dmblair13

There aren't a whole lot of true 4 and 5 terrain caches in the lower peninsula that we have been able to find. There are some good caches that are moderately challenging around the Grayling military reservation. It is about two hours from Lansing. That area is beautiful, hilly, and swampy in parts. If you have a four wheel drive, some of the caches are fairly easy - no four wheel drive and you have some nice moderate hikes. A few good ones around there are Polo2003 (gcpnrp) King of the hill (gcxwww) and The view is worth the trip (gcvj8e). I heard that Silas Doty Cave (gctzvw) is pretty good. It is in south central Michigan. If you can do Wherigo's, you should check out Punishment (gc1wgte). We started that one, but had to quit early and couldn't finish. if you don't mind mud, it is a good terrain cache. Sadly, there really aren't too many terrain caches and many of the ones there are just involve climbing trees (which can be fun, but not as cool as a good strenuous hike)! If you have a free weekend, try going to the Upper Peninsula or head south to the Hocking Hills area of Ohio. I'm pregnant so I had to take a break from finding terrain caches for awhile, but my husband and I really enjoy a good long hike with some nice challenging terrain. Hopefully my kid will like geocaching!

We spent the day caching with our two labs in Island Lake State Park today. Our black lab puppy couldn't resist all of the puddles left over from the melted snow! She actually likes to lay down in the puddles. I kind of dread having to turn in my lease car because the pups have really messed it up! It is worth it, though, because they have a great time. The puppy also tried to run off with one of the cache containers today. She's also in the habit of running at me full blast when I call her. She actually took me out today! My husband thought it was pretty funny when he saw me laying on the ground because the pup clipped my legs. Although she is still a puppy at 10 months old, she is about 80 pounds of muscle! The dogs in my profile picture are Xena our yellow lab, and Socks a lab/sheppard mix. Socks passed away a couple years ago. She was an awesome dog and I'm sure she would have loved geocaching. Our new black lab puppy is named Gabby. She's the crazy one, but we just love her to death!

We are heading out to do our first snowshoeing/frozen lake crossing cache tomorrow. We finally got a decent snowfall here and the temperatures have been low enough for us to feel confident on the ice. I don't like to cross the ice unless I at least see the snowmobilers and ice fisherman out. That car breaking through the ice picture makes me a little nervous, though!

I had a friend who messed up her shoulder and back awhile back. Her doctor told her to get a reacher to help her grasp things without putting too much strain on her shoulder and back. It was a pretty cool device and it might help you reach those caches. You can get them at medical supply stores or on the internet. If you google disabilites reacher you will find several sites with pictures of this device.

It didn't seem like the OP was upset about the term. Also, I really don't see a problem with asking a question like that in a geocaching forum. Could she have looked it up in google - sure. Perhaps he/she just figured it would be helpful to ask in a geocaching forum since it was used in reference to placing a geocache. These forums are really rough on people with innocuous questions!

Take a look at The Night Beckons You (GCXYMV). This is a cache in Michigan that we had a lot of fun finding. A couple of other great night caches that use beacons are Josh's Night Hunt 1 and 2 (GC1MB27 and GC1KK1D). The first one has a beacon that is activated shortly after sunset. Night Hunt 2 requires you to shine your flashlight at the beacon to activate it. Then you have to count how many times it flashes to get your coordinates. I love night caches too, and am thinking of making the first cache that I place a night cache. Good luck with yours!

As an ORV enthusiast I understand the frustration of seeing trails that you have used LEGALLY (hopefully) for years closed. It is very sad that a small minority of inconsiderate riders have to ruin the sport for those of us that respect the land use rules. I would propose that we add stricter penalties for those few that choose to go off the designated trails. Perhaps their vehicles can be impounded and they can be given a huge fine, maybe even jail time. Here in Michigan I believe they get up to a 500 dollar fine if caugtht going off designated trails. This is not enough of a fine in my opinion since these rude riders make us legal riders look bad! Another problem is that, just like with geocaching, ORV riding has become very popular in recent years. It is up to those of us that engage in these sports to help educate others about how to share the public lands so that everyone from the backcountry hiker/geocacher to the dirt biker can enjoy our beautiful parks and forests. I'm all for having designated wildnerness areas. We have some really gorgeous wildnerness areas in Michigan that are off limits to motor vehicles, and as a backpacker, I'm all for that - we need those too! However, I don't want to see the amazing ORV routes and ATV trails that my family has used for years closed. I think the OP was upset about losing an ORV trail and a cool geocache that has been around for years due to the knee jerk reactions of a few. I can see the environmentalists going after people driving off designated trails. They just need to leave the already established ORV trails alone. We need to share our lands.

YES! The Battlefield Earth dvd is just what I needed to complete my amazing John Travolta collage/shrine. I will reluctantly leave my pair of slightly used multi colored ear plugs. They have given me many a night of restful sleep free of the horrible snoring of my husband.

That didn't happen to be in Allen Park, MI did it? There is a cache like that in Allen Park that was pretty cool. It was one of our first caches. We went looking for it at night and when we opened the tent there was a creepy halloween monster decoration. I must have jumped a foot when I saw it! Luckly we haven't really mistaken anything weird or nasty for a cache yet. I've found a couple of tupperware like containers and exclaimed "found it" just to recant when they were empty or contained old food.

I have the same issue as you. So far my husband and I have found 116 caches that we have logged as Team DnR. We have never had a problem and no one has even asked us about it. In our online logs we always put Team DnR at the end of our post so the CO can connect the written log to the online log. It wouldn't be a huge deal to us if people deleted our logs. We just like to have fun going to interesting places - finding and looking through the caches is just a cool bonus for us. In fact, we got into geocaching by accident when we stumbled across a cache while out on an ATV trail. But as some other people have said, it seems like most COs aren't real strict about logging requirements anyway.

This handwarmer will make a nice pillow for my hamster's newly renovated pen. Only the best for my animal friends! In return I will leave a scratched up "Best of David Hasselhoff" CD. I always trade up!

Oops, it appears that MidwestHaunters beat me to the punch! I guess I'll have to give up the six millimeter ball and take the sandal instead. I will turn it into a fancy keychain. I'm still leaving the air freshener.

A six millimeter plastic ball - awesome! It will work perfectly in the broken minature plastic pinball game I found in a cache last week. Now I can spend seconds of my time playing this amazing game! To help spread the joy I will leave a used up pine tree shaped car air freshener. Enjoy!

I don't hate nanos and micros, I just don't like to use stealth. Most of the nanos and micros around my area are too out in the open for my tastes. One of the first nanos I found, however, was in a really cool place less than five miles from my home. It was near an industrial area and the Rouge River, but suprisingly it was secluded and made for a nice hike along the river. The viadocks that were by the river had some pretty interesting graffiti. (On a side note I was glad that I went during the day, because I imagine it could be a little freaky at night.) Since it was one of my first geocache finds, it took me forever to find it because I had no idea what to look for. When I did find it, though, I was really excited. Since then I have noticed that most of the nanos and micros are in high muggle areas. So I usually do a quick drive by and leave. My husband, though, did find one on a signpost on a very busy road that he just had to get because it was bugging him that it was right there. I was a grump and waited in the car.

This thread hits home for me today, so I feel compelled to add my two cents. I just got back from finding three geocaches tonight. At the first one we had our bag full of stuff including a working pen so no problem - log signed. The next cache we went to had a log book that was wet and damaged to the extent that it was impossible to sign. We still logged it. The next cache we parked far away from, and being that it was already dark and we looked pretty suspicious lurking around at this particular area we were in a hurry to find the cache and head out. The problem was we forgot the pen back at the car. We still logged a find and let the CO know that if he/she wanted evidence we could describe the cache container and location to him/her in an email. Basically, I don't care about having huge numbers (we only have 102 finds so far). I just like to have the list of caches I've found listed on my profile so I can look back at them. It is also cool for us to see how many we have found just for our own personal enjoyment. If the CO wants to erase my log that is fine. I know that I wasn't trying to cheat. I'm just trying to have fun.

There are a few near me in southeast Michigan. Two of them involved sensors that only worked when you put a flashlight beam on them. The sensors had little red lights that blinked on and off and you had to count the number of blinks in order to determine the final coordinates. Although they weren't in the middle of the forest (they were in small suburban wooded areas) they were a lot of fun. I love these types of caches! There are a couple on my to do list that are in northern Michigan, and there are a couple in Ohio that look interesting. I used the flashlight icon to find these ones. I think the new night cache icon will help too. If you are ever in southern Michigan, look up caches by Stan&Ruth. Not only are their night caches cool, but they also have some regular caches that are pretty creative.

Why didn't you run a PQ of Kauai? They only have 87 caches on that island. I saw the tunnels caches but we never made it out to them...ran out of time. I actually did do a PQ, but I just put it in my GPSr without really looking at the descriptions. I wasn't sure if we would be doing much geocaching as we had a bunch of other stuff planned for our vacation. Luckly my husband was up for hunting a few down. I wish I was still in Kauaii! I miss waking up to the sound of the ocean.

Do you have any specifics or links to these caches? I'm close enough to Columbus to make a day or weekend trip to find some cool caches. Thanks!

I would love to find caches like that near where I live! Although I have a slight issue with heights, I really don't have a problem with crawling around in caves and drains. I've looked for interesting subterranean (and ruins) caches within 200 miles of southeast Michigan and have pretty much come up empty. I also don't really know how to look for them in the search criteria. It is probably hard for people to get permission to place caches like this and therefore they are most likely rare. From random google searches, though, I have discovered that these types of caches are out there - just not anywhere near me! I was in Hawaii (Kauaii) a few weeks ago and missed out on a really cool tunnel cache because I didn't know it was there until after I got back. I guess I will have to plan another vacation to find any of these types of caches.

That stuff melted one of those big red plastic cups (I put some on my hand to apply to my face). Kind of scary, but it sure does keep the bugs away!

My husband and I like to avoid muggles so the rain can certainly work in our favor at times. We also just got back from Kauai where it rains in the interior of the island all the time. It was a lot of fun searching through the jungle in the rain once we got over our fear of the mud! Since we live in Michigan, we are looking forward to doing some winter time caches in the snow using the snowshoes we bought last year. Really, caching is fun in just about any type of weather. I could do without the mosquitoes, though, they are nasty around here!

My husband and I do not have children, so we don't care much either way about swag. However, I can see how it would be a little bonus for kids to find neat stuff in the caches that are big enough to hold swag. I don't think you are teaching them anything wrong by getting a little bit excited about cool items unless you throw a big fit when you don't find anything good in the cache. It's awesome for kids to just get out and hunt just for the hunt, but on the other hand it is probably fun for kids to find interesting things in the normal or large sized caches too. It is just another element to the game. I do believe, though, that it is kind of annoying when people put junk in a cache. It just seems kind of disrespectful to the people who left interesting things in the cache for their fellow cachers to find when those things are replaced with tissues, twigs, or dirty sweatsocks (all things I have found and removed recently). I think it was cute of the OP to come up with a light-hearted post to determine silly names for people who do not trade fairly. I just figured he was trying to be funny. There seems to be lots of funny names people on the forums give to others that they find unsavory (sock puppet, troll, cache magget, etc). People need to not take things so seriously. Personally I thought many of the terms the OP came up with were cute and clever.

We love caching at night! In our area (metro Detroit) there are a few caches that are meant to be done only at night. They were our favorite caches so far. One of them had a becon that only worked when you put your flashlight beam on it. My husband and I prefer to stay away from muggles, so many night caches are perfect for us.

True, We just really like the ones that use creative means like beacons, sensors, and glow tacks that only work at night. We have done two like that so far and they are our favorite caches.

My husband and I have recently gone on a couple of really fun night caches. We are addicted! One of our favorites was "The Night Beckons You" GCXYMV (sorry, I'm not sure how to make a link). Sadly, there are very few caches of this sort around us (southeast Michigan). I'm interested in hearing interesting stories, experiences, and adventures people have had while caching at night. We especially like caches that are only available at night with a flashlight - the more adventurous the better! We would also like to see links to awesome night caches. Thanks!