WoollySMASH

Since I just started this year my goal was a measly 100 caches, 3 provinces, and 2 states. So far I have 1 province, 2 states and 40 and change caches. Not too bad.

I plan on getting one of my own, just to show my loyalty to the game mostly. I like how they look, if it doesn't get discovered a lot.. oh well. I plan on moving it to all my vehicles depending on which one I decide to road trip in.. I may even throw it on my father's classic cars when he's showing it...

I had this same issue with the default browser. It isn't very fine tuned for any forums at all. I solved the issue by using Chrome over the default... I also tired firefox with no luck.

We really need to get a gallery of sig items up, I've only seen a handful in person. I'd be very happy to see how extensive some collections have become, as well as grab ideas for my own sig item.

I tested the capabilities of both a Magellan GC, and my android while I was on vacation in the US. The android was far superior taking me closer to targets, stronger gps signal, excellent maps, and it could hold much more in the way of offline cache details. The only drawbacks I could actually find is that it seems that it takes a huge ammount of time if your preloading any more than 100+ caches at a time. Connecting to wifi helps this considerably but it is still slower to bulk upload the android than the Magellan GC. The other drawback is that it is much more fragile... If you were going to use your phone I would consider spending upwards of another 100 bucks to get some safety cases, and some waterproofing.. just in the case something happened. The magellan GC disappointed me so much while caching that I'm actually in the midst of selling it, while I was on the trails it constantly lost gps signal taking upwards of an hour or more to get it back.. where my phone didn't lose it once. I'm under the assumption that more costly gps units would probably be much better than both the android and magellan GC.. but for the considerable future unless I run into trouble I'll be using my droid exclusively.

You can't go wrong with dinsaurs, I tend to try to get the rubbery plastic ones because they are nearly indestructable, you can get these at dollar stores and sometimes buy them in bulk sets for less than 80 cents a piece. I've yet to take swag myself but I do my best to try to leave something pretty good. Another thing I also leave are pins, members of my family have been pin collectors for years so sometimes they give me a big bag of canadian flag pins or some other type and I distrbute. So Pins and Dinos are my main staple, both of which are inexpensive but offer a little bit of quality amongst caches that are otherwise filled with some not so good items. The only time I've wanted to take it was usually a sig item, which I refuse to take until I have a sig item of my own to trade for.

On my trip to the US I saw many creative and awesome looking signature items. Everything from poker chips to wooden animals with burned inscriptions. I've been very tempted to trade for them and start a collection but before I begin trading for sig items, I would like to have my own to swap with. I'm currently pricing some interesting items to have my insignia assigned to... plastic tokens, metal blanks.. etc Eventually I'll work my way up to being a collector of such items.

This is pretty much my stance. I've done a lot of park and grabs, and a few challenging caches as well. I'm working my way up the difficulty scale because I'm slowly accumulating myself to doing trails etc. I plan on focusing on harder to reach or find caches just for the personal challenge... but this doesn't mean that if I'm at a local restaurant that has a cache in the parking lot that I will pass on the opportunity to find it. I'm not discriminate.. perhaps when I enjoy the game for a number of years I'll become more particular but at this time if I can go for a walk around my town or vacation spot and grab a few easy park and grab style caches while I get exercise.. well it is just another motivator to keep me active. I'm still new to the game but caching has already taken me to beautiful scenic spots that I would have never wondered to, businesses that I would have never shopped at, spots that I always said "I would like to visit there..." but never did, and places that I pass every day or know very well from the car window or walking by but never stopped to appreciate. I appreciate the game for how it makes me feel, and how I enjoy it. I often dislike some caches but since I went out of my way to grab it I log it... I just take note of what I don't like so I don't do those types when I start placing my own caches... but I'm meticulous and enjoy building things.. so when I venture into that area I'll probably throw maximum effort into it.

That's a beauty.

Within an urban setting I typically scout the area first. If there are people near where I believe the cache to be I come back at a better time. Early morning/Late night caching is a great time to hit those busy spots without much trouble. One thing I absolutely hate to find in a high traffic cache is a pill bottle used for a cache.. especially a prescription bottle. I'm not sure about this area but I keep finding them without tape and/or some other covering... and it makes the stealthy element increase that much more because no one really wants to be seen hiding a pill bottle.

I usually use a car, park in an area with many caches around it and walk from there. However this is typically within town or city when you get on the outskirts there is a lot of driving as close as possible then walking the rest of the way for a single cache.. sometimes you have to drive a long ways to get even close to that certain coastline, beach, forest, trail.. etc.

So far I've not taken anything, I usually try to leave something fairly good though. When I have my signature tokens made up I'll trade for signature items for an album I intend to make, but those are something I intend to trade for other sig items. Other than that I may take some pins, or geocaching merch (stickers, pins, patches..) Mostly stuff for the album.

Typically I leave dinosaur toys of reasonable quality, I've been looking to find some rubber or plastic mammoths in bulk to have as a kind of a signature item. I'm also considering having a plastic token type calling card made up to trade for other calling cards as I've seen some excellent ones that I think keeping a catalog of would be fun. In a pinch where I haven't had any dinos or other trinkets, I've left or traded things like sunglasses, local ferry tickets, various coins, free coffee coupons.. etc

Not very far into this but I see it becoming something I'm going to need to watch. My Start up costs when I got serious were: - 30$ premium - Roughly 180$ for my first GPS Travel costs weren't really a factor to me because I take annual trips to the USA, and frequently take day or longer trips to other provinces in my country... for the heck of it. Being able to cache these locations now is just a bonus. I save quite a bit, so these missions don't hit me too hard financially. Where I'm running into trouble is seeing swag, and things I must have. I'm on vacation currently but quickly see myself buying up some essentials for the future: - Hiking boots - general cache repair gear - personalized tokens (not essential but I really want them) - Multitool - some other misc hiking gear - and some trade swag as well as fun swag like the car window travel bug... I started thinking this hobby would be cheap, not that I was looking for cheap, but I'm becoming very addicted now and these extras seem essential to me.. so I can see myself spending some more mad money just on these before the year is out. A quick guesstimate would be around 300$ bucks IF I'm lucky and catch some deals.

I do enjoy souvenirs personally, I do think they need a bit more consideration. It was nice to find out about them while I was on vacation in the USA I managed to get 2 states. However, logging and deleting to get the souvenir seems like a exploit to the site and to the fun.

Completely understandable reasoning.