dsandbro

Rats!!! I was hoping for some excuse when I couldn't find a cache.

Yeah. DEET is perfectly safe when used in moderation and as directed. I wouldn't want to bathe in a tub of it, though. I wash up whenever I come inside after using it. An article in a magazine a few weeks ago said based on military tests using DEET higher than 30% does not improve effectiveness; i.e. 30% is equally effective as 100%. I have heard numerous anecdotal reports to the contrary ("your results may vary") but I wonder how much of that is placebo effect or confirmational bias. We use the wipes on our face and the spray for the rest of the body.

Would coyote or wolf droppings be similar enough???? From a purely environmental standpoint, just flipping the deposit off into the brush or burying it off the trail is better than taking it home and putting it in the landfill. In a landfill it will take decades or centuries to completely decompose versus a few months in the wild. I find worse things to complain about than dog deposits. They're pretty far down the list of peeves.

The ten essentials. Don't leave home without them. Having said that -- I confess that I too have wandered from my vehicle while my fanny pack containing the requisite items was quite comfortably resting in my truck. I regretted my oversight later. Good judgement comes from experience, and experience usually comes from bad judgement.

On newer maps, whether NAD27 or NAD83, look near the SW corner for a small faint cross ( + ). This marks the quad corner in the other datum. If found, you can 'shift' the grid ticks to align with the the cross.

Buy an inverter for less than $50. Plug the inverter into the power port in your car then your home charger into the inverter. You can charge all your batteries while driving to and from the cache. You can get chargers that plug directly into a automotive power port, too. I haven't heard much good about the small solar rechargers. Most I have talked to complain it takes all day of setting in the sun to fully recharge batteries. Anyone ever use these?

Been posted before but here's a couple of articles on GPS use out in the real world: http://www.safnet.org/archive/0404_howtotriangulate.cfm http://www.safnet.org/archive/702_howtogps.cfm

Tell him there may be beer in the cache.

My technique. May not work for everyone. At a distance of 30 feet or so put the GPS down on a stump or rock, step away from it, and let it settle down. While waiting, I scan the general area where the cache should be and look for likely hiding places, or an unusual pile of rocks or sticks. (hmmm... that slab of bark leaning against that log does not look natural...). Of course there are always people like me that intentionally leave a false pile of rocks or bark nearby as a red herring. After the GPS has settled down I use the pointing arrow to draw a line through the search area and make a mental note of the line. I pick up the GPS and move to point perpendicular to that mental line and about the same distance away. Put the GPS down again, step away, and scan again from a different perspective. Use the arrow again and start looking at the point where the two line intersect. Work outwards in a spiral. If after a while I cannot find the cache I repeat from the other two directions. The key part is to PUT THE GPS DOWN. If you stand there and hold it you will continually move it and your body partially blocks the signals. You will also get impatient and start walking again before it has settled down. It can take several minutes of being motionless for the GPS to stop dancing.

Go ahead. I seldom take anything so we will just balance each other out.

With apologies to George Carlin, I post his definition of a sport: It must be played with a ball. There must be a chance of an injury to participants. You must be able to bet on the outcome. And you can drink beer while being a spectator. Geocaching has two, maybe three of the four criteria.

Report it. Do the planet and your community a favor. The risk of boobytraps and violence has been noted in earlier posts. And the idea that person is attempting to run off legitimate public use of public land in effect converting public land to private profit. But please consider that every marijuana garden I have helped destroy (every one!) had massive amounts of fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, etc being used on it -- creating downstream run off (That's one of the methods law enforcement now uses to find the gardens -- water sampling of streams). The environmental impacts of illegal gardens is well documented in scientific literature. No one who even remotely cares about the environment supports illegal marijuana growing on public lands. Report it. Its the ethical and the environmental thing to do.

Roads are notoriously off. That's a function of trying to get as much detail as possible without making the map file size so large it is unusable. Roads are generalized. Zoom in close -- a nice smooth S curve on the ground will look 'angular' like a series of straight lines on the map.

Old enough to know better, but young enough to do it anyway. Just turned 51. Do you want physical age or mental age?????

Turkey Vultures eat dead decomposing flesh that has been run over countless times by large trucks on hot days. They should be able tolerate a geocacher (well, most geocachers, anyway...).

Have you ever taken a close look at a turkey vulture???? They certainly are not the prettiest bird you've ever seen. Around here they are thick as fleas and are considered a nuisance. Another species would make a better illustration of whatever point you are trying to make.

Garmin's map imagery format is proprietary and only their product currently works. Other manufacturers (e.g. Trimble) can load any imagery format into their unit, like MrSid, jpg, tiff, etc. but you are paying for that functionality. To keep file size small Garmin's topo data is simplified and generalized. Internal storage capacity must be balanced against physical size and cost. Now, if Garmin would add a USB port to their units....

LOL!!! Actually, yes. About twenty years ago while hiking up a side canyon off a state highway. And what is most surprising is the guy said he was finished and asked if I wanted her. She looked at me and nodded it was OK!! I passed on the opportunity.

No. There are some software programs that will convert lat/long or UTM to the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), but they have limited application and are still prone to errors. Basically, they have huge look-up files that have the lat long of every T/R intersection and mathematically interpolates to the specific quarter section. This is reasonably accurate in regular shaped or numbered townships, but those are the exception rather than the rule in mountainous terrain. Around here we several L shaped townships, a T shaped, a couple only one section wide and 6 high, and some section numbers missing. There is a Township 37 and 1/2 North in Nevada. In these cases computation based a perfect square is quite useless. Higher end GPS units allow you to upload maps or images, and the maps can have the PLSS delineated. BTW -- the PLSS is somewhat uncommon in the eastern part of the U.S., so many people are unfamiliar with it, and land surveys are still described in metes and bounds.

Searched for a cache for over an hour with no luck. I finally decided to call it off and go look for another one, but nature called. I stepped off into the brush to do, well, what guys do in the woods when the bladder calls. I looked down in midstream and saw the cache. Good thing ammo cans are mostly waterproof. The cache really only a caught a few drops and I wiped it down.

Most bladders have to be replaced periodically and so there is an advantage to sticking with a brand name where you can always get a replacement. Discounters and closeouts of the minor brands may not have replacement bladders in the future. But of course many bladders are interchangeable with the different manufacturers so check that out too. I have a Camelback MULE and love it. It is very comfortable even when overstuffed and loaded to the max on a hot day. BTW -- choose the largest bladder over a smaller one. You tend to drink more water with a hydration pack than you did with canteens/bottles. You do not have to completely fill the entire bladder for short hikes.

NAD83 and WGS84 are so close together the difference is way out in decimal-place land of a meter. For all practical intents and purposes you can use them interchangeably.

A shareware program for calculating the magnetic declination for any point on Earth for any date. http://www.interpex.com/geomagix/magfield.htm Declination does change over time. A rough rule of thumb is 1/2 degree over ten years, but it varies across the country. If your source is twenty years old (many topo maps have not been updated in that long or longer) then the published declination can be in error significantly. Aeronautical sectional maps are updated every six months with current declination. If you know a pilot, ask to see his charts.

Free downloadable self-study course on topographic maps and compass use. Designed for firefighters but is useful for the general public. 108 pages, illustrations, exercises. http://www.nwcg.gov/pms/training/map_comp.pdf

Fried Tacos with Fritos. Now I'm hungry!