Wpowell99

Thanks all. I'm always respectful to authority (lot of family in the service & law enforcement, and I respect the hell out of what they do), and wasn't planning on lying. I was curious about how everyone handles it. I LOVE the brochure idea, i'll print off half a dozen and keep them in the car. Since I cache mostly at night, I assume i'll have a few more run ins than the day cachers will. Thanks all!

Hail fellow Geocachers! I am a relatively new Geocacher and have only been at it for 3-4 weeks. I love it so far, and don't know where its been all my life :-) I typically do the majority of my caching at night because my Caching buddy works until 9pm, and with a very small child (who gets bored easily), and a wife who isn't much into it, caching alone or with my late working friend is the best bet. So last night we went to do a multi-cache(my first one). The final coordinates took us to a small piece of national (and local) history, complete with picnic benches, cool plaques, signs, and statues. There were NO signs stating that the park closes at dusk or a note in the "attributes" section stating that it couldn't be done at night (yes, I know use common sense Bill, but we figured we'd find it relatively quickly). It was later, around midnight when we parked our car in the lot and walked deep into the gully area. There were houses at the top of the gully, but we made sure not to shine our small flashlights upward to wake or frighten anyone, and kept our noise to low talk. After an hour, we gave up our search wanting to come back during the day. We walked back to the car, and turned a dome light on to do a little logging in the app, clean our hands with some wipes, etc and head back home. A police officer pulls up behind us out of nowhere and puts his spotlight on (not the red/blue flashers). He asked what we were doing, we told him we were Geocaching, and I had asked him if he knew what it was. With a "no", I gave him a quick explanation and showed him the (already open) app on my phone. He took our credentials, and went back to the car for a LONG time, and cleared us to leave, no citations, no warnings, just told us to leave. I used to belong to a Paranormal investigation group YEARS ago when we had a similar run in, but we had badges, equipment, etc. The police officer was kind enough to tell us neighbors saw the flashes and were worried. He told us we were doing nothing wrong, but to just keep it down and not stay much longer. Last night, the officer gave us no reason why were being stopped, or that someone called in a complaint, or anything. I know he was just doing his job, but i'm curious to find out how others have handled police stops before, as i'm sure we've all had them at one time or another. The "What Is Geocaching" letter that goes into containers may be a great thing to edit to hand to people/officers as an information sheet/white paper in case you need it and keep a few in the car. Since this was my first stop (and im sure ill be stopped at some point again), i'm wondering what everyone else does, or if you have anything prepared for them?

I'm a brand new cacher, and don't have a truly educated experience just yet. But, i've "fixed" two caches so far that needed some TLC. New log in one, and fixed the hiding spot in another. The fun of the hunt is finding a cool container with either cool stuff to trade, or a nice log to sign. If the log is soggy, wet and damp, its no fun. I think the best you can do is use the boy scout motto of "left it cleaner than you found it" or however that goes. Make it just as fun for you as it was for the next cacher. I dont think you really need to buy bison logs, since someone else already got the FTF, just write the date on top of the first log in the "replaced" log, and continue on. Thats just my 2 cents.