Bamboogirl
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Posts posted by Bamboogirl
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On maybe a less practical note from the first-aid kits and panchos and all.....which are most excellent.....I like to leave foreign coins - Aussie coins are cool, singapore dollars, US$2 bills, these are not all that common. I find that they generally move out of caches pretty quickly.
A stop at a rock shop will yield a goodly supply of small intersting mineral samples - only a few dollars, and good unless you plan on hitting 50 caches in one day.
Small field guides local to the area are very welcome - and can be had cheaply at used bookstores.
A nature museum I went through recently was selling very cool seashells for fund raising. They were $2 - 3. I bought a mess of them and was happy to know that the $$$ was going to help the museum.
I understand that these things don't come without a bit of looking. But I think that's kind of the point of finding cool swag to leave. I'm just getting into hiding caches now, but leaving cool trade items is sort of a thank you to the folks that hide and maintain the caches I've visited.
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I found the nesting site for the local pair of Peregrine falcons, a sleeping barn owl, a rare Shell Duck that must have blown in from Asia and an undying appreciation for Ibuprophen in my Trail Mix
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"I had an incident this weekend where a cacher visit one of my new caches and got very upset that there was poison ivy near the first stage. They left this in their log: "you obviously have little concern for others when you place a cache that could be very dangerous for others"."
Oh please. Unless there's rattlesnakes, PI or PO, a couple of spiders and maybe an enraged ground squirrel around, where's the fun of the hide? We have a rule in my house - my husband sticks his hands in places to get a cache (ewww, spiders!) and I do the squishy mud grabs. PO and rattlesnakes and spiders are expected factors in a cache hunt.
Loved the Forest Service warnings. There are a few folks I've seen hiking where we live that are just annoyed as heck at the intrusion Nature makes on their afternoon jaunts. Folks that don't want to face any itchy plants or other challenges should perhaps stick to low terrain ratings or wide paved trails.
To calm the traumatized cache hunters, maybe posting a picture of PI in the description and leaving a little bottle of Tencu would help?
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I have done a total replacement on one cache that was severely muggled or chewed up. The site was ok, the cache was close by and the owner has gone AWOL and no longer is active. I was just getting into the game and didn't have the confidence yet to place my own, so this seemed like a good way to 'give something back' to the game.
I'd much rather help out an ailing cache then add another 'log is wet, needs a new bag, etc' to my find note. When we are out on a day of caching, taking along some 'fix-it' stuff is pretty easy.
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Does that mean "cache or check"?
A Mr. Money card with Signal on it would be quite fun!
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I think it's a great idea whose time may already have passed - for the reasons already mentioned. But for those folks that DO use checks, it's a pretty spiffy idea.
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Interesting idea - how not placing caches implies one is not being 'fair' to the game.
I'm still pretty much a newb at this. Love the game and the new places I've seen. Have gotten a pretty good feel for what's a good hide and what's not.
So far, I've got 2 out there that I've completely stressed over - good camo, good swag, spots worth visiting, etc. Next project is a micro that's got some camo I've never even seen on any of the boards.
What I will not do is toss caches out "just because". There's enough poor-quality hides our there to gag a maggot. I love the idea of placing a really great cache. But unless I can come up with something different and well worth someone's time to go find, it's just not going to happen.
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Geocaching has led to a lot of new observations - things I'd never realized or thought about.....
I REALLY don't much care for rattlesnakes
If you walk up to a tree with a sleeping owl in it, they will generally look at you and go back to sleep
A lot of glue that calls itself 'waterproof' really isn't
We will crawl literally up the side of a hill if we can't find the trail and know there's a cache "just up there a little farther"
ZipLock bags frequently are on sale
There's a whole lot of new maps in the house and cars
Tarantulas are really fuzzy and wave their legs at you if annoyed or surprised
Turkeys are very very noisy if surprised - or nearly stepped on.
It's tough not to be in a good mood if you are out hiking with a bunch of folks or a loved one.
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Myself, I am an active duty Air Force staff sergeant. I am a flight engineer on the E-3 AWACS.
Jeez, after an opening like that I know MY own job is nowhere as cool. However, there's a fair bet that I had a hand in making the hard drives in your computer systems, so at least that's something close to cool.
But I do have pics of my dad who went in the Navy in '28 and thought jumping out of bi-planes airplanes back then was a good idea. They walked out on the wings and jumped. Miramar was pretty empty at that time. lol
I used to have 3 goats. One of which was an angora that looked like RastaGoat that I bought from this guy who was going to sell him for tacos.
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The yellow tape is hust plain litter and needs to go away. Possibly the same statement applies to the cacher who left tape all over the place.
And a carefully roasted goat is surprisingly tasty.
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While vacation caches are bad for a huge pile of reasons, planning on helping a few in need along the way is a very good idea.
When we are heading somewhere on a trip we try to have a bag of repair supplies along - clean logs, fresh ziplocks, stuff to dry a damp cache with, etc. It's also nice to bring a bag of fun trading stuff local to your home to drop off. Caches in Hawaii, for example have huge problems with dampness and rampant tourists tearing up an area. Pretty easy to fix one up as a way to thank the locals for placing one in an intersting spot. (I've left some odd stuff in Singapore and it's pretty fun)
Plus you don't have to scout new locations, you just trust the locals to know where the good spots are. And dropping off cool doo-dads in a new spot will be appreciated by the cache owners as well.
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Got it! Thanks for the directions. All is edited and my first cache just went live! Now all I have to do is sit back and fret about the dreaded "Lameness Factor".
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Yes - you should be able to edit it.
Be sure to click the 2 "I agree...." boxes toward the bottom before you re-submit.
But I seem to be not seeing the "submit" button? Where is that please?
I do see the "I agree...." boxes, just not the means to save the edits.
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Need some help please.....Have submitted my first cache and it's in review (so far, so good) However, I want to go back and modify the hint and some of the general description.
When I bring up the "Edit Listing" page and make the appropriate changes to existing text, I am unable to actually make the changes 'stick'. I don't see a "submit changes" option, but it must be there somewhere.
If I make the changes and navigate back to the listing, the changes don't show.
Or is it impossible to edit the above until the review is complete?
Sorry for what must be basic stuff, but it's making me crazy.
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Knowing that there are serious FTF hounds in the area seem to me to be a challenge to the person placing the cache. I'm just now getting into hiding (the first one is waiting to be published). It's all part of the game. It's not selfish to like being FTF, it's just another facet of the game.
The OP is good at being FTF. As a fledgling cache placer, I see it as part of the game to make it a little tough for the local FTF hounds to BE the FTF - time it so the cache goes live mid-week, at 2am, in the middle of winter in a blizzard, whatever.
Just my 2 cents, but having a known FTF addict in the area adds to the fun of the hide.
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Add another vote to the "carry a hiking pole" idea. In the hills around the Bay Area we have a fair number of ratlesnakes.
I'm also going to start taking the wonderdog Toby along whenever I go out. Friday while heading up to place my first cache he was a bit ahead on the trail and stopped dead in his tracks to check out a tarantula! ICH! I know they live up there and this is their season to find other tarantulas but ICH! First one of them I'd seen out and about in a while.
Now I'm wondering if they hang out in burrows or hollow trees or what because I'd rather find a rattlesnake on a cache than another one of those!
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So clearly then, I'm not spending enough time caching so I don't have so many logs to write. At this point in my semi-newb caching experience it just seems basic ah, good manners to write something besides TNLNSLTFTCGYAPIDKE. I mean really now. Good caches in interesting spots or caches that are humorous or just not a LPC (sorry) deserve a decent log. I've read the cut and paste and it's just tacky.
edited for realllly bad English. Jeez, I gotta re-read my logs and see if they make more sense.
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Cool Stuff! But we DO want to see the results!
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I'm in the E/F range. I don't usually have full days to go caching, so will try to target a select few to go after. As noted before, the "TNLN, TFTC" logs don't really scream "Come find me!"
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Everything you need to know is here.
If only all urban caches were as much fun as that one. It took a good bit of head scratching and a long evening at Belltown Pizza to figure it out!
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I've been lucky enough to travel a lot for work and am often alone when seeking caches. Carrying all that mace and stuff is nice if you have time to get it out of a pack and use it. Acting like you are comfortable in your own skin and have a lot of confidence is a very good deterrent. Screaming like a banshee and waving a big hickory walking stick is also quite good.
But there's no substitute for common sense. Do some research up front on the area you will be hunting. If there is anything about the area that feels off, just don't go caching. If there is even a whiff of a report about assaults in the area, go find somewhere else to search. There's too many other places to find interesting stuff. I have checked out areas that just feel "off" somehow and not hung around to search.
At home, I usually have my husband along - or one of the dogs.
And without starting a gun discussion, if I was on my own a whole lot, I'd take a gun (sorry, but better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6)
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There's been more than a few times folks find garbage in a cache. I find it annoys the heck out of me and I tend to think it is just plain tacky and not 'playing fair'. But that's just me and I may be over-reacting here. So rather than go off on another angst filled rant.....
Fun stuff I like to leave in caches:
Sacajawea dollars
Cool mineral samples (I recently picked up a handful of Peruvian Chrysacolla samples and they are too cool!)
New decks of cards
Small tape measures (like $3 at Wallmart)
Compass
Spiffy foreign currency
Carabiners
Local field guides to birds or bugs or such
If there's any Happy Meal toys involved, they'd better come from Thailand or Malaysia or such because they are pretty odd looking, to say the least!
While some folks are not into swag at all, I think at least if a person is going to drop something in a cache, it should be something interesting, useful or fun.
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Oh Jeeeez. I'm getting ready to start placing my first caches and am happy to say they don't appear anywhere on this thread! Now if I can just get over the general angst of first cache placement, I'll be good to go.
As for the worst - and yet another ringing endorsement of why Vacation Caches are a bad idea, we found two on Maui in one morning of running around on the north shore. The first was a gladware bottom wrapped in a leaking black garbage bag with a wet log and melty crayons. Covered in those nasty ants that can only be found I think in Hawaii.
The second was even better - a leaking 1 gallon zip lock that someone had kindly stuffed full of mouldy baseball cards. And more ants
The worst of it was that coastline where these atrocities were placed contains some of the most amazingly beautiful views on the planet.
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It depends on how interesting the clues and logs are. This in turn correlates to an annoyance factor in NOT being able to locate it, despite knowing it's there.
The greater the annoyance factor, the longer we will search. This also depends on how many colorful ways we can say bad things about the cache owner while searching. This finally spirals into insanity and crawling around on the ground feeling blindly under stumps and wet rocks.
The most time we spent looking was about 90 minutes in a creek bed full of fallen logs and hidey holes. The worst part was when my husband pulled it out of it's hiding spot that was where we had already looked 3 times and was where we had piled up the daypack, GPS and other hiking stuff.
Have not had to spend anything like 7 hours searching for something, but I could easily see us doing 2 - 3 if the above applies.
Evil Caches
in General geocaching topics
Posted
Evil = Bring it on!
Some cachers dread having to do a lot of careful planning to pull off a find and may avoid the cache based on lfeedback in the logs.
But cachers that are tweaked by the challenge of the hide will think it's a wonderful thing indeed. I'd say any cache that is well-hidden that requires some stealth and planning to get to in a crowded location is a great thing. May need props, friends, planning, a dog or some other diversion to make the grab. It increases the difficulty of the find without neccesarily increasing the terrain level, so folks who are not into long hikes but do like the challenge would appreciate it.