jon & miki

The picture sure looks to me like they are burying the logbook. I gotta admit I don't see a shovel or other "pointy object" though, so maybe you're right.

You can save some effort on steps 3 and 4 using GSAK to import the route directly when building the filter. The filter tab button will load from an MPS file containing the route created (and exported) from MapSource. Just be sure to delete any waypoints from the route first (other than the start/end/via's) or they'll be included in the route in some unpredictable fashion.

This article is about students who put out a series of buried log-only caches in several locations (including a cemetery from the picture caption). The article goes on to say that the students intended to list them on geocaching.com. A good use of gps equipment for teaching students navigation, math, history etc, but buried? Maybe the students will catch the faux pas when they read the guidelines prior to submitting the caches for publication....

Nice site! I've bookmarked the links for our future use.

It might be clearer to include the description and details about geocaching in a separate enclosure and not in the main body of the letter. That way a letter could be specific to the land manager and what you are asking for won't be obscured by the need to explain the sport. A good handout I've seen used effectively is the Geocaching University Let's Go Geocaching brochure Is it possible to meet with the land manager in person? You probably would get better results by handing them the brochure and talking with them directly to answer any questions rather than trying to cover the range of possible questions in a letter. Maybe your letter should include the brochure and just ask for a meeting to discuss it?

I forgot to say that other than the one issue brought up by Tsegi Mike and Desert Viking, the overall description is great. Well done!

I have to agree. Sometimes the "wow" factor is not a specific thing, but the entire body of work. For example, Living Art. There is no specific bush that's nearly as amazing as the entire couple of acres (though the harp-shaped tree comes close) and the years of work that went into it. Every single bush and tree is sculpted and standing in the middle of the garden and taking it in is truly a "wow" experience..

Others have already touched on the major points that define "Wow" for me, but I think the primary characteristic is the "unexpected" quality of the location. That unexpected quality can arise from the location itself (a natural wonder), the story behind the location (so that's where that happened), or the sheer labor that someone put into creating the location (I recall a castle being constructed in the Rockies over a period of years by a single guy with no help out of local stones and mortar). I expect a nice view when I go into the mountains, I don't expect to see a multi-turreted castle that's a labor of years by a single eccentric fellow. Besides the unexpected quality, I'd like to see a "spectacular" quality in most cases. While an unusual flower might be an interesting sight, it won't usually make me go "wow". I don't know if size matters directly, but I can't come up with any "wow" candidates that didn't give me room to wander around a little. Cross-listing? Certainly! I don't plan to go looking for "wow" gold in the McDonalds franchise category. A gold nugget would be lost in the franchised sand and never found at all. The purpose of this category is in no way diminished by having the same item listed in a more extensive category because of one of its more mundane characteristics. We OUGHT to mine other categories for the really amazing stuff that would get lost because it's buried in with a lot of other things of interest only to certain groups. The problem remains of how to set the hurdle for listing in the Wow category. We can't really vote in advance on things we've never seen. Posting pictures and descriptions would help but would tend to diminish the "unexpected" factor. Gotta think some more. Jon

We went for a non-caching walk along Riverfront Park Sunday before last. We didn't bring a camera, but we saw the usual suspects, ospreys, Canadian geese, and turtles in the Broad River. We also saw a big (8 foot?) king snake sunning himself on a branch over the river and a muskrat that swam across the canal and started grazing about 20 feet from the busy trail. The surprising sighting was a 5-foot alligator in the Broad River near the CCC cache. It wasn't a hallucination, several other walkers also saw it and reported it to the rangers. Neither the hikers or the rangers had seen an alligator in that part of the river before.

For Lexington City parks, we approached the Director of Parks & Sanitation. We brought along some sample caches and the Geocaching University brochure along with our contact information. It took a week or so, but he ran it by City Council and they OK'd placement of caches in their parks.

I've never seen that symptom. You might post the problem on gsak.net's forum and see what other users have to say. I'm sure they'll want to know what version you're running. Jon

Landsford Canal State Park has a number of interesting caches with a variety of hiding methods and terrain. Look for caches near this one - http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...02bd3b834&log=y Also I'd suggest checking out the caches in and near Andrew Jackson State Park (Another A.J. cache for example).

I assume the pocket query page shows that the queries have run? And that you are getting no emails at all, that is, not the email minus the zip file?

A few questions - Does the problem still occur if you turn off zonealarm for a few minutes? If the problem still persists, does it occur in more than one browser (i.e., FireFox, IE, Opera)? Or if you only have one variety of browser (probably Internet Explorer), which version are you running?

Welcome to the hobby. Your area has lots of nice caches to hunt. You'll have a lot of fun. Jon

No idea what bit you, but you should probably post on the boards at gsak.net if you haven't already. Some pretty experienced folks hang around there. Never mind, I see you already did.

This may start a whole new craze - geostamps for geopostcards. Probably be able to buy the geostamps with geocoins, right?

On the Legend, if you download a waypoint and another waypoint with an identical name is already there, the old one is overwritten by the new one.

Miki and I are planning to be there barring unexpected events.

Glad you remembered that link CR. I thought I'd included it with the original post, but apparently forgot and lost it in the swamp of old emails. jon<=>noj

It's most likely to be an incompatability between the version of MapSource you're running and the version of Mapsource that GSAK thinks you're running. There's a popup selection for the version and filetype on the Mapsource export dialog. I'd guess that you are probably running an older version of Mapsource, but GSAK is set to export "6-GDB" format. Make sure the versions match. Garmin shifted to GDB as a preferred format at version 6, but earlier versions won't be able to read it. You should also be able to upgrade Mapsource to the latest version which can handle both the older format and GDB. Let us know if that's not the problem? noj

Unfortunately, I also came up missing a cell phone after a fairly steep uphill rock scramble. The rocks were somewhat loosely piled and a search up and down the hill didn't uncover it, nor did ringing the phone from another location (I think the battery was pretty run down when I lost it). Fortunately I had a "new every two" deal, so a replacement phone was free. Unfortunately, on a CITO a week later, I discovered the phone was no longer in my holster after slipping on a muddy riverbank. I had wound up sitting in the mud at the edge of the river, muddy down to my knees and undwerwater below that. Although ringing the phone seemed futile given its probable location, we tried anywaywithout success. Fortunately, when I got home, I heard a folorn beeping sound from the desk drawer where the phone had apparently fallen before I even left the house. The holster was obviously NOT holding the phone well. For a little while, I zipped it in a pocket, but it was pretty inconvenient to answer that way. I had to do something to make this phone last at least another two years or be prepared to pay a real premium price. Very fortunately, It turns out that GearKeeper makes a great cellphone tether for about $20. It's a thin steel cable on a industrial strength clip with a low-force reel (about 3 ounces of "tug") and several options to attach to the phone. It works great! I got mine online at Bass Pro, but I've seen them at Radio Shack since. The phone has come out of my pocket or worked loose from the holster several times since, but the tether has always held it dangling close to my belt and avoided a lost or dropped phone. So yeah, you're not the first and there are some good workarounds.

Crayola 64 did something a little bit similar to your idea a couple of years back to produce a collaborative artwork by geocachers. You had to pick up your crayons at various caches all over the area, then bring it in and draw on the shared canvas. There was another in Greenville a couple years ago where you did the drawing on the spot too (in a high muggle area, so that was one difficulty). We had a little trouble drawing in cold pouring rain on that one - don't remember the name of it though.

The quickest way is to use a map drawn to scale and draw two circles around the known points. Some of the mapping programs will let you draw circles on the maps, which should make the process somewhat easier. As you probably already figured out, in most cases there will be two places where the two circles intersect. One of those two intersections will be your location. If you can get a third known waypoint and distance, you should be able to narrow it down to just one of the two points.

Depending on your meaning by this statement, it's a known flaw/setting in the forum software. The old software would highlight all those threads which have had new posts since you last visited, each time you read the boards. This software does not do that. I sure wish it did. Jamie This software does do that. For everybody. The "mark all threads as read" WORKED! Things are now back to normal. That is: Messages that are new or contain new remarks are highlighted as solid blue and posted by date newest at the top. Old messages are in light blue. Things are back to what I have been seeing for the last x number of years. It's not quite the same thing. The old forum software effectively did the "mark all threads as read" automagically after you read threads of interest and went elsewhere, so inactive threads you had no interest in reading would not be shown as having new posts the next time unless there really had been new posts since your last visit. The new forum software seems to need to be manually told to clear the flags after each visit and as far as I can tell, it NEVER does it on its own no matter how long ago a thread was posted to and no matter how recent your last visit. It still shows the thread as having new posts no matter how many times you've looked into the forum after your last manual "mark all threads as read".