Beffums

I think the cache owner has to be the one to start the process through that link though. I recently adopted through that system, but had to wait until the current owner had gone there and put in requesting that I be allowed to adopt the cache. It might have changed in the past month (I know there have been several updates in the past few weeks), but if not, and if the system is throwing error messages your way, have the current owner try that link.

I think people tend to be more lenient on miles for TBs than they are on finds for other cachers. so, so long as you log it as either a DNF or as a "write note", very VERY few people would begrudge you "dipping" the TB in the west coast caches for the miles. just pick it back up and drop it somewhere back in PA. and, make sure to explain why you are doing it. unless the tb's are specifically in a race or challenge, I think the owner would appreciate knowing that their TB made it that far, even if it came right back.

yeah, but we sure coulda used him later. after we hit 300, it was time for some cache maintenance. my hubby's love of nanos = lots of logs to replace and roll and roll and roll and roll...

So if someone has obviously abandoned a cache is it OK to take it over and start maintanining it? that is an EXTREMELY controversial topic in some areas. some will say yes, others will say no. the question is, have they abandonded their cache or not. to some, not being on gc.com everyday is abandonment. for others, not being on once a year, or once every couple of years is. most cachers do not mind if you help out if you see their cache needs something - a log is full and you have a spare log and leave it in the cache (space permitting) - we LOVE people who do that for us, makes us very happy - guilty, but happy. log is wet and you dry it, etc etc etc. but, there are cachers who will send offensive notes because you dared to dry out the inside of their gladware before you re-closed it. even though the last seven logs mentioned it was wet. or that you dropped in a new pen because the old one wouldn't write. just depends on the person. it's such a grey area, that I've become very hesistant to tread there. others have different opinions, I'm sure. when in doubt, check with your local reviewer. they might know better how to contact that person, or if an "official" adoption is in the works, or ... at a minimum, they can guide you on proper etiquette and procedures. that said, if you ever come across a cache that has become litter - where the cache is so far gone that it is now simply trash littering the environment, then anyone can legitimately clean up the mess. geo-trash is still just trash.

ok, so I never really thought that I grew up in a "big town" - my hometown of Wampum, PA has about 600 people in it (2000 if you count the "suburbs" - i.e., anyone who gets mail through the post office, but that's not what locals call Wampum). But hey, let's count big, we'll go with the 2000 number. still not the big city. JAPTKD's hometown has about 200 people in it; if you go with where his post office is (about 5 miles away), then you get up to about 1500. again, not the big city. So, we were caching in Patoka/Princeton today, trying to find a cache, you know the drill. driving south on US 41, mis-communication leads to a more sudden turn than is usual, but not unsafe (and a right turn at a light with a turning lane... etc etc). it also results in a cop turning to follow us. and follow us. and follow us. So, JAPTKD promptly sets the cruise for 1 mph below the speed limit, and we follow the straight-as-an-arrow road (do you guys build anything else around here???) waiting to see what either the cop or the GPS said to do next. so, this contiues, and we stopped at a stop sign and paused, since the GPSr insisted it was at a 45 degree angle - debating - to turn, or not to turn. we didn't pause for too long (there's a cop right behind us after all, didn't want to look "weird", but a longer than normal stop with no one coming). decided to turn. cop follows. lights start flashing. we pull over. wonder if a brakelight is out or something. roll down window rest of the way (btw - wasn't this weekend like PERFECT weather!). cop walks up ok, get ready, this line is classic "so, I noticed that you have Evansville tags..." now, really - is 17 miles allllllll that far to drive in a car??? we were less than 1.4 miles from us 41 - trust me, I had a GPS in my hand, measuring the distance! only about a block from IN 64 (what we *should* have turned on originally). is this so surprising?? do people around here really not travel????? anyway, we explained we were geocaching. got the blank look. tried the "scavenger hunt" synonym. got a head nod. took the license and registration, and got sent on our way. no biggie, except the laugh over the "you have Evansville plates" line...

well, looking through it all (and I gotta admit to feeling a bit guilty on this one, since hubby and I have been caching since last summer, but newbie is all in the eye of the beholder, right?) I think I'm going to go with Sissy & CR's stencil (see link to their site above). Thanks Geo-Froggy for sending it to me. one of the main reasons we were interested in the stencil is that we live along the banks of the Ohio. yesterday, minor flooding (about an inch or two in the streets). we're new to this part of Indiana, but the locals say this will be a pretty consistent event (2-5 days a week) from now til June or July= sigh. ammo cans are all pretty good and relatively dry (gladware caches, not so happy, but we don't use them much), but the stickers don't fend so well after getting wet repeatedly. I'm hoping the paint will do a bit better. Based on the expert's ideas above, though, I think I'll forgo the "just use card stock idea". (when someone knows what they are talking about talks, I figure it makes sense to listen) hubby has access to decent level plastics that we could form into the stencil, and that are oil-insoluble. Thanks everyone for your help. Hopefully others can use a stencil as well if they want one, or maybe got a new idea on how to label their caches! (now to go dry out some ammocans...)

To get the "fancy" link, go to the particular post you're interested in. The top line of it has a link called "Posted" (right before the date/time of the post). Left-clink that, and a box will pop up with the url of that post; copy it with ctrl-C. thanks!

Deermark, we know we know - you have a life (and with the beautiful weather we had yesterday, if yours was at all similar, hopefully your life got to include some caching!). But, ... any more news on the next trailmix? we have the weekend of March 18th marked on the calendar, but weren't sure if more details were forthcoming...

no problem. glad to be able to help

it's ok if you still have the TB in your inventory, it's actually really easy to fix. go to the page for the CACHE, not for the TB. you need to log a visit for the cache. I know - you already did that. normally when you log your "find", you'll do this, but you can also do it as a "write note" option. do that this time to get it all squared away. click "log your visit" highlight "write note" type in something about dropping off the travel bug BEFORE you click submit, look at the bottom of the screen, on the left. you should see a box where you can highligh the TB. highlight it, and then click submit, and it will "drop" the TB into the cache when it posts your note.

Also, sometimes, no matter what you do, your accuracy will be bad. if so, just say so in the listing. that way, if I go look for the cache, I know that you had bad reception, so I know that I shouldn't just rely on the GPSr - I need to go a bit broader in the search. And, keep an eye out. You can state in the listing to "feel free to post coords" and some people will. There are people out there who are REALLLLLLY good at marking spots - they'll let you know where they found your cache. Then you can average that in with what you had.

well, I'm in the process of planning an event cache (my first will be held in February), but we're having it at a Golden Corral. There had been an event there last fall, so it was easy for directions (right off of an interstate, so also easy for out-of-towners). Price was right for people who were eating. I spoke with the cachers who'd planned the other event, and they said to just give the restaurant a call to book a space, that it was no big deal, but I felt a bit weird doing that, so I just swung by after work one day. Took about 5 minutes to chat with the supervisor, make sure there would be enough space, that we'd have a semi-private area, etc. it was actually really easy. and, gave me time to check coords.

It was a beautiful day, so we were planning on going geocaching in Indiana - but we live in Evansville. and our closest unfound cache was in Kentucky. so we went there. And, I have a neat story, that I thought all the ISQ folks might like. it's really really weird to be searching for a cemetery cache in Kentucky, and to look around, and realize that you are staring at your great, great, great, great, great, great uncle's grave (keep in mind, almost my entire family lives in Pennsylvania) I know, you are thinking she's crazy, but really, how many Latrence and Matilda's are there who are married to each other? (and who were born in 1808 and 1810 and in the right months with the right middle and last names and living in Kentucky). I'm gonna check with my parents, but I seriously think I found some of my relatives' graves today. My branch of the family just knew that side had moved to Kentucky. see, there IS a good reason for cemetery caches. plus, the cache was a nice, and tasteful, memorial to a revolutionary war soldier.

Can you post a picture of one of the cans so I can see what you are talking about? I think geofroggy knew what I meant, but since his caches are great, I'll do my best... things to leave in a cache thread this is just one example, I've seen them in some of his other posts as well... (sorry - no idea how to do the fancy link where it starts you out partway down the posts on the linked thread; just scroll til you see a bunch of pics and look for ammo cans)

Wasn't he the photographer in Alaska who assumed two juvenile grizzlies were just happily playing just before they turned on him? Salvelinus He was an ex druggie whose brain was burnt. He thumbed his nose at "the rules" for years. Here is our current discussion of his assinine behavior. http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=120655 yeah - now that one's just being stupid.

It is exactly that exclusive ability (the ability to reason and communicate verbally) which make humans think that animals are experiencing the same emotions and feeling as humans. You assume because you feel anxious, fear, etc... then animals must. That assumption is totally emotion based and not factual. You will not find ANYTHING in SCIENTIFIC research that says so. I would expect a vetenarian or zookeeper to think as you do since they only deal with animals taken from their natural environment and forced to adjust to a human world (some would even call that cruel). But a trained biologist and researcher, such as myself, who makes it a career to study animal populations and behavoirs in their natural environment would not agree with you. You may have the last word since we are off topic. Salvelinus apparently not one trained in identifying emotional or neurological responses though. should you want the references, a quick medline search produced more than 4700 references verifying clear, incontrovertible proof of anxiety responses bases on neurochemical responses in "lower" mammals. biologists need to leave the psychology to the psychologists. animals feel pain. if you cut a dog, it bleeds, and it hurts. it might not have the same awareness as you have of that pain, but it experiences a physiological pain. the thing is - that is all beside the point. a GOOD trapper isn't hurting the animals. stressing them out? who knows. but not hurting. certainly not hurting more than the alternatives. So, while I will FIRMLY disagree on scientific grounds with your erroneous claims that animals cannot feel emotions, since we've known that they do for more than 100 years (Pavlov proved that one conclusively a looooong time ago, and he wasn't even the first - search past the salivating studies, you'll get there), it doesn't matter - the traps are not "dangerous" or "bad" or "evil" yes, when you kill an animal, it hurts it, and *gasp* it dies. but yep - that's what killing means. and there are times when we, as humans, decide that that is what is best for us. keep in mind that we are not the only animals to make these "decisions" (and here I AM being anthropomorphic). The lion decides to kill its prey. It decides that it (the lion) is more important than it's prey. Sorry - but the real world is NOT like "The Lion King". There is a Food Chain. We just happen to be near the top of it. Not at the top of it, but closer to the top than the bottom. personally, I'd rather be at the top than the bottom. do I hunt? no. do I support idiots who go out drunk shooting at anything that moves? of course not. do I respect the right to hunt? of course. (ok, I'll climb off my soapboxes now)

overall, I'd agree with all of the above. only other thing I'd add is to keep in mind that you might need to go back and check on it when conditions change - both weather and other. examples from caches I've had: penn power waited 70 years to mow their right-of-way, then decided to plow it and the neighboring lands - oops (nice lawsuit from those landowners, thankfully my dad noticed and saved my cache) had to go back to replace. sigh. we now live in Evansville. tornados will do a number on a cache. so will the Ohio river. it's flooding slightly tonight. I'll be out checking caches tomorrow, particularly the one down lowest and nearest the river. why wait for complaining logs?

I've also seen it logged as a "grab" when one cacher directly hands it to another cacher - with no cache involved. If you find it in the correct cache, you'll want to log it as "retrieved from ______ cache" (the default option that will pop up in the TB logging page). the most important part of getting a TB is to log it through the TB tracking system. don't just mark it in your online log. make sure you click on the "track travel bugs" and the "find it, log it" for the one you found. that way its owner knows where it is. and, when you "place" it into a cache, pay attention when you log that cache. before you click submit, make sure you highlighted the TB, so that it gets "dropped" into it's new home.

it might vary area to area, but near us, most cachers seem to log what they take and what they leave (unless they are TNLNSL types - which is also fine). sometimes we'll forget paper, or think we marked it in the PDA and didn't, and just forget what we traded, so, um, uh, ... but overall yeah, we log it in the logbook and in the online log. the exception seems to be sig items. they're often not mentioned in either log for some reason. one piece of advice that I learned the hard way: if you pick up travel bugs and are going to more than one cache along the way, make sure to WRITE DOWN the TB # somewhere. You always want to log the TB in and out of caches, both in the logs and in the TB pages. One day we picked up a TB in one cache and dropped it off in another before going back home. had to drive back 27 miles the next day to re-find the TB # for the bug, since I'd forgotten to write down it's #! (I know, coulda just written to the owner or something, but I felt responsible)

great - thanks!!!

ok, after seeing several pics of briansnat's caches and their contents around, I just gotta ask - where do you find the stencil that says "offical geocache" to put on the outside? In the pics, it doesn't look like a sticker, it clearly looks like a stencil. but I don't see one on Groundspeak, and I'm not talented enough to take my old alphabet set and slowly paint each letter at a time in a straight line... is there somewhere to get one?

I'll not steal team bubbymac's thread, so I'll just send you an e-mail. we're wayyyyy down in the Southwest corner.

so, did she ever get a FTF?

If you are willing to travel over toward New Castle, PA, there are a few, that I've never been up for trying, that are supposedly well worth it. They are all in the McConnell's Mills area, and most have a 4* terrain rating. From personal experience (pre-caching days) growing up in the area, it is beautiful scenery, even in the winter (that's why Wendell August makes sooooo many items with the McConnell's Mills emblems on them). However, I must be honest, I've not found these caches (i live in Indiana - they're a bit far for me), so I can't speak for the caches themselves, just for the North Country Trail and for McConnell's Mills. Plus, I figure the 4* terrain hints that just maybe... McConnell's Mills Acrophobia Crow Knob Sippery Rock I know that these are a bit farther away, so if you are interested in more, just check out puppyman's bookmark lists on the cache pages. It's a pretty straight shot straight across from Akron on 80, so it shouldn't be a bad drive, but might be further than you had in mind. The only thing I can promise is that they ARE remote.

I'm going to jump in in an attempt to defend what I *think* Mr. Car 54 meant. What you might want to try to do is to define the locations where your group will normally MEET. not where the cachers will be from, but at least the areas where you'll hold meet and greets and other social events. over time, if you hold caching events that involve more of a hiking/major event, you might venture outside of those "boundaries". But, to set up a sense of "we're cachers who get together in the following counties". ok, I'm re-reading that, and realizing that I'm not clear. So, I'm re-trying with an example. Right now, JAPTKD and I are attempting to start a spin-off group of INDIGO for the Evansville area. We're encouraging ANYONE to join, no matter where they live (all we need is an e-mail address or some way of letting you know of future get-togethers). But, we clarify in the first event that most events will likely be held in the Evansville area, at least for now. So, while the cachers may be from all over, the group events will be within this range. I think that's was what Car 54 meant -- by picking where you'll have parties or whatnot, you let people decide if they'll likely be able to come and join you. edited for typos