MTGeoPirates

When we first started caching we too noticed this trend and started looking for the Unusual Pile of Sticks. (UPS) Also known as the Unusual Pile of Rocks (UPR). We've now come to call them the Usual rather than the UNusual. Not that there's anything wrong with that. We've found that we'd much rather find an ammo can under the pile of sticks than a micro in an urban haystack. Our little cachers enjoy trading in the larger caches, and often the caches under the sticks are in areas that are worth going to, rather than an X-mart parking lot. Just our two cents.

We've only found a couple that were placed at someone's house. The first was in Oregon, a house tucked back from town a little bit, with a large yard. The ammo can was placed near a tree towards the front of the property. Mom and the kids traded and signed the log while I went and visited with the cachers. They were very friendly and pointed out a couple more caches for us to get along our route. The other was here in Montana and the cache and the house were owned by someone we'd just met at an event. Although there were neighbors fairly close, the cache was placed so that prying eyes couldn't see what you were up to. Both of those caches were fun and didn't feel creepy at all. However, if someone placed a cache on a typical suburban property, I might feel a little weird poking around while the neighbors watched. I guess like alot of things you have to take these type of caches one at a time, and if it doesn't feel right, keep driving to the next one.

We're good about logging DNF's, better than some cachers we know of. With that being said, there has been a time or two when all we had was the GPS, no print outs or Palm Pilot, thus no description or hint and were unable to find the cache. Didn't log a DNF as we didn't feel we'd gone as far as we could with all the information. Some may look at that as "cheating" on the DNF, but our conscious is clear, so what the heck. As far as the timing, if we have all the info and didn't find it, the DNF is logged as soon as we get home and log on. MTGeoPirates

When you get down to Dillon drop us an email before you come, we'd be more than happy to go. But you have to put up with 4 rugrats running around ....Hmmm, now why do I think that email won't be forthcoming? Seriously, although we've found most of the caches around Dillon, if you need any help or just want to talk about caching just send us an email. MTGeoPirates

We'll second (or third) on paying for the pins. As soon as we can get to Yellowstone we'll earn our bronze, and be well on our way to silver. We'd definitely be willing to pay for our little tokens of recognition.

We weren't really worried about what the guidelines had to say so much as what the EC community thought. Just looking for words of wisdom from those who've placed Earthcaches.

We're really interested in creating several earthcaches in SW Montana (some great areas down here). Our dilemma is that we haven't found any (although that should change after next weekend when we find our first.) So should we wait until we've found several more to get a feel for what a good Earthcache is? I should note that I'm a bit of a rockhound and keep a copy of "Roadside Geology of Montana" and RSG of Yellowstone in the car most of the time. We've also done some scouting already and also consulted with a local geology professor, so I feel we're pretty well prepared. Your thoughts?

We usually try to stick with the theme of the cache when we leave FTF prizes (which we have on all but one of our regular size caches). For our cache at a ghost town we left a book about the history, for one near a copper mine we left a copper nugget magnet. A FTF pin from Geoswag makes a nice little prize as well, especially for smaller caches.

Commandment #11 Thou shalt log thy Did Not Finds faithfully, so that others might know the truth. And just so you're aware, the Montana branch of The One True Church is already discussing a schism, and deciding who will post our theses on the door of the Groundspeak Headquarters.

We're happy (and usually surprised) if the swag is at least relatively new. Mostly it's just the little pirates who trade, and they're happy with about anything. We always have brand new toys that we trade, out of consideration for those who find the cache after us. We haven't found many caches where the swag really interested mom and dad, and that's fine. For us at least, it's about the find and the time we spend together, not anything that might be in the container.

And it really is just that simple. We've hosted 2 events, and haven't had any special games or themes. Especially if there haven't been many/any event caches in the area, the best event you can throw is just a simple meet and greet.

I'd be interested to know what National Forest it was. I've never heard of any NF banning caching, and know of at least one (the Boise NF) that has placed their own caches. Caches are banned in wilderness areas, but since you'd parked at a gate that doesn't sound like an issue. Looking at your finds, I'd guess it might have been the George Washington and Jefferson NF. Wonder if their website might have info?

We were just reviewing some of the found it logs for our caches, and some of them really jumped out at us. "Great historical sight" "Never would have visited this great spot if not for the cache" "Wonderful view" What kind of logs put a smile on your face as a cache owner?

Obviously the GeoPirates doesn't have anything to do with our names, but we wanted to include Montana in our name, and we know of several cachers from Montana who use MT in their handles.

If you want to send us an email, we live in SW Montana, and know of lots of things to do in the area, including 3 ghost towns with caches in/around them. (We placed 2 of them).

We've talked with some local cachers about placing "The Mother of All Caches". There are some great footlocker size waterproof containers at the army surplus store nearest here. We want to fill one up with ammo cans, decons and maybe a few micros. We discussed having folks bring containers to an event, put them in the cache, then placing the cache, maybe as a group. The only snag we've run into is where to place it that cachers could find it, but muggles wouldn't. Once we get that figured out, we hope to run with it.

Have to agree on the sticking to regular size caches! Our kids HATE micros! We just found a micro the other day and had a LONG discussion with our 7 year old about how boring they are. As far as the other rules, I have to agree with Renegade Knight. Anything that makes sense when not caching, make it a "rule". Other than that, don't freak out about what you may find in/near a cache. We have yet to find anything illegal, immoral or dangerous when caching. So just go out there and have fun!

It's good to see our state tourism board is finally getting on the geocaching bandwagon. I've noticed a few "discover Montana" type ads on geocaching.com in the last month or so. I guess we're hoping to cash in on caching. (Awful pun, sorry about that folks)

This happened to us about a year ago. As we were approaching the cache, we noticed a couple walking with a GPS in hand, looking at a piece of paper. We smiled at them and said "I bet we know what you're doing". It turned out that they had just bought the GPS and this was the first cache the had ever attempted. We helped them find the cache and then went our separate ways. All in all it was a nice encounter, and we were glad to be able to help a couple newbies.

Polished rocks? Our kids would go ape for those! (Future geologists, all of them!) Our kids are the only ones who trade now. At first we took cool and unique items with us, and traded for them, but quickly we realized that mom and dad just don't want to trade stuff. Our "treasures" are the memories of doing things as a family. So we stock up on brand new toys and let the kids do the trading. We do our part (I think) to CITO caches by letting the kids have the toys that other peoples kids didn't want, and putting in brand new toys that hopefully will delight another child.

Urban Micros The bane of our geocaching existence. Ok, maybe not that bad, but we do seem to have trouble with them. Maybe it's because our first caches were in rural settings and that's what we're used to, but our ability to find micros is somewhere around the 50% mark. So we try to limit the number of micros we search for and go after "regular" size containers. Besides, our little cachers don't like micros because there's nothing to trade.

Papa pirate is a wildland firefighter, has been for 18 years. Papa and Mama pirate were both rural volunteers 6 years and 3 moves ago. With 4 kids we just don't have the time to put in anymore.

We logged ours last spring, and never even thought twice about it. Literally, we hadn't even considered that it might be bad form to log our own event. We'll probably still log our events, I guess that's what side of the fence we fall on.

I had read about geocaching several years back in a magazine or newspaper, can't remember which. Spring of 2004 I was trying to come up with ideas on how to train some of our new fire crew members on the use of GPS and somehow dredged geocaching from the depths of my memory. I got back to the office and looked it up, then went home and mentioned it to my wife. Long story short, we've been caching for close to 2 years, and really love it.

I've noticed some really good caches that we've found in the past are now disabled (and have been for quite a while) or are archived because the owner didn't get around to replacing the cache. Just wondering if this is as common as it seems. When a cache you own goes AWOL, how soon do you get out there and replace it? So far we've only had one cache go missing, and had it back up and running the same day we found out. Are we the exception?