yale-peabody

We've sent out several TB's but none so close to our hearts as our first. It made it from Ohio to Arizona on it's first hop but has not been heard from since. People visiting its last drop off, report there is no sign of it. Why were we so fond of this one - because we handcrafted it ourselves - a wood TB in the arrowhead shape of the National Park Service symbol, painted and stained to look like the real thing. We wanted it to visit as many of the NPS units as possible, then be dropped of in a nearby site. It went to the Grand Canyon and then disappeared. Maybe someday it will surface. But if it's the case that someone kept it because they are a fan of national parks and thought it was cool, shame on them. We think the national parks are cool too, and that's why we made the bug to look like it did and travel where it did, so more people would visite and appreciate national parks.

Religious notes and poems. If you're not Christian, they're offensive.

Does anyone have the figures on the ratio of micros to regular caches. It seems that when we go out hunting so many great sites which could have supported a regular cache and a good-sized container, only have micros. Is it because too many cachers are in too much of a hurry to put something out?

I've gone after two caches which I thought were bad ideas. The first was in a park that suffers so much vandalism and trashing (it has literally become a dumping ground for locals' garbage) that it would have taken weeks to go throught every receptacle that could have been a cache container. The hide was made more difficult by badly measured coordinates. We gave up on this cache when we realized we were courting serious cuts and bruises if we continued. The second cache was in an area that was frequented by "partyers" as evidenced by all the empty liquor and beer bottles. This piece of land was also criscrossed by dirt bike trails and was close to a poorer, crime-ridden neighborhood. The cache instructions said you could find the container if you took the right path -- but that was more a matter of luck than anything else because of the labyrinth of paths. And the clue - hidden under some fallen branches - could have referred to about a thousand fallen branches in the area. We found this one, but when I logged on I advised people not to try this cache by themselves or in the evening.

We're new to geocaching and have found that a lot of the local rural areas and cemeteries are saturated with caches. We would like to place a few of our own but it's hard to find a space. Does anyone know what the policy is in Ohio State Parks for placing a geocache? Do you need a permit? Do they forbid it? We've found that our local county park district is allowing it after a long ban, but they have very specific requirements and you must get a permit. That's okay with us. Just tell us what to do and we'll give it a try.