MRC & JLC

What a fun, fabulous little introduction to geocaching! The look on her face when she found her first one was great! I'm going to share this with my friends and family who don't really know what geocaching is. Nice job!

I always carry a geocaching backpack with me. One pocket full of caching tools (tweezers, scissors, flashlight, telescoping magnet, etc.), one pocket full of stuff to fix caches (replacement logs, tape, wire, extra containers), one pocket full of first aid stuff and the BIG pocket full of swag. I put a lot of thought into my swag and restock it often. I like to leave stuff for both adults and kids alike. For kids - new toys, glow sticks, school supplies, books, magic trick sets, playing cards. For adults, caribiners (I know I always love finding them), compasses, tweezers, space pens, mesh bird feeders for finches, thin gloves, vinyl repair kits, laser pointers and flashlights, pet toys and pet waste bags in dispensers, all kinds of stuff. We also had some mailing labels printed up with our caching name that also say "Happy Caching" and we put the stickers on the swag we leave. The last thing I carry is a ton of golf pencils and little sharpeners. I put them in most caches I find that can hold them. We're not big on taking swag unless it's something we can really use, but almost always leave something knowing that one of the next cachers will probably enjoy it.

We have Garmin GLOs and they are truly amazing. Quick to find satellites, and they find so many more than our regular etrex vista and are sooooo much more accurate. That being said, they're PERFECT for placing a cache. But your caching experience, no matter how great of a gpsr you have, still depends on the accuracy of whomever placed the cache you're looking for. One of the best things is being able to use your smartphone and get REALLY accurate readings using your app of choice. The only two problems we've come up with: 1. It would be great if the unit came with some velcro. I'd love to be able to stick it right onto the strap of my backpack. (I've now done this myself, but seriously, the stubby little sticky "feet" on the unit will never make it sit still, no matter where you set it... Well, maybe on carpet.) 2. The stupid on/off button is REALLY sensitive. You don't want to put it in a pocket or anything if you think it's off. You'll most likely pull it out to use it the next time to find the battery dead because an incidental bump turned it on and drained the life out of it.

I found a tutorial on how to make your own geocoins with "shrinky dink" material. I'm looking into doing that right now. The ones I saw on the tutorial were very pretty. I'm not into collecting unactivated geocoins but love finding them and using them for a cool ftf prize in my own caches. No cost to me and I know people love finding them. We also just set up a cache with a cheap, disposable camera and posted a note for people to take a photo of themselves in the cache area and replace the camera in the cache. When the camera is used up, we'll make a small album so finders can see a history of who's been there and put a new camera in so future finders can play along. (Not really a prize/reward, but kind of fun and pretty cheap.)

Really well done - all the work that you put into these really shows. Keep up the good work, we'll keep watching!