Team Wildebeest

Welcome Michelle, I'm also from the Buffalo area, Hamburg actually. I found these 25 in ASP and ANF in PA: GCK32E GCGMW5 GCE736 GCJB9K GCNY11 GCNTJ7 GCJP77 GCNHVV GCM01E GCKG5P GCNPDM GCKG5N GC80CA GCHX9A GCNPD5 GCMPH0 GCKG6P GCHX96 GCKG6B GCJP4D GCKG6A GCJ1K5 GCMPGM GCKG6D GCK1JQ Pop those into an advanced search using waypoint name, or you can use the zip code for Salamanca 14779 or Bradford 16701. Letchworth has some nice caches as well, we were just there a couple of weeks ago. Have fun down in ASP

I have a garmin 60cs and I went caching a couple of weeks ago with a friend who has a magellan, sportrak I think. We found 4 caches, 2 each. The only difference we could see between the 2 units was that he walked right past the caches and had to come back. Not by much only 20 ft or so but we would get zero readings at very different spots. It worked out well because we then walked toward each other and usually the cache was right between us. It was a very enjoyable experience having a different brand of GPSr in use, my usual caching partner uses my ols etrex and we end up close to each other but not to the cache. It seemed to us like the garmins and magellans just have opposite zero readings that happen to work well together. Other than the slight boomarang problem, and it wasn't really a problem, I think magellans are fine units. I do like the way my 60cs fits in my hand though, as well as it comes with a clip to hook it to the sternum strap on my backpack.

Our first cache find took almost a year. It was only 2 trips but we were very new, and had no idea what to look for. Turns out it was a multi and the first part was in a plastic bottle. It looked like any other piece of trash laying in the woods. Later, we searched for another that took forever. That one was hidden in a tree way above my reaching ability. I'm not super short either(5'10) Good thing my caching partner is 6'5!. We looked for about an hour before finding that one.

An old style boxcutter. One of the ones with the exposed blades.

Our first find was this cache. We tried it a year earlier after I got my first GPSr. Too bad we didn't find it, we would have had a whole year of caching rather than waiting untill we found that one. When we did go back, we found it along with another. One more the next day and 3 more 5 days later. Hooked.

I just bought a new garmin 60cs to relpace the etrex legend I bought a few years ago. I sold the legend to my caching partner. I got the legend from a store that only sold garmins so I didn't have a choice in the matter, nor did I even know there were other brands. Both have been fine for the type of caches we've done, only once we had to abandon the GPSr because we were in a canyon and had no view of the sky. I got a friend of mine into caching, and we're taking him out on Sunday to try it out. He's got a magellan and I'm looking forward to seeing it in action. He said he can't wait to try out my 60cs. As long as the GPSr picks up signals I don't care who made it. It'll get me to where I need to be.

I got mine from Eastern Mountain Sports. Aluminum, telescoping, with a thick grip, and a cork knob on the top that unscrews to reveal a camera mounting screw. It extends from 2 feet to 5 feet and fits perfectly into a holster made from a carabiner on my backpack.

We've only run into 1 family caching, but that day we ran into them 5 or 6 times! Last year there were 6 or 7 caches in Chestnut Ridge park in WNY. We were doing all of them and walking the roads to get to each. They were doing the same ones in the same order but were bushwacking to them. It took about the same amount of time but we were much cleaner. We were putting yu-gi-oh cards in the caches, and eventually just started giving them to the kids and they put their trade items into the caches. I looked up the family and it seems they moved to Florida shortly after that day.

My caching partner and I were hiking in the Allegheny national forest (PA) last summer. The ferns there would rustle for no apparent reason so we started saying that it was because of the wildebeests. Apparently, they would run a string to a plant and shake it. Then while you were looking at the plant in question, the beest would pounce on you from behind. We laughed for miles about the stupid things and now anytime we hear a snapped twig, or anything like that in the woods, it's the wildebeest spys coming for us.