.

The Bond Girl and I love to do cemetery caches. In Wisconsin, they now call them WSQ for Wisconsin spirit quest. Everyone I've found has been in good taste often with the actual cache hidden along the outer boundaries of the cemetery. Never have seen one buried under a headstone, nor have I had to stand on headstone to make a grab. The cemeteries we've been to are quite varied and have shown us gravestone ideas I never knew about. At one cemetery, many of the deceased had mailboxes by their headstones where friends and family could leave them letters. At another cemetery we found the buried survivors of the Titanic. Never knew so many had ties to Milwaukee. To summarize, we find them much more interesting than LLP's.

Alex the geodog has definetly found a couple of caches ahead of the Bond Girl or myself. I really don't know if its human scent she zeros in on or just because she's been along on just about everyone of our 879 finds.

I think Harry hit the nail on the head. About a month ago in the Madison area, a girl was abbducted and killed, left in a wooded area. The ploice found her body 10 days later by gps tracking her cell phone. Now, I never did hear one way or the other, but I believe her phone must have been turned off or she had the best cell phone battery I ever heard of to last at least 10 days. Now I personally never bought into the story that the gps signal comes from satellites in space. No, I believe they come from alien UFO's in space and that is why at some caches my signal jumps around so much. The UFO is starting to home in on me and that's why you must find the cache quickly and then run away from the area as quickly as possible after putting your gpsr back in its lead lined, foil covered case.

Probably the wackiest hiking story I have happened back in the mid 60's at Devils Lake State Park near Baraboo, WI. I was a young boy scout at a camporee and all the scouts were to hike all 4-5 trails that ring Devil's Lake. Now, we were supposed to get breakfast first, but the mess wasn't open yet so we hiked on anyway. I had one canteen and 2 hershey bars. By midway through the hike, the other scouts were offering me good money just to lick the melted chocalate off the inside of the foil wrapper. Nobody had any food and most had brought no water along. The hike was several miles long with a lot of elevation change. The hike took like 10 hours to complete. I guess it was that experience that taught me to "bring everything but the kitchen sink" along on alll future jaunts that might go more than 800 yards.

I think the biggest cheaters are those that use a computer to look up geocaches and to download the coords to a gpsr(mapping or ortherwise). I miss the good old days when you had to write to Groundspeak ( enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope) asking for the closest 10 geo caches in your area. Yep, FTF races were'nt so common back then - nor were LLP micros. Yes, technology is a cruel taskmaster indeed!

I don't know if this is your problem but the other day as I was trying to delete 'found geocaches" from my Garmin 60cs, I accidentally hit the wrong button and I could only load from GSAK into waypoints like you are. So, go to find>hilite geocaches,hit entr, hit menu, hilite geocache setup and hit enter and reset the gpsr to accept the treasure chest icon. Maybe this will help you or maybe not.

Hey, good to hear from a newbie. Mapsource is a Garmin product but it is a general term. They several mapping products. Are you refering to their trip&waypoint manager or to city navigator v8 or what??

It's odd then isn't it that all the DEET products come in plastic containers.

Yes, I use a Hiking staff that I purchased 2 decades ago. It is called "the staff of life" or something similar. Don't recall where I bought it from. It unscrews into 3 sections for easy portability and comes wth survival gear in the upper section, includes an icepick, and the knob on top unscrews for a camera mount. Unfortunately, the compass in the top knob doesn't work anymore. It also has a heavyduty, adjustable wriststrap and a foam rubber grip. Because I have wickedly bad ankles, I use it whenever I expect the going to get rough and tricky. It has saved me from serious injury many times.

Continue to exhale while ascending at a rate no faster than 60 feet per minute.

Hi There: Are you using GSAK to download the gpx files off gc.com and then export to mapsource? If not you should try that. Then you can load your waypoints into your gpsr off GSAK while looking at the locations of the caches on the mapsource maps.

I used to do house caches without a GPSr - we called it trick or treating.

In answer to yor question yes. Vince Condella the weatherman of Fox 6 News here in Milwaukee airs a regular series on geocaching. It deals both with caches he has hid as well as some of our local cachers. You should contact Mr. Condella for details of his show.

Why would you approve a cache on NPS land when it is clearly in violation of GC.com guidelines. The head of a volunteer trail club does NOT have the authority to speak for the NPS. I published this cache because the owner did his homework by obtaining written evidence of adequate permission, and the cache otherwise met the listing guidelines. It is hardly unique. There are other examples where the NPS has allowed caches on properties it manages or, as with the AT, where it shares management responsibilities. I have a lot of respect for you Keystone but I respectfully disagree. The owner did NOT do his homework. He did not approach the NPS and ask for permission (probably because he knew it wouldn't be granted) and instead asked an aquaintance of his (the head of a vo;unteer trail maintenance organization) to grant permission. This person had NO authority to do so.

Why would you approve a cache on NPS land when it is clearly in violation of GC.com guidelines. The head of a volunteer trail club does NOT have the authority to speak for the NPS.

Instead of huckle-huckle-beanstalk, we use "the finder's tree". You spot the cache, move off to a neighboring tree and yell "finders tree. However, when it is just one other cacher or family, I always ask if they want help or not.

I've done a library cache. It is a puzzle-multi cache that ends inside a library and even includes a bonus cache. See GCV8Y1 by Russell_53040.

I for one, enjoy cemetery caches and have found about 20 of them here in Wisconsin. Some have been virtual only, some have been the first stage of a multi where you're required to read dates of certain headstones and use those numbers for coordinates to the next stage. Some have had actual hides in the cemertery but usually never near an actual grave. Oddly enough I have never run into a mourners. Perhaps because most (though not all) of these cemetaries are no longer active. However, they have all had some great history behind them. I also take my geo-dog and she has never once p**d on a grave or been disrepesctful in any way. I would agree that the local reviewer should make sure everything has been done to show proper respect before approving the cache.

Did you leave the required offering when you placed the cache? A crisp $20 bill would be an acceptable offering and do wonders for having your cache found quickly.

Testing if my new avatar appeared.

Went to REI and and turned on and compared all their headlamps. Bought the Princeton Tec Quad. Has 4 ultrabright leds that offer 3 power/illumination levels plus a flashing dtrobe mode. Haven't used for night caching yet but I do look forward to doing so soon. Paid about $30 for it.

I'll look forward to your return from south of the border and to finding your new cache with the pesos. Have fun and say hi to Mr. Magoo.

Here in the Milwaukee area we have cacher, WhitnallGPS, who is a teacher at Whitnall middle school and use geocaching as a teaching tool in his classroom. His 6th grade math classes have both hidden caches as well as hunted caches in the area. He has been highlighted on our local FOX tv news channel (Fox6) by weatherman Vince Condella who has also recently been bitten by the geocache bug. Note: WhitnallGPS may have recently changed his handle to Green&Gold (he's a BIG Packer fan).

Happens to me all the time.