team moxiepup

I've heard that female moose have strong pheromones in their urine. They'll pee on their legs to waft it around to attract a mate. Glad people don't do that! Seems a bit early for mating season, but who knows... maybe some moose need a longer time to get worked up?

I got stung by a ground wasp a couple of weeks ago. We had been walking along a trail by a disused RR track. I stopped to get a pebble out of my sandal, using the track to rest my foot. Evidently I picked the wrong spot to do that, as a couple of wasps came flying out from below and one zapped me on the top of the foot! I applied some crushed plantain to the sting & carried on. The worst pain seemed to come over the next few days. The whole top of my foot was swollen and very itchy. It felt like a bad sunburn over poison ivy. What seemed to work best for pain relief, was soaking my foot in the hottest water I could tolerate, filled w/ epsom salt. Hot water breaks down the proteins in the venom, and I was hoping the salt might cause some fluid to be lost via osmosis. It certainly made a big help! We're going to be caching in NC in a few weeks. I've never encountered chiggers before. What kinds of areas are they usually found in, and how are they best avoided?

What? No miniature pinscher/pomeranian mixes??? LOL! Even though there is no dog on there like Moxie, (The Jack Russell comes close) the coin captures the spirit of the love we share for dogs! I just had to order one of these gorgeous coins! Great job!

Thanks Briansnat and Gpsfun! It's always good to hear from folks who have actually made the journey! Now to plan the cache route...

We're going to be visiting the NC Outer Banks in September. We're leaving from Maine and are planning to meet up about 1/2 way down with family traveling down from Rochester, NY, spending the night in a hotel, then follow each other down to NC from there. Mapquest has suggested we travel down Rt. 13 through Delaware and MD then VA. My older sister says that going that direction means lots of tolls, and traffic jams on the bridge. She says AAA usually routes them down 83, 695, and 95 to 64. To me, that way seems to steer you too close to Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond to comfortably avoid big city traffic jams. The Delaware route seems more direct, but if the traffic/tolls are that bad... If anyone here is familiar with any/either of these routes, could you please list to pros and cons of each? Any input would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

My guess is that this person has something negative to say on his logs for other people's caches as well. Some people thrive on such negativity. If this is the case, other cache hiders in the area will soon have his number. It will only affect him in the long term as he isolates himself. Don't worry about it. It's his problem.

Kinda sorta did... maybe... The Twilight Zone For Non Premium members- There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone. Geocachers hike on many trails. Trails that lead them to a fixed point in space where they hope to find a cache, usually a container that holds the traces of those who have been there before. The cache you are about to search for will lead you on an adventure unlike any other. For you see, most caches, in addition to being fixed to a certain point in space, are usually tied to a fixed point in time. The particular trail you are about to embark on is very particular indeed, for the fabric on which time's tapestry is weaved, wears very thin here. The trail in question is The Gambo Gunpowder Mill trail, which contains remnants of the historical Gambo Powder Mills, built in 1824, incorporated into the Oriental Powder Mills in 1859 and which later became the Dupont Powder Mill, which ran until 1905. This complex was once the fourth largest powder mill in the country and produced gunpowder that was exported all over the world. During the Civil War the mill ran day and night producing two and one half million pounds of gunpowder per year, which represented 25% of the gunpowder used by the Union forces. The gunpowder was loaded in boats and shipped down the river along the Cumberland and Oxford Canal to Portland where it was then sailed to Boston. Wooden wheelbarrows made with non-sparking copper alloy nails were used to move the gunpowder around. All of the buildings were placed far apart so that any explosion at one building would not affect the others. Despite these measures, there were many explosions at the mills, which led to 46 unfortunate deaths between 1828 and 1924. As you travel along part of the old canal towpath, you will see some of the massive stone foundations left behind from this time. "This time", of course, being relative. Some believe time to run in a linear fashion... moments sliding by, one after the other. But time can be tricky. Are we living in the future of the past or the past of some looming future? Perhaps all these exist at once. We usually perceive only our own present, but on this trail, you just might get a glimpse of some other time. Perhaps the stone remnants of that faraway time hold in them some of the memories of those who worked and died here. Perhaps the electricity being generated by the nearby dam creates an atmosphere conducive to other energy. Perhaps that high-pitched hum which pervades the woods serves as a carrier between dimensions. Add to the mix a simple ammo can. A box not so long ago used to carry ammunition, now residing near a place where men worked and died producing large amounts of gunpowder. Enjoy your walk on these historical paths. Whether or not you will feel or see anything as a result of all this synchronicity is a matter of conjecture. For this is not only a journey of sight and sound, but of mind. One thing is for certain… those are the coordinates up ahead - your next stop, the Twilight Zone! Please read the note on the first page of the log book. While the ticks are light (only found 1 on us after several trips in), the skeeters are thick! You will need bug spray! You will not need to move any rocks to find this cache. Also... beware that the rocks can be slippery when wet. It should be noted that there are two trails that run adjacent to each other before meeting up further up the trail. The one on the east side, closest to the water, starts closer to the Gambo Gunpowder Mill Gambit cache. This one is the most scenic, showing more ruins, but does require you to cross an elevated 12" sq. beam. The other trail on the west side starts slightly further west, up Gambo Rd. There are several other nice caches within walking distance. Please replace as found.

We had a bear encounter this past spring. We were hiking through a forest that had three caches along it's trails. We had found one and were walking down the trail to the next cache, when Moxie's nose went into high alert. She wanted to find out what the smell was and proceeded to get on her hind legs so that she could see over the brush. We glanced towards the area where she was looking and we saw 2 bear cubs about 100 feet away near the stream! We were thinking Wow!!! We then quickly thought ..."where's mom!?" Mom must not have been too far away from the cubs, as the 2 bear cubs turned and scampered away from us. We moved onto the next cache and were very vigilant in surveying our surroundings after that, making sure to make a bit more noise, and picking up a large stick from alongside the trail to hike with. I only wish I could have gotten my camera out of the bag fast enough!

Do you have data to back up that assertion, or are you just revealing the fruits of your omniscience? In my part of the world, the most damaging thing that happens to caches is that geocoins disappear from them. The members-only caches don't have much trouble with this. This is a great point. A lot of newbies think you can trade for geocoins and keep them. This is very frustrating for the owner because coins typically cost $5-$10. Most premium members would know better but it still could happen. This is precisely why we made our last two regular sized caches "Premium members only". TBs and coins had been disappearing in some of our other ones. When we checked the paper logs for those caches, we found there were people visiting the caches but not logging online. This is fine as long as they're not moving trackables, but sadly, this is sometimes not the case. Being able to compare the paper logs with the audit logs on a PMO cache makes it easier to keep tabs on trackables should they go missing.

I think maybe some people are confusing park and grab micros with lame micros. Sometimes they are one and the same, sometimes they are not. A micro can be be placed in a creative way, yet easy to find and picked up quickly. We have one that would be extremely evil if placed out in the woods, yet being in a small memorial urban park, it is easy to hone in on and the cache can be found quickly. GC1408W A passing muggle could be looking straight at it and never see it. People seem to be enjoying it... both people who don't like difficult hides and those that do. It took some time and effort to create the container. All the while I was working on it, the thought goes through my head that someone could just take a "seed cache" micro they have in their possession, and just chuck it in there, giving all of 30 seconds of thought into it. In my earlier post I stated... "Sometimes they're even in spots that are adjacent to private homes or businesses. There was one that recently was confiscated by the police because the hider put it in a guard rail near a child care center, and the owners were concerned about what people were doing." In these cases, Geocaching itself is being given a bad name to the community at large. Anything that does that opens the door to the authorities to start putting restrictions on caching. They can cite these thoughtlessly placed caches as "examples". Here are some of the logs for this cache- "Tried for this since it hadn't been disabled before I left for Maine ;-( A woman came out of the business this was in front of and she said that the police had been there in response to a report that "someone had put something in the guardrail" and she thought they had taken it. I visited the police station and, perhaps not surprisingly, they denied knowing anything about geocaching or about any responses to that location. (If I hadn't read my FBI reports about geocaching and had seized something so innocent I would probably deny it too)." Owners log- "Well, I guess we can confirm that this one is missing and will not return to the same location! Archiving with the hopes of bringing it back in a new spot. " Here is a log from another, that was placed right in front of a homeowner's property.- "While we were finding this one, the owner of the house drove up and asked what we were doing. She said a man with a little boy was there yesterday and she thought the little boy had to go to the bathroom. I assured her I wasn't doing that and most likely neither was the little boy. I had to confess and tell her about Geocaching and she seemed to be relieved that we weren't being...relieved." Regardless of what type of cache you enjoy hunting for, taking the time to make sure your cache is hidden in a place that causes no public concern is only proper and good for the game. There are micros that are lame because they are mundane, unoriginal, and don't bring you anywhere special, then there are really lame micros that actually jeopardize the game. To me, the "seed" cache micros especially just too often encourage people to hide a cache without thinking.

My local library was filled with great books. Authors like Thoreau, Dickens, Melville, Austen, Twain, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Lawrence. I could go there blindfolded and be guaranteed a great book. In fact I did that because I really enjoyed the sense of anticipation when I took the blindfold off and saw the exciting new book I had chosen at random. Then someone came along and started slipping Harlequin romances on the shelves. I really didn't mind a few. I figured, hey some people like them and going in blindfolded I'm bound to have a disappointment now and then. Then people started sticking more and more Harlequin romances on the shelves to the point where they were the predominant book in my library. The classics that I liked were still there but were now but a small percentage of the books in the library. I couldn't go there blindfolded anymore without being practically guaranteed disappointment. I could take the blindfold off and go there, but hey, I really enjoyed going in there blindfolded. It's just not the same. Note: The above is for illustrative purposes and is not a true story Very well put!

A fairly new local phenomena around these parts are "seed" caches. These seed caches are normal size caches that contain large numbers of micro caches which people are encouraged to take and hide. Usually they follow a theme and there are specifications limiting difficulty/terrain to 1 or 2. While there are some that are placed in nice locations, the majority are in guardrails and lamp posts in not even remotely interesting areas. When the first seed cache came out, containing 99 seed caches, we joined along. We can see where it is good to have caches out there that are accessible for those with limited mobility. We placed our cache in the recommended "Guardrail/lamp post", choosing a spot that offered an interesting view over a salt marsh. In the year following the first seed cache, there have been 3 new seed cache "series", all with large numbers of micros. Many folks seem to enjoy them. I have mixed feelings about 'em. Like I said before, many just don't take you anywhere. Many seem to be just haphazardly tossed in the most convenient spot. Sometimes they're even in spots that are adjacent to private homes or businesses. There was one that recently was confiscated by the police because the hider put it in a guard rail near a child care center, and the owners were concerned about what people were doing. The kicker is when these caches are placed near enough to where a good, creative hide could have gone, had the hider wanted to put a little time and effort into it, but now the spot is taken by a cache chucked under a lamp post skirt only a few yards away. I don't mind picking one up if it is on the way to another cache, but other than that... A well done, creative micro is one of my favorite type of caches to hunt for, but I cringe whenever I see a new "seed" cache pop up. Maine had been pretty free of micro spew, but now it seems the tide is turning. Are these "seed" caches common in other areas?

local fauna

As long as the bugs are behaving, and there is no pressing "call of nature", we'll usually look for about an hour.

I've been thinking of doing an underwater cache. I'm not going to worry about whether the cache is water proof or not, as I plan to use a diver's underwater slate for the log. You should be able to find one at any dive shop, online and ebay. They come with a pencil attached by a rubber cord. My only concern is with how long a pencil will last with continued submersion. I'll probably add "BYOPOP" as a precaution.

To me, the liability lies with the finder. Nobody is forcing anyone to climb, it is a matter of choice. Plus with all the disclaimers on cache pages, people should know only they are responsible for their own actions. I do think it would be prudent for the cache page to mention at least a hint of what the search entails though. Keep in mind, landowners may have their own ideas as to who is liable. When we were just starting out, getting ready to place our first cache, I tried to call the Portland Parks to get permission to place caches. It took a few calls to find someone familiar with geocaching! They said we could place caches anywhere in Portland Parks... as long as it wasn't up in a tree! Evidently one of the early area caches in the area was up a tree, Monkey See, Monkey Do and someone fell out of it while attempting to get the cache, and then threatened a lawsuit against the city. Common sense would say the cacher is responsible... but since when did insurance companies ever make sense?

Oh good point! Many of the TBs I have foud have had the note or pasport or profile attached. But some havent. If you aren't going to include it then what happens happens. Suppose you do include it and it gets separated from the bug because of negligence or whatever. I guess we have to rely on the good will and ethical practices of other cachers to restore the materials. I just released Its a Small World TB, which really has som3e heavy mileage, but doesnt have any papers with it. I printed out the TB passport, and enclosed both the passport and TB in a zip-loc baggie before I released them. I hope it helps. I agree that having some sort of mission or ID tag on a TB is the best way to go. It eliminates a lot of confusion. If a bug doesn't have any ID with it, we usually try to just describe the bug on the paper log. "the rubber duck" TB, the "plastic fish TB", the "stuffed penguin" TB, etc. The proper names, of course, are discovered when we log them online, but anyone trying to track a missing TB by reading the paper logs will have an idea of which ones we have or haven't moved by the description. It really irks me when people move TBs without logging them online. If you prefer to cache without logging online... that's fine... whatever floats your boat. TBs however, are meant to be tracked online. If you don't plan on doing so, you shouldn't be messing around with them. Leave them for someone who will take that responsibility.

I had immunity to it as a kid. I even fell face first into a large clump of it at camp, while retrieving a baseball, with no reaction whatsoever. Since geocaching though, I have been getting a reaction. Usually I get it around my ankles. For some reason it happens as clusters of two dots. Like this---> : I think what is happening is that I step on the plant, and then as the day progresses, my sandals brush against my ankles, creating small breaks in the skin for the oils to get into. The rash doesn't show up until about a day or so later. I end up washing my sandals in Technu from time to time, but am considering buying a product from Bujii (sp?), that can be used a barrier to the oils getting on your skin in the first place. Has anyone out there used this?

This incident reminds me--I once lost the cache itself. The container was the new-fangled Folgers coffee canister, a large plastic cylinder. I was standing atop a steep, rocky ridge when the canister slipped out of my hands, bounced and rolled downhill. I held my breath. If it continued, I'd have a long, steep hike to reach it. But just 20 feet down it wedged tightly in a narrow crack between rocks. I was glad not to have an audience for the awkward gymnastics required to retrieve it. Lol! That reminds me of something which happened to us a few weeks back at "Knights Pond Microcache" ... "We scrambled our way up to the cache area and found the cache immediately. We had the cache in hand and H-pup found a place to sit. Moxie was given to P-Pup to hold while H-Pup took care of the cache stuff and signing the log. Just as H-pup was getting settled in to business, Moxie's leash had gotten behind H-pup so in the process of untangling the leash..... Well remember that hill we scrambled up... You know how in the movies where they slow things down for dramatic effect... well the cache container went rolling/bouncing down, down ,down the hill and out of site!!!! Well P-pup went down the hill in search of the wayward cache container. After a short search she found that the cache had been stopped by a fallen tree. The cache had traveled about 3/4's of the way down the hill!!! Back up the hill with the container, log signed and cache placed in it's proper place we headed down the side of the hill laughing in disbelief as to what had just happened. TFTC and a wonderful story to remember and tell!!"

Here's our geohound and team namesake, Moxie. So proud of finding the cache. Here she is on top of the world at Jockey Cap, our 500th find. Taking a rest on a bench near Cross Country Cache, with the wind in her ears! With Hello Kitty Doggie Birdie TB

Maybe... it depends on a certain factor, but if I say what that factor is, I'd be opening up a whole can of worms! It could get rather messy. We had this dilemma the other day. We had figured out where an unpublished cache was hidden, (assuming it wasn't a puzzle cache) and we wrestled with ourselves whether to try for it. Ethics won out in the end, though I thought it might be fun to just drop in our sig item without signing the log.

I had a close call losing something last week. I was attempting a FTF on a disused railway bridge that crossed a river 30 feet below. At one point I heard a "cah-thunk". I casually looked around me. I hadn't noticed anything on the bridge that would have made such a cah-thunk, and was mildly curious as to what it could have been. It was then that I saw it. There... about a foot and a half down, on a strip of metal only two inches wide, lying on it's side, was my cell phone! That 2 inches of metal saved my cell phone from careening down into the river, never to be seen again. I don't think that I could have had the cell phone land there on purpose if I had tried, throwing it 100 times! I was extremely careful in retrieving it. That would have been the ultimate kicker... to fumble on the retrieval and drop it into the river after that!

Our TB "Boomerang", has a mission to travel to Australia. Here is what is printed on her mission tag- "Boomerang's mission is to travel to Australia, visiting all that is good and interesting to see on that grand continent. She would especially like to visit Uluru (Ayer's rock),the Sydney Opera House, and a Koala sanctuary. Please take pictures of her along the way." Boomerang made it to Australia and got to visit 8 caches, and then her mission got side tracked. The last cachers to have her, grabbed her in January, and placed her in a TB motel. Two months later they picked her up again and took her on vacation with them. Over the next couple of months, they brought her back to America, then to Greece, before finally dropping her off in England. We have really mixed feeling in regards to how this caching team treated our bug. On the one hand, they took a couple of cool pictures of her in Greece, which we enjoyed seeing. We also like to see people enjoying our bugs; it's part of the big picture of the game. On the other hand... we never got to see any pictures of her in Australia at all, and then, after all that time, they finally ignored her mission completely by dropping her in England! We're well aware that with TBs, it's pretty much a crap shoot, but we would have preferred for our Tb to travel more in Australia, instead of being carried around for months in a bag and then dropped 1/2 way around the world from it's destination. Hopefully she'll make it back there someday. Edited to add- I just checked the cache page of where Boomerang was last placed. The last person to log noted that there were no TB's in the cache.

Done! Looking forward to the summary.

We've only been stopped once, by a police officer who came over to ask us what we were doing and did we realize that Walmart was closed. The cache in question was near some sheds that were chained to a fence, so I can see where he might have thought we were up to no good. We explained about geocaching, not sure if we were making much sense or not. I wasn't too worried as we had already found the cache and had just finished replacing it. I knew we could always use the "Look, here it is - this explains everything - see, we're not crazy after all" speech, while showing him the cache. Not so sure I would have been as calm had we not found it yet. Evidently, we weren't as crazy sounding as we thought, for he simply pointed at the GPSr mounted on the dash, asked if that is what it was, and let us go on our way. He was really rather nice about it.