sixsix210

Awwww. You should be laughing with them. Good they have an interest in an outdoor activity. I encourage you to encourage them. Spend time working with them to develop Cool Cache Containers™ and hides. Perhaps even having them hide caches for you to find (as well as others.) best of luck! Oh..trust me...my mini-cachers are plotting their revenge. Lol. They are up to something about a hide that they won't tell, and are anxious to get to twenty finds so they can unleash their plan on me (and the rest of the world) some day soon. I'm glad for it as well. My small town has a sparse smattering of caches, and I have a feeling it's going to be well filled sooner than later. For now though it goes alot like this "what are you guys up to?" "nothing" twenty minutes later...."DO WE HAVE ANY BROWN PAINT?!?!?!?" "maybe...why?" "No reason" :D

A Large percentage of my fishing gear is...reclaimed...from trees, shrubs, shorelines, reeds, and so forth. As a fisherman (and a cheap one at that) I agree. This is a cache that is itching to be muggled.

Just bought a few RITR logs. When I got them in the mail, I whipped out my trusty geocaching pen(yes the pressurized one in the 'shop' tab. best money I've spent...love it) ran the log under the faucet in the kitchen, and scrawled my name on the last, soaked, page. Loved the result. Two great products, that thus far, have held up to their descriptions.

I've found screw top travel containers that hold up well, and are found at the dollar store in a bag of six. Six for a dollar? I have only placed one in the wild, but stuffed the others with tissue paper and left them on my porch all winter. The paper is nice and dry...

I do this well before publishing the cache, but with the added step of having my wife, who likes geo caching, but doesn't have time, so she's my tester. She's unbiased, and gives good feedback. Handy.

I won't even do the ones that say they have permission. Just something oogy about tromping around in a stranger's lawn.... Just me.

Now that suddenly my teenage step son and his buddies have taken an interest in geocaching, it's become A L O T more fun. Before, when I had some free 'me' time, I'd go. When I went somewhere else, I'd do a quick check and maybe grab one. I normally walk for my cache finds, so my range is limited. Now that the geo-noobs are constantly hounding me to go, I amuse myself by taking them to cache's I've gotten before, and having a good laugh at their expense. They've also proven to be good little trackers, and have aided me in finding some I had not found before. I've also taken to hiding caches from them. Working on my second hide. And exceptionally nasty one. I took a pine cone from the yard, cut some of the fronds(?) off of one side, gorilla glued a small container in, and hid it in a pine cone heavy area. Cause I'm an evil step father like that. ;-)

Lol. Guess I wasn't such a wild child after after all since these are recommended activities now. Besides, despite the fact my birth certificate says 1-10-1969 on it, my wife will swear I'm only 12 on the inside.

My job has 6 caches within a quarter mile of it, and I have yet to find ONE. I'm there 40+ hours a week, and just stare out the back of the building into the woods.....rrrrr......I know they're there because of the logs...everybody else is finding them but me....so far...

The game is all about what you make of it. I've not been a member for a year yet (6-22-11) and I'm content with my 37 finds. I prefer to enjoy the scenery, or the challenge (my best is a 4/4) or the camaraderie now that I have a small group I go with occasionally. I enjoy the planning, and don't see the fun in driving through the desert looking for cloned caches just to rack up 500+ finds. I don't see it, but I'm game to try it. If I do, and come out the other end going "WTF did I just do?" or "HOLY s*&^ that was a blast" I'll take it. lol. Personally, I'd rather HIDE a power trail, and make it tough. Tougher than "They are normally a film can beside a bush under three to four rocks" anyway. I'm a geek so I can say this...this game IS what happens when nerds go outside to play, as mentioned in another thread. lol. GO out side, GO search, GO learn something, GO find something. WHo cares about the numbers. After all as a fairly new cacher, I have zero chance of catching anyone in a race to the top....so I enjoy the walk.

I've had a "brilliant" idea, and before I move forward with it, I was wondering how many of us use bikes while caching. Do you take a mountain bike? There are many caches in my area that are available for cycling, and I use one. 90% of my caches have all been within cycling distance of my home. This is a good thing, since I do not own a car. Just curious if I'm alone in riding my bike.

Holiday Woods is my first cache. I LOADED it full of easter related swag for the kiddies, a FTF coin (unregistered) a cachkinz ghost trackable (registered) a first aid kit, a cool clip on led headlamp, a survival whistle, and the log. My next cache in the works is a multi/puzzle cache, so the swag will be limited. My 'boss' is a fan of all things penguin, so she wants me to make a penguin themed cache asap. There's lots of cool stuff out there. It has been my experience that the adults hunt for the hunt and are bummed when they find an empty cache, but don't really care about the swag. Most of my swag (90%) is kid related.

My boss to me upon hearing my explanation of geocaching.... "So wait...lemme get this straight...you go wandering around in the woods and poison oak looking for plastic army men that someone has intentionally hidden from you, and this is 'fun' to you?" punctuated by a raised eyebrow and a look that clearly said "oh dear god, I've hired a lunatic"

I do alot of cleaning and stocking on caches I find along the way. I have only physically replaced a container once. Sort of. There's a cache near my home that is a 4/4 and when I found it, it was no where near waterproof. Not even close. The cache contents were protected only by a fabric sack of sorts. I loved the cache, so I messaged the owner. And waited, and waited, and waited. So I messaged again and never got a reply. It was at this point that I went and purchased a water tight container, went back to GZ, and took all of the swag out and put it in the container and put the container in the sack. I have been watching the cache (and two other of this owners that I liked) for quite some time now. To encourage people to essentially just make their own cache just because they couldn't find the real one is frankly, deplorable.

I like stocking swag for kids and adults as well, but mostly for the mini-cachers. The adults do not generally seem to care about the swag, as long as it's a)there b)in good shape) c)dry. Even adults still seem to get that pang of disappointment when we find an empty cache. The adults who do care about the swag are not above having a collection of plastic army men. lol. To me it seems as if the adult ratio for happy caching is roughly 90% the hunt, 10% swag. For kids the ratio is reversed, they hunt to find the swag. I try to reflect this in my swag. Isonzo said "Over time, the swag on a cache that requires 3 miles or more of walking will do okay. Under that, it's junk by the time it's been found 6 times. " For me this is both true and untrue. It's true because it's exactly what I find in the world. It's untrue for me though because it's the cache owners responsibility to make it untrue. Maintain your caches people.

Figured it might be a start to open a fb page. Society Of Better Swag has it's own page now. ;-) we'll see where it goes... SOBS

I use my phone. It's a motorola defy, so it's water-proof (it's been in the pool and the washing machine...no issues) and damage resistant (lost track of how many times I've dropped it) and I use geo beagle for my app. It was free and does what I need it to do. I just whip out my phone, hop online, use the "find my location" button on geocaching.com's front page...and hunt away. The convenience, ready availability, and ease of use are what does it for me. I also used it, and made five passes at my first cache I placed to get the co-ordinates. My FTF guy said "I walked right up to it at 10 o'clock at night" so...the accuracy is there. Just my $.02

All awesome info! Thank you!

I'm looking to start a club in my local area. There's a broad based club in my area, but it's too long of a haul for me to get there regularly, and I'm tired of caching alone, and CITO alone blows. Lol. Are there any elders out there that have any advice (other than 'don't do it') for getting a group up and going? I'm not looking for a million man march, but it'd be nice to organize the locals. From my cache list there are at least 20 of us, but how do we do it? Just flash mob McD's every month? Or set a charter and make it super formal? I'm just looking for some basic advice from some of the experienced cahcers out there.

My rookie $.02. I hate micro's. Well...that's not exactly true. They frustrate me since I have a rookie eye. Frustration is not good for the life of the game. If all the noobs have to find expertly hidden micros, there will be few that continue the hobby out of frustration. Hence my first hide is decidedly going on the list as a 'new player friendly' cache. I get it now even with my limited experience as a cacher, that the hunt is the fun, but not everyone has the patience I do, or the stubborn streak, or the inability to let go lol. Most people would have quit log ago in my shoes...making them easy to find once at ground zero is a good thing for expansion of the game....nobody said getting TO gz had to be easy though. *devious laugh*

I just placed my first cache today. I placed it but did not publish it yet, because I want to give a week or so of good southern thunder storms to live through so I can inspect the contents, and make sure the container is functioning as designed. I'm also still getting coordinates daily to average them out for a solid reading. It's going to be interesting to see if it works out. I'm going to call it "Happy Holidays", and have swag in hand to keep it holiday themed. Currently, it's stuffed with all manner of easter swag. yo-yo's, bendy rabbits, funny buttons, wind up bunnies, etc....as soon as easter is over, I'll swap it out to mother's day/memorialday....I'm stashing the holiday stuff that's left over until next year. I also recently informally adopted two nearby caches. One is a 4/4 and I was dumb enough to volunteer myself to maintain it. lol. First thing I had to do was clean it up, cito, replace the container, and the swag. I'm a big fan of CITO, paying it forward, and T1L2....Took one, left two...make all the caches you visit better than when you found them, and as a boy scout leader I'm bound to not only practice, but teach the scouts 'leave no trace program' so preach on...be as crabby as you want... gripe loudly... but always practice what you preach. Ther's always going to be some twit who leaves a business card, or muggless who muggle, and weather just can't be stopped. But dang it we can all do better. I carry old bags from the evil empire, and clorox wipes in my cache kit with my other essentials...log books of a variety of sizes, golf pencils, baggies... we really should make a club of cache crabs, or cache fairies, or SOBS and make Groundspeak give us a page or a badge or souvenier....something....anyone have some extra webspace available? Anyone feel like writing a charter? Making some gfx? Authoring a related blog? Paying for a domain name? ANyone? Message me if you do...let's get organized...

Got one recently that took me repeated tries. The gps points right at it from quite a ways away. It's obvious. It's the only thing even remotely close to something that could hide a cache. There's the rub...it's also in one of the busier areas of town. A parking lot that is used by the locals as a pass through to another street to avoid a very long light. It's constantly busy, and knee deep in muggles. It's also a favorite hiding spot for deputy muggle because of the traffic level... The challenge was stealth. The container itself was very cool, and it took many tries, and a vast amount of patience to get it. The rest of the LPC's I've encountered have been mundane. One we found on vacation was removed by the owner the day after we found it. Somehow being Ltf was kind of cool on it's own.

Dangit. Now I want to get divorced and ask her again this way. Congrats!

I figured they'd show up all the time. lol. I should put little lamentated cards with the "puzzle" in them and remove them the 1st of Nov to keep my porch quiet from nov through the following october. Good point...

Here's where I'm stuck. I have no clue how to submit this cache as meets several requirements for different types of cache (multi, event, regular, puzzle maybe). I'll list the basic elements I want so you all can flame me or help me. I plan on placing a few caches before this one for more practice, but this idea is stuck in my craw..... I want to place four caches for Halloween. I want to fill them with goodies for the geo-mini-cachers and their drivers ;-). I also want to put one segment of final co-ordinates in each cache. Four pieces of the puzzle will lead to the final fifth "cache" (more below) I want to theme them to their hiding places with a story. Find the caches in order, and you'll have had a good scary story on Halloween, and had some treats (no food...i know...) and a good time. The final fifth "cache" I was thinking could be my doorstep. I'm a professional baker, and any one who knocked on my door on Halloween and said "I need to sign the log" would get a goodie bag. A tasty one. I want to also add in a few disposable cameras to see the costumes and fun at the caches. Anyone had success with this? My plan is to go back on Nov1 and turn these into regular non-themed caches for the rest of the year, then re-write a new story next year. The problem is, when they are just regular caches, theyll just be regular caches. No need for the multi tag. This isn't truly an Event, so that doesn't work either. There's no puzzle, except the final location. So do I just list them as regular caches? Can I go back and change the descriptions and names and such (I was thinking about "Blood Road" as their name) since the name would be a bit of a head scratcher the rest of the year... I'm open to suggestions...help...and yes, even flames. lol. I used to sell cars for a living, you have to have a hide like a sherman tank...fire away....