Frodo13

We found our first 27 with internet maps and a good compass, waiting on a slow eBay shipper. There are several who are approaching 750 without GPS. Welcome to the addiction.

As with so many of the groups, its all volunteer. The AGA is no different that other groups, a small group of dedicated committed people spend their free time trying to create a solution to a problem or issue that will be acceptable to a majority. The theads on their site go back for months regarding design ideas, sales ideas, purchase price and so on. In many ways our level of satisfaction with any volunteer endeavor is connected to our participation level. The amazing increase in the collectability of geocoins has reated a catch 22 in many ways. The coins were created to be placed in caches and tracked like Travel Bugs, and yes collected if the person finding them chooses. The placer of a coin in a cache can make a request that the coin travel, but alas it is only a request. It seems in todays climate the coin rarely make it into a cache, unless it is a FTF prize. The AGA will use the proceeds from their coin sales as many other states will, to offset direct costs, not to turn a profit. The sale of coins after that seems to be more profit driven by those individuals who choose to sell. The collectors fall somwhere in between, wanting to add to their collection but with fewer opportunities to find coins in caches must resort to trading or purchase. I have no problem with any of those. I hope their sale make a bunch of money. Heck if they sell a lot of coins to collectors who are not geocachers, thats even better.

Again, but slower.

I sorta confused.

Reading the releases and reviews there seems to be a focus on auto perfromance. Thats ok with each cutting edge technology the tried and true equipment seems to be abit more affordable. I am sure it will be able to handle caching, although there is a noticeable absence of its mention. It looks cool, but how does she handle?

If the camera wasn't too expensive lets make this a test. You might even send the pictures to the camera manufacturer, they love stories about how well their products perfromed. My wife is from Poland, they invented really cold winters. She laughs at all of the winter clothes in the stores here in Alabama. She says how silly we all are. I have spent two Christmas holidays in Poland and there are not words to describe the Siberian wind slicing through your tender parts at 50 MPH when is - 15C. Brrrr seems too tropical. Good luck with the camera

If you can't decide then perhaps your heart isn't committed to either. Or you should simply hold out for a girl who has a nice big set of.. folding topo maps and a nice GPS, if she has a jeep or other 4 wheeler, you might consider getting the ring now. And don't forget the the 4 Cs of diamonds. Good Luck

Another way to get power or recharging into the field was a solar powered battery charging station. I have seen a couple of articles regarding a proposed experiment for through hikers on the AT that would have solar powered charging stations. The stations were self contained similar to those used for temoirary highway control signs along interstate construction areas. The idea looked pretty interesting with the hikers employing a book exchange like arrangement. The base of the station would have an enclosure that would be accessed through a key pad allowing users to exchange exhausted batteries for recharged ones. The batteries were bar coded to help prevent abuses and there were a few others "kinks" that were to be worked out. As I said this was only proposals, but it really caught my attention. It looked like all of the technology was off the shelf. Pretty cool if it catches on.

If someone wants to take a random picture of my sweaty self covered in bug bites and post it on the internet I only request they do a little photoshop manipulation and drop my head on Brad Pitt's body or Angelina Jolie for that matter.

I have three that I am going to place this weekend that are all touching each other on the floor right now so by my calculations the number of caches per square inch at that exact point is 3. Three caches per square inch wins. PS Sadly, I have to disqualify myself as these caches have not been placed or approved, dadgum. Sorry The shame.

Not to be too simplistic, but Travel Bugs are for Traveling. People swap them at cache events like baseball cards so a cache owner moving one along is no sin. It supposed to move. Go for it.

My wife spent considerable time on the Jeep website (over fours hours) reviewing the listings for white TBs. We had been to three caches where the TBs were listed only to find them missing with no log (paper or internet). She discovered over 500 Jeeps were "out of circulation" and she was only counting people who had more than 3 or more Jeeps. I can only surmize the jeeps are the trophys of Geocachers who need some way to measure there skills or something else. She went so far as to send Jeep a nice note listing all of the offenders over a month ago and has not recieved a reply, I don't expect she will. As with all games, there are those who feel its ok for them to break the rules, even if the rules are the unwritten ones of fair play. I am planning on going to our local toy shop and ordering a few Jeeps and painting a few for my bookshelf, that way I will look cool.

Add Alabama to the trackable coin list. Non-member orders will be taken next week and the coins should start showing up in caches a few weeks after. Alacache.com members can pre-order right now. http://alacache.com/modules.php?name=Forum...iewtopic&t=1712

(Please forgive my american accent here)....I believe the answer to your question is NO. Unless the crystal in question is on a keyring attached to a new Garmin GPS with a fresh set of batteries. As far as the devining rods, I use those to retrieve my cat's toys from under furniture.

It hardly seems necessary to condem rat poision, or any substance that could cause harm to unsuspecting people, kids, geocachers, etc. Even if the poison was outside the cache to "protect" it, its bad news. I think reporting it as well as posting a note on the cache log page warning people about it is a good idea. I emptied a bottle of kids toy bubbles that had leaked inside a waterproof cache container and ruined everything, seems sorta mild in comparison.

This makes it much more challanging. Great idea. I would slightly expand that to be any 100 year multiple 200, 300 etc. Only additional point is that there a many, many that have year and month of death listed. My vote for century/ millennium headstones.

I like the Waymarking page and in fact have posted a watertower over a week ago during the quiet beta testing. I can understand the cachers who feel their opportunity to log virtuals as caches will be diminished, untimately reducing their opportunity to increase there find numbers. The measuring stick of geocaching, for some, not all, is the number of finds. I also know the for me, a great hike or interesting hide overshadows lots of finds. (parking lot micros are an entirely different subject, so I will save my comments for another thread). That's me and obviously not everyone, as we can only speak for ourseleves. Good luck with Waymarking, I will be adding more this weekend.

We have come up with a 2" button that we leave in some caches that are attached to a micro-biner and an aluminum whistle. It has our logo and slogan with a big fat cat print in the middle. So far we have gotten a few kudos. Just takes some creativity, and its way better than old McDonald's happy meal toys. Like our adopted slogan says, "Imagination is more improtant than knowledge" - Albert Einstein

Another vote for the "Like 'em" camp. Like others we have taken some time to design our SIG cards and we leave them in the pages of log books. I am not sure how I would come down on a card only cache, I think we should let people add/take what feels right to them, Geocaching has evolved that way so far.

Please consider another item for your cache. I have cleaned three ruined caches in the last week where some cachers placed sealed liquid items inside a very water/ moisture proof container. The last was a bottle of kids bubbles, really, we try so hard to keep the caches dry, lets not put the liquid inside on purpose. There are so many other great SWAG items out there.

If you are a member of Geocaching .com its pretty simple. Once you have logged in and selected the cache description page look to the upper left where it has a navagation button labeled "Log your Visit". That will take you to another page that will allow you to create a log for that cache. Good luck and welcome to the obsession

A bit of clarification might help. We are new to the sport/ hobby/ game/ obsession of Geocaching, but we have logged 21 caches so far (9:30 am 8/19/05) and feel pretty good about our progress. All of those 21 finds are without GPS. We got hooked on the sport when a friend told us about a trip had a completed with his 11 old son and how much fun they had "cashing". "Cashing?" my wife asked. And on he went to describe geocaching. Once we got home and fired up the computer we fell into the rabbit hole of sites with maps and coordinates and waypoints and file formats and some bable thingie that sorts it all out and whew! We really just wanted to go hunt hidden treasure. Of course we discovered the hunt was what it was all about. The treasure was the time outside (ok, its Alabama and its August, so the outside is no real treasure) together hunting in places we had never visited. Now, the request... we are desperate for clues to cache locations. We have ordered a GPSr but while we are waiting we are out there snooping around and having a blast, until we come across those "Clueless" caches. When posting your cache hides give a thought to those who might be trying your hide without electronics. How would you direct them to your treasure? Encryption or even double encryption is fine, I am sure there are lots of folks who might not want the turn by turn route, heck we don't either - just a nod in the right direction is great. Thanks for reading this far and we hope to log your cache soon... PS: We have another email from the eBay seller telling us our unit is on backorder so its satellite maps and topozone for now. Frodo13

SOGing? snogging? Slogging? Ok. I fold. What's SOG'ing? Is that an acronym for orienteering? Silly Old Goat?

I Created an image archive at Flickr.com and invite cachers to post pictures of the hunt. Its PG-13 so please reserve those "Other" images for another site. If it is successful I am considering upgrading to a larger capacity account. Thanks Its all free and no spam or spyware stuff. We all have enough of that alreasy. http://www.flickr.com/groups/southerngeocaching