Ruddles1325

No pictures of this one, sorry, but recently I found a cache hidden in the insulating handle of an electric fence. You know when there's a gate in an electric fence and you have a couple of long springs with insulating handles across the gap, so you can open it up to get through? The handles and springs were hanging on a fence post, but of course there's no electrical fence. One of the handles could be opened up to reveal the logbook. The hint was 'In an isolated spot'. Very clever. I won't say which cache it is in case it spoils the fun for other finders...

It's quite brave looking for a multicache on your first go Even if the clues are easy, you may have made a mistake with the final location, or it may be it's just a well camouflaged cache and you don't see it. It may be better to start with some 'traditional' caches near you, particularly those highlighted as beginner caches, and that way you wil get used to how caches are hidden. For De Tolboom, I noticed that there is a hint (you have to decrypt it). I don't know this cache, but I guess the hint might refer to a feature of the landscape? Good luck!

With the latest Garmin versions you can have whatever file and you want for your map so you don't have to worry about it overwriting any other map yo may have already installed. Just give your newmap a unique file name ( of course do not change the extension - the bit after the dot) and copy it to your device. You can ( should) back up the data on your device y making a copy of it to your computer before loading the new map.

The ones that surprise and frustrate me the most are for puzzle or multi caches where you know that it takes a lot of time and effort to get to the cache, and people still just put TFTC or Thanks. It might have taken them hours or days to complete the cache, surely they could spend a bit more time on the log!

I found a nice one of a little viking figure who wanted to visit caches near the coast. I just picked one up that had very specific missions: first go to America, then to Africa, etc. then eventually back home. I'm proud to say that I helped it to achieve its first mission by taking it to America. I also found the Eifel Tower TB mentioned above, and took it to a nice place in Switzerland. I never really saw the point of trackables but some of these creative missions make a l;ot of sense. I especially like the idea of the one with the box attached which is to collect some item and then go back to the owner. I might steal that idea for a trackable myself.

I agree it's hardly a secret these days. On the other hand there are some caches, particularly urban ones, which do seem to be placed to make the finder feel part of a secret society. They are not near anything of interest, often need extreme stealth, and seem to imply that the finder is "in on the secret", while all those people who walk by every day without noticing are not.

Flanders and Wallonia are regions ( and so us Brussels for that matter). There is only one king of the Belgians. While each region has its own government (more or less) there is also a federal government.

I would place some traditionals along the route of the multi. 23 miles is a long way for one smiley Near me there's a nice multi nightcache of around 20km based on the zodiac. It got a lot more logs when the owner added 12 traditional caches along the trail based on signs of the zodiac.

My average distance away is 148 km - I have a 'double peak' distribution of distances: more than 50% are less than 20km away, but almost 25% are 500 - 1000km away because I regularly visit my family far away, and when I do I always manage to find a few caches...

Google is free (if you're willing to ignore their advertisements). I pay $30 to Groundspeak annually for "Premium" membership (plus they sell advertisements on their pages). And I can't even search for words in titles of caches!!?! No, it DOESN'T make complete sense to me! Just check out the market capitalisation of Google. They have way more money than Groundspeak, even if it doesn't come directly from you.

Yeah well, maybe if Groundspeak had the money that Google does then their search would work that way. But they don't, so it doesn't. As someone who works in IT, I understand why Groundspeak has done this - and if you read their explanation, it makes complete sense. Note that you can always use Google to search for your caches by name - it works too...

Most of the caches I have placed are just in nice places which people might not visit otherwise. I did make one mistake with a puzzle cache which was meant to be a joke ( published on April Fools' day) but which is probably the least interesting of the lot.

I got the same error logging 2 caches just an hour or so ago. No such error 8 hours earlier.

There's a multi-cache near me where one of the stages is to find a small bag containing the pieces of a puzzle - the type where you have to fit a load of shapes into a square. When you complete it, it reveals the coordinates of the next stage.

I've played 3 Werigos on an iPhone5 (didn't have any experience on iPhone4 so cannot compare). The speed seems fine - no delays at all for me. Once the catridge got into a strange state and I could not continue and had to start again completely. That taught me to save my game after every waypoint. The other issue I found annoying was that sometimes you have to scroll down to see all the information on a screen, and there's nothing to tell you that you need to do this, like a scroll bar.

Well I have never found a lamp post hide (I don't even think they exist in my home country of Belgium) but I will be coming to Texas in a couple of weeks so maybe I'll find my first one!

Personally I hate any competitive aspects of geocaching. To me it's a hobby, a passtime, a way to get me to interesting places. It does not need to be competitive.

Presumably finding a cache anywhere in mainland USA will show you as having found a cache in Hawaii and Alaska...is that better or worse?

I see exactly this behaviour on my eTrex20. As you say, it always seems to happen just as you approach a cache, never just part way along the trail, so it's very annoying. Sometimes I just switch it off and on, and then it's fine, other times I just wait. On one or two occasions I thought it was related to low batteries, but it happened to me today with almost fresh batteries. Another way I've found to kick it back into action is to go to the 'satellites' view and check it's updating satellites ok, then back to the Map.

I placed a beginner series not too long ago. I made it a relatively short walk (6 caches over 5km or so) with easy paths but interesting locations. I used a consistent container type throughout so people knew what to look for. I posted hints and spoiler pics. I put in a short multi-cache along the way, and a final which you could only get to if you had found all the others, which makes people feel good about completing it. i've had some nice feedback about it, so it seems to work. Hope that helps.

In Belgium you have the LHC series of caches. To start you have to do a multi. This gives you a special tool which you need to calculate the starting coordinates of 12 other caches (mostly mysteries but also letterbox, night cache and Wherigo). In each cache are two codes which, together with the tool gathered in the original multi, you use to calculate more information to allow you to find and open the final cache. Everything is themed around the Large Hadron Collider and the 12 caches are placed on a circle the same diameter as the LHC. There's also a story running through it about having to prevent an explosion. So yes, sounds like your idea can already be done with the existing cache types.

It's in a cache in Belgium. I found it a few weeks ago. Here it is.

A cache today with the hint "container not buried". Given that I was in a forest with a stream in a deeply-cut stream bed this didn't help. I found the cache in a hole under a stump, so almost buried

If it's not available in winter then tough. I hunted a cache this year that was under about 4 foot of snow. I was really chancing it. I gave up when the snow was up to my waist. Will just have to go back in summer. On the other hand there is a cache near me which is only available in winter, as due to some clever printing the tags can only be read whn the temperature is below freezing.

I found a cache today after a lot of searching. The previous signature in the log was 3 months ago. Whn i got home and logged it I realised there had been a DNF and the CO had placed a new container just yesterday. So i had missed the new container and found the old one.... Now there are two containers. I can't quite believe the CO coldn't find her own cache, maybe it had wandered...