team5150

The kids and I have found several caches without the use of our GPSr, aka naked caching. Some of them were in small local parks and we did them without the GPSr just for fun. A couple that we did were in more remote areas and we did them with the use of map and compass, mainly to reaffirm the kids knowledge of orienteering and map skills. In either instance, a find is a find!

Check out this tutorial... Click Here It might help.

One of our favorite things to leave is a small first aid kit that I get in the checkout aisle at Walmart. They cost 94 cents, have quite a few handy little items in them, are small enough to fit in a lot of caches (and in your back pocket) and people seem to snatch them up quite quickly. I always cache with kids, so bumps, bruises, scrapes and cuts are quite common, so we always have one of these little kits in our geo bag and another in the glove compartment of the truck, just for such occasions!

Mine still shows an event I attended last month, which has now been archived. Most peculiar...

Here is a link to a great FAQ page that might answer some of your questions. Explorist 500 FAQ.

What Blue Deuce said! Travel bugs are not considered trade items, so the trade rules don't apply to them. If you can help them on their journey, then grab 'em and get 'em goin'.

Also check here in the Garage Sale forum. There are some nice PDAs offered from time to time for a very reasonable price.

When I first started using GSAK, it asked me if I wanted to download a sample file. I answered yes and it downloaded a file of Australian caches. This might be what you are seeing.

Yes it is possible. It is what is referred to as 'paperless caching' and is the only way to go in my opinion. The two most popular programs for this are GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) and Cachemate. Here is a link to a tutorial that will walk you through the setup and installation of these programs. Click Here. If you search through the forums you will find lots of discussion about paperless caching. Good luck and happy caching - Gary

Email sent....

You can take a seperate piece of paper if you want, but one of the requirements of a regular cache is that it does contain a logbook. Sometimes the logbooks are full or wet, if so be sure and leave a note for the owner in your online log. As for travel bugs, quite often they will have a tag attached to them with specific instructions as to what their mission is.

Yes, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I am using a Z22 and a Sony Vaio laptop running Windows Vista. The easiest way that most people have gotten it to work is by right clicking the palm desktop icon and choosing the 'run as administrator' option. If that doesn't work, there are a couple of other workarounds that are available, feel free to email me and I will tell you what they are. Good luck and happy caching - Gary

I am running Vista and while its true that there are problems with transferring .pdb and .prc files, there are workarounds for them. I have been using Vista with my palm for several months now.

We have used a Z22 for nearly a year now and like it a lot. We have literally thousands of cache pages stored in Cachemate. The only caveat that I would mention is that it can be a bit hard to read in direct sunlight, but this can be overcome to a great extent by adjusting the brightness and contrast.

Right click on the icon and choose "Run as Administrator". This has saved my bacon on a couple of programs now. Good luck!

I don't have a Venture Cx but I do have a 60 CSx that I have run with a mini- USB car charger for a while now. A USB port supplies a steady 5 volts (+/- 0.25 volts) power supply. Click here for some technical stuff. I also run my Palm Z22 from the same charger. Only difference is that I can recharge my PDA with this charger, but I can only power my GPS with it. Still comes in handy and saves a lot of battery life on road trips or when traveling between caches.

Only found one tick so far this year, but that was back in late March, which I thought was way too early for ticks this far north. Obviously, I was mistaken. (Imagine that! ) Here is an interesting site about tick removal and Lyme disease. LDF info.

You might try visiting the Waymarking site, also. They have tons of unique places to visit.

What kind of GPS do you use? Garmin has a free routing software called NRoute that is free, uses your Garmin GPS and seems to work pretty well. Not sure what you want to use it for, but you might check it out before you drop a load of $$ on another program/set up. Heres a link to the site Garmin NRoute.

Have you checked out all of the junk they are trying to sell on Ebay? What a crock!!

The kids and I love finding coins in caches. We have a shelf in our living room where we keep our favorite 'treasures' from our caching trips that has a lot of coins on it. One thing that I try to do with them is to sit down and figure out where the coin is from, a little about the country, how much the coin is worth in US $. I figure that adding a little geography to our caching can't be a bad thing! They have learned about many different places this way. We picked up a coin from Jordan this weekend that we plan on researching tomorrow night after dinner. Then it can take its rightful place on the shelf!

When you list your cache, there will be the opportunity to add attributes (the icons on the cache page) I would be sure and click on the ones that indicate that it is NOT a 24/7 cache and that it is NOT a night time cache (The moon and stars icon). Another thing that you might do is mention in your write up that if the finder does do it after daylight hours, you will delete their find, and that if you didn't see them there during the day(since you work there) then you can and will check the security tapes. Just my 2 cents worth.... Good luck with your first hide and happy caching!

Ran two PQ's this morning, received them, had them loaded into GSAK,GPS and PDA and was out a whole 15 minutes of time. Have never experienced the problem that is causing all of this whining and belly aching personally..... And not to be picky but 0.082 would be 8.2 cents a day, less than a dime. What else did you do today that cost you less than a dime?

Congratulations on your first find!! There is no turning back now!!!!

Good luck! Hope your hunt goes well!