bigredmed

While in Kearney, there are three that are really classics of their forms. 1. PineCob 2. Antique ATM 3. The night cache in the Bassway Strip. Enjoy!

Head west young cacher (to Kearney). Some really creative hides there.

Getting back to the original question of can we stop complaining? Two thoughts. 1. This feature will make it easy to blink out caches and never have to see them again. This will reduce the irritation of seeing caches that you don't want to see. 2. The question of cache spews is not addressed by this feature. This is of greater concern to the long term health of the game. Think about a new player. He/She doesn't know if they are going to like it, so they don't join, they just play for a while. They get their non-ignore feature cache listing and go on the hunt for a couple of cache spew caches. How many of us would stay around if the first two or three caches were carbon-copy caches and weren't that good to begin with? These really need to be dealt with. When cache pages are just cut and paste from one to another, and the containers are just a film can or a key holder in a bush or behind the dumpster, we are not going to be retaining new players/members who got interested in the game due to the articles emphasizing the outdoors, etc, and find these.

We sympathize with you. Rangers are kings of their little worlds.

Did this with my 3 Germans series. The cachers have to go find a couple of statues in SW Omaha that are German. The color of the first statue locks a color wheel corresponding to the numbers on a clock. The coords for the real cache are revealed by the colors that are posted on the page corresponding to numbers missing from the posted coords. To find the third cache, you have to subtract the two colors of cache 1 and 2 from the color of the German flag, then use the missing third color to lock the wheel and get the coords for #3 The wheel is a jpg file that when printed out will cover a CD. Put CD and color wheel inside a jewel case, and you can lock the color wheel in position by friction. (credit: BlackyV)

I tried this method. I took a 16 oz Nalgene straight jar, set it upside down and and covered it with Great Stuff. Then I painted it with Fleckstone paint so it looks like a rock. The results leave something to be desired. It looks more like someone spilled concrete, then painted it to look like a rock. Maybe I'll post a pic. My experience exactly! I used the stuff to cover a plastic covered box (box covered in a sheet of plastic, so I could remove the box and use it for something else once the plastic dried.) The weight of the foam made the box droop (not all that bad), but when it was done, it looked NOTHING LIKE A ROCK! The plastic sheeting, the foam, and the box all got junked after that failed experiment. After that, I went for the attempt at wacko camo like the UK and US navy used between WWI and WWII with the odd patterns and contrasting colors. Came up with a paint technique that left my ammo cans looking like Jackson Pollack attacked them. Apparently this was such a popular color scheme that the person at the geocaching event where it was raffled off kept it and never hid it. The one place it would POSSIBLY work is in a lava flow where you were trying to imitate Pa hoi hoi lava. The foam would bulge against the plastic to form the pillow lava like structures.

SWEEEEEEEEEEETTT!!! The new look is great. An "ignore list", oh man, I would have thought the day would never come! Thanks!

You could link to one if you had a URL for it.

I will start putting together caches from Nebraska (central US) and will contact the two of you when I have the items gathered. (Warthog and Africard)

No, the logs are the same. I did one with a cacher in Berlin and we put each other on the cache as owners so I get logs when someone finds it in Germany. The idea of using your own container is that ammo cans aren't always welcome, and they add considerable weight.

I cleared that up awhile back. The trail is not closed to hikers. It is closed to mountain bikes until 4 or 4:30 pm (I can't remember which). That is because yes, they do trail rides and the bikes could cause issues. The signs there only speak of limiting bikes and we happily hiked there during the day and walked right by a trail riding group. I think the park person you spoke to there a year or two ago was simply confused. That can happen. Either that or they changed the rules. My point still stands. I went to the ranger station to ask for a trail map and was told that hiking was prohibited during daylight. Whether this was a rule or from confusion on the part of the ranger, I can't say. Neither can you. The rule was placed without any discussion or public input. If I had broken that rule, I would have faced consequences, just as if I had broken a real law. The difference is that laws are debated in public forums before they are put on the books. These land use rules are usually not. Certainly in our state, they are not.

Check out www.byonics.com. They have TNC's for APRS and cables that both connect the GPS to power and connect the GPS to your pc.

Tick season would be a major drag. Don't think I want to get Lyme disease in that region.

The frustration is that even when there has been a problem, there is rarely an attempt by the park managers to engage in a discussion with the local group or GC. The other frustration is that when rules get placed, there is often no advance notice that the rule is being discussed. Hiking was banned in a section of one of our state parks. No notice, no public forum, no explanation of the problem ahead of time, no media attention to some accident or some other cause of a public hue and cry, just the ranger thought that horses on the trails would get spooked by hikers, so shut the section of the park off to any foot traffic during the summer when they had horses. Note, the absence of a public discussion meant that we didn't get informed, we didn't get to have input, and I could have been arrested for breaking park regs had I not stopped at the ranger's station to ask for a trail map (when I was told of the ban.)

Yep, we'll begoing right by there. I'll try and remember to stop. Shouldn't be too hard, since my Pocket Queries are set to grab all caches within 3 miles of our route. Oh yes! That is a must find! A major Nebraska must see! Seriously, that should be top of the list. Carhenge is pretty cool! Its a particularly great pun (CoFord Wagon). When you go to Carhenge, take time to sign the "Autograph" and appreciate the "Ford Seasons" as well. (Some people just have too much time on their hands to be trusted with welding equipment... )

In case you didn't want to wade through the thread. The International Geocache Exchange was started by Canadazuuk and Divine last year. Basically, we set up the contents of a cache (minus container) based on where we are, and then mail them to another cacher in a different part of the world who sends a cache from their part of the world to the first cacher in exchange. Both caches are set up in their locales and people who find them get to see items from another part of the world, send travel bugs to different continents, etc.

II agree with most of your post, but its a civil rights issue and a proportional issue. 1. Civil Rights. We are all to be treated equally before the law. We are all to be given equal rights and provided with means of redress of grievances with our government. When some faceless bureaucrat can (often at a whim) ban a sport, and face no consequences for his action as there is no effective means of redress, this is not the kind of activity that we want to see in a government. Who is next to get banned? Picnic'ers? After all, they spread blankets on the delicate vegetation and leave a lot of trash behind. They burn fires to cook their hot dogs, etc. 2. Proportionality. We may cause damage, especially in fragile areas or in the case of popular caches. Do we REALLY cause the kind of damage that mountain bikers, ATV riders, snowmobilers, horseback riders, or moutain climbers cause? If we are so terribly dangerous, why not make this sport illegal outright? (Cause it would have to have public hearings, and testimony, etc, and would never pass muster?) The response of banning caching while allowing other things that are obviously more destructive is out of proportion. As we have no effective means of redress for these kind of decisions, this kind of disproportional response in government needs to be opposed by those who are concerned that government at the level of the mandarins is getting out of hand.

Sad, but true.

Is anyone interested in swapping a cache from South Africa for a cache in the US (Nebraska)?

Cabelas at Sidney is a fun place. Be sure to check out their sale room(s). You will also find plenty of places to eat around there. May I suggest either an Elk sandwich at the store, or going into Sidney and eating at a place called Dude's. Great prime rib and steaks. The decor is like a time machine back to the rat-pack era. You half expect to see Frank Sinatra hitting on some "dolls". Worth the side trip.

Anyone want to revive the International Geocache Exchange? I have one with Germany and would be open to another from Europe or elsewhere.

Well, we should have some extra time the day we visit Mt. Rushmore. I mean, how long does a typical tourist stare at the monument? We may take that route and stay the night in western Nebraska instead of coming through Wyoming. We'll be driving through Wyoming in June anyway. Crash at Fort Robinson. Its about 3 hours south of Mt Rushmore. Very cool history and some neat caches. Things to do at Ft Rob. 1. See the Crazy Horse memorial. The only memorial to a fallen enemy ever errected on an active duty Army base. 2. See the museum there. Walter Reed practiced medicine there. (As a doc, I find seeing his script pad and medical gear cool). 3. Go into town and drink some Eiswein. The winery in Crawford makes eiswein that seriously rocks. 4. Hit Officers' Club cache. 5. Breakfast at the Frontier Cafe (good omlets).

Good point. Another approach would be for geocachers to stop caching in Oregon. Locals would still be there, but if the folks from Cali, Wash, and Idaho skip on by, the gas, food, and lodging loss will sting a little. So we strike against Oregon, no cache trips, no purchases of Nike or Columbia sportswear, no nothing. Basically, look at the point of origin or the company HQ. If its in Oregon, we just buy something else. That will hurt more than just a cache boycott. I wonder if its time though to finally say the L word and go after a class action lawsuit against the state of Oregon and the other pinheads that ban geocaching because of its "environmental impact" yet allow people to drive ATV's all over the park, or drive steel climbing spikes into rock faces (and leave them there). Seems to me that we might make a case under the equal treatment clause. If these other sports are OK, then a little box in the woods should be fine. Perhaps its time to call forth the demon spawn?

A national group could set rules that would be independent of GC, N or TC. This is a good thing. Example: If Jeremy wishes to sell travel bugs, fine, but a national group could require that all travellers be trackable on all listing sites (put a link to geolutin, traveltag.com on all listing sites.) A national group could set a standard definition of terms (a micro is blank, etc) A national group could set standards for labeling (All caches will have a Gx logo on the outside). A national coordinating group of regional groups could help spread cache style ideas and develop a systematic means of letting people know about successful new ideas. A national coordinating group could use local and regional groups to enforce standards. Cache spews and other bad forms would be more easily controlled if it were not up to one approver who may have a wide region to cover. I am in favor of this type of development. It would require membership and would require work to coordinate all the groups. I am president of Nebraskache and would be happy to work with anyone interested in exploring this.

The problem is with land managers with this patronizing attitude. If someone isn't breaking the law they should be allow to do whatever the flock they want in a park. Another problem is that the land managers have no effective check and balance system that they have to live under. They decide that they don't like you, and you are out. They decide that they like someone else, and they want something, then everyone else gets leftovers, and there is not much we can do about it. Lobbying congress gets nowhere, I have emailed the Secretary of the Interior asking for some assistant to converse with geocachers on this forum, and got squat. I have sent emails and letters to our state game and parks group and got nothing in the way of a response to several problems that we have locally. These people are the mandarins of our public land. We need them, but we need them to remember that its land that doesn't belong to them, that being a petty tyrant is not OK, and being able to defend your decision is part of any form of management. As for lobbying, we need to get a sense of where we fit in the pecking order at Garmin, Magellan, REI, and Cabelas. If we are a large fraction of Garmin's market, you would think that laws banning us from large areas of the country would be a threat to their business and that they may be willing to atleast help us talk to the right people.