jmorris9999

The ones I want to avoid are those that make me wonder "why the *#(@ did anyone put a cache here?!?!". Absolutely nothing significant about the place, no view, etc. Just because they could I guess. Unfortantly, doesn't seem to be a way to tell those before hand. Perhaps if the logs said "this cache sucks".

And my favorite little freebie topo program (USAPhotoMaps) now has that capability. You have the be on the net because it uses a USGS server but you can enter an address and it will take you to that location. It also creates a waypoint automatically and that can be uploaded to your GPS. USAPhotoMaps

If the text was orginally done in Word it substitutes smart (or curley) quotes for normal quotes. It was probably then saved as a web page. These smart quotes don't translate in the font set that's default on most web servers so something else shows up.

Gonna be a little bit hard to move the Alamo off public lands. Not to mention all the missions that are on public land. And at least two in San Antonio still conduct services. Course, might defeat the purpose in making them public lands in the first place.

Make it really interesting. Give each a knife, one canteen of water, and tell them the money is hidden in a bag on the island. See how civilized they really are.

Makes me wish I'd taken a picture of the one at Sam Houston NF. It didn't say "electronic devices" but it did say no aircraft on the trail.

I've been using a freeware called USAPhotoMaps for the topos. It may not have 10,000 bells and whistles like the others but it works for me. It will send/receive waypoints, tracks and routes to the GPS. Will track your route. Downloads topos and photos form terraserver.com. Contributions accepted. USAPhotomaps Note, this doesn't load maps onto the GPSr, but it will work in conjuction with it. I've found that it suits my need for the moment, especially with a laptop. Now if it only ran on my PDA.

If you can think of another way to find the trail back to the car, I'd like to hear it. How about something more Earth friendly than beer cans. Urine. Dogs use it, why can't we? Ah, reverse track on the GPS maybe?

Read about it in a [newspaper, magazine, ?] article two, three years about. Heard about it on NPS some time ago. Probably ecountered it in one form or another 4-5 times in the last few years. But the reason I bought my GPS was just to log my backpacking and hikes. Then while on the Magellan site I saw a geocaching link and the rest is history.

Were you able to find a home for it or did you leave it at a shelter?

It's sad, geeky and suggests that the person using it has to resort to reading children's books because they're not quite advanced enough to progress to non-chewable reading material quite yet? Hmmm. I have about 1500 books in my library. 80% SF/F, Heinlien, Bear, Foster, Asimov, Lackey, Moon, Chandler, Weber, Drake, etc, but it also includes Mark Twiain, Sir Conal Doyle, Homer, St. Thomas Aquinas, Ayn Rand, etc. I also grab each one of my daughter's Harry Potter books as soon as she's done. And I rarely chew on any of the pages.

I was looking for one the other day along a street, wooded area with a sidewalk. I'm looking up in the tree trying to find the cache. Guy with a beer can comes ..walking.. down the sidewalk. Stops. "WHATCA DOING?" Looking for something. "WHATCA LOOKING FOR?" It's a scavenger hunt. "OH!" Thinks about it for a minute or two and then wanders on along. My biggest worry was that he was going to want to climb the tree and look for it.

Absolutely right! Silly word, "muggles". You should use "mundanes", like the SF/F world has been using for years!

Is there any other type of computer then a DIGITAL one?????????? Yes. The abacus and slide rule are considered analog computers. For a discourse on modern electronic analog computers vrs digital ones, see: Analog vrs Digital Although in my previous message I was making reference to Babage's difference engine. (Although "size of a pickup truck" was a bit of an exaggeration.)

Or take days to hike 30-100 miles (I will do the CDT, AT and that Pacific one one day) when you can get there in an hour or so in a car. Own three backpack and more backpacking gear than 3 people need. Or own 1500 SF/F books and spend hundreds to fly somewhere to share a room with 4 other guys so as to listen to a bunch of authors speak for three days. Or have a room full of motherboards, hard drives, etc, that will never see a volt again and yet have more on order as we speak and spend hours playing with them. And a shop full of tools and a 3/4 finished kayak and storage to build and another project for which I get to buy another power tool. Or.....but enough about me. Of course we are all lunatics. Being serious about any hobby requires a certain degree of craziness. Some of us are just multi-dimensional loons. I've got to get one of those. This analog computer is just too darn heavy and it's as big as a pickup.

Oh, I don't know about that. It could indicate that the site is not over run by snowbirds.

Well, my PDA has mapping software, GPS link, AND a camera. If they had stopped me I'd probably be in some deep hole by now.

It means that under normal conditions, it can be resonably expected to keep the contents dry. Normal conditiions would be some rain and wet or general dampness. If you could throw it in the middle of a stream and retreive it a month latter with the contents dry it'd say waterproof on it. You'll find that very, very few things actually say waterproof. Most will say water resistant.

Whoever logs it is the one that gets credit. I think that you are going to have to each log it as a find. I know that chachers that go out together do that. Either that or you'll have to create a new, joint account.

It's not as fancy as NGT but it has one big advantage: it's free. USAPhotomaps It links to Terraserver to download topos and sat photos. You can enter your problem coordinates and create a waypoint. Then X brings up a window with all three coord formats. It talks to GPSes too. It is USA only for the topos but seemed to be pulling up photos outside of US.

In the parks I've frequented in Texas, the mountain bikers have been restricted to specified trails. Being off those trails gets you thrown out. I seemed to remember a park in Austin that banned all mountain biking for a couple of years because of abuse. I haven't yet been in a Texas park that allows off-roading. Texas was introducing a state-wide ban on running riverbeds. Not crossing, but driving down them. I think it passed but not sure. So not everyone is enamored of either mountain biking or off-roading. And I was specifically speaking of parks. Private land, it's up to the owner. And over the years I have seen habitat damaged by overuse by hikers.

77-83, Infantry, mostly light. Paratroop but cherry jumper. Benning for Officers Basic, Berlin Bde, Officers Advanced, Ft. Hauchuka, Ft. Stewart (when it was the 24th ID).

May have been. There was a follow up article on geocaching about a month later that still mentioned it as an accidental death. Nothing else in the newspaper. I can't find anything that references it other than accidental.

And in fact we just had a fatality in San Antonio. He evidently slipped and fell into a small ravine. Death ends high-tech scavenger hunt

Must be a TROLL, they do not know the difference between a National Forest, and a Wilderness area which is just a part of the National Forest System. And in these parts Caches are not allowed in Wilderness Areas, while the National Forest area is ok. Well, if you want to get really picky, the National Wilderness Preservation System is not just the NFS. Wilderness areas are also managed by the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service. And they do not occur only in National Forests. Sam Houston NF has the Little Lake Creek Wilderness Area (avoid after long periods of rain), but the Indian Mound Wilderness Area stands on it's own, although it borders on the Indian Mound National Recreation Area (both under NPS by the way). Big Thicket National Preserve (which I, and others, erroneously refer to as a National Forest) which is as large as Sam Houston, has no designated wilderness area. Perhaps where I, getting along to being an old geezer, failed in my vocabulary is in the use of the term wilderness. Way back in my dinosaur scouting days we referred to camping in the outback, away from established camping areas, as wilderness camping and it's pretty well stuck in my head. I know that on the park sites it's referred to as backcountry camping. I just have not been able to make the replacement. Usually when I'm writing about a designated wilderness area I tend to capitalize it but when I talk about being in an area of wilderness I don't. As far as your statement about what's allowed goes, it may be a bit of an over-simplification. The only reference I could find on the NFS site (that actually had content) was for Allegheny National Forest. And, while permitted, they listed several areas in addition to the NWPS area where geocaching was forbidden. They also asked that the cache be moved or removed after a year. I could find no overall policy on geocaching. So perhaps it's just in your "parts" that it's known. Same for the NWPS and NFS sites. No overall policy prohibiting geocaching stated, but a lot of discussions in the forums. Mostly of the "throw the bums out" and "What is acceptable use" type. Perhaps it’s up to the local management to decide?