Shrink

Thought I'd add a rather large cache container, which is the most unusual cache I had found http://www.geocaching.com/seek/gallery.asp...d8-7e6ed78a021c The cache is a tree stump, that has been roofed, and underneath, Pooh's house has miniature furniture you can view through the windows. check out the photos of this most unusual cache. I have a book cache, with hollowed center, and the cover has pictures with dedications to the sport of geocaching and local geocachers I have known. It has been enthusiastically received. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...d9-9b8f5bdc8411

I check the local lists and slowly expand to find as many near local caches as I can. When I get an opportunity to travel for whatever reason I check to see what caches will be nearby, so I have a good reason to explore the new neighborhood, and meet the locals. My furthest was 7240.5mi from my home coordinates. This did involve getting updated local maps for my GPS, as detailed maps were not available in Japan.

Cachemate on my palm m515 and GSAK work well together. only I can't figure how to get a good satellite image of the cache are without paper. Otherwise paperless is the way to go.

3 episodes of unusual occurrences: The first in Soda stash cache, Tampa, I was walking up the trail and I could smell the sweet smell of burning "wood". Then there appeared 2 youths smoking dope on a bench at the end of the trail. They had not realised the wind was blowing their smoke straight down the trail, and everyone could smell it and see them a mile off. One bolted for the exit, dropping something and shouting, "I promise I wont do it again". I shouted back " You're busted" and proceeded along looking for the geocache. I didn't see them again. Second episode was the sighting and photographing of a bobcat on the trail in a 600 acre park in Tampa: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...13-37da69e05257 Unfortunately, I thought it was a panther, because of its size. 3rd strange occurrence:Finally after wandering through a large graveyard in the middle of Tokyo, on my second day in Japan, I found the cache in an interesting multicache, At Rest At His Master’s Feet. As I was signing the log, sitting on the edge of a grave, I was approached by an american man, who asked what I was doing. I explained about geocaching, and he was polite in his interest. He thought I had a relative buried in the graveyard, as I was sitting in the foreigners area. We got into a discussion about how the japanese were trying to disinter the foreigners, and move them out of the cemetry. He was organising a protest against this. He was accompanied by his Japanese girlfriend. He said he knew where all the foreigners in the graveyard were buried except one family, the Irwins. To his total astonishment, I told him I knew where they were! He was totally dumbfounded as to how I, who had been in the cemetry less than 1 hour, could have found them, when he had asked and searched all over the graveyard for months. Actually I had passed a group of celtic crosses, on the path to the cache, and as I was born and raised in Ireland, and had thought it so unusual to see these crosses in a japanese graveyard, I had checked who they were and how they got to be there. I brought him to the grave site and he was very appreciative. 5 days later, this nice Japanese lady introduced herself to me in a store in the middle of Tokyo. I had no idea who she was, until my sister in law remembered my story and realised she was the girlfriend of the man looking for the graves. I am glad I had related the story when I got home or I would have had a lot of explaining to do to my wife about what I was doing "geocaching".