GeoStars

I put together a puzzle cache but listed it as traditional by mistake. When I go to the edit page, the cache type is greyed out and I can't change it. Is there a way to change it without redoing the entire cache page? Thanks!

Thanks Rick. I didn't mean that they had to be virtuals, just figured that would be most likely in the areas we are going to be. Can you point out any cache that is close to the Space Center? We won't have a lot of time but would to get in one or two... Thanks!

We will be visiting both of these places next week and would love to be able to find some caches while we're there. I know that virtuals are most likely and that is fine. If anyone could point us to some caches in or near these areas, we'd be most appreciative! Thanks in advance!! The GeoStars Team from Indiana

Well we survived driving in Chicago and only got lost a couple of times. As we had figured, we had little time for geocaching but did get a chance to walk to cachew nut's Passing the Buck cache. We had a great stroll along the lake shore after leaving the aquarium. We really enjoyed Chicago and are already planning a return trip. Thanks again for the suggestions! The GeoStars Team

Thanks for the replies. I printed out a couple of virtuals since are time will be VERY limited. We're actually going on a Girl Scout outing but will an hour or so after the aquarium before we have to head back home. The water taxi sounds cool! I'm hoping we can make a return trip (less scheduled!) with just our family. I've always been afraid to try to drive in Chicago, maybe this trip will take some of the apprehension away. Or confirm my fears... Thanks again!

O.K., this is short notice, I know. We're leaving tomorrow for Chicago and will be visiting Shedd Aquarium. Are there any caches within walking distance of it? I'll only be back online once before leaving but if I get any responses, I'll check back and let you know how our searches went. I tried to search using the zip code but it came up with WAY too many finds and I wasn't able to narrow it down enough to be useful. This will be a quick trip but I'd love to pick up a cache or two along the way. Thanks in advance! The GeoStars Team

Well, if you can move it further east, I could try to pick it up and move it on to Garrett unless you were planning on doing so yourself. I'll add it to my watch list. For *Paws*itraction, is there a cache you're wanting to get it to, a person you want it passed on to or just a picture at the Garrett FD? Are they having a celebration and if so, what date/time? I can't make any promises as far as getting it to Garrett in the proper time frame (I will try if I get it picked up) but I could get it a visit at a local fire station as I'm a volunteer FF as well as a medic with two county EMS services. Would the TB be interested in visiting the EMS services as well? I will try to check the forums but it would be helpful if any responses could be sent through our GeoStars profile.

I would have to go with Shades State park. We love the trails and it's much less crowded than Turkey Run which is nearby. There were two caches there last time we were there and several others nearby. Runner-up would be Clifty Falls SP. Again, awesome trails. I don't know about caches there since the last time we were there, geocaching didn't exist!

I too, thought of going directly to the source as far as looking for GPS unit donations. Don't know if Garmin would be willing to help out but it's definitely worth a shot. We have a yellow E-trex which was inexpensive ($99 including shipping) and has served us well for over 130 finds. Someday we plan to upgrade but we'll never give up our little E-trex. As far as tying in geocaching with teaching, I think it's a great idea. We homeschool our kids so our *class* is conisderably smaller but we've used geocaching to provide all types of hands-on learning as well as a fun way to get in some exercise. Good luck with your grants!

Well, our Toledo trip is now history and all-in-all, we picked up 7 finds out of 10 hunts. Well, actually 12 hunts since two we tried twice, one resulting in a find on the second try, the other double-no finds. We were very impressed with the Metroparks that we visited. Also got to visit the zoo (did the cache there), went fossil digging at Fossil Park (cache there, but was a no find for us), took a short drive to see Cabela's (wow!) and ate at Tony Packos. It was a nice extended weekend trip and we'll probably be back since we now have a relative in the area. Thanks for all the suggestions, we will probably try the ones we didn't get to sometime in the future.

Thanks again for the replies. If we do take the camper (still in discussion) we won't be pulling it when we're looking for caches. The truck is pretty big (long wheel base) and can be a pain to park in small areas. Sounds like we'd be O.K. with the suggested caches w/o the camper. For Team Tigger, you mean there's worse caches than Fuzzy caches?! We don't get down to FW as much as we used to but have been talking about teaming back up with Team ABC and tackling Clue. We had such a good time with them on PPP that we thought we needed another go. They don't cache much and log even less but they enjoy the tough ones. I think we're going to team up for a Toledo puzzle cache since they'll be there with us. Our Cedar Point trip is over and there were no caches in the park. No big deal, just didn't want to find out afterwards that there was! We had a great time, it's definitely the best amusement park in the midwest!!

Thanks for the suggestions. We're definitely going to do the zoo cache. We had already planned on going to the zoo and the cache looks like fun. As far as the other suggestion, how big of a truck is too big? We haven't decided for sure but are leaning towards taking our camper which will mean we'll have our full-size quad cab p/u. The cache look interesting but this truck is a bear to park.

Have a couple of short excursions planned and we are looking for caches in the areas. First place of interest is Cedar Point. We will be extremely limited on time and were just curious if there were any caches actually located *in* the park. We found a virtual once at Busch Gardens in Florida. Second area is Toledo. We'll have bit more time and would be interested in caches in unique/kid-friendly caches. Our kids can hike so they don't have to be park-n-grab types, just an area that the kids might find interesting. Thanks in advance for any suggestions! The GeoStars Team

Not sure I completely understand what you're going for but I'll post a few caches that we found to be in particularly inspiring places. I'll start with one in the western UP of MI. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...&log=y&decrypt= Another UP cache further east. The cache has been archived but since you're looking more for location than caches (at least that's my understanding) I thought I'd include it. There is a tradition cache very close to this one and another within a few miles so you could check out the place and still get a couple of "finds" for the trip. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...48-95dc4cb203e4 Another archived cache but again the area is very unique and worthwhile to visit. It's not so much the views on this one but the history and the idea of trying to create a perfect community. There are other caches in the area so you could visit and still add finds. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...11-a2da2f65d8ac Hope these are somewhat along the lines of what you're looking for.

At one of the EMS services I work for, we have a GPS in one of the ambulances. Dispatch for that service is also upgrading their computer system so they will be able to either get coordinates based on an address or get a location based on GPS coordinates. The other service I work for already has this system. I think this will become very common now that many new cars are coming out GPS systems on board.

AEMT here (similar to EMT-I but not as many tricks in our bag). Plan on going paramedic next year. BTW, we now carry an Epi-pen and Epi-pen Jr. after a scary encounter with some sort of ground-dwelling stinging buggers last fall in KY. No serious reactions but 3 out of 5 of us ended up with multiple stings and my then 6yo son did end up with hives. We already carried liquid Benedril. We fortunately have an understanding family doctor that knows our lifestyle and penchant for hanging out in remote areas and she had no problem giving us a script for the Epi-pens...

We've had lots of near-misses, potentially bad situations including snakes, spiders, drug-dealers (urban caches worry us much more than wilderness ones!), hidden drop-offs, etc. Our recent encounter with yellow jackets was probably the one that freaked me out the worst. We cache as a family and were 45 minutes into our hike when we were attacked. And I do mean attacked. The yellow jackets were extremely aggressive and followed us back up the trail for about a tenth of a mile. My 3yo daughter was stung twice, I was stung twice and my 6yo son was stung once. We were in a pretty remote area with no cell phone reception and had no idea where the closest hospital would be. Fortunately, none of us stung had a reaction but I did discuss the incident with our family doctor and now have a presciption for both an adult and pediatric epi-pen. We do a lot of hiking and camping in remote areas and although I doubt we'll ever need to use the epi-pens, I feel better having them available. We also carry Benedryl and other first-aid equipment. BTW, we did find the cache!

I don't make it to the forums very often and just now saw this. I'm going to attempt to get you a check via snail mail. Hopefully it'll make it in time for the drawing, if not, just pass it along to Make a Wish anyway as it's a very worthy organization. Thanks for putting this together!

If it's anywhere in the area that we can get it, we can get it directly into the hands of Big Mike. I'm on call all day the 9th so a direct meet would be iffy at best but if you put it in a local cache or Team Tigger gets it, we could definitely help it along it's journey. GeoMedic - team leader of GeoStars Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.

Heck, I LIVE within 10 miles of the 80/90 toll road and yeah, it kinda freaked me out when they were seaching our county. It does exit onto a two lane road here (Howe) but none of the other things seem to fit. I know this county pretty well and nothing of the description rings a bell except the two-lane. My other thought, how out-of-your-mind do you have to be to not only murder your children, but not even remember what STATE you buried them in?! I hope they're found, if for no other reason than they deserve a proper burial. Too sad. GeoMedic - team leader of GeoStars Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.

My 2 cents, FWIW. We were paying members of GC.com for one year. We joined mainly for the opportunity of member caches and to support an activity we enjoy. When the member dues came around for year #2, however, we were watching the budget a little closer and making some cuts. We still enjoy geocaching but found that none of the member services really offered us anything more than we were getting with the *free* membership. There was only 1 member's only cache within 100 miles and we never did go search it. All the other stuff, we never used. What we DID enjoy was Dan's stats page. Were GC.com (or anyone else) to include a stats page as part of a membership, we would reconsider being paying members. Again, just my 2 cents... GeoMedic - team leader of GeoStars Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.

Hi Big Mike. We're a long way from Muncie but have been to Portland a time or two. Well, maybe even more than that. Probably will be back sometime. Probably will even see you when we do return. One thing's for sure, we'll be searching out your caches when we're there. I'll let you guess who we are and where we're from. Bet you can figure it out...

Just got back from a weekend get-away that of course included finding a few caches and found the latest issue of Electric Consumer in our mailbox. We knew immediately from the picture that there must be a geocaching article inside! Glad to see geocaching getting some good exposure, the more the merrier! This has been a family hobby for almost 2 years now and we're nearing our 100th find. Nothing close to what those featured in the article have done but it's something I'm sure we'll enjoy for a long time to come. Very nice article in a publication that we always enjoy reading. We're LaGrange county REMC consumers, BTW. GeoMedic - team leader of GeoStars Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.

Welcome to Indiana! Always good to get new cachers in the area. Looking forward to seeing your signatures in the log books! New caches are great too... GeoMedic - team leader of GeoStars Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.

Perfectly Perplexing Puzzles was GREAT fun. We teamed up with my sister and her son and it still took a month to finish. And we were FIRST FINDERS!!! Unfortunately a killer work schedule (and the hour+ drive to Ft. Wayne) has kept us from tackling CCC and/or EV Perelandra. One of these days... GeoMedic - team leader of GeoStars Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.