BZLuck

Seek Garmin support staff.

Do not mount the chirp inside a metal container. Do not bury the chirp. Do not put the chirp in water. A compatible Garmin device should detect the chirp within 10 m. For maximum transmission range, allow the chirp to have an unobstructed view in all directions. Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to Chirp. Caution: Chirp may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds. Chirp Contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at. Do not use Chirp on concrete. Discontinue use of Chirp if any of the following occurs: Itching Vertigo Dizziness Tingling in extremities Loss of balance or coordination Slurred speech Temporary blindness Profuse sweating Heart palpitations If Chirp begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head. Chirp may stick to certain types of skin. When not in use, Chirp should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration... Failure to do so relieves the makers of Chirp, Garmin Incorporated, and its parent company Global Chemical Unlimited, of any and all liability. Ingredients of Chirp include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space. Chirp has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is also being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq. Do not taunt Chirp Chirp comes with a lifetime guarantee. Chirp! ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES!

SOMEWHERE in this house is a Garmin eTrex Summit... Bought about the same time as my Garmin Street Pilot III (but I DO know it's whereabouts.) Lord knows how much I paid for the both of them 10+ years ago. Once I came across caching and this site, I spent 3 days looking for that old eTrex. DNF. The irony was in the inability to locate my GPS... Just bought a Magellan GC, (while it was on sale for $169) since I have a Nuvi something-or-other in my car for turn by turn. Figured the GC will take us from car to cache and I can't see using it for a whole lot more. There are a half dozen caches within biking distance of our house, and we are going to kick off our first official searches this weekend on 10-10-10 to be a part of the mass logging hoopla.

I think they just want their device image and information added to the list of "what GPS are you using" in the profile area. Am I correct?

My chewing gum was getting stale, and I don't want to spit it on the ground. I'll take the expired yogurt coupon to wrap it in so I can stick it in my pocket to throw away later. I'll leave a burnt out glow stick.

Somewhere there are a couple of acne riddled kids, filled with misaligned teen angst, armed with smartphones and a laser printer thinking they are the coolest guys on the planet. They probably have half a bedroom filled with stolen cache containers. What I don't understand is what they would do with them. If they tried to sell them, a cacher would certainly "bust" them at some point. What honest cacher would want to buy a known stolen cache? Steal them to throw them away? Fools.

So sorry, you must not live in a "military town" like we do. Ammo cans are aplenty here in SD, about $5-8 all you can carry. I just wish they were not so expensive to ship, or I'd hook you all up. MAybe you could pass the guys id out to friends at local get togethers or drop his info into caches you go to and get some kind of break from him when you want to pick up some for others that go his way via you! just an idea. Then you could sell them for less and the added shipping would not hurt so bad. JMHO/ McEllen Here's one: Ammo Cans on SD Craigslist

So sorry, you must not live in a "military town" like we do. Ammo cans are aplenty here in SD, about $5-8 all you can carry. I just wish they were not so expensive to ship, or I'd hook you all up.

This made me think of a litte GIF I made years ago while on another d-board. Feel free to use it if you like.

I'm in nearly the same boat as you. Been lurking around here for a few weeks gathering intel and doing lots of reading. I have a Droid 2, but the dang thing sucks battery life like no tomorrow when it is doing anything other than text messages or being a phone. Besides the screen is nearly invisible when in direct sunlight. So, last weekend I went to Target and purchased the Magellan eXplorist GC on sale for $169. You do NOT (actually you can not) add new maps for it. It has a "full base map" of the US and Europe, but that is really just streets/names and blocks of color for water and parks and such. I already have a Garmin Nuvi in my car do do turn-by-turn navigating, so I didn't really need another unit to do that for me, and the GC unit does not. It is a hand held GPS, with basic tracking functions, a simple compass, and was designed to load, read and point you to geocaches quickly and with lots of informational details. One of my goals was to be a paperless as possible, and this unit falls into that catagory without spending a whole lot of money. What I determined was this: Sure the Magellan GC unit is an entry level GPSr. No, it does not do everything that a $400+ unit will do. Yes it was designed for Geocaching and not much else. It does (if you are a premium member here) let you VERY quickly and easily load "pocket queries" (which are groups of caches from a specified area, aka NOT having to load them one at a time) into the device. You create the query they are e-mailed to you. You plug in your GC to the PC and copy the .GPX files right into a folder on the GPS. Reboot the GC and there they are with descriptions, hints and everything ready to go. So of that is your intent, then for the money it appears to be a good unit. I have yet to really field test mine, but the discussions I read led me to that unit as a starter GPS. I also figured that as a "starter GPS" for under $200, if some dramatic change occurs in the GPS/Geocaching market in the reasonably near future, I don't feel like I'm stuck with a top of the line GPS that I spent a bunch of money on, to experiment with an activity that I'm not even if I'll totally dig it or not. So there ya go, I hope that helps!

If you select "e-mail" me the PQ, it doesn't happen instantly either. I thought I was doing something wrong at first because nothing was happening. Try again. Check mail. Try again, check mail. Then after dinner, [an hour or so later] there they all sitting there in my mailbox. (Of course they were all the same request, because again, I thought I was doing something incorrectly.)

Conceptually, I really liked the idea of a "dedicated geocahching" unit. Afterall, that is what it was purchased for, and what it will be used for. (Well we might use the "odometer" for our bike rides too.) Sure this is Magellan's first attempt at this idea and the pricing made it very approachable as an entry level unit. I'm quite certain that their next "GCx2" will be better, faster and more expensive but out of the gate I liked this idea. I really have no immediate need for a full blown "air-drop me in the middle of Africa" GPS unit. Heck I live in San Diego, not Montana. I can barely scroll around the geo-map in my neighborhood without exceeding the 500 caches limit. Lots to find before we have to start hitting the trails into no-mans land, where a fuller functioning device might be beneficial.

If they are willing to post pricing including UPS ground shipping, you might find interest. I have yet to hit my local surplus store(s), but rayt333's prices sound about right for "in-store" purchases. If they will cost another $5 each to ship, then I doubt they would get many sales except from desperate people who have no access to surplus stores. Besides, once they hit the $15-20 range (with shipping) you can just buy something like an Otterbox through Amazon.

Monty, I did come across many of your posts and the references to your failed units. I hope that isn't the case with me/mine, but will certainly be playing "watch dog" on this product as we begin to explore with it. Providing my GC unit doesn't have a catastrophic hardware failure, my goal was to find the most Geo-caching friendly GPS unit without spending as much as a set of new tires for my car.

Been looking around and reading here, and as much as I'd like to plop down the dough for a top of the line Garmin touchscreen GPS that simultaniously tracks Soviet warheads, I realized I didn't need all of that.... Yet. I was also hesitant about purchasing something used, even here. I've just learned too many lessons there to save ~30% on a brand new product with no waranty or returnability, etc. Especially with electronic devices. I already have a Garmin Nuvi in my Xterra, so I didn't need another turn by turn GPS. I also decided that I would think as "paperless" as possible, and the search narrowed a bit more. So I went and did it yesterday. I saw the ad from Target for the Magellan eXplorist GC for $169 and decided to give it a spin. Got the last one in stock at my local store. Updated the FW to 1.4 and did the VERY nice and easy drag and drop of the pocket query GPX files directly onto the unit. (Also upgraded to Premium here!) I read every thread here about the GC, and the only real "complaints" seem to be from those that used to have a higher-end GPSr's and this one doesn't do everything their other one did. Well it's also sub-$200 instead of over $400. Other than that most people seemed to have pleasant experiences with their GC, so long as they understood that it was not the "ultimate GPS that does everything for less money" unit. Which I do. It's a place to start under $200, and other than the premium membership here, I don't have to purchase anything else to get it up and running. This was all late yesterday after football, so no bush-groping has been done yet, but there are 2 or 3 caches within walking distance of both my home and my office that I'm gonna check out asap. So I guess, I'm just giving a shout-out to other GC owners to wish me luck out there!

FYI, if it hasn't been mentioned Target (and Target via Amazon.com) is selling the eXplorist GC for $169 right now on a "temporary price reduction."

To "drop ship" is typically when a company acts as a wholesaler for products and ships directly to the end consumer. Let's say you want to sell Widgets for $19.99. You don't want to fill your garage with boxes full of Widgets, but there is another company called "Acme Widgets" that already stocks the same Widgets and is willing to sell them to you at a wholesale rate of $14.99 and act as your distributor. They don't sell directly to the customer, they only sell to other companies like yours. You sell your Widget for $19.99 and then place the order with Acme Widgets for $14.99 and they "drop ship" the Widget directly to your customer, most often with your information on the return address label, as if you were the one that actually sold it and shipped it. You make $5.00 and the customer is none the wiser. Amazon.com is a perfect example of the practice of "drop shipping" products for companies through their own website orders.

Since I'm still just doing my reading and research here (0/0 for us!) I would not even THINK of putting actual trash or "crud" (bottle caps, etc) into a cache. If anything, I would (personally) want to take the trash out and add swag to someone else's cache. Kind of a "Johnny Appleseed" theorem. I'm 42 years old. There is little that I could find (minus the keys to a new 4x4 with coordinates of the car tagged on them, heh) that would get me excited. My wife however is a 5th grade teacher, and she knows all too well, for kids, it's all about the goodies. When we went to the dollar store the other day for the wife to shop for stuff for the kids "prize box" at school, and all I could do was look around and think, "Dayum, this is the ULTIMATE swag store!" I can say this though, once we track down a few caches, and start to hide our own, I hope that children DO find ours, because we plan on stocking them up with "good stuff" for young and old alike.

Funny someone should mention finding a lanyard in a cache, and taking it. I had a software sales rep come by my office a while back and "gave" me (read: left behind) about 20 lanyards with his company logo on them. Nice ones too with metal clips . Some yellow and some purple. They were left over from his last tradeshow give away swag. I guess if people want them, when I start making caches, I could toss 'em inside. Never crossed my mind WHAT to do with them until now. They were too nice to toss out, but now I know how to spread them around... Thanks!

Thank you everyone for the input, the time taken to do so is greatly appreciated. As I mentioned, I'm just brainstorming right now. Looking into equipment, containers, contents, etc. I come from a very creative background (fine arts, graphic arts, event planning...) and I think I'm nearly as excited about creating quality unique caches as I am finding ones created by others. I've also been living in wonderful San Diego for about 40 years, and already have some great general locations in mind. It will probably be a few weeks until I actually do anything (need to get my new phone at the end of the month, and I apparently also have some studying to do first) but my personality is just so preemptive, it's difficult for me to not flush out potential ideas with the veterans here.

I'm brand new too! I'm due for an upgrade on my Verizon phone in about 2 weeks and for many more reasons than getting started in Geocaching I've been looking into a Droid X. I used to (I swear I did, but after searching the entire house and garage, I'm clueless to where it might be) own a Garmin eTrex Summit that I thought I could use to get started in this adventure, but alas, I have located the cover, the car mount, the cables and the user manuals, but no GPS unit, except the Garmin Nuvi in my Xterra. From what I've read the latest generation of "smart phones" that are GPS enabled seem to be a good overall investment for getting started here, with a few available apps loaded. Good luck to you, (and us) in our latest adventure!

Perfect. Lots of reading to do, but exactly what I needed! How much can a motivated guy actually do in 24 hours!?

Thanks for the input, and that IS the goal - a mulitcache, hopefully with a theme involved. While doing some basic finds, we intend to be building up and creating something that we can contribute to the hides. I didn't think that indoors was an issue, if the location was eluded to being indoors. One of the caches on my area map says for its clue, "Since your GPS won't work indoors, you will have to find this one with your fingers." (Or something very similar, it was inclined to be inside of a specific retail store.) I'll have to look around for the regulations. This is my research phase so I'm not afraid of asking questions and looking for answers.

(Brand new here, just got access yesterday!) Here's my thought, and tell me if I am off my rocker, or it sounds like a fun idea. I'm quite sure that most people find more than they hide, right? I mean it only makes sense... Would 10 caches considered a good starting contribution to the community of hides? First off I'm in San Diego, so there are a lot of great variations of both urban and wild places for hides within a reasonable traveling distance. My concept is to make a set of 10 distinct, identical and somewhat related (possibly numbered?) caches and hide and log them all during the course of one weekend. Or possibly posting the location of "#1" here, and putting the coordinates for #2 inside it, and for #3 inside #2, etc. This is still conceptual, but sounds like fun to me, both to hide and seek. Since it will be me and my wife that will be starting this together, would that be considered an acceptable amount (10) to feel involved with both the hiding and the finding cachers? Also, how often to you all check on your caches, both here (for finders) and in real life for their general well being? And yet another question, has anyone here ever asked permission from someone (like in a museum, etc) if they could put a cache in their property? I work with a lot of high profile San Diego companies and tourist attractions, and could quite possibly get permission (not even tried yet) to put a cache inside of a public location, so long as it did not interfere with their daily routines. Thanks for your thoughts, I'm just doing a bit of brainstorming and wanted to know if I was going in a constructive direction. BZLuck

This sounds like a good time line goal for me to assemble, hide and log (here) my first cache. Thanks for sharing the idea!