CroftFamily

We're still pretty new to the game but we'll be there. I'm envious of those that have already left for Champoeg since we don't leave until tomorrow afternoon. I hope the weekends events wear my kids out, they are frantic to get out the door.right.stinkin.now. Looking forward to putting faces to screen names.

No comment on weaponry- I just want to agree with those that swear by Tecnu. Most wonderful thing ever *snuggles tecnu bottle*. Husband and kids have never gotten PO/PI, but I have. I grew up hiking just outside Yosemite on a daily basis (lived there a while) and at age 15 discovered I am highly allergic to poison oak and poison ivy, both of which are prevelant on my grandparents property. Oops. At one point I ended up in the ER with a ginormous needle in my hip. Then some ninny decided to pull all the ivy/oak out on their property and BURN IT. My throat and lungs were not happy and neither were my grandparents as they rushed me back to Sonora to the ER. Providing no one is burning the stuff, tecnu is the best way to prevent and treat, in my experiance at least.

We have a hiking backpack filled with random items. We have bought several wooden games from the dollar spot at Target, mini first aid kits at target or big lots, insect bite kits (49 cents at big lots a while back), kids toys/sunglasses etc, and a bunch of DVD's. When we first started my kids demanded the Treasure Island cartoon dvd's at the dollar store, since they were fitting we bought them and occasionally drop them in a kids cache. There are also playing cards, mini frisbees, bracelets who knows what else in the bag. Currently I am working on making some knitted dodads. I attempted a pouch today ... frankly its more of a GPS cozy. It is a bit dorky so when I place it, I am going to leave something IN the thing as well. I am also knitting up some hats for grown ups that I will be tossing in. They may not be useful in summer, but cold weather comes early in Oregon. I hope my little knitted crafts go over well.

Quite the contrary for us. We're slow on the go mind you, but we've been caching as a family since the begining of February or so this year. Husband and I are not "outdoorsy", we're more "sit on the couchy" so discovering this game has given us something to do outside besides whine about the heat, the bugs, the general idea of not hiding in the house. All three of our kids have been better behaved since we started going on weekends, even their teachers noticed that each were improving in the critical thinking areas. Since many of the teachers also cache, they felt it was a great way to spend time together as a family, working as a team. Now if only we had friends that would join us I'd be thrilled. You guessed it, all of my friends are couch spuds and have no interest in a game where the pay off isn't a hugely expensive reward. mleh on them.

I too have bookmarked the blog. It's a riot.

This is great! We've been real busy with the kids, and geocaching on weekends so I haven't looked at the thread in a while. WOW. I agree with the others, it would be cool to move this to a general forum and get the input from other cachers. Honestly, I cannot wait to start meeting people. We've met two other cachers by pure accident when searching for Pitfalls of Geocaching. When we're out hunting we automatically scan others in the area and wonder if they are cachers as well. I love this game, I am so happy to have found out about it. I've already picked a couple of caches to pick up the next time I visit my grandparents, they live in the middle of NO WHERE and there are caches all around them. Caching along the 14 hour drive will certainly keep the kids from dying of boredom!

Aha! Thank you all. Dh got everything set now. Oh how we love this game, even if he has to pretend the GPS is a cell phone at times A hunting we will go a hunting we will hi ho cheerio a hunting we will go.

We're still pretty new at this and have only had the GPS for a week now. Its a magellan 500 with geocache manager. Anyway, apparently we are dolts because we cannot figure out how to download multiple caches at one time into the silly thing. So far we've managed to DL one at a time but thats getting tedious. Hoping for some quick answers since we'd like to be outta here in an hour for our day of caching with the kids. TIA

This is great! I love reading all the different ways everyone has discovered geocaching. One year my husband and I went to Champoeg with two of our three kids. We were looking around to find a neat place to camp. As we drove around Champoeg, it seemed pretty full of tents but there wasn't a soul to be found. We stopped by the water for a picnic, and while we were eating we saw expressions on peoples faces as they poofed back into the woods. Now I wonder if we accidently "discovered" the champoeg geocaching trip. We're hoping to join up on the Champoeg event this year. Now someone needs to send a memo to mother nature to get rid of this cold front so we can have that lovely spring like weather back.

How on earth have I managed to miss every newstory about it? Considering that I am geographically impaired, I am actually proud of myself for managing two finds without a GPS. Of course, they have been kid level finds, but with my inate ability to get lost its impressive I didn't completely wander off course and end up in Washington State. Now I just need to get a GPS and figure out how to use it, then duct tape it to my forearm to see if I can manage to stay on course on a normal day.

Hi everyone, we're new to geocaching and this is my first post in the NW forum. We've found two caches so far, easy levels since we don't have a GPS. Anyway, out of pure curiosity, I wonder how everyone found out about geocaching? I find myself wishing I had heard of it years ago. We discovered geocaching by way of Flylady. I read over there once in a while for housekeeping and organizing tips. Geocaching is listed under their date night section. I explained the idea to my husband and kids, and the next thing we knew we were searching a local park for a cache just over a week ago. We've decided that Sundays are our day to hunt and love it. How did you find out about it?

I knew that really I did. My kids had such a good time picking out items for other kids to collect, I wanted to ensure it was alright first. They also grabbed a couple watches, things they'd like to find. We'll get the hang of this I'm sure.

Greetings folks. My family and I are very new to geocaching. We have done one cache, sans GPS (we don't have one yet). Thankfully it was a themed cache so finding a trade item was simple. Anyway, I was at the dollar store today and found some Treasure Island DVDs, I grabbed a few thinking those would be alright to put into caches. If by chance the items in a found cache were obviously worth more than a simple dollar store item I would take nothing but leave a dvd. Same goes for the childrens craft projects I found there. Is this something that is OK to do? I would like to avoid offending anyone during our "darn it we're broke" weeks.