markp99

TFTP Thanks for the post. I wholeheartedly agree. I ALWAYS leave at least few lines describing my hunt, the location, the weather, cache condition. It's as much for the hider's benefit as my own. I enjoy going back a read my old logs. The more descriptive, the more likely I am to remember the find. The only caches where I may leave a very short log are those caches where the hider did not seem put a whole lot of thought into (IMO, anyway).

I was talking with my niece and her husband who live in a very rural/wooded area. They are frequently visited by a family of black bears. They claim that black bears can be quite funky smelling (like human B.O.). When I described the "smell", they quickly agreed it was probably a black bear. They said while foxes can get pretty ripe, their smell is quite different. When the hairs were standing on the back of my neck, I think this is the sort of beast I had envisioned. The magnitude of that smell was quite powerful, probably no small animal! :eek: There is a multi-cache in this same area. I'll be sure to visit that one during bright daylight hours and stay on the primary trails.

Almost exclusively pines in this area (white, red) and some spruce. Not much hardwood. My first instinct was to look UP. Could have been a nest of some sort, I suppose. It was quite warn tonite (75-80F), which probably enhanced the effect.

Nothing like rotting swamp smell (I know that one very well). Not skunk either, we have ~resident skunks near our house, who have nailed our dogs a couple times over the years. Ugh! It was more similar to very strong B.O. (human body odor) , but MUCH MUCH stronger and muskier! I'm guessing I was very close to whatever it was, which is why I moved away from that area. I'd say the smell was concentrated in an area of ~20ft diameter.

I was out caching this evening, just at dusk, in a somewhat unfamiliar area. It was a preserve very rural area with am extensive watershed and nearby stream. A beautiful area. As I began my walk into the woods, I was surprised by a pair of large deer bounding across the trail just in front of me. Ok, that was cool enough. I continued in. As I made my way through a thicket (a few hundred yds from where I saw the deer), I was overcome by an intensely strong, musky/pungent smell. It filled my nose and seemed to be everywhere. "Oh crap", I thought to myself, "This is an animal scent I dontl recognize, and I'm right on top of it." I stopped, listened and looked up and around. I saw nothing, heard nothing. By now, with it getting just a little bit darker in the deep woods, the hair on the back of my neck was standing on-end. I though it would be a GREAT idea to get away from this spot!! So, I slowly bee-lined out of the wooded area to a bit of a clearing and the trail I was looking for. I found a footbridge and made my way across the stream, happy to be on the far side, away from whatever smelled THAT BAD. So, what kind of animals native to this area (southern NH) can possibly smell so strongly?? I thought i could have been deer urine, but I've smelled that scent (in a bottle - hunting). This was wayyy different than that. I didn't hang around to look for any other signs... I took a more round about route on my way back to my Jeep. Oh, I did find the cache! Any ideas as to what it might have been??

Sorry to go off-topic. Not to beat a dead horse, and YMMV, I'm thinking it may be that PB Jars sometimes use a waxed cardboard liner inside the lid. This may be the element that is failing with time. I have used a small Nalgene bottle for a geocache. Definitely small, but a convenient form-factor for stuffing into the perfect location. Not much room for swag, but fully waterproof.

FYI, I have never found a cache in a peanut butter jar that has not been wet and stinky... Maybe it's my northern climat, but they are not so waterproof.

Found 226 of the 562 caches within 15mi. Due to a hip issue, It's been a slow summer unfortunately

Hmmm. No GSAK for me yet...

The symptoms of withdrawal have begunnnn tooo settttt innnnnnnn. This cold-turkey stuff is not all its made out to be!! Hope you're back up soon. myGMEv3 is all buttoned-up and ready to release! Yay!

Yay!! The floodgates have been opened. LOTS of GC.com emails tonite. Thank you! \ Whew, the DT's were begining to set in!

No email love from GC.com for a couple days. I'm going through some serious withdrawal. Hope things get corrected soon. It's a bit like flying blind.

Ugh! No Owner emails for me either. I did get a couple hits yesterday/today that I only noticed by going to the cache page directly. Hope this gets fixed soon.

Hmmm... GMail user here: PQs and email copy (via GC.com) seems to be working just fine. However, I am NOT seeing any watchlist and new cache notifications. Very strange.

I noticed the same brightness difference when I move from the eXplorist 500. Very big difference. However, the only place this becomes an issue is in the car in bright sun. Out in the woods does not seem to be an issue whatsoever.

Reinstalling GSAK into "C:\GSAK" (vs C:\Program Files\GSAK) will avoid the permissions issues.

Arghh! My geocoin has fallen victim to tbclean! It was logged as "grabbed" and then dropped into the nordic graveyard. Then the logs disappeared. I do have a generic pic of my "Getting There" geocoin, but no tracking number is visible. tbclean's account is locked, so there's no way to contact this slimebag. Here's hoping karma catches up with you!

I was out this weekend and was unable to use the electronic compass most of the time. It kept complaining for me to "Hold Level". Pwr'd down and up and recalibrated several times taking great care to hold the unit level. Batteries were fully charged, fresh off the charger. Ultimately, I shut off the electronic compass and continued on my way. But I've become spoiled by this option, so I was not happy without it. I had noticed on previous trips this fall that "Level" was frequently accomplished by actually holding the GPS tilted slightly forward (~about 5deg). Also, on 2-3 occasions this weekend, I lost the bearing indicator upon those previously mentioned pwr-up cycles. Another pwr cycle would bring it back. Quite frustrating. Temps this weekend were in the low 20's; nippy with a good windchill, but balmy by otherwise normal mid-Jan temps in New Hampshire. Could these issues be related to the ambient temperature? Any suggestions?

OK, I know I've done this before. I want to dump all of the Custom POIs from my 60Csx so I can refresh the collection with the latest info from GSAK. I use this Custom POIs to hold *ALL* the caches from my GSAK library (found, not found, archived, etc.) with hints. I use regular waypoints to load a collection of 200 unfound caches using the custom icons approach. Any help on deleting the current set of POI's?? Thanks

I've left my Leki trekking pole stuck in in the ground at a cache (twice!), only to realize my mistake AFTER I was back at my car, or had begun to embark on my next cache hunt miles away. Do'h!

Si2Me, Simple steps: 1. Copy the macro (txt file) from the link 2. Paste into the ...\GSAK\Macros directory 3. In GSAK, setup your filter to suit your needs 4. In GSAK, select the >Macro>Run , select myMGE macro 5. Google Maps will launch by itself with your caches displayed HTH markp99

Don't lay your GPS on the ground when you go to grab your camera from your pack - you might strp on it! Actually there is some law of nature that says you WILL strp on it. $93 later, I have my eXp500 back in with a brand new LCD display - ugh!

Hey Si2M! If you're a GSAK user, I have created a macro to show a collection of caches in Google Maps. You can build a filter to exclude your found caches, or simply leave them there; found caches are shown in red. Take a look. I am working on the next version which adds a bit more functionality. http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=...iew=getlastpost Discussion Here: DIscussion Here: Mark

Beermaker, You neglected to tell the whole story:

Huh? I love my eXp 500! That is a very good price. My only "complaint" is that I have lost signal a few time in the deepest/densest woods. I'm not sure my 60CSx would have maintained a lock in those conditions. I actually prefer the eXp's display over the 60CSx, MUCH brighter and clearer. Mark