AmphibianTrackers

Awesome! Congratulations on taking your children for a fun first find!

We love to find miniature items, tiny character toys, dice, bracelets, signature items, new and sealed items. We like to leave things even in nano caches as long as there is enough room for people to get the log in and out and still leave some SWAG so we take miniature items to leave in the smallest of caches as well. We try to find items that adults would like as reminders of their childhood toys like marbles and toy cars of older models and anything frog related because that is our thing.

I have only been geocaching for one month. I have 118 finds. So, I am a complete newbie. When I first started caching, I believe it was the 2nd week of July, I went online to read about it. Somewhere, in the explanation of what SWAG was I read that it was small toys that children would enjoy finding. My experience to that point certainly indicated that is what people were leaving in caches. It was not until I read threads like this one where I started to hear that there were people who preferred us to leave items that adults would enjoy. That gave a new perspective to the idea of SWAG and I ordered additional items to leave along the way. We have certainly found our share of trash caches and we clean them out the best we can but so far, and I realize I am a complete newbie, it has only been at the poorly maintained caches that we have found everything inside to be trashed with muck and dirt and trash. We have found some awesome newer hides and some well maintained caches where the CO's placed very fun and inexpensive SWAG and we squealed with delight. One was a critter cache where every SWAG item was a small toy animal, another was a creepy crawly cache filled with party favor type plastic bugs and things and the third was a newer cache filled with Independence Day themed items all of which were fantastic. There were post-it notes, silly sunglasses, etc. So, my point is that trash is trash but inexpensive well maintained caches are fun! I would love to know how the person presents his string? Does he wind it up and leave his user name or does he just drop in a bit of string or what?

Hhhmmm, I am such a newbie I can't quote the right post. I was responding to the problem of coyotes. For us, it is raccoons and they would have these little containers apart quicker than you could place them. Case in point is Tupperware containers that the raccoons are just dying for us to place outside for their enjoyment. Edit to add: We were recently at a cache where we found the container but they had scattered the items all over the place just like they do trash left in unsealed trashcans.

I am a huge fan of dogs and uhm, I would bet dogs aren't a huge fan of you holding up sticks and not throwing them. Of course, dangerous dogs are dangerous but it is usually pretty easy to tell the difference.

Thank you for the information. If I found one I would happily log it and help it on its way. I love trackables!

Sounds fun to me, I love trackables. But, could you please define "Geokrety"?

Oh, goodness! We had a heartbreaking day finding a dog out while out caching as well. We came upon a mix breed chocolate lab and he was so hungry he was trying to eat poison ivy. We called out to the people who were fishing nearby and they said it wasn't their dog but we could have it. Our daughter was very upset and it was all we could do to drive away but there wasn't any space in our car and we were away from home caching. We have no idea what the real story was. I am so glad your story has a happy ending!

Oh! Will check that out.

Like my sig. line says I use a PQ, GSAK and a macro to do that. Then I write down the cache names in order that I'll be going for them. I"ve got a Garmin Vista and the TOPO maps on it, but a smartphone app won't work everywhere around here (and I still haven't tried to figure out how to use my BB for caching). I understand what a pocket query is and use them. I also make a list of the caches we are going to in order. I don't know what a GSAK or a macro is. Thanks for your help!

Yesterday, we used the GPS to get directions and we also had to use the laptop with Google Earth to find our way around to a location. This has happened several times, lately. Of course, geographical situations have to be taken into account. We are caching near a river right now and there are few bridges. I just can't always take the laptop with me to find a cache. I can understand that it is frustrating to use the function to sort nearest caches and have to search through them with the phone maps to try to find what is really closest. Anyway, more than any technological advancement, I value kindness.

OK, going out on a limb here but as a newbie I found some of these responses to be rather harsh. This was just an expressed idea. How things started or how you use them or the location in which you search is not the question. The question is could the distance be changed from how the crow flies to the distance a nonflying person has to go to get there. The person is only asking about how their own stats are calculated. I am not advocating for anything except more kind responses.

Wouldn't that be more of a travel consultancy than a tour company like the OP wanted? Yep, that is what I was suggesting.

A friend of mine posted that she and her family were enjoying geocaching while camping. I was looking for cost effective adventures for my family so I googled Geocaching. We already owned 2 smart phones and 2 GPS car units so it seemed really easy. We downloaded the app and before I knew it the kids ran out of the house with my phone and came home having found 2 caches within a run from our home. Since then, we have taken caching trips with several friends around our area, taken an entire church group to learn how to geocache and have been teaching people at the campground we are visiting how to get involved. I think it is a great activity and we are learning a lot as we go.

We have tics here. We have predetermined Geocaching outfits that are treated, we wear socks with pants tucked in, light colored clothes and hats. We did this because of coming home with tics, chigger bites and other unwanted attacks. We have noticed that other people who work the land can be seen in Walmart dressed just like this. It is old hat for people who regularly go digging into odd places. All this in 100 degree weather that has the "feels like" temp of 115. It is very hot. So, we tend to cache in the morning then try to swim later in the day so changing into our swim suits helps with the checking process.

Instead of actually taking them on the tour yourself, you could set up a plan for them to follow using a rental vehicle and suggest hotels and restaurants to try. You could offer a class to teach people the appropriate ways to geocache and how to use the equipment. As for getting school children involved I was really disappointed by a series of caches that a teacher placed with her students. They started out as a great idea but have degraded into simply trash. Bummer.

Well, we are still a new team so that thrill of the hunt hasn't worn off on us, yet. We try to go every day and hit 105 in less than a month. So, obviously we are not hard core or anything just having fun. We were collectors of small items before caching. We have been disappointed in some small items and completely thrilled with what I expect others would call trash. We like scrabble tiles, dice, dominoes, etc. But, we also collect miniature things like we got a bottle of hot sauce from an MRE. Today, we took our found swag to the springs and took photos of them as we let the kids play with them on the shore in the sand. We have really appreciate the people who took the time to do themed caches and we appreciate everyone who goes to the extra effort to come up with something unusual. We needed a pair of goggles and low and behold we found one in a cache yesterday. Go figure.

One issue I have come across is that my phone app does not allow me to log that I have picked up a tb. It will be a full day before I get home to my computer where I can log in, alter the log and note which tb I picked up. If the phone app worked, we could find out the mission of the tb before we take them. I was all happy thinking I was rescuing a tb from a remote location only to discover when I got home that it was only to travel west and I was traveling east. Most tb's do come with a mission page but the older ones I have discovered have long lost their mission statements and they are only to be found online. Anyway, point being, the phone apps should enable us to log tbs so that there is less confusion. Also, I would not go to a cache only to discover that someone else that day already picked up the tb if the phone app worked.