cfever

Yes. This season Northern New Jersey is terrible. I was bitten already, and have found several on the dog even with frontline. It's been really bad in central Illinois. A few weeks ago my 2 sons and I went caching at a local lake and we pulled 17 of the buggers off of us! I even checked my oldest son when we got home, checked his hair and everything was fine. The next day we found one crawling on his back and when I double checked his head there were 13 more of them attached to his scalp! He was not happy and of course being the smart aleck that he is, he yelled out "I'm ticked off!"

To my fellow LEO's, have you informed all your officers about geocaching? We had a suspicious person call in a low crime area that had a burglary spree going on. I'm a civilian analyst but I took the phone call. Turned out to be a geocacher, who incidentally I contacted through GC to confirm it was a geocacher and not the burglar (we never made a stop on him). I put out a notice to our officers and dispatchers about geocachers, how they act, why they may seem suspicious and evasive, what equipment they may have, etc. Never had a problem afterwards.

On the other hand, an earthcache at the springs in the park would be pretty neat, and the DNR would like that better than a traditional cache.

Weldon Springs is a DNR managed park and they have rules on geocaching. This link explains the DNR rules. IDNR Geocache Rules While the DNR does not prohibit placing geocaches, they make you work at it! Good luck!

As someone in law enforcement, I can tell you that very few GPSr's and Ipods that are stolen from cars are recovered. They are worth around $25 at a pawn shop, about the price of a rock of crack. However, we have recovered a few GPSr's and the home button allowed us to find the rightful owner. Rare, but it happens. In one case the owner didn't even know thier Nuvi was taken! The bigger problem for law enforcement is when we do find a stolen item we can have a hard time finding the owner. Very few people record the serial numbers of thier electronics. That's the best way for LE to match an owner to thier stolen item. Mark your stuff too. If you engrave the GPS, Ipod, laptop, etc, with your name, some (and I mean some) pawn stores won't purchase the item. But, there's a better chance of getting the item back to you if it's found. Getting burgled sucks, but you might as well give yourself the best chance of recovering an item if it is taken.

One of the main reasons I got into geocaching was for stress relief. I started at a time when my marriage was on the rocks and I really needed something else to focus on. It became an essential diversion from all other problems I was facing. I met some wonderful new friends and had lots of good places and time to just think things through. I also purposefully don't find every cache near my work for those days when the weather is nice or the stress is high so that I can go find a quick lunchtime cache. Overall, I find geocaching a very rewarding hobby that is a different experience everytime I go out, and that helps me a lot.

ok... go to your pocket queries ... Well, aledgidly, you can now get a map with your finds or hides in "maps bata" v0.9.2. I can't figure out how to do that though. When you are in the maps beta you can click on "Enable Personalization" and see your finds and hides. The kicker is you need to zoom in fairly close to see the smiley faces.

Also, take stock of what you do have. Do you have a smartphone, Ipod Classic, or Ipod Touch among others? Many of these devices support some type of paperless options. Paperless simply allows you to see all the cache details that you see on the website. You get the details, hints, coordinates, logs, photos (if any) and sometimes the logs. Even certain Nuvi and Tom Toms can hold cache details. Many paperless programs allow you to mark the cache as "found" and then create the log on the device. When you get home, you can upload the field notes to GC and make your cache logs from them. Convenient way to remember which caches you found. I use a 60CSX with an Ipod Touch, and together they work great for me. Like the others have said, you can use the GSAK program to trick the 60CSX into somewhat of a paperless device. However it is bulky and inconvenient to use that way. Good Luck!

All the bells and whistles won't help you find that cleverly hidden cache any faster! I use a Garmin 60CSx and an Ipod Touch with the Geosphere app for paperless. The 60CSx can be bought for around $150 - $200 new if you look around and they are super accurate, rugged GPSr's. The 62 series is paperless too. From what I have heard, the only drawback to the Oregon line is some complain that the touch screen is not very responsive and the display is not as bright as the 60 series. That and they supposedly are not as accurate as the 60 series either, from what I hear. Really, the hunt is the most rewarding part for me, not the technology I use to play the game.

American Bittern

All of the replies are very good tips. I would add that you can pick up Nuvi's fairly cheap on Ebay, Amazon, and second hand stores. Especially if you are on a budget like I am! Also, what kind of cell phone do you have? If you have a smartphone, the geocaching apps from Groundspeak are awesome and many cell phones (including the dumb phones) have turn by turn navigation. If you have internet enabled phones you can log into Geocaching.com directly as well. I have Geosphere for my Ipod Touch which is nice since it runs on data already downloaded to the device. If there is no cell signal at least you still have cache info at your fingertips. There's really so many options for paperless caching that you just need to do a little research into what you can do with what you have. GSAK will do just about anything you want it to do and their support is top notch if you have a question. So that would be my next purchase if I were you. One other idea would be to download and listen to some of the excellent podcasts out there. Podcacher, Cache-A-Maniacs, and the Geocaching Podcast are just 3 of the many shows out there. Most of them have episodes on paperless caching that you can download without using Itunes. They are great resources for keeping up with the latest in technology and caching. Happy caching!

I also got a free Expedia tag when I received my last order from Groundspeak. Hey, it's a free traveler so if it goes missing I won't care.

So here's a twist. My son is 7 and he placed a cache about a week ago. I decided to upload it last night to OC under my caching name just for curiosity. When you list the cache, you are asked if the cache is listed on other sites. I checked 'yes'. Perhaps only amazingly to me, the cache was listed on OC with me as the cache owner! Not that big a deal since it's all in the family for this cache, but what is to stop someone from "adopting" current GC.com caches owned by someone else and placing it under thier own name on OC? GC2JTBK on GC.com OX2JTBK on OC.com I see this as a potentially huge problem

Since the message is not addressed to your screen name or real name, I would say 100% phishing.

A 2001 Magellen Meridian! I still use it from time to time, especially for the 7 year old to use. Still works great! Slow to lock on to the sats but seems to keep the signal really well. Can you believe I used to try to use it for road navigation before the Garmin Nuvi, man things have come a long way!

I like to move TB's and coins along. There are not too many regular to large caches near my location that have these so I find myself going out of the way more these days to find larger caches with trackables in them. I'll pick up micros and nanos along the way, I just enjoy the larger caches more.

I always thought this would be a neat premium member feature. Have a search for X number of cachers within Y distance from your home coordinates, or any address.

Found a ripped in half riverboat casino playing card once. I mean, really? Who wants that?

I am heading on vacation tomorrow and I want to add the treasure chest icons on my Garmin Nuvi 765. I have the gpx files I want and entered them into GSAK and loaded the POI's without problem. However, how do I get the treasure chests to show up on the map screen. I tried to search the forums but couldn't find an answer. I also tried to copy and paste the gpx files into the Nuvi but nothing would show up. Thanks for the help!

The DuPage policy is very similar to the Illinois Dept. Of Natural Resources policy. Here's the link http://dnr.state.il.us/lands/Landmgt/Progr.../Geocaching.htm Looks like this kind of policy is popping up everywhere in Illinois.

Wheter or not one agrees with using a Nuvi for geocaching I do think that the Nuvi has helped introduce many to the sport, myself included. I have found over 50 caches using my Nuvi 675 and while it does have some limitations, here in the flat lands of Illinois it does an adequate job of getting you to the cache. The paperless feature is great and I find the time I spend with the family finding caches to be enjoyable. Thus, I think the Nuvi (or any car GPS) is a good all around tool for both caching and road navigation.

I'm a newbie to geocaching and I only logged 1 DNF because it was pretty obvious that the cache site was destroyed by construction work. Honestly I felt really stupid when I can't find a cache and the next day there was a log saying someone else found it right after I looked. I think most newbies feel the same way, slightly embarrassed that they missed the cache. However after reading this thread perhaps I shouldn't feel so embarrassed. The winter is hard on caches and perhaps they were destroyed and the CO needs to know like several of the other posters have suggested. Plus I am still learning all the different tricks for hiding caches. Most of the caches near my home are micros and nanos. I know those are harder to find and it's all part of the game. It wouldn't be fun if we found every cache that we looked for in 10 seconds or less!