KG1960

While your idea sounds interesting, and while I probably would try it at least to see what it was all about, JezzaXtreme has a good point. Namely, how could it be easily and cheaply made to look better than the old games that used to run on 286 based PC's with a 4-color CGA monitor?

Chemical Engineer, P.E., State of Illinois EPA Edit: corrected spelling, believe it or not!

This picture was taken on January 6, 2008. The temp was 60 F, just a few days before the temp was 0 F, so a major thaw. It is in a parking lot of a local park where we went to find a couple of caches that day. It is a 1986 Chevy Celebrity, 4 banger. I bought it for $100 a couple of years ago and use it to go to work and drive around town (saves wear and tear on my good car). It gets around 25 mpg, suburban driving. BTW, we did not get stuck.

Example: There is a state park near here that allows hunting in certain areas of the park. During deer shotgun season, the whole park is closed to all except hunters, but that's only two weekends a year. During deer archery season (and small game season), the park is still open. One needs to be aware that some caches are hidden in the hunting areas.

While I suppose that not having a car may limit your caching opportunities, I have an idea that may help. Do a search for Toronto on geocaching.com and see how many caches there are in the city. I would guess city parks would have caches in them. Can you get to those parks or other places on public transport? Then you have to decide if there are enough caches you can get to, to make buying a GPS worth while. If you are good with maps, etc. maybe you can try to find a couple without a GPS (it's a bit more difficult that way).

I usually go to zero or the minimum reading and start searching from there. At least half of my finds have been within 10 feet of that. Of course, a few have been 30 to 40 feet. Rattlebars: Good idea on the antenna! I have one of those that I have used on my car, hadn't thought about putting it on my head, but I'll try it next time I'm out.

I'm a train nut myself and would find such a thing interesting. Having a note with it saying what and where it came from would be excellent - that would differentiate it from other rusty RR stuff accumulating in my garage.

Also, be sure to change the date to the date the caches were actually found. The default date is today's date.

For the times that I can't seem to find the cache, I'll walk away about a 100 feet and approach from a different direction than I originally did. This may give a different location and more often than not, I'll then find the cache.

Wouldn't a Visa gift card work? Just buy one for whatever amount you need (or maybe a bit more). Then if things go bad, the worst that you could be out is whatever you paid for it.

I found a cache a month or so ago that didn't have any logbook. The previous finder signed a piece of bark and put it in the cache. I happened to have a small piece of paper, so I signed that. I also did a Needs Maintenance log.

Interesting observations. For #3, I see no problem in trading two things - leave two things and take two things. Come up north where it snows, then you won't have to worry about 1, 2, or 5 (at least until spring).

My first impression when I read the OP was (and remains) a big "So What?" Just another insignificant thing that's easy to ignore.

Double post again, sorry.

The cable for my Garmin 60 is a standard USB cable with a standard USB plug on one end and a USB mini-B on the other. Take your GPSr with you to be sure the cable plug matches, if in doubt about the exact cable. Just everybody has these cables - Best Buy, etc., even Walmart. I don't know about the cable for the E-trex.

58, often with a 19, sometimes with a 60.

Geocaching wasn't around when our kids were in the 2 year old range (they are 22 and 20 now), but we were camping, hiking, etc. even before they could walk, the same as my parents did with my brother and me. We did try a backpack carrier and it worked well but the kids most of the time wanted to walk themselves. You have to go at their pace and at their endurance. Let them stop and investigate whatever might catch their interest. Amazing what interesting and beautiful things they may find that we probably would not have noticed! Of course, as others have said, you have to bring all the necessary supplies along, diapers, first aid stuff, water, etc.

It's still getting blocked for me. It started at the same time when everyone else started to have problems. It says that my employer blocks "sports". Oh well, it was good while it lasted.

Not knowing your ISP or how its's setup, this may not even apply to you. However, my ISP has a spam blocker, and I can view a list of blocked emails, and if one is one that I would want, I can unblock it. I can also add email addresses to a white list so that they always go through. So, perhaps the emails with the PQ's from GC.com hit some trigger and got blocked??? Maybe since your PQ's from long ago, they changed the blocking protocol??

There are several free, legitimate WiFi's around here. Most coffee shops, some McD's, book stores, etc. I somewhat often go to Springfield, IL on business and have stayed often at a Holiday Inn Express with free WiFi and no password. Right next door is a Crown Plaza and I have stayed there. Both are owned by same owner and both, in my case, give the same government rate, but Crown Plaza charges $9 a day for their WiFi access. I just went over to the lobby in the H.I. ex. and sat in their lobby. No one asked what I was doing. Other times I have stayed in Comfort Inns - some had no password and others seem to use the room number as the username and their zip code as the password. Last spring when I was visiting my mother in Chicago (she's in a single family house neighborhood), I turned on my laptop just out of curiosity to see what WiFi's might be around. It found three and one was unsecured. I used it to check emails and check GC.com, but don't use WiFi for sensitive items. I don't really see any problems with using, briefly, an unsecured wifi, of course, as long as you aren't trying to steal stuff off someone else's computer.

Same here!!

As a few others have said, the geological record indicates the magnetic poles do periodically shift. So, no surprise that it should happen again. However, it usually has taken several hundred to a few thousand years for the shift to complete, so predicting a specific date is absurd.

1.how many geocaches have you found? 209 2.how many geocaches have you hidden? 1 3.how many people do you know go geocaching with you? Usually alone, but many times with son. Sometimes wife is along and she usually is the one that actually finds the cache. On Thanksgiving morning, it was wife, son, and cousin. First time for cousin and she enjoyed it. We found four in two hours. 4.how many times have you gone on a long trip just for a geocache? Never, but usually find a cache or two on other trips. Sometimes I'll leave early for a business trip so I have extra time to cache. 5.how many geocaches have you found in just one day? 6? 6.how many items have you traded? Just one, usually don't trade 7.how many times have you gone geocaching with out a gps and found the geocache that you were looking for? Once, only tried that one time, but probably will try more.

I have had good experiences with rest stop caches. For example, between Bloomington and Moline, IL, on I-74 there are three pairs of rest stops and I have found caches in all of them. As others have said, all of these have a picnic area and a more or less undeveloped wooded area (where the caches are usually hidden). You don't have to go anywhere near the traffic areas. In fact one of these rest areas is large enough to have two caches - one at each end. When I logged my most recent find in one of these areas, the previous finder said in his log, "Thanks for placing a trucker friendly cache." I thought that was cool.

For caches in my area, I usually use my '86 Chevy Celebrity that I bought for $100 a year and a half ago. Can't beat the price and it get 25 MPG around town.