Chokecherry

I have 9 points I haven't used yet. I like to keep some on hand because sometimes I'll do more than one out of 10 great caches in a day when I'm out so I purposely save them until I have found a bunch of caches and then go back and assign them as desired. I use them when searching for caches to a degree. I hand pick the caches I do based on location on a map, cache page and comments. Then I look to see if it has favorite points. Since I usually mark a batch of caches to do I may put more effort into finding the ones with favorite points in my very limited time I have to cache like if I only had so much time left and two caches one with favorite points and one not I'll probably do the one with the points.

If a parent has no respect for caches and what they mean to other cachers and the c/o, I doubt smut mags would really bother him, I don't think he is going to be winning any Parent of the Year awards....Plus you run a chance a good family running into it... I'm not sure that is quite what she meant by "adult swag" For once smut is not what I meant. I mean not toys and stuff kids would want in the cache as swag. Adults do like other swag than smut.

I'd put the caches in places not friendly to children with no swag or only adult swag. Passive aggressive shaming at an event too discussing the pillaging of caches would be fun too. And I agree premium member only caches if he's not a premium member.

I usually use the wooden stick that ground speak was selling for a minute. I can't remember the brand but they break down into 3 pieces for easier transport. It's worked great for me geocaching and doing other hiking. Mom uses it sometimes too. I'll give it to her if the terrain is particularly nasty and use her cane in trade. I don't like collapsible sticks much at all but it's a personal thing. I have a girlfriend who has an old wood curtain rod or broom stick fancied up with some electrical tape.

If I had to rely on GSAK I would never have have run the 2 PQ's I have run (caches along a route). I don't do PQ's because I had pick caches from maps for one and two after looking at GSAK I realize my technological limitations.

Yes. The Goat has a point. After breaking my leg, getting the boot off and being able to hobble about carefully and with a brace, I downloaded caches rated 2 or below: Handicapped accessible Terrain is likely to be paved, is relatively flat, and less than a ½ mile hike is required. Suitable for small children Terrain is generally along marked trails, there are no steep elevation changes or heavy overgrowth. Less than a 2 mile hike required. It was so frustrating hobbling to the cache site only to find a steep hill at ground zero, or a tree climb, or a 25 foot bushwack over logs and through heavy overgrowth which were not mentioned in the description. My online comments got a bit touchy at times. People don't realize the frustration and waste of time and gas money until they have to deal with it. If you're able-bodied you forget that some people aren't. We rely on accurate terrain ratings. I use the terrain ratings solely to figure out which caches are safe for my mom to do with her mobility issues. People who purposely lowball the terrain ratings to not give anything really bother me. We end up wasting a day chasing after these caches (we have limited lower terrain rated caches she can do in the first place) only to find out that we really can't do the cache because someone decided that they didn't want to give away that you need to dangle off a wall, climb up a tree or bring ladders (which she can't climb) to ground zero. If a cache is in the 1-2 realm she should be able to do it if caches are rated accurately. I agree about the able bodied thing. And it's a safety thing as well for some folks. Gives people an idea of what caches will be over their heads and unsafe for them to even try.

I have some out with notes and some with out. Doesn't seem to affect traveling of my bugs.

I don't usually do any caching in the woods with my phone. I use my GPS for that kind of caching. Usually I mark where the car is (which is usually somewhere near to the trail head). I use the methods from post #15 a lot. I look back more frequently though I think. Everything looks different when you're heading back out so familiarizing yourself with how it looks so it's not a visual shock when you turn around is a good thing. Before going in anywhere I analyze where the major roads are and figure out my "back up" plan. As in I could keep walking straight and end up hitting something for example. If i'm going to go further into the woods then I take out a map and look at landmarks like rivers or rail roads that I can follow back to civilization. And if all else fails I carry a compass for those treks too. But usually for shorter trips it's marking the car, marking where I go off trail, and looking back frequently. If it's twisty and turny I'll mark some other points too.

Last time I lagged while logging TB's is my last big vacation I took. I tend to vacation where there is no or very little phone reception let alone any of the fancy reception for data. Sorry, not going to sit at a cache waving my phone around in the air trying to get that one bar of reception to log the bug. Oddly enough these same places didn't really have any reliable wireless internet either. So here we had the computer and couldn't really get any connection there either. Just how I vacation. Not all of us go to the city to take time off. Shoot some of us don't even live somewhere where we get reliable phone or data reception. There are numerous places with a few miles of me that don't have any affordable or reliable internet so the homes, cafes, and motels have none either.

The way I figure Groundspeak is in it for the money. They have paired up numerous times to do sponsored trackables. I would bet if the right offers came along they would offer up an icon and sponsored cache series again in a heart beat. I wouldn't want to see it but with how emotional people were over those ape caches I bet there would be equal emotion over any new series and potential icon even from the naysayers.

I'm still interested to see how they do Lara croft with out showing her apparently not family friendly assets.

Me too. Don J- i wont spend my money at these places because of their tacky and tasteless methods of advertisement. I've just hiked all the way up to this cache, I don't want to see your (figuratively speaking) crap in a cache! Put real trade items in there, or nothing at all. I'm tired of people filling caches with junk. And I too, will toss them into my cito bag. So because some random cacher drops an item from a business in a cache (such as free McD toys or a pen with a business name on it) you will avoid that business? Man, you must not do business with very many places, as almost all business have some sort of logo'd items, i.e.. "tacky and tasteless methods of advertisement". I'll go back pre-McD meltdown and reply to this since I was quote and since I was partially quoted in there I will clarify yet again. I was very specific in the items listed that would make me not go to a business. I don't care if someone throws in a logoed useful item but here's the reality where I am. Some pyramid scheme people in the area have decided to use caches to market their wares with samples. Peppered a bunch of caches with their garbage. And not just one or two. They left multiples of their crap in those caches. Know what happens to a sealed health drink mix after being moist for a long time and going through weather changes? Sticky gooey mess in a cache with a bunch of business cards. I do take note of those cards and remember them and will not purchase their stuff. Even more profoundly annoying to me was in a place where I cache often a business decide to put a cache out at their place of business (and name it after the business). How it got past the commercial cache guidelines is beyond me but it did. Those same business people went out with piles of coupons and peppered that area and all the caches with literally piles of coupons. Every cache I stopped at I had to wade through all their stupid coupons to just get to a log book. Before finding their garbage all over it's a business I would have stopped at but the fact they felt the need to make a hobby into a giant advertisement for a business no way. I don't care if logoed, useful stuff is in a cache. But I do care when individuals purposely use the cache as their advertisement for their businesses like that. It's obnoxious and tacky.

Amount of craptastic business cards smeared at the bottom of an ammo can vs legitimately cool swag left as advertisement......hmm. Not sure I can even come up an accurate ratio... Lets wing it and say 1000:1 There's a lot to be said for, you know, personal experience. The OP specifically asked about a business card which could be why some people are responding to that specifically.

I look at pamphlets, coupons, business cards and samples left in a cache, take note of it and remember it as a business I won't be spending any money at. I get enough advertising in my regular life. The last thing I want to do when finding a cache is be bombarded by it. That being said promotional items like chip clips and whatever I don't mind as much since they don't become the spit ball in the bottom of the cache and if they aren't accompanied by other promotional materials they aren't as in your face advertising wise. They also can be useful.

We have numerous state and federal lands where I am. This is actually a simpler policy than some of those lands have where I am. As a result there are numerous state and federal employees that could potentially have to be asked for permission to place a cache. Still people seem to do it with absolutely no incident whatsoever so long as they go into well researched on it. Yup it sucks that you did all that work without checking about the policies regarding the land you were putting a cache on. But that's why a lot of people do that checking for policies work on the front end before even going out there and getting their hopes up.

I want to go caching with you because I feel that your caching trips are somewhat more eventful than mine. Anyhow, I continue to not be in favor of game cameras being use for caching purposes. I can't stop someone from using them but I would likely avoid caches that did use them. And if i saw pictures posted of me from a game camera on a cache page I would be pretty peeved.

Coins are just a small part of the fad industry of geocaching. Reality is as witnessed by the forum alone not many people send out coins for their intended use but instead collect them. They are made for a tiny number of collectors. The coins hold no value to those outside of geocaching thus limiting the market to only those who geocache and participate in the sub fad of geocoin collecting. Their prices will inevitably meet an equillibrium price and as more collectors pieces emerge decline becoming less favorable as the newest fad coin comes around. For me I find geocoins have little to do with geocaching anymore except for a few. And for the most part they are marketed towards collectors instead of people using them for the originally intended purpose.

I remember typing a response to this but I ran off to work and I think abandoned it. I'm not a collector of geocoins and never really have been because I like to release my trackables into the wild. For me it's prohibitively expensive to be buying $30 coins to release into the wild. I also tend to not buy from the forums. I have once but the reality is I want instant gratification so if it's not in a webshop where I can sit at 2am and buy a coin and expect it to be mailed to me sometime that week it's not going to happen. I don't ebay in my normal life so I never use that site to get coins. I also like coins that have something directly to do with caching. While there are many beautiful coins out there which I'm sure make for great collector items I like to find ones that are cache related and not over $10 per coin. The reason I never collected coins comes down to fads come and go. I have 2000 magic cards and a bucket of beanie babies up in my attic that at one time were all worth something more than I paid for them. I see the geocoin economy in the same way. These items will likely not have antique value and their value is based on the popularity of them at any given moment. So I'm not going to invest in them with hope that an inflated price will hold. I'll buy them retail and send them out and play with them instead. But that means I likely will be buying cheaper items.

Social event for geocachers where we thusly nerded out and talked caching and only caching just like most all events. Events have no more to do with caching than virtuals, earth caches etc. If you these things don't fit your personal aesthetic then don't do them simple as that.

The one I attended was hilarious and since there are so few cachers here me and friend now call it the sparkle gathering. But culturally we are 15 minute early people here. So all of us showed up 15 minutes before the designated time. So we all stood around and chatted. Signed the book. Chatted some more and then left after like half an hour. I've seen people pop in and sign the log book and leave at events to get their smiley. Some people don't feel the need to bond at length with other cachers and I think that's fine. I don't go to events with heavily scheduled events for hours. The flash mobs are good for folks like that.

When I had the trial version of the official app we were able to search for caches and not have a geocaching.com account. The only point that we were required to create an account is when we had to log the caches.

I do periodic tick checks when out too. Once back at the car after a cache I do a once over and shower immediately after I get home and the clothes go into the wash as well. I don't see either option as a be all/end all for tick issues. Just like I don't see those things like frontline on pets as a be all end all. It's almost impossible to spray every spot on your clothes and permethrin does wear off at some point. The little guys can get to those spots and hang out and hide. Some detach in the car. Some at home and then attach to your body like that too. My girlfriend could not figure out for the life of her last summer why her cat kept getting ticks when it's an indoor cat. Told her the dog is probably bringing them in. She insisted the dog was treated with frontline or something. Explained that it doesn't stop the ticks from getting a ride. I also thoroughly check my dog outside if we've been out treated or not. Get the little guys off before they come inside and attach to me or my cats. Ticks can ride in your hair. I have long hair and thick hair. Those little guys can get all caught up there and never reach my scalp but could potentially get elsewhere on my body once the poisoned clothes are off. There is no be all end all to the tick control thing. Use your poisons, repellents and what not and then use your brain on top of it.

I keep my treated clothes outside away from the cats when I first treat. They don't go into my clothes basket ever so I don't worry much after the first wash.

I began finding ticks on my clothes at the end of March here. Then I bought a Permethrin shirt and hat, and the Sawyer Permethrin treatment for trousers, socks, and other shirts. I've attracted no ticks in several cache runs, which is highly unusual. The comercially treated shirt's repellent is advertised to last through 70 washings. The Sawyer spray lasts "6 washings" (if hand-washed and dried, but I'm using a washing machine). So I'm still testing exactly how long it repels, but the first impressions were 110% better than Deet. Usually the Sawyer stuff will work about 3-6 washes for me in a washing machine. Honestly I spritz my shoes with it at as well.

I totally can't see the body in the photograph.