mertat
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Posts posted by mertat
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Since you live in Georgia, you might want to check out the GA Cache Guidelines on the GGA (Georgia Geocachers Association) website.
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One of my all time favorites: log by stthomas95 for McCosh Mill Ruins Cache
Found it from the Alabama side! DO NOT COME IN FROM THE ALABAMA SIDE.
If you come in from the Alabama side...this is what happens. You follow your GPS to a paved road and bridge, and your GPS points directly at a logging road telling you the ruins are 1/2 mile away. DO NOT GO DOWN THAT ROAD It takes you to the edge of West Point Lake to a dried bottom. DO NOT STEP INTO THE LAKE BED, AS DRIED AS IT APPEARS. We stepped into mud, and had to rereat to the rocky ledge on the naked banks of the lake.
The rock formations are geological wonders, and, continuing from the Alabama side you must walk over these rocks. DO NOT WALK OVER THESE ROCKS. Some are 8 feet high and six feet wide, and lounges for sun tanning snakes. The first snake you see slivering off the rock into the water will scare you. The second snake you see will make you wonder if there are other snakes around. You will probably want to pick up a stick and carry it in front of you the rest of the way. DO NOT PICK UP A STICK from any pile of sticks washed up on those rocks. We did and found out what REAL snakes do on Sunday afternoons. You can choose at this point to turn back, or decide to suck it up, and continue on. DO NOT SUCK IT UP AND CONTINUE ON. Take your losses and go home.
If you choose to do what we did, you will continue on these beautiful rocks, trying to tell yourself you are having a good time and experiencing something no one else ever gets to experience. Your GPS will indicate you are 534ft from the ruins, but these ruins are across the lake, and the falls, and the slippery rocks.How do you get across? You can wade, swim, or attempt an 8 ft jump over rapids. Wading seems best, because it will wash the mud off your shoes and legs which came from stepping into the dry lake bed. DO NO TRY TO WADE. If the lake bottom is wet and muddy with no water on it, how wet and muddy do you think the lake bottom is with water on top of it? The second alternative is not really an alternative either. The lake is 2 feet deep in most parts, and, you cannot swim in two feet of water. DO NOT TRY TO SWIM IN TWO FEET OF WATER. This leaves the third alternative: Jumping eight feet over the rapids. This entails jumping from one rock to another over running water.
DO NOT TRY TO JUMP ACROSS THE RAPIDS. First of all, unless you are an olympic athlete, you cannot jump eight feet from a standing position. You THINK you can, but you can't. Second, you are jumping UP and and not DOWN, and....well, take my word for it. By God's grace our noisey approach to the ruins caught the attention of a 19 yr old Alabama boy, camping at the ruins since Thursday. After his girl friend put her top on, he responded to us in our plight, trying to yell across the rapids.
DO NOT TRY TO COMMUNICATE BY YELLING ACROSS THE FALLS. You cannot hear, and they cannot hear. Noticing a canoe on the bank I resorted to hand signals and rowing motions. The camper understood. His girlfriend put on some more clothes, he tipped his head towards heaven, finished off a can of something, and jumped in the canoe and rowed toward us. DO NOT STEP INTO A CANOE...CRAWL IN CAREFULLY. Enough said. Our rescuer was an Alabama Tom Sawyer who walked barefooted on rocks, stuck a rusty barbed wire in his foot, and pulled it out, and kept going He grew up around this area, and gave us a barefoot tour, of the whole scene. He walked barefooted through the ruins as if they belonged to him, while we tip toed behind.
Beautiful place. And two of the greatest Alabama kids you could ever hope to meet. They gave us a ride in their truck, back to our car on the Alabama side. The ruins are open 24/7. Our Alabama rescuers, however, camp once a year.
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After a few days of the two recent threads about logging caches--Don't use my cache for your challenge and Poor logs deleted--there was a thought that struck me about the attitudes of some of the posters. This is different than the subjects of the threads so I decided to start a new one.
The thought was that it seemed to me that many of the posters' first thought when placing a cache wasn't whether a finder would enjoy their cache. This thought was spurred by tozainamboku's comment "This sense of entitlement should not be a part of cache ownership." That was counter to comments like "So what?" in response to not getting a log that recognizes the cache. It seems as though there are two competing schools of thought in these threads. One says that cache owners should expect finders to heap praise on their caches while the other doesn't seem to give a dadgum what it said. Both of these seem to boil down to two sides of the same coin and that is ego gratification without regards to others. Mostly.
<snip>
I bolded the part I wanted to highlight and reply to.
I think this is an oversimplification of the views that were offered in the other threads. While I think these two groups were represented, I also think there were those who posted opinions that fell in a middle ground between these two opposing sides. In my own words, I would express it that while as a cache owner I would love to get good feedback (i.e., a nice log), I’m not going to get my panties in a twist if I get a TNLN. I would hope that you wouldn’t interpret this as not caring about the logs. Rather, it’s that I’m not going to let a TNLN log dilute the enjoyment I got from placing the cache.
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Does this new guideline apply to earth caches? Without a log book ALRs are usually the means to verify a person was actually there- a picture , answers to questions about the site.
Making ALRs optional doesn't necessarily not make them fun.
Just reading through some of these posts I can see how with a little thinking some of the affected caches can be reworked so that instead of mailing the owner the answer to a question the owner could use that information as a stage to finding the cache. Someone was disappointed that people wouldn't read an interesting plaque the coordinates brought them to. So use that information on that plaque as a clue to the next stage of finding the cache.
From the OP: "EarthCaches, remaining virtuals and remaining webcam caches are not affected by this guideline change. They do not have a physical container. They will continue to require some form of verification."
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Nevermind - followed the "trail" and found the answer
Okay, where's DavidMac when you need him? What is this and where is it found?Great thread idea! I'll contribute.
I know what these are, but I wonder how many others do.
Some wild mushroom fans may recognize this fungus:
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Okay, where's DavidMac when you need him? What is this and where is it found?Great thread idea! I'll contribute.
I know what these are, but I wonder how many others do.
Some wild mushroom fans may recognize this fungus:
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I know what the top two are (but I'll let someone else chime in since I've already had my turn
) Don't have a clue about the 3rd. -
I forgot to add my story so here it is. I did this cache with my buddies redworm and geomuse. I'm not even going to tell you how long we searched looking under the wrong species of shrub
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Great idea for a thread!
Rhododendron.
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the top of the log could explicitly show and state how you want the cache to be replaced, so you have a self-correcting mechanism.
I recently found a nice custom cache with a nice custom logbook. The log cover has an explanation of "how to rehide the cache"! very sweet. And it worked, at least when I found it, cache was hidden per directions, and I put it back that way. A nice idea that ought to help.
I really like that idea! I try very hard to hide the cache back the way I found it although I probably err on the side of rehiding it too aggressively. After having rehidden some caches "better" than I found them only to go back and find the hint states that the cache should be exposed, I now read the hint after I find it (if I haven't already read it) to see if it mentions how it's hidden and then try to rehide as indicated.
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Just wanted to pop in here for a sec and say I hope this topic won't be closed and will continue with the good technical information. I just bought the PN-40 - steep learning curves and itty-bitty screens don't bother me - and when I have sufficient time, I plan to go through this thread very carefully to glean all the helpful tidbits. And thanks to all who've posted those helpful tidbits.
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Huh? You seem to be claiming that logging multiple finds on events that one has attended is somehow bad or undesirable, at least in your book. Amazing! Who would have known? Using an automated PERL script, I regularly log anywhere from 10,000 to 400,000 attended/find logs on each event that I have attended, based simply upon the entirely legitimate, solid, established and defensible premise that I deserve an attended/find log for every microsecond that I was present at the event. And then, when you factor in my multiple personalities (each of whom also has their own accounts at Groundspeak and here on the forum), and realize that each of these personalities deserves to log an attended/find log as well, it all adds up to a large number of entirely legitimate attended/find logs! I love this sport!
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So then does an occult hand reach down from above and smack you upside the head?
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I'm myopic - does that count?
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Just be careful, because what we're really talking about here is Dihydrogen Monoxide, a compound that has caused more death and destruction than...
I though I WAS playing, now your the one taking it serious just because I didn't include a
Dude, neither one of us thought it was actually electricity draining out. We were joking. Didn't you see the laughing and smiling emoticons?
I see that you have some experience with this. But that isn't electricity draining out it is PCB (Polychlorinated biphenyl) which at one time was commonly used a coolant in transformers but due to the high health and environmental hazards it's production was banned years ago.
Well, I'm told that if you use a good wet mop, it comes right up!
I think that's just because they don't want you to poke a hole in the side and let the electricity drain out all over your shoes. That stuff is pretty hard to clean up too.
Never poke at a padmount transformer (green boxes on boulevards). It doesn't say no geocaching so I guess placing a geocache on one is fine.
in my post. Sorry. well, just about anything else! When Dihydrogen monoxide and electricity come in contact, the results can be dangerously unpredictable! Beware! No! No! No! What they don't want you to know is that it really contains hundreds of hamsters on little hamster wheels. How else do you think they can generate enough electricity to power your house? However, they can't risk errant hamsters coming into contact with their trained electrical-generating hamsters so they have certain safeguards in place to prevent that.
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Okay, looks like my original post got lost in translation so here it is again:
I bought a pair of LEKI Luau women's trekking poles about 6 months ago and have been very happy with them until just recently. It seems that when the weather is cold, the locking mechanism doesn't work. I'm planning on taking them back but if this is a problem with this brand, I need to know so I don't just exchange one problem for another. Anyone else have a problem with this brand?
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Well, I think it would be funny but as others have said, probably wouldn't be met with enjoyment. We had an "incident" here that was a joke that turned ugly. A local cacher was going to swap all the TBs from one TB hotel with ones from another TB hotel - he called it Kidnapping. It was actually a pretty funny gag but wasn't met with much appreciation - here's his log. However, he did create a pretty cool cache from the experience: GCJA8H
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Destroy 400 acres of forest land because there "might" "possibly" be something.
yikes!!
Kiss the area's tupperware caches goodbye.....
Um, not really destroying forest land - they're talking about a prescribed burn of the underbrush.
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Okay, I'll bite.
Here's the typical scenic one:
And here's one that's just as scenic but not as typical:
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One of my top ten favorite caches is in Savannah - X Marks the Spot - Urban Jungle III GCNN8X
It's a puzzle cache but well worth the effort!
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The problem has been reported and they are working on it. Thank you for your patience.
Will we need tore-run PQs from earlier today, or will the server spit them out when the repair is complete?
Historically, you have lost anything that should have already ran. This time it is a bit different as it appears the PQ's have ran just not been delivered.
I wouldn't count on receiving them.
Well, I just received one of two that I ran yesterday.
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I've seen quite a few snakes while geocaching. Only one really startled me - I happened to look down to see a small copperhead coiled up right next to my foot. I was too busy running away to get a picture
.However, I did take these at other caches:
I didn't take the pictures of this snake but it was seen near a cache:
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Hey, me too! DavidMac, any idea what this one is?and i have a strange need to photograph mushrooms
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Meh! Don't let 'em scare you off - although it's all good info it's not as bad as it sounds.This is just lovely information......
And we're heading to NC on Friday.
I've run into snakes, spiders, ticks, chiggers, poison ivy, poison oak and I'm still here to tell the tale. 
Just be aware of your surroundings and you'll be fine.
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Devil's Courthouse - my absolute favorite cache! The easiest approach starts from the parking lot behind the bathrooms.We did the cache at the top of the mountain but there was another nearby at Devil's Overlook or something like that and I was determined to do it. My GF told me the trails were too iced over. I said I could do it. She said I'd be doing it by myself. I got her to hold my camera and gear and I started down. About the third step I took I busted my butt slipping on the ice covered rocks and slid down a ways before stopping suddenly by crashing into an ice coated bush and the rocks it was growing out of. The I-told-you-so's didn't stop for a while
It's still on my to-do list
Mule Ears - do you carry a tripod or do you just use available nature?
Vinnie - how do you think I get the energy to do all those hikes? Stealing soul energy is much, much easier than going to the gym and working out!
in my post. Sorry.
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Just be aware of your surroundings and you'll be fine.
Women -- caching alone?
in General geocaching topics
Posted
This subject comes up with some regularity and I wanted to repost some information from Mule Ears from a previous thread:
I, also, highly recommend this book - it has some great information about listening to your instincts and not talking yourself out of it just because you're afraid of being ridiculed about it.
I typically hike alone and really enjoy it. Sometimes I run into other people on the trail and sometimes I never see another soul. 99.9% of the time I just exchange pleasantries with whomever I might meet and then go about my business. However, there is that 0.1% of the time. Recently I was on a hike - hadn't seen anyone and was heading back to my car. I was climbing over a downed tree on the trail when I looked up to see someone on the connecting trail. He was very polite but my fear instinct kicked in almost immediately. Believe it or not, I think it was because he was too polite. He kept apologizing for startling me. The last time someone apologized that much to me, they were up to no good. This might sound as weird to some as getting freaked out by footprints in the mud but I've learned to listen to my gut and I don't really care if others think it's ridiculous. I'll never know if my instinct was correct or not about this guy - I have no way of proving anything and while I don't think he was a serial killer, I do believe he was probably up to no good. What I'm trying to say in my long winded fashion is - listen to your gut and don't shrug it off just because someone else might laugh at you about it.