brendanwood

My family has trekked to a few difficult caches to find trash in them as well. I try to stock my backpack with good stuff to fill up the caches, but it still is a bummer for us. My oldest son has sort of lost the thrill of "treasure hunting" and got to the point where nothing in there is something he would want. It bums me out to compare how excited he was early on and how much of that is lost now. I know he should just be happy with the find, but he is little and it is just treasure hunting for him at this point. What we decided to do was hide our own cache and fill it up with lots of goodies kids would love. My kids went through all their stuff and collected enough for 3 caches. I weeded out any fast food toys and broken things and have enough for 2 more caches. Our first one was placed near the end of the spring and was filled to the top. I plan on going out this summer to check the contents and replenish it if need be. The description notes that we are trying to make this cache suitable for kids wanting to find treasure in our area We enjoyed hiding the cache together and have enjoyed reading the logs. The only bummer is that I went out and got 3 ammo boxes and painted them (rust proof) - only to find out that the parks in my area don't allow ammo boxes. Had to replace the one hide with a tupperware container (and lots of zip locks inside). Oh and someone seemed to yank the 5 or so pens and pencils I put in the log "bag" with the log. I'd like to think they thought they were swag, but who knows? The wife put the clamp on caching over the summer after our first good outbreak of poison ivy and run in with a snake (scared the kids a little), but we should be back in force in the fall. In addition to the "kids" caches, I am going to add more swag that appeal to others (compasses, flash lights, some of my printed photography, lanyards, etc). Oh and my wife makes necklaces (bezel cups + (images or polymer creations) coated in resin) that I often drop in caches around here. I dig finding other people's home made art My hope is that we keep a few families "into it" when they find our caches.

Have my first post around geocaching on my blog http://www.datacake.org - hope to add more soon (as I am relatively new to caching). Planning on hitting a few after work tonight if the rain holds off We are also placing our first "hide" this Sunday, will definitely document that. Have plans for 2 more hides shortly thereafter. Probably not what you are looking for, but I do have plans to center it more on caching (as it is consuming more and more of my time lately).

My 6 year old daughter took a spill on a terrain rating 5 cache a few weeks ago - the hill was steep and once she went down, she kept going down. Luckily she stopped before hitting the creek below (otherwise we'd have both ended up soaking wet and cold I am sure!). She was scraped and bruised and crying - but even after looking for the cache for a good half hour, she would not give up. She looked me in the eyes and said "listen dad, we came all the way down here and I don't want to do it again, we are finding it before we leave and that is that".. and we did. (Unfortunately the cache was soaked and full of broken fast food toys that had mud caked in them, so she had to go home satisfied with the cache find by itself - which isn't much to a 6 year old). We did find 2 pairs of broken sunglasses on the way down the hill, one fairly new/expensive looking - so I am guessing others suffered the same fate - we trashed those out off the trail. Anyway, we both wish you a speedy recovery!

If anyone, like me, lost street names after the firmware update to support birdseye view on their Garmin GPS's, I figured out how to get mine back. I will note, however, that Garmin has acknowledged the problem and says a fix is coming soon. Anyway, a little bit about my setup. I have an Oregon 450 (no preloaded maps) that I loaded up with OSM and a handful of maps from GPSFileDepot. When BirdsEye was announced, I updated and got a subscription. After loading some Sat imagery and booting the GPS I was shocked to discover I no longer had street names on the unit. Doh! I am using a Mac, with Basecamp and MapInstall btw. So last night I added a new set of maps (from GPSFileDepot) and decided to reselect every area of every map and reload them all into the GPS. This process took around 14 hours (why does this take so long?!). Anyway, when that finished and I booted up the GPS I had all my street names back. Perhaps just regenerating the maps via MapInstall was what needed to happen? Either way, I happy at this point. Curious if anyone else wants to try this to see if it resolves their issue as well?

Interesting thing - I opened MapInstall and reselected every area for all the maps I have loaded on the GPS and installed all the maps all over again (took 14 hours !!), but when that was done and I fired up the GPS I had street names again. Note: I have a Oregon 450 that had no maps preloaded from Garmin. Using OSM and terra files from GPSFileDepot and now BirdsEye. Anyway, I'd be curious if someone else who has lost street names could try and see if reinstalling all their maps fixes it?

I have a Oregon 450 and have also lost all street names. I contacted support (email) and the first person I conversed with seemed to have no idea this was a bug or anything. After a bit of back and forth, during which the conversation switched to a new person (shift change?), and linking them to a few forums where this issue is discussed, the new person acknowledged that they were aware of this issue. His recommendation was to roll back to the old firmware (and lose birdseye functionality) and wait for a fix to be posted - or - have both firmware's ready on my machine and switch between them based on my need. The latter didn't really seem to offer much, as you can't really do that "in the field". Unfortunately I often use streets to orient myself if I am in an area that I am unfamiliar with, so it is somewhat vital to my usage needs. The thing that sort of bugs me here is that I subscribed and that subscription times out in a year (if I understand this correctly). If I roll back and don't use birdseye, I am paying for a time based service that I can't leverage. I inquired as to whether or not I could roll back and put my subscription "on hold" until I can actually use the service - to which I got a curt "no". Bleh. Sometimes early adoption can be frustrating, but most often (in my experience) the vendor makes a little attempt to make things right by extending the service (if it is a "time out after X days service" model) until they "get it right". I can also live with minor bugs, but street names not appearing is pretty major in my opinion. Hopefully they'll fix this issue soon and this won't be a big deal (i.e. I won't lose 2 months of my 12 month subscription waiting) - but I am a little bothered by their handling of the issue thus far. It's still early though, so my fingers are still crossed.

..not really a fan of the different fonts - but to each their own. I prefer the clean, simple and easy to read default cache page. The one thing that bugs me about most web designs is when the page has multiple different fonts across it- it always hurts my eyes. Maybe a different font in the logo, but the page should remain consistent (imo) - otherwise you end up with something looking like it belongs on myspace. If these fonts were to transfer to my GPS in the cache description, that would be the hurt.

Yep, I could care less about the swag (except the coins are kind of cool, but I never feel I have something equal in trade value, so pass on them by and large). I view it is as more of something to keep the kiddos into it (the younger ones that is). Some of our hikes have stretched into the 4-5 hour range, so keeping them into it with the chance at treasure helps out a lot So we talked about it a little as a family and decided we were going to make it one of our efforts to boost the swag for the other kiddos out there. One particular cache we found contained a "crystal", which my daughter just LOVED. Next time we are at a store that sells geodes/crystals/cool rocks we are going to pick up a bagful to put in caches. I am also going to pick up some coins as well (or try to make some perhaps), just to drop in there. I also have a box of smurfs from when I was a kid. AFAIK they aren't as popular nowadays, as we rarely see them in stores... but the show is still on and during playdates, the friends that come over love to play with them. We have been leaving those in caches . We also found a broken hand mirror in a cache yesterday, which I was worried would cut someone's finger. We "traded" for it (my daughter wants to try to salvage it by trying to cut it to shape and frame it). If it comes out nice, it will likely go back to the cache we found it.

Hey all, I am sorry if this has been discussed to death.. Anyway, I have noticed in multiple posts that people talk about improper logging in the cache log books. One of the main gripes is that people just leave names and dates. Hmm, that is what my kids and I have been doing, as we have been following what others have been doing. We have been, however, logging more detail when we log our visit at Geocaching.com. Should we be writing more in the logbook caches? I figured that if we did that it would fill the logbooks much more quickly? (FWIW: We typically have been putting my geocaching username, the kid's first names (as they are not members there) and the date. We try to also indicate what we leave in the cache as of yesterday.) We are enjoying caching very much and want to be conscious that we are doing things the right way. On a side note, the swag here in the 10 or so caches we have found in St. Louis has been weak sauce. Yesterday we found paper clips, broken McDonalds toys that were 2 part toys and missing one, hair rubber bands, random rocks (of no interesting value), broken sunglasses, etc. We have been trying to empty all our goodies into the caches we are finding (new as of yesterday). I think that we are going to try to leave 3-4 things in each cache, whether we trade or not, just to boost the content in some of these. I know it's not about the swag, but it is for the kiddos. They are 6 and 8, so while it pains me to say it, they don't always appreciate the hike/view/being outside/whatever. For them it is a treasure hunt more than anything else. Thanks, Brendan