ZingerHead

Adventure. Exercise. Meeting new people. Get to buy cool gadgetry. I think that people who don't put parking coordinates on caches just don't understand that I like to hike, not drive around, frustrated, trying to find a place to park. No parking coordinates = a lot less fun. It's flippin' dangerous to drive around a strange area, looking around for parking spot when you SHOULD be looking at the road. But then this thread isn't about that, now is it?

This site requires users to enter their own stats - it doesn't seem to be as popular as the other site.

Could you make it a multi? Just have the coordinates located on the buoy pointing to a land-based final cache? Designed correctly, the finder might not even need to retrieve the cache in order to view the numbers, or at the very least they wouldn't need to reel in a container to proceed with the find. Maybe there is a question that can only be answered by viewing the buoy, like "how many red rings are on the object located at xxx.xxx?" You give multiple choice answers to that question, or you base the next coordinates on some multiple of the number of rings. I know in CT we have a few caches located on remote islands in the ocean that you can only reach by boat - adding a multi-component on the water would be pretty cool. As far as where to place them, I would feel uncomfortable dragging up a buoy in a field of lobster pots. GPS isn't so accurate that cachers could be guaranteed of pulling up the right buoy every time. It's just too easy for this activity to be mistaken for something else. And it gives cover to those who actually ARE vandalizing or poaching on commercial fishermen's locations. There have to be plenty of lobster-free areas appropriate for a cache of this nature. I know "it's a free country" and all, but what's the point of inviting conflict when there's no good reason to do so? Are there any rules for locating something like this in the ocean? By this I mean is it OK to set up your own permanent buoys or anchor floats without violating some sort of regulation?

So all I need to justify and properly use my $98 flashlight is years of martial arts training. What am I up to now -- $3998? Such a bargain!

Palm m130 - next to impossible to see the screen in bright sunlight unless you turn it just so, so the sun reflects back through and backlights the text on the screen. Despite its flaws, it is still much much better than dragging a pile of paper printouts on cache trips. And it doesn't get soggy in the rain . I use GPXSpinner and Plucker, just because they still work just fine. I have GSAK, but haven't taken the time to make the switch.

108 miles for one smiley, and it's a series of drive up micros? I understand why you want to do it, but as a single geocache I would avoid it myself. If you can place a micro at each stage, why not make each cache an individual find? Then have a bonus find for those who log each of the 23 (or more) hides in the series? Maybe hide one digit from the bonus stage coordinates in different micros along the series, and a key that tells you how to arrange the numbers in another micro. That way folks can break it off in chunks, and you won't have as big a maintenance headache. You could even post the names of those who achieved "uber" status on the bonus cache page to foster some friendly competition or give recognition to those who made the effort to find all the stages. But as-proposed I think you'd find yourself with a lot of maintenance and very little traffic.

That's one smart Santa . Cripes, $98 will buy you a decent GPS and a four cell Maglite (a real one) to boot! If I thought for a minute I'd wind up having to defend myself with something, I'd bring a knife. Or a gun. Or a big stick. Pretty much anything other than a dinky little flashlight! I could probably do more damage whacking somebody upside the head with my 60CS than with that little pipsqueak lighbulb. $98 almost makes sense since they make stuff for the military, those same folks who brought us $400 toilet seats . I do have to admit those little flashlights are pretty cool looking though.

Can you explain the point of waiting so long before posting your finds? I know a few folks who do this, and it mystifies me. I don't have a problem with the practice, it's your way to play. But I don't "get it". If you are going to record the log somehow, in a notebook or what have you, aren't you putting in twice the logging effort? For me, I log them as soon as I get home before short term memory loss kicks in .

One reason I like hiding offset caches is that they pose more effort for would-be vandals. Not that I'm paranoid or anything

I used to hike/bike/camp/fish quite a bit before GC. Now I find that most of my outdoor trips have a geocache attached to them, or are repeat trips to places I found while caching. I like to hike in a few different spots and I visit them repeatedly, like the NH White Mountains. Caching is different - a new place every time.

Put me on the side of "not a problem". Keep the log. Check up on your cache to determine the extent of the overgrowth. Calm down. This is much ado about nothing. If people don't do your cache the way you expected them to, so what? I've got a cache with a recommended hiking route that is rather strenuous. One of the first finders described how he drove up a different way and had an easy .1 mile amble to the cache. Delete his log? Of course not! He used his ingenuity to reduce the necessary effort. Signed the log, got his smilie. End of discussion. If a few branches were cut away because the foliage has "exploded" as the area recovers from a fire, so what? After a year of not-founds I can easily see how the brush could have overwhelmed the cache site and forced the finders to clear a way in. How else would they get to the cache container? Do you need to maintain a path to your cache? No, but it seems then that you should expect some aggressive bushwacking to occur if you don't keep the cache in an accessible condition. And I'd take a look at the site before jumping to conclusions about the extent of the damage. Here in CT there was a small brouhaha about "destroyed stone walls" near a cache. People got upset and accusations were made. Then somebody posted pictures - oops! just a couple of rocks out of place, stone wall looks fine. Relax.

Even 500 caches loaded into your GPS is a lot of caching for 2 weeks. This summer we travelled from CT to ME to Nova Scotia, and I picked a few locations where the wife and daughters could shop, and loaded caches near there. Posting a request in the appropriate forum might get you some suggestions for roadside micro type hides if you are looking to boost your find count. In CT there is the HONEY WOLVES Road Warrior series, and CraigInCT has been creating a bunch of park and ride micros too. These are very easy to pick up as you drive along the interstate. If you pick a few spots along the way to concentrate your caching you could load 50 caches or so for each spot. If there is a particular kind of cache you want to hunt, post that in the forum and you might get some suggestions. Be sure to indicate your planned route so folks can make suggestions. I don't know of any way to download waypoints from a palm to a GPSR. But a 32Mb Palm would certainly hold a lot of .gpx data, so if you had to you could punch in the coordinates manually. But unless you are going on a "cache intensive" vacation, I think a little planning and research would let you thin out the cache herd and load up 500 potential hunts that would keep you plenty busy on vacation.

Here in CT we have two monthly events, and both take place in a bar. We start them at 7pm, and they run to whenever. Food and drink are available, which makes them an excellent and easy way to meet local cachers. We have a raffle, we celebrate milestones, and of course we talk about caching. One of the events moves to a different location each month, within the Hartford area. This gives everyone a new smilie each month, and we've also taken to hiding a new cache nearby to double the fun. We also have bigger events throughout the year. Some of the best have been held at state campgrounds, so people can stay overnight. During the day we hunt caches, have a big picnic lunch, hunt some more caches, then hang out around the campfire trading war stories. It makes for a great weekend. Because the events are so long, you usually have a chance to mix up the socializing and the cache hunting. And the campgrounds are typically near water, so we have planted many "hydro caches" that are only accessible by boat. I've seen both sides of the socializing vs. caching argument. I tend to not socialize as much as some, so I like having caches to hunt. But I cannot argue that caching should take precedence over socializing. If I were to plan an event I would plant caches for those who prefer it, but make sure to have plenty of time set aside for socializing as well. Planning a single time to eat is usually a good way to ensure that everybody is in one place at one time.

I thought I read somewhere that if you don't open your PQs regularly their delivery will get shut off, as an effort to reduce the load on the system. I've noticed similar things with my PQs, but resetting them seemed to put things back on track. Give it a day or two and see if things return to normal.

I like them, but not a steady diet of them. I've done multis that took multiple days to finish because I ran out of time (14 hours total on one). I've done one where you couldn't "see" the coordinates - you had to read them by feel. I've done multis that required a compass, waypoint projection, magnifying glasses, ultraviolet light, and a mirror. Multis take more time, but when hidden correctly they are a lot of fun. If every cache was a magnetic key holder hidden in a Wal-mart lot this game would get stale very very quickly. I am just glad that there are bunch of very creative cache hiders in my area that hide excellent multi caches that are a joy to find.

Simple! Smilies = Life itself.

Multi caches might be tricky without a wireless link to your laptop . I'm not so sure using Google Earth is any less hardware intensive than GPS. After all, you are still using billions of dollars of military hardware to figure out where the little box is hiding. For a different challenge you could give orienteering or letterboxing a go.

BLESS YOU SADIE!!! It's so true - not everyone is blessed with the gift to write a wonderfully ebullient log about every find. I figure my rather terse logs are there to make the truly gifted loggers' entries shine .

Abandon all hope of ever finishing all those home projects you've been thinking about. And start saving for gas money .

I'll bet they guy (or gal) who's minting these things doesn't think geocoins are stupid . And is geocoin collection any weirder than following an electronic pointer through the woods to find worthless hidden stuff?

You might want to also post in the Midwest forum for more info on local clubs or organizations.

Why wait ? Caches are harder to find in the snow, but any reason to get out of the house during the cold months is a good reason.

It depends on the quality - of the cache, and of the mood of the finder. There are days when the last thing I want is some 4/4 blockbuster multi to challenge me - and on those days a magnetic keyholder behind a guardrail is just what the doctor ordered. Other days that 4/4 monster multi is just the thing. Even in the woods a micro can be appropriate given the proper rating, decent coordinates, and a satellite lock. Especially if the hide has some new twist to it - check out Blind Man's Bluff for a cache with devilishly clever "micros" in the woods. I have to agree with you though that if the only caches coming on line are uninspired hides in uninteresting places it's hard to stay interested in the game.

Depends. I like the electronic compass, and use it once in a while. But I carry a plain old magnetic compass with me in the woods because, well, it's batteries never go dead . I've come across several caches where you have to "project" a waypoint along a certain heading for a certain distance. With the electronic compass you just point the GPS in the right direction, lock the heading, punch in the distance, and it walks you right to that point. The downside of the compass? It sucks the life out of batteries (you can turn it off) and it has to be recalibrated (easy to do) each time you change the batteries. The altimeter is a novelty as far as I'm concerned. I used it once hiking up Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, just to see how accurate it was (pretty darn accurate) but I haven't found much of a use for it otherwise. Maybe if I take up parachuting...... And if you think it would be cool to see what your altitude is on a plane trip, it won't help you. It measures atmospheric pressure - in a pressurized cabin you'll probably see 10,000 feet when you're really at 33,000. HTH

One suggestion, to avoid frustration, is to stick to "traditional" hides with a "regular" sized container. And stick to difficulty levels of 1 or 2 to begin with. A "3" difficulty "micro" sized cache is designed to be hard to find even for an experienced cacher. Have fun!