Team LaLonde

This one is from Marquette, Michigan.

These are the vehicles we've owned and used for caching in the last 5 years.

2006 Hummer H3 - Here it is parked at Marquette's Lower Harbor Marina with the old ore dock in the background.

For what it's worth, I just purchased a GlobalSat BT-359 bluetooth GPS puck for my Verizon-crippled BB Curve 8330. It works great and the accuracy is <3 meters (10 feet). I don't know if it will ever replace my Legend HCX but it certainly has opened up some options. The free Blackstar geocaching program is great for getting nearby caches and descriptions (as well as logging) as long as you have cell reception.

While driving and geocaching around Lake Superior we found an unresponsive homeless man on the trail in the Two Harbors, MN area. Called 911 and left for the next cache which was close enough to hear two sirens about ten minutes apart. A few days later in the same trip we found a rotting moose. Oh, the things you'd miss if you weren't geocaching.

We were caching in very cold weather and cracked a plastic container. I emailed the owners and told them I'd be back in a day or two with an ammo can. The cache had been placed by elementary school students and I broke the final stage.

OP, does this answer your question? There's an FTF waiting here for us and in a week we're signing the logbook.

We have a special place in our hearts for a certain pencil and it's companion, a metal fish key chain. We were a very long way from our car and found a micro. The only thing we had was a new, unsharpened pencil and a keychain made from a fishing lure. The fish had an edge so we used it to sharpen the pencil. It seemed to take forever and people were walking by and giving us strange looks. We finally exposed enough pencil lead to sign the log and replaced the micro. We still laugh about the whole thing to this day, but I guess you had to be there. Needless to say, the fish key chain goes with us everywhere now. The pencil has long since outlived it's usefulness and has been replaced by mechanical pencils.

Look at it this way: Say my dog gets loose and someone finds him. Do they have a right to keep him until they find another dog? NO. On the other hand, a cache owner CAN list a cache as a mystery cache with additional logging requirements, then deny your smiley if you don't follow the rules. What a world, what a world. If my TB is in a TB hotel with restrictions, take it out and publicly log that the TB wasn't in there. Send me an email and let me know where you left it. We all win.

Dante is on the left and Geoffrey is on the right. They go on the wilderness caches with us or when there's no traffic issues. They like to run full speed through the woods until they get near a cache.

Yeah, the one at the Drive-Thru wedding chapel in Vegas is really popular: A Special Memory I also found one hidden in the menu sign of an old fast food restaurant but that was years ago and I can't remember it well. We've done this one, too! We launched our first TB here.

We ran across this alien posing as a travel bug. We took him camping for a week and then let him go.

The only thing that can spoil a day of caching for us is if one of us is injured or sick. Our average snowfall is 200 inches per year so we can't let the weather stop us from getting outdoors. If we did, we'd only be able to cache from May to October. We've found caches in as much as two feet of snow.

You - get in the corner until you can behave. Now, back on topic: What about wrong coordinates? I'd classify that as a catastrophy.

I'd send you one if I could resurrect my old virus-contaminated PC. Someday I'll figure out how to get the pics off the old hard drive. Sorry for the duplicate!

All's well that ends well, I suppose. If I was in that park that night I think I would have opened the bag and dumped the dope in the stream. Either way, you handled it responsibly and you didn't go to jail. Any day that you don't go to jail is a good day! I'm sure a lot of people think geocachers are drug dealers. Picture this - a forty-year-old guy going into a craft store alone and buying nothing but a large box of three-inch baggies. You think I didn't look suspicious?

I don't know about caves in the Twin Cites, but I saw more than one 'hole in the wall' in Winona! All kidding aside, get to know the local DNR officers and you would be surprised what information they will share.

Here's a good reason to carry bear spray - Bear Attack in the U.P. Walking in the woods with wild animals is like going out in a lightning storm. The chances of getting hurt is extremely low, but why wouldn't you do something to minimize the risk?

Here's a couple of shots. Both are on the Lake Superior shoreline.

Ditto.

Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see the name Streamlight. They make several good headlamps. Streamlight is the brand most used for tactical applications and by search and rescue teams. Common models are the Argo, Septor, Enduro and Trident. We use the Tridents now but if I had to recommend a better one I'd say the Septor. I've sold them for several years and they are quite popular around here. You can find them at Gander Mountain or Fastenal.

I have a whole selection of different bird songs as ring tones. This serves a couple of purposes: It doesn't alarm wildlife when I'm caching and it makes people look around when the phone rings indoors.

in today's society, I would be VERY leery of picking up property and taking it to the police. There is too much potential for misunderstanding, e.g. the owner sees you pick it up and thinks you stole it, a passerby sees you leaving with a purse and thinks you are a purse snatcher, you hand it to a cop and he arrests you for possession of stolen property (actually happened to my brother-in-law), or even the property has been deliberately "abandoned" by the police in a "sting" (entrapment) operation as has been done in NYC. IMO, the days of "getting involved" ended when people, especially the cops, forgot how to tell a "good guy" from a "bad guy." Admittedly this is a tough call at times, but people used to lean toward the "good guy" side. Best to leave it alone and ANONYMOUSLY call the police and tell them where it is unless you are well known to the local establishment. (of course this does not apply if you witness a SERIOUS crime- then by all means GET INVOLVED) Oh, trust me, I AM well known at the police department! I'm also well known at two prisons and a county jail. I make sales calls at all of them.