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k_statealan

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Everything posted by k_statealan

  1. I try to make them ones I have to work a little more to get to, or are a beautiful natural location or at a place that is special to me. Haven't always been able to or I've miscounted on a couple of the even 100's. For example, #100 was at a really cool geologic formation in western Kansas. Beautiful area. #500 was little more than a park-n-grab, but it was near Bill Snyder Family Stadium (Home of my Kansas State Wildcats--hence my screen name) #1000 was intended to be Groundspeak HQ on my honeymoon, but in all the business before the wedding, I came up a little short and it was only #997. Instead, I got it at the virtual at Ruby Beach in Olympic National Park. It was the first time I ever stepped foot in the ocean, plus it was an amazing place, plus I shared it with my new bride. Definitely made up for not making Groundspeak HQ the milestone. Planning on picking up #1400 in the morning. Haven't figured out where I want it to be, though.
  2. Got this in a log yesterday. It was after he had come across what I think was a harmless ringneck snake which had gotten the cacher's heebie jeebies up. He's not from the area originally, so he probably didn't know what a ringneck was and that its completely harmless. He ended up moving my cache. In this case I don't mind. Probably better that way. "I spotted a likely spot and managed to go up a very steep grade. As I crouched to reach into the hiding nook, I felt a rustling on my left wrist. As I looked over, I about wet my pants -- a juvenile copperhead (about 6 inches long) had slithered up and was crossing my hand!!! [] I prayed to every heathen diety and our Christian supreme being that the little fellow would not scamper up my shirt sleeve. Thankfully, my prayers were answered as it moved along and then slithered over my shoe and into the leaves. I grabbed the container and moved about 15 feet away to more secure footing to sign the log. As I began to return to replace the container, another 3 juveniles stuck their heads up just mere inches from where I was. I hope the cache owner does not mind, but I rehid the container in a nearby tree and not immediately in the vicinity of the snakes."
  3. I know in my hometown, people go into the cemetery all the time for amusement, not counting the one cache that's there. It often used by walkers and bike riders because its a peaceful area with grass and trees and what little traffic there is, is going slow. People often visit cemeteries for research purposes, as well, for genealogy. That can be considered a hobby, too. And that will often lead to direct contact with headstones if a rubbing is necessary to read it.
  4. I considered doing it, but decided against it since caching was more my thing than hers. However, I did propose at the base of a beautiful cliff with a creek and a nice grove of trees out in the country that I wouldn't have ever found if not for caching.
  5. I never hunted them until a year or two ago. Last year I moved in with my wife after the wedding and she/we live on 200 acres of mixed crop/wood/pastureland that's been in the family since the 1880's. This year was the first time I ever went on my own. Managed to find a bunch, but when I went with my sister in law she found a ton and I found very few. The next day, my brother, who had never hunted before, and I walked around for 2.5 hours and found only a couple. We passed by one area on the way back to the house and decided to look just for the heck of it. We ended up picking up at least 50, several of them in the 6-8" range before it finally got too dark to see. Came out by myself the next day and got about a dozen more. Even found one 3 feet from the paved road on more or less flat ground where anyone could have seen it. Later I found out that the area we were looking in hadn't been searched by the family for at least 15 years because they never really found anything there.
  6. Doesn't slow me down in the least. Prior to breaking that record twice this year, my best day (31) had been on a day where it was 98 and humid. Granted, almost all were P&G's along a highway, but that wasn't part of the plan. Was just on vacation in northern Arkansas last week and it was quite hot and steamy with little breeze. Did a 2.5 mile hike with a cave and waterfall earthcache at the end (made for a cool ending). Got up the next morning and did a 3-miler. I figure I would only get one chance at those caches--and no way was I missing a 35-foot waterfall inside a cave or a cliff overlooking a beautiful valley.
  7. Its possibly a url that doesn't allow hotlinking. Try saving the image and putting it on a photosharing site and then hotlink it.
  8. I've seen a cache where there were a couple of softballs inside that you signed as the logbook.
  9. My "first" was only 75% out of state. It was the virt at the triple border point of KS, NE, and CO. It is listed as a Colorado cache, and I suppose half of it is while KS and NE get 25% each. Of course since then I've moved from West Central KS to KC, KS. I can hike up the hill behind my house and clearly see the bridge over the Missouri River into Missouri.
  10. For a short time I had a 3 stager that had maybe two miles between S1 and S2 and a mile and a half between S2 and S3. If you took a boat that wasn't so bad. S1 and S3 were on one side of a reservoir and S2 was on the other. Took about a 15-20 mile drive to get from one side to the other with another 1-1.5 mile hike on top of that on each stage. Took me 6 hours to hide it.
  11. Was looking for a cache a few weeks ago and realized that I was kneeling within a foot of a copperhead. Fortunately, I was still about 15' from the cache.
  12. I went out to place a cache in an area where one had been, but had been archived for about 2 years. I had heard a report that the container was still there, but didn't really expect to find it. As I climbed around the rocks, there it was--a plastic container larger than a .50 cal ammocan--sitting out in the open. Was some water leakage and some bad swag left by muggles, but the logbook was still in good shape. Had been found by muggles numerous times and left alone. Obviously, with 2 years passed, the owner wasn't interested in retrieving it (He also lived over 100 miles away). So I cleaned out the container and hid it a little better and created the new cache. Even used the old logbook. Just recently, I was hiking through a mixed tallgrass/wooded area along a river. I was hiking toward a cache when I saw something bright red in a tree stump from 150' out. I got over there and found a cache. Couldn't figure out what it was as it wasn't on my list and it was only about 200' from another cache. Took some notes about it and moved onto the cache I was trying to find which was another 500' or so of bushwacking away. Got to that area and couldn't locate the cache. Then looked it up and found the cache had red in the title. Seems like this cache had been found by mushroom hunters or the like and decided to carry it a ways then thought twice about it and decided to leave it sitting in the open so it would be spotted. As I was a significant hike away from the place where it was left and I was headed the opposite direction, I didn't go back to replace it, but left the coords on the web page so the next cacher could find it and return it to its home.
  13. On ones like that I just go up and do my thing. If its muggled oh well.
  14. GC30 iirc. It is one day older than the next oldest (in Oregon). Along the interstate near the tiny, isolated NW Kansas town that bears the same name as the cache, its in a spot only a mower from the Kansas DOT would go and its in no danger of being destroyed by one of those. No reason why anyone else would walk past that area or find the hide particularly of note, so if they did wander by they wouldn't think anything of it. It is in plain sight, however. Between its inconspicuousness, out of the way location, and remoteness of destination, there's no wonder why its the oldest. It has been the oldest for quite some time. Here's the oldest 100. About half are still active. http://members.cox.net/pkpublic/index.html
  15. I recently placed a cache in a cemetery for the first time. It is a small, rural cemetery that hasn't had a burial in it since 1987 and will likely not have another. It rests on land that was donated to the community by my great great grandfather, who is buried there. About half of the burials are related to me and the others were local community members. I placed the cache in the back corner in the trees at least 50' from the nearest grave. I placed the cache with the specific intent for people to visit the area, think about what life may have been like for the people who used to live there, and enjoy a quiet place where you might not see more than a couple of dozen vehicles go by a day. I don't find it disrespectful at all to my ancestors that people visit. In their day, people would often visit cemeteries and have picnics on the grass. To add a little flavor to the cache and the area, I wrote in the cache description the story of my great great grandfather's capture at the Battle of Chickamauga and his subsequent escape and return to Ohio several years before he moved to Kansas. All that being said, I did once find a micro stuck under a stone in a no longer used cemetery here in KC. I did find that one disrespectful. Basically, placement is the issue.
  16. Also, depending on how often you cache you can extend your membership a bit. I first subscribed in early February. Now it comes due in mid-March. What I did was let my subscription lapse and renewed it only right before caching if I wasn't going out for a few days after it lapsed. Like last year, my subscription expired and that day we got several inches of snow. I ended up not doing any caching for a week and a half after that, so I waited a week and a half to renew.
  17. I suppose you could save the cache page itself and open in on a browser if you have a laptop. You may not have any photos, but the text will show up. For the vast majority of caches, that's enough. Or you could cut and paste any text into some kind of software that you could upload to a portable device. But there's no way to get a whole slew of coords into a GPS that I know of without a PQ. It really isn't that much money. But if caching is important enough to you, just budget for it and the month it comes due the next year eat out one less time or put off buying that other frivolity that you've had your eye on for another month.
  18. I would be willing to venture a guess that most people learn about caching from going with someone or having someone near them that caches.
  19. There's one near my house. I can't do them anymore apparently (I could 10-15 years ago) because of astigmatism or whatever. So I posted it on another message board (non-caching) that I frequent. Got the answer in no time. If someone really wants to solve it, they will. Its really not that much different than having a puzzle cache with a complicated mathematical function for decryption.
  20. They actually stiffened the penalties in Colorado a couple years back because of mowers hitting trucker bombs.
  21. Don't really care if its not found very often. That's kind of the point--to attract highly dedicated cachers.
  22. I was just throwing out 5-state rule. I'd be more likely to limit it to so many per series. A couple states have all of them or nearly all of them. And I wouldn't put a time restriction on it. Those are annoying to me.
  23. So only another couple years in the United States then?
  24. My question is can this be done? Have you verified that there are caches with each state name that aren't in said state? Yes, it can be done. Some, like Washington (43 states and 5 foreign countries), are really easy. South Dakota is the most difficult, with 2 (in NH and ME). New Hampshire is the second hardest with 3. New Mexico has 4. A vast majority have at least 10. These were at least current as of about 2 weeks ago. I would probably allow 1 or 2 freebies from "series" caches.
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