FishieFive

We always cache with our two kids (soon to be 3 kids). They are 7 and 2. Our 2 year old likes throwing rocks, so generally he's happy. Our 7 year old likes making the find and getting the swag. We carry a bag with a LOT of good quality swag so that she can trade for whatever she wants. Like others have said, we generally avoid micros. When we "go caching" we try to find a local trail that has 4-5 caches and some other points of interest, like a river or pretty flowers. Otherwise we mostly stick to those in town that are park & grabs. And we take it slow...over 18 months of caching we're just now coming up on 200 finds. Kids are great excuses for just about anything if a muggle comes around! Once we were surprised by a runner when we'd just pulled out the cache. With no time to hide it, our daughter threw her jacket over it, struck a pose, and I took a picture. LOL The runner commented as she ran past "Great spot for a picture!" We were totally out in the middle of nowhere with no earthly reason to be standing halfway up a hillside.

LOL at some of these posts. We look a lot like muggles...we cache with our kids, one of whom is either in a stroller, trying to get out of one, screaming to be in one, or aimlessly wandering around us. The little guy is a great excuse for anything. Our 6 year old loves to have her picture taken. Since we use our phones to cache, if a muggle happens by, she strikes a pose and I take a pic. We can get away doing anything just about anyplace with the kids. If I see someone who's caching, I always introduce myself. I've met some fabulous cachers this way. But genuine muggles...we do just about anything to stay secretive. Otherwise, as someone else mentioned, it takes too long to explain and takes time away from caching.

We do the swag thing because we cache with our kids. It's important to them so it's important to us. I always carry a good selection of quality swag items (not necessarily expensive, but things that my kids like trading for) and sometimes we'll toss in a few extra into a cache that's full of lousy swag. We live in the wet part of Oregon so a lot of the caches are wet. That's normal and to be expected here, it's just hard to keep anything dry. So some caches we find are pretty gross. Those we just sign the log and move on; no sense crying over spoiled swag.

Poor Bad Duck and friends. That couldn't have made their day great...

We have an iPhone 4 and have used it exclusively for caching. It's very accurate and usually we're right on top of the cache once we get to GZ. We use the official Geocaching app.

It worked just fine today, so it must have been just a glitch the first day that I tried it. I didn't do anything differently today, but glad it worked.

What happens when you try? Is there an error message? No, it just resets the page back to blank.

I took some photos of my geocoin before releasing it, but for some reason the photos will not upload to the coin's gallery. I've tried over and over, different size photos, different file types, etc. Am I doing something wrong or is there a glitch? http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=3585560

I think it's a fun idea. I would love to find a beloved pet TB. We'd for sure move it along. If you do it, include lots of pictures on the TB page so that cachers can see who they're moving along.

Since we have kids that are bored with micros, we usually skip that cache type. HOWEVER, we realized that a local cacher who hides a lot of micros makes them a LOT of fun. He hides them in creative containers and his hides are almost never evil. We've gotten to where we love finding his micros. The best one so far was hidden in a huge plastic spider just above eye level in a tree. I hate spiders and when I found it, I screamed like a banshee. Then I made my husband get it. I loved it! Just goes to show you should never judge by cache size!

I found condoms once. (Thankfully new in package) I was with my 6 year old, so I removed them. We added extra swag to make up for what I took out.

I've never been injured, but I've gotten into stinging nettles a few times and I got a wicked case of poison oak my very first day. I was too excited searching for the cache to be looking for poison oak. My mistake. That's the cache where our profile photo was taken, incidentally.

We cache as a family of four. And we're Christians so we picked the ichthus (or fishie) as our moniker. FishieFour. And with two little ones, it just fits us!

Yes, but I'd recommend using a bit first to see where you can get good coordinates. We use our iPhones exclusively for caching. Near cities, our coords are spot on every time, so we feel safe using it to hide caches near town. But out in the mountains (trees, elevation differences, etc) the coords are more jumpy so we wouldn't use ours to hide a cache in a place like that. It doesn't have anything to do with phone service or how many bars, but rather the terrain, in my experience.

I've found awesome caches by fairly new COs and I've found lousy caches from COs with 1000s of finds. We placed our first hide the same day we found our 100th cache.

We once found a cache full of condoms. Thank goodness they were new. I removed and tossed them.

I wear Keen waterproof hiking shoes. It rains a lot here so waterproof is a must for me. I also have Vasque hiking boots that are fab. I wear them when I know there'll be a lot of mud, standing water, etc.

My husband and I worked together in the woods for a couple of years. Back then, and now, we walk fairly close together and hold branches, at least those at face level. Easier to chat that way, I guess.

We use this one and LOVE it. It's exactly perfect for us at this stage of our caching (just crossed 100 finds). We carry 50-75 trade items of various sizes (we have a 6 yo so we almost always trade for something), log sheets, baggies, pens, toilet paper (again, our 6 yo), a small first aid kit, any trackables that we have at the moment, and one pocket that only holds my phone. It will also hold 2 water bottles if we need them, though usually we're not out that long since we have 2 youngsters. I bought it in a Target store for $24 I think.

I love to find nice signature items. Like wood coins, etc. I collect those. The best cache we've found so far was full of really unique (unique for a cache) items for kids. Hawaiian leis, new pack of washable markers, I don't even remember what all. It was awesome. My 6 year old thought she'd died and gone to heaven.

October 27 - we found #100 It was my 35th birthday, so we celebrated by caching (had 7 to find to get to 100), we placed our very first cache, and we put our first geocoin into cache #100. It was an awesome day. Best birthday ever!

Ugh...I've gotten PO twice from caches. The first time was our very first day caching. I was so excited that I forgot to look for PO. I had a terrible case of it, but I was hooked on caching. The second time I was watching for it and I saw it, but must've gotten slapped by a leaf I didn't see. Out here we have PO everywhere, so any non-urban cache is likely to have it nearby.

We use our iPhone 4 exclusively. It usually gets us to within 10 feet of the cache and very often right on top of it. It does bounce some under trees, but usually if I stand still for a minute or two, it finds us. I love the new feature of the app that allows us to save caches so we can access them even without cell service. Bravo!

Kids having to go potty...yeah. Our caching bag has TP in it, but sometimes there's nothing to do but leave. Poison oak. Ugh.... One of my least favorites is when someone has found a Grade A Awesome spot for a cache, then they put a micro there. My only hope is that they're "saving" the space for a really great cache someday. Seems like such a waste of a great spot. And micros in general. We usually skip them, even when we find ourselves 32 feet from GZ by accident (hey, it happens!) My kids hate them, my husband hates them, and if I can't find them in under 5 minutes, then I hate them too. Someone once said that you hate to look for micros but love to find them, that pretty much describes me.

Or when you pull up the covers on light poles "just to see"!