Understandblue

There's your problem. I wouldn't dream of anything but urban caching on a phone. They are meant for making calls not navigating in the wilderness. I don't care how many fancy apps you have on it. I've done tons of it in the wilderness and it works great

We have a giant and sometimes treacherous greenbelt here that is a blast to geocache in. We get trail deja vu pretty frequently, and sometimes the way we climbed up is not safe to go down, so we have to improvise. I do waypoint trailheads on the cache we initially start for, but because our tree cover is so heavy, we also build cairns or take pics of existing cairns. I geocache with the app, not a GPSr (please don't stone me) so battery is important. It's also extremely helpful if there's something terrifying like a rattlesnake or a tarantula, which happens fairly often, and tends to burn a spot into your retinas My recent encounter with a coral snake has that section of the trail clearly mapped in my mind. The important thing is not to panic when you don't know where you are. Google Maps can get you out of nearly any situation, even if you have to bushwhack.

Let me check with a friend - I'll let you know!

I've been wondering what's been missing from my geocaching experience - it's definitely governmental oversight. Having just read The Secret Race, I'm most concerned about doping in our sport. I think the FTFs should be tested.

bwahahah the avatar

I guess I'm an outlier - I like that there's more contrast between finds and everything else. To me it's a cleaner look, but I hadn't thought about the global warming angle

Okay I totally went down the rabbit hole with that awesome Ranger Fox post and log - wow - what a beautiful place. I love being outside and seeing beautiful places on my daily walks. I started geocaching because I walk for several hours each day and found out (thanks to mtnbirders) there were tons of caches on my route. Then I expanded my area and now feel like a tourist in my own town because of the amazingly beautiful places I had never seen and wouldn't have seen but for the caches. I'm not a huge fan of urban caches - I like the peace and solitude of the trails. I like the photography opportunities and the wildlife. I love puzzles and multis. Everything about geocaching speaks to my inner Nancy Drew. I love trackables and I love beautiful and creative containers.

"strange looking penny" - That cache page is fantastic.

Our big greenbelt here with some of the most beautiful cache locations (and the most challenging) has become famous for parking area thefts You know you're at a great hiking spot when you see tons of broken glass. I like some of the devious solutions here

Hi anarcha77! Welcome! I just ordered my first container for my first hide too - it's sort of nervewracking gearing up for that first one

That's kinda like asking if all caches should be safe. It's too subjective. I would take my soon to be 5yo to Necropolis and there are dead bodies there that look quite real as well as many other displays of horror. I'm confident I could talk him through the experience and I know him well enough to know he would enjoy it. Necropolis was awesome - I would have loved it at 5

I'm going to have to say that, for me, the proper way to dispose of it is to take it to a gunsmith, then. I'm sure not going to be pulling any bullets in my living room. I've never heard of this sort of thing, before, and you're the first one to mention it, here, so I hope you'll forgive my ignorance. If I did find a live round in a geocache, could I really walk it into a gunsmith's shop and hand it to him with the expectation that he'd dispose of it for me? I mean, is that standard business for them? Is there typically some kind of fee involved? Will he laugh his head off if I walk in there with just one bullet? Can you tell I get really nervous in unfamiliar situations? Ha! Reloading is super common - you must not be from Texas I do believe here they'd laugh if you brought them a bullet. It's a really fun process if you ever decide to do it - great for people who love precision. You know - Virgos

MUST have that!

Bwahahah!! I prefer these:

Well if you live in a place in constant peril from forest fires, you might feel differently about lighters. A child or a careless adult could easily start a fire that could leave thousands of people homeless in our tinderbox of a state right now.

Ditto. Puzzling. And yesterday, a powerbar. :-/ No ammo or throwing stars yet!

HAHAHA! Okay that made me laugh. With you, though, I promise

Yes

Well it's always overnight for someone

No - I'm not confusing it - I'm saying that a relatively small number of forum users get disproportionately alarmed about maintenance. I know the relationship quite well

All community sites do this - I am the CM for a site that has about 1600 - 6000 users online at any given time - vs. the 200+ members online here right now - and we do scheduled maintenance in an overnight window that takes about the same amount of time. I don't understand why it's controversial here - all our community sites know and expect it and it's not associated with a conspiracy If we had the resources of Google, maybe there would be redundancies we don't have...

Hi and welcome! You will be addicted soon. I guess my best advice is once you get close - quit looking at your GPSr or phone and start looking around the area and use your head and eyes. When I started I was so focused on "3 feet away" or "20 feet away" I missed just finding it with my senses.

I absolutely love them. To me - all of geocaching is a puzzle, regardless of cache type, but puzzle caches are even more fun. On a traditional, I still have to solve lots of problems, try a few different things, decipher hints sometimes, use a variety of tools. Puzzle caches just kick that up a notch. It's okay if you don't feel like doing that extra work -- I dont' feel like kayaking or rappelling to some caches, so we're even. I have some extremely creative people in my area - a recent favorite had a game piece with a folding puzzle in it and it was so much fun. I'd certainly rather "butt sit" and use my brain than watch TV, especially since the result is a nice walk the next morning to my reward.

This happened today on a completely evil cache - I had been there three times and brought a friend today and we were reading one log that said they found it in three minutes on their first visit. Grr.

Welcome to this fun hobby!