GatoRx

Wow Jamie - you and that bike! All the places the two of you have gone! I'd volunteer my help again, but I haven't moved since your trip last summer. Good luck though, and include me on the e-mail list of updates if you decide to send them again.

I had a stamp made with the logo for my geonickels. I didn't think it'd be a problem, but I e-mailed TPTB just to make sure.

Here's the event The Federation was referring to The Jacksonville to Gainesville Geocaching Road Rally. It was a lot of fun to put together (though nerve wracking at times, particularly when caches came up missing), and everyone who participated had a good time. Let me know if I can answer any questions about it.

Check out this page at IMS Surplus - they're about 2/3rds of the way down the page. This is the most popular source that I know of, though you can find something similar at Walgreens (or other chain pharmacies.)

My first find was a micro, and took a good 45-60 minutes to find. I was the person to find it though, despite being with a seasoned cacher and a few other newbies (they already had a few under their belts though.) That one was replaced in a different part of the same cemetary a few months later, but the owner used the same cache page for the second cache for some reason. No problem, I just logged a find on the second one as well. Then the owner decided to redo the cache a third time, and deleted all the previous finds. 'Public outcry' eventually led to him archiving it. I was a little sad when the first one was replaced, but enjoyed its replacement. When the second version was replaced and logs were deleted, I was just too p.o.'ed to even bother hunting for the new one.

The Echo Chamber is jaw-droppingly awesome. My fiancee and I couldn't believe it when we got there. We also enjoyed Famous Neighbors in Bonaventure Cemetary (another Savannah area cache) - a great setup, and you get to see a lot of interesting gravesites. As for Jacksonville, there's always the legendary The Federation MUST PAY!. This would be a good one if you have a few other people with you - bring cameras and act 'touristy.' 'Nuff said!

Check out the forums at NEFGA.com. Its the website for the Northeast Florida Geocachers Association, but right now its the main site for us FL cachers. There are regional sections, so you can post something there - you're bound to get a response from someone.

I never paid attention to yellow Jeeps until last November. I knew about the locationless, but never really thought about looking for one. Then a caching friend told me about his exploits trying to find a yellow Jeep, and have his camera and GPS on hand at the same time. Within days I was seeing yellow Jeeps everywhere I went, and I do mean everywhere. Now I often see at least 2 or 3 a day, sometimes more. I think the only way that I'd be able to not see at least one daily would be to sit at home with all the blinds and curtains pulled shut. I'd probably still see them on TV or something though... And on a related note to other things mentioned in this thread, at some point during the early 90s, my mom bought a Buick Century - a pretty run-of-the-mill sedan. No one in the family could recall ever really seeing one on the roads, so we thought it was pretty unique. It took all of about a week before we we'd see dozens every day.

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Here's a link that should help: State Styles It has the 'style' that caches are often hidden with for different parts of the country. It makes for quite an itneresting read.

I'd have to agree with Doc's last post. Ditto what he said.

meadowmuffin and I use variations of the "Huckle Buckle Beanstalk!!!" yell - her cousin told us about it on one of his FL trips from NY. I've taught it to a few cachers around here, but I don't know how well its caught on. If we're out in the middle of nowhere, and want to give the others a chance, the finder will walk away, wait a minute or two, then yell "HUCKLE BUCKLE BEANSTALK!!!!" If its a more urban location, or we need stealth for some reason, its a more low key "huckle buckle," as the finder retrieves the container.

Thank you!!! I've been trying to find that online without luck. Kudos to Jim though - we've been listening to him talk about this interview for months now, patiently waiting on it to be published.

Not sure about appliances and such, but for the trash we collected last year, I was able to get the park manager to get a dumpster moved to our meeting point. It made for a good photo op with all the bags collected. I whole-heartedly agree with Lep about picking spots ahead of time. I had contacted the Jax Parks Dept to explain the idea, and for suggestions on which park to hold the event. Since they suggested 8 or 10 parks, I went around to several of them, spotted the areas that would be good candidates, then described each on the event page for participants to vote on which park they thought was best. It worked out really well - we knew what to expect, and how to divide everyone up once they got there.

A similar idea came to me while hunting caches during an event this weekend. My teammates and I kept seeing piles from dogs and horses along the trail, and the term 'Cache In, Crap Out' popped into my head. We got a good laugh, but were ill prepared for the amounts that we were running into.

My fiancee and I hosted The Jacksonville to Gainesville Geocaching Rally about a month ago. The webpage has a lot of the info on it, and there's more stories and such in the logs. If you have any questions or need details, send me an e-mail and I'll be happy to help.

Did anyone notice when the show was recorded? The copyright was something like 2001, which would explain why the website the family was pulling up had the old logo on the main page. The guy didn't specifically say the word 'micro', but he did make a comment about caches being very small. The one statement I got the biggest kick out of was, 'the satellites fly at 2 miles/second, over 2 miles above the earth' (rough quote, but that's more or less it.)

I'd say I more or less fit in the 2.5 group. Decent number of finds and hides, seen a lot but not everything, and still enjoy a good hunt. Haven't been asked to be a mod or approver, but I did help start a caching organization that's still going strong.

Assuming the hunt involves a good hike, and I bring all the usual stuff: Merrel hiking shoes - $90 Garmin GPS V - $350 gpsgeek external antenna - $20 Super nice hat to attach antenna to - $65 Hydration pack - $30 Booty nuggets to trade - ~$30 Canon digital camera - $350 Prescription sunglasses - $200 Cell phone - $200 Grand total: $1335 (and that's not counting clothing - that depends entirely on the weather.)

Don't remember what brand, length, or anything like that, but yeah I have one. It hasn't been used in several years for various reasons (nasty water in the area, boaters trying to tip me with their wake, etc.), but I've enjoyed the times I've had it out. I'm really wanting to get a kayak though. I used one on a river/lake in Michigan a few summers ago, and was amazed at how easy it was to paddle, manuever, and pick up speed, despite my young cousin in the front 'helping' to paddle.

I'm at the ripe old age of 24. My fiancee and I are almost always the youngest people at events (not counting kids brought by their parents), but it doesn't bother us or anyone else.

I'll see what I can do to get some interest going for the NEFGA event in FL that day. Someone's gotta have a way to access the internet.

Then I have a pin with your picture on it.

That actually sounds like some pretty nice stuff to have put in a cache - I'd be quite happy to find some of those. As The Cheeseheads said, forget about the people who complained (I know, not the exact words, but the same sentiment. ) If they want to see better stuff in caches, they can hide caches for each other with the particular items they're looking for. As for what I put in caches, I generally do hit the dollar store. I usually manage to find enough decent items to fill an ammo box, and a lot of their stock changes every couple of months, so there's new stuff to buy. Other than that, I'll try Wal-Mart, Target, and even Books-A-Million will sometimes have interesting bookmarks, pens, etc. that'll fit in caches. I've put FTF prizes in two caches. One was a fairly long multicache, so the FTF cacher found a Best Buy giftcard in the logbook waiting on him. The other was a goofy cache with a goofy name, so the FTF got a somewhat goofy prize - an 'I'm #1' ribbon (that was found at the dollar store. )

Took me a minute to find, but this discussion details quite a bit about the critters and such that you'll find in Florida. I think there's also a description of palmetto (in case you haven't seen it before), which is necessary to understand the phrase, 'hidden Florida style.'