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Sent my info to Laval K-9: Nov 20 Name received from Laval K-9: Nov 27 Sent my gift: Dec. 2 My gift arrived at destination: I received a gift: Dec 3 I received my gift from Ms Marvelous and WOW! I have to up my game next year. I did not expect SIX trackables and a pathtag. Along with a cute Christmas stocking. Thank you so much, Ms Marvelous!!

Sent my info to Laval K-9: Done 11-19-22Name received from Laval K-9:Sent my gift:My gift arrived at destination:I received a gift:

Normally when a thread gets this long I don't bother posting. BUT, I'm hoping that with more comments, Groundspeak will see a pattern and try to come up with a workable solution. Yes, I can use the new maps. Do I like them? No. They pretty much suck when it comes to loading, if they load at all. One positive for me is that the icons show up on the map on my work computer. Before, with the beta-map, they did not because of the firewalls. I would be willing to buy into a tiered membership. I don't think I'd do $50/year but I'd do $40/year. Maybe there should be a "Limited Time" Free membership of 3 months or 6 months and then ease in with a $20 for the remaining portion of the year. When you get to your One Year usage, you have to decide if you want the $20/ year Basic (which is equivalent to the Free Membership), or the $40/year Premium Membership. Basic members would get the OSM maps, Premiums get the Google Maps and the other PM add-ons. I have learned a bunch of work arounds in the last three days but I really don't care for any of them. Very time consuming and I already spend too much time looking at this stuff (according to my wife). I'm still old school. I use an eTrex H and instead of printing off the cache page, I have a notebook and write down the basic info I need to get to the cache. I spent two hours today taking notes for a three hour caching trip tomorrow. Between slow load or no load maps and my work arounds, I spent a lot of time writing down a lot of information. I won't ever stop geocaching because "My name is Nelomo and I'm a cacheholic" but it sure would be nice if we and Groundspeak could work something out to get Google Maps back or quickly help develop the OSM into something that is better. Let's get this thing worked out. Please.

I'm pretty much a newbie so you can dismiss it if you want but... If you aren't concerned with numbers but quality then just go after the 3/3s or 4/4s. I have friends who go after numbers, some go after ?s, some go after the multis. I have a friend who would rather find 6 traditionals than 1 6-stage multi. For me, it depends on my mood. This is the best game in town, you can make it whatever you want it to be. You make the rules for your game and let others make rules for theirs. You say too many, some will say not enough. JMHO

I'm barely two months into this stupid addiction and I basically ignored an entire deer hunting season. If you knew me, you'd probably fall over. I spend free time trying to solve puzzles (which I hate but I'm not going to let them beat me), think of unusual or clever hides, or just stare at the beta map hoping new caches will pop up close to my house. New 12-step program: "Hi, my name is Nelomo and I'm a geocacher. It's been 12 hours since my last find."

A couple weeks ago I was caching in a County Park on a Wednesday. It was 9:00 a.m. and my vehicle was the only one in the parking lot. There was a cache about 100 yards away, about 20 feet off a paved bike path. The cache was hidden under a pine tree that was in a small group of pines between the bike path and the road. I was standing next to the tree and just finished signing the log. I heard muffled music and glanced up in time to catch a quick glimpse of a lady jogger running down the paved path and a couple seconds later she quickly passed by with her music playing loudly from her iPod. I visually saw her for a total of 2 seconds total. I continued caching in the park and was headed back to my truck about 20 minutes later. A County Sheriff pulled into the parking and up behind my truck. He asked me if I was on the bike path this morning. This started the 15 minute questioning and conversation of what I was doing. He told me that he had gotten a call that a man was hiding in the bushes. That lady has the fastest deductive mind in the world. She saw me in a public park in daylight hours for 2 seconds and determined that I was a pervert waiting for her to run by. I now wear a safety vest with reflective strips on it and I put a sign in my truck window that says "I AM GEOCACHING". At times I ride a bike and there is now a sign on my bike that says "I AM GEOCACHING" and it has an arrow so I can point the bike in the direction that I am caching if off the main trail. How's that for using stealth?

I'm currently doing some research because my phone is up for an upgrade. I have just started caching and I use an eTrex H. I do not have a smartphone. I'm definitely doing this old school. I really like the thought of having real time caching available to me. The new GPSr units have direct connection to Groundspeak and provide paperless caching. I have to decide if it is better to spend $300 once for a GPSr or to spend $50 for the phone upgrade and then $20/month for the data package. After one year I've spent the same money but what about updates and improvements? I will always keep my eTrex H because it is quite accurate on the coords. It will always be a back up.

I agree that the CO needs to be informed about issues with the cache. The logs are supposed to be about our experience. If it was a bad experience with one of my caches (I only have 6 currently), then I want to know because I want my caches to be fun, informative, or challenging. I will change it or archive it. Log notes, just like email or any other written form of communication, have to be written with care. You cannot read sarcasm, attitude, humor, etc, into written word. It must be denoted somewhere. My teenage son just said to me yesterday. I always assume you are upset with me when you send me a text that doesn't have LOL in it. I told him, I'm not upset, just passing along information or needing information. Never assume someone is angry or upset in the logs. They are just passing on information that we should have.

I just started out by borrowing a friends eTrex. After a couple weeks I went to Amazon and found a used one for $70+ shipping. It is very basic and I print off or write down the pertinent info, keep a notebook, and off I go. My coords are most usually right on. Sure, I can't just go finding new caches on the field but I go out with a plan and when I find the ones I wrote down, I go home and do my chores or go to work. I might be old school but it works. It's a good way to figure out if this is really what you want to do. You can always resell the GPSr to upgrade. I am hoping that I can upgrade to a Magellan eXplorist at Christmas (if my kids get the hints). But if not, I'll keep on getting my finds. One month into caching and I have over 130 finds.

I'm a month new into geocaching but I'm loving it. I live in the Grand Rapids area of Michigan. My wife and I took a day trip to Michigan City, Indiana so she could visit a friend. While she visited, I planned on geocaching. I had no idea what the area was like but I went to the Beta Map and looked at the area. If I'm caching in an area I'm not very familiar with, I look for county parks, township parks, city parks, natural areas, and cemeteries. College campus' are also a good place to start. They usually have several caches that are sprinkled along paths or trails. These are good ways to get your finds up too; one area to park, good excercise and maybe 10 finds in about two hours time. Look at the beta map in hybrid mode. You will see satellite imaging with the roads marked. I could look at the map right now and put in a zip code for the area you want and find a handful of caches that you could find within an hour or two without a lot of driving.

I keep finding marbles and those clear little stones that are used in table centerpieces. I find them in micro caches and that is a bit irritating because it makes it hard to get the log back in the container. Some of the swag isn't worth putting in there. I am a find the cache and sign the log kind of person. I am new and have been examining the swag. I plan on getting a small back pack to carry some essentials in and getting a small stash of good swag to drop off in the appropriate sized containers.