TheShelbyFamily

How about just printing on waterproof paper? Then it doesn't matter if it's watertight or not.

I rather like the saturation actually. Heck, I've been working on caches for weeks now to populate my hometown back in MO as it only has two. I've got a stack of creative ones, and some standard ammo cans; the whole nine yards. I want to place down a walking path to encourage people to visit it, and in town at a few of the landmarks we have. In short, I plan on "saturating" an area that is basically off the grid from geocaching. The town economy is doing really poorly, and call me optimistic, but I hope that if I make it worth people's time with a nice variety of caches, geocachers will travel into town, stop in for lunch, maybe buy something or the other and help out. Does that kind of thinking ruin the spirit of the game?

Letterboxing was what got me into geocaching. The kids seemed to lose interest with stamp carving and locating a letterbox can sometimes take a really long time. The directions are more "adventure" based, being like "Find the tree with 4 trunks, take 15 paces at 70 degrees, locate the moss covered rock.... etc etc." Additionally, for some reason, most of our hides got stolen within days, and after spending about 200$ on hides (we really tricked out our boxes) and having all but one stolen, I gave up on letterboxing. There's some kind of letterbox griefer where we live unfortunately. I personally prefer letterboxing to geocaching for the reasons you noted. Extreme caches are fine for young fit males like myself, but I can't take the family with me to do them nor can I ever seem to tell them "Hey kids, Dad wants to climb a mountain. Go sit in the car, or play in the street or something." So for me, it's a life of exact coordinates, parking lot pill bottles and mcswag for the kids. The thing that keep me going, aside from my family's enthusiasm, are the really good puzzle caches. The ones that irritate the heck out of me though are the ones that want you to e-mail in responses to questions answered by local placards to claim credit. I was caching with the wife just yesterday, and ran into two of those, without pen, paper, nor the inclination to e-mail in the responses. Once again I declined to sign the logs, and not report them as found. Don't misunderstand me; I'm a huge history buff and study more recreationally than most people can fathom. But I go out to explore the world to get away from homework, not turn in assignments via e-mail. Of course the easy solution would be to read the cache description first and avoid them, but hey, reading is for suckers, right? lol

Weird, I just posted about this in another thread, but here's ours. All it takes is hitting up a local bar for bottle caps, a 1 inch round hole punch, some dollar store glitter glue, and some clear easy cast casting expoxy/resin from any craft store:

Our family always upgrades cash trash and cleans them out as we go too. If you spend 20 bucks on some glitter glue, easy cast epoxy from any craft store and stop in at any local bar for bottlecaps, you can make homemade geocoins like this by the hundreds: Easy peasy, and people seem to dig em!

Sweet, thanks for the response! I think I've solved the problem of not being able to get out the log by cutting up a plastic q-tip and gluing the bottom portion to the log to wrap around. Gives a nifty "handle" towards the top of the cache!

I don't mean to cause thread necro, but I found this post while looking for a stack of those plastic containers. I needed to know why the seller should be banned for selling them before I buy. Is there a cheaper place to get them, or is there something wrong with him selling them?

This countries obsession with who owns what land and what it can and can't be used for is disturbing to me. In rural MO where I grew up, fences were only used for hemming in cattle, not keeping people out. Now that I live out East, every square inch of land is owned by someone or something and nobody wants you on or near any of it. Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs.... ***ing up the scenery, breaking my mind.... name that song! Anywho, I can see why guidelines for caches can be a good thing, such as restricting the placement of caches in endangered plant areas, but cemeteries? Is there really such an environmental impact caused by foot traffic? Does it really compare to mowing down a section of forest, digging up the ground, putting rotting corpses filled with noxious chemicals into and then fencing it off? Oh, what a world we live in.... it's getting safer by the day! lol

It's quite easy to make a stamp. I made this one in about an hour that's about 3inches by 2 inches: Just buy an eraser, draw a simple figure, say pac man chasing a ghostie, and carve away everything except what you cut with a pocket knife or xacto blade. The actual carving kits DO help, but aren't necessary.

phew! Was worried I wasted my time making like 100 of these; didn't think to check beforehand. The user Renzo Tobias inspired them, and they're quite easy to make! The inside is filled with epoxy, and they also have random backs, but the family logo is on all of them somewhere, either front or back. The backs are sealed with Games Workshop 'Ard Coat sealer, and each one comes in a baggie to further protect it like this: I can't say they're 100% sealed against rusting, but I'm willing to bet they'll outlive me. lol As to a particular series, I'm just randomly making them as I go. I realized yesterday that I can crank these out at a speed that defies my supplies. I made about 100 in 24 hours, if you count the cure time of the epoxy. Some have magnets: and others have pins, but most are plain. I did make a few with tartan pattern backs tonight too; thought these turned out well. Thanks again for the kind words! Oh, and as to the miniatures, that's for my Death Korps of Kreig 40K army. The whole family loves Games Workshop Warhammer 40,000. Wife wears Khorne Earrings, and it's a series of letterbox stamps I carved and am placing currently as well. You can see just a bit of our 40K stuff in this horrible panorama shot I was playing with: I think together we have around 40,000 points of armies, due largely to the fact that I'm also a papercrafter and replicate many of the pieces in paper, and even make larger constructs on occasion like these, which stand over 2 feet high: Try making your own bottlecaps and let Renzo know! And also try papercraft! After you start doing papercraft modeling of other plastic models, you'll look at those expensive plastic kits and scoff at those "lazy" people. lol

I don't mean to sound like an elitist here, especially as I'm new, but I would think that dropping GC's in premium member only cache's would be a heck of a good start. If you care enough to buy a membership, odds are, you're into it for the community, not for the thievery. ;-D

I've been making some home made "geocoins" out of bottlecaps, with a family logo on them, and it occured to me I had no idea what the community response was to finding these in caches. Our family is relatively new to geocaching, and I wanted to clarify how people felt about these types of items. Do people like getting them, or are they considered junk? How many should we leave in a cache? Are they considered tradeable swag or just something extra to toss in? I've been making two types, the classic wooden nickels, and these bottlecap art style ones: I did some searching on the forums, but perhaps I'm not inputting the query right, as I didn't turn up anything definitive on the subject, unless it's hidden in a faq?

Wow, this looks like a great event! Any geocachers from the Martinsburg area heading down for a possible carpool?