benderoos

Cool to hear. Like I was thinking, the needles and broken glass could have come from a party of some sort, and not the CO's fault for trying to bring you there. At the same time, be careful of your surroundings when you are out. A missing smiley on your map is far better then poking yourself, or even worse, getting your neice poked with a needle and getting who knows what. Might be a wise idea to stay away from that general area if you are taking her to find a few. Never know where the next pile of needles may be hiding.

And don't forget, the one that sits in the Micro size locator, a nano. Usually will be mentioned in the description. About the size of the tip of your pinky, maybe smaller. Has room for a tiny log, and nothing else. For beginning, I would avoid these until you have a few finds logged. They can be tricky.

Don't forget, no matter where you are, you are in someone elses backyard/area of town. My best word of advice. Where I live, people call the Fire Dept. or police whenever they come across a needle no matter if they are Geocaching, or walking down the street. They will send someone down who is properly trained, and has the proper gear to dispose of the needles. For you yourself, I don't know why people always have a problem with this. Stay in the areas you know, or feel safe in. Just becuase there is a cache in a bad part of town, doesn't mean you need to find it, or take small children with you to find it. But that shouldn't take the fun away from people living in that area from joining in on the fun. I had a few caches myself that I was going to look for in the bad part of town. As soon as I saw a Needle Exchange box in the park, I didn't even slow down. That spot will never have a smiley on my "Finds", but if some people who live in the area, and frequent that park want to find it, I am not going to be the one to spoil their fun becuase I am used to needle free parks where I live. It should be everyone's responsibility to call the authorities no matter what they are doing if they find needles laying around though.

The ones that I don't like are micros in Juniper/cedar bushes. Or even worse, Micro's in juniper bushes in front of a bank. Usually when I see these, I just keep driving. I have never come across a Lamp skirt hide, so I don't have any dislike towards those. . The ones in playgrounds I actually enjoy. I am guessing they are probably hidden by kids, and if you have kids, this is pretty much the best place to bring your kids to help them get hooked on Geocaching. Sometimes people have to accept their map not filled with smileys. Just becuase its there, doesn't mean you HAVE to find it

If you click on "Your Profile", there is a selection to see new listings in your area. You don't even need a Premium membership for this. Premium members do get the option of having every new cache within a selected range of their house e-mailed to them when they are listed. That way they have a better chance of a FTF. Lol, speaking of that, I have that option set, and check my e-mail every few hours. 2 nights ago, I got an e-mail for one that was posted at about 10 pm. By 11 pm when I checked my e-mail it had already been found.

Yeah, unless you get a military grade GPS, 6 m is pretty decent. Plus don't forget, even if you have a GPS that is accurate to 1 inch, you still are only as accurate as the person's GPSr that placed the cache.

I go Geocache with my scooter occasionally. And mine is even more nerdy. It's an electric

Welcome to the addiction You can contain your excitement by searching for more Geocaches to hit in the area. Try to stick to non nano ones, until you get a few finds, and possibly a handheld GPS.

We are a small family just starting as well. And yep its fairly addictive. Have 65 finds so far, and only been doing it for a month. It is quite enjoyable to get out for a walk with the kids (They are 6 and 7), since it seems to be almost impossible to get them to go on walks. Now they ask "Dad, can we go Geocaching today", and I park extra far away to lengthen the journey

I know it must be hard on you, expecially if a good friend, but if I ever cached with someone like that, it would be the LAST time I cached with him. Maybe out him during the campfire at the Geocache Campout .

I have only found a few "hotels" so far, but from what I see, they are almost always a larger cache size, that is hidden away from urban centres, usually near a highway. This makes them prime locations for people to drop TB's off and send them on their way.

Being from Utah, if I let mormons bother me away from a cache, I'd never get any finds... I don't see why it matters if they were mormons or perceived by you to be mormons. Maybe they were Geek Squad Agents out Geocaching on their lunch break

I hate to say it but after looking at the Cache in question, only 2 people signed the log as found after the bench was missing. And it was these 2 people who reported the bench as missing, and notified the CO that the bench was missing so the cache would become archived. Sure they might have added 1 to their numbers, but at least they made sure no one else searched for this "Missing" cache. After reading the OP's post, I was expecting to see piles of people still logging "Finds" and continuing on their way. Personally I would have logged these as DNF's, but to each their own. No need to go on a side rant about people caching with friends, ect. I would rather see people walking somewhere in a casual group, then see people driving from lightpost to lightpost to claim their finds. Who knows, maybe someone else will claim you didn't earn the cache unless you found it naked, covered in honey with swarming bees and a few hungry bears chasing you.

Also a good thing to note. The size of the cache and the difficulty do take into play. Sometimes the cachers place caches in an area to be found. Other times they do their best to hide them, I have a few in my town that I go past occasionally and give "yet another try" on, but no luck at all. Others I can spot as I am walking up to them. And welcome to the game. Remember, expecially in an urban area, anything can be a geocache. From that bolt on a meter, to a rock in a rock pile, to that large tupperware box with some twigs on top. And yeah as far as accuracy goes, usually I am within about a 10 foot circle of the cache. You have to remember you have to take the in-accuracies of 2 GPS's into effect. First the original cacher may not have an accurate GPS'r, and might take the first reading they get, instead of averaging a bunch to get the co-ordinates more accuratley pinpointed (could be a 20 feet out from the placement). Then you come along, and your GPS is probably also plotting you within a 10-20 foot radius of your location. If you happen to be on opposite sides of the inaccuracy circle you could be looking 40 feet away. Usually I take several (walks) towards the location if I am having trouble finding it. (I believe the Geo-caching term for this is the "Drunken Bee Dance"). It is suprising how your GPS may lead you 10 feet in another direction the next time you hit the zero point.

I am new yet, but the strangest thing I found was a newer looking 21 speed mountian bike, not locked up, laying behind an old brick wall in a part of the city that was demolished a few years ago, so no houses or anything nearby. My first thought was it was stolen, and dumped there. I kept looking around to make sure no one was going to jump me. Might have been some kids in a bush somewhere doing who knows what.

My favorites so far are ones where the CO's put some thought into the container, and didn't just grab the first thing they saw in the garbage can, cleaned it out and hid in a bush. I kind of like well hidden urban micros, where the cache is disguised like a bolt, ect. I also found a cache in deep bush, that was built out of 2X4's and had a solar light on top for night caching. The ones I dislike the most are micros/smalls hidden in trees, or ones in urban settings where the hide is in a bush in front of a business. Nothing makes you look more suspicious then digging around in a bush in front of a bank. I usually keep driving when I spot these.

Lol, had me worried for about a second. That 1 cache had the same name as my hidden cache. Lol, in a different country though

I have always wondered. If you get to a cache, and the log paper was soaked and literally had turned into paper mache, can you log it as found, if you log a maintenance log stating that log's current state.

Opps my bad. I was just reading my "Forum Title"

Yeah the Geocaching Mascot is a Frog. Everyone starts out as a Tadpole for their 10 first posts, then they become official Geocachers

I am new to Geocaching as well, but I have found a few easy ways to meet fellow Geocachers in the area. 1) Check to see if you can find a local Geocaching association. They have alot listed in bottom portion of these forums 2) Check for "Event" caches when you search for new caches in your area. These are probably the best way of meeting fellow Geocachers. I have seen events in my area where they meet for coffee somewhere, or ice cream, or occasionally a BBQ. And the bonus, you get a "Find" in your list for event type finds, LOL. 3) Create a new cache. Post it, and hide nearby and watch. The extreme cachers in the area will probably arrive shortly thereafter looking for a FTF Jump out and shout "Caught you". Ok, this probably isn't the best idea, and might get you shot, but if your desparate

Found another interesting translator http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ Interesting becuase you can cut and paste the webaddress of the page you are looking at, and it will (try) to translate the entire page for you. I tested with a few France cache pages, and was nice that all the logs were in english as well, no need to keep cutting and pasting each line in to have it translated.

I have used a Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx and really liked it. When I purchased mine however, I went cheap, to see if I would get hooked on the whole Geocaching thing, and not be a 4-5 cache thing then have an expensive unit collecting dust. My GPSr is a Garmin ETREX Venture HC. It does everything you are asking for, and I only paid $150 cdn. It isn't paperless (Meaning you have the co-ordinates and the name and a few other details about the cache but not all the hints, descriptions, ect. that the website has) So when I go somewhere I usually print out the pages of the caches I go to. Another thing that is a semi-annoyance, is it doesn't have an electronic compass (an option you may want?) In other words, in order for the GPS to tell you what direction you are facing/what direction you need to go to find a cache, you need to be moving. When you stop moving, and start turning around trying to figure out which way to look, your compass will not move until you take a few steps and it gets its directions back again. Never had a problem in a park, but in deep brush it definatley is annoying.

http://translate.google.com/# Google website will translate many languages to english for you. Just copy and paste the text and press translate.

What app are you talking about?