ldyparadox99

Here's a good example of the GPS only getting you there. Yesterday, my hubby and I set off through the mud to start a long multi cache. The first waypoint, the coords are spot on. I literally walked up to the first hint. Second waypoint, I was 10 meter off and looking on the wrong side of the trail. 3rd, my GPS said I had 30 more meter to go, but the tube with the hint was right there. By the 4th one, once we got within about 50 meter we just put our devices away because we noticed an interesting pattern of where the hints were being stashed. We just needed to get to the round about location, look for a big old interesting gnarled looking tree, done. ;-) Also, as others said, caches could be above your head. They can be at your feet on the ground. They can be shoved in a crack and be well disguised. You could be holding a rock that has a secret compartment or keep stepping on the darn thing. (this has happened a few times now) I can tell you though, the more you do, the more you see, the less likely you'll be "tricked". And when you are tricked, you'll be tickled it wasn't another film canister. ;-)

For the pocket queries and building lists, the Premium is worth it. Plus there's a lot of premium caches in my area.

A few weeks ago I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking and I managed to ram my shin into the foundation of the pole that comes down when the bridges over the canals go up. My whole shin was black. To add insult to injury, the next week we decided to pick up a cache in Cochum, DE behind the castle and after logging, we start walking down the wet, slippery cobble stone stairway and I figured out just how little traction my hiking boots had as I ended up going down to 1 knee, not being able to catch myself with my hands (slick as snot), then doing a superman for about 3 feet. After I picked myself up, wiped the mud off as best as I could, I admitted to what I wished for up in the castle (there's a legend that if you touch this mermaid lantern and make a wish it would come true). I had wished my lower back would stop hurting from all the hill hiking we'd been doing. Moral of the story? Be specific on your wishes and watch where you put your feet when geocaching. LOL

There's loads of nanos around here and the most common problem is no more room on the log book. So I usually log it as found, then I log it as needs maint afterwards with what was wrong.

A lot of micro's in my area are film canisters. One trick that CO's seem to like doing is wrapping the film canister in duct tape to match the surrounding area. In addition, half have been magnetic so far or shoved into a crevice/hidey hole. So far I've found micros and nanos shoved into holes, between the post and actual street sign, nano stuck to the backside of a street sign, under benches, under garbage bins, inside posts, fence railings, fence poles, as part as objects (like a nano being part of a door bell or bike chain), looking like a bolt, etc. The more you do, the more you can apply it to future catches and without a doubt you'll get an "A HA!" moment about a DNF, go back and there the little sneaky critter was. ;-)

I'm currently watching the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Singapore. I'm pretty sure the fact that I love this sport and support it by buying team gear, etc is much more harmful than going geocaching in my LPG fueled car (auto gas). However, rest easy. We often take our bikes somewhere (by car or train), park and cycle from cache to cache as well.

I'm a gamer (think about dungeons and dragons type gaming) and one day my husband mentioned I should try geocaching. I downloaded an app and gave it a go when my father, who was visiting from the states, and I went out for a bike ride. I was pretty much hooked. Some caches I've found so far are kind of like a real life dungeon crawl or hunt for treasure. Plus, we really like the looooong multi caches that take us on a several kilometer walk. What's funny is my other gamer friends had all started this way before I did, I knew it but thought it was too hard and complicated. It's not. In fact, several of them are coming over this afternoon to help on a few that are hiding from us. ;-)

I picked up a extrex 20 and am pretty happy with it for a starter gps. It does what it needs to do, the battery life is fantastic and it always seems to get a good lock even on cloudy days (which is a good thing considering I live in the Netherlands) and tree cover. I haven't had too much issue with mine in urban settings either. The only thing that annoys me a bit is the fact that it doesn't have a magnetic compass and I have to walk around like a loony for a few seconds until the compass picks up my location and sends me off in the right direction. If I had to do it again, I'd get the 30.

Don't feel bad. As you cache more you'll have good days and bad days. Some caches you'll walk right up to and it'll appear like magic to those with you, and some you'll spend hours or days, weeks, and months (depends on how tenacious you are)looking for. Yesterday my husband and I went out for the afternoon picking off some caches in the next city. There's one out by the airport that are these stair going into a sky, kind of bad art pretending to be something. So we're looking, and looking, and looking. A car stops by our car and a guy is standing there watching us. It turns out he's a fellow cacher. Anyways, as we do the walk of shame back to our car, he calls out a hint which renews the search. He hopped in his car, probably sure we're going to find the bloody thing, and zoomed off. After another 30 minutes and a few nettle stings later, we hang our heads and slowly trudge back to the car with shaking knees from running up and down the stairs. I know we'll find it. It may take another visit or 2 (my record so far is 37) to find it and we'll probably take some fellow cachers with us as reinforcements. But it does get easier every cache you find. ;-)

Just to go on with the micro... There's a carpool cache that I've been trying to find for about 3 months. It's a nano (tiny little thing, no bigger than my pinky nail). So when I first tried to get this, my phone actually put me right on top of it. I mean, I couldn't have gotten closer unless I wanted to hump the corner of this shed thing. Couldn't find it. 39 times later (because everyone and the dog was finding it, I refused to DNF it), I found it. Why did I find it? Because my husband and I did a different cache and thought "hmmm...could that one cache be similar??" and wouldn't you know, it was. So yea, the biggest, baddest, most accurate GPS wouldn't have helped with this cache (and incidentally, my garmin was putting me in the exact same spot my phone did). That's why I said to watch videos to see how people hide things. And, the more caches you do you start to develop that cache sense. ;-)

Last weekend the husband and I were out on our bikes doing a little series of caches along an old post/coach road. We finally found the cache we were looking for when a big family comes walking up the road. We were pretending to be taking a rest and looking at our phones, but I guess my etrex 20 hanging around my neck was a tad bit of a give away. They call out "don't worry, we're not muggles!". We'd probably have chatted if the kids weren't starting to have a bit of a meltdown. LOL Other than that, I haven't come across any other cachers yet, but it's only a matter of time.

I googled "plastic walnuts" and came up with some companies selling them in lots of 40 pieces and such.

So just a question on PQs. I'm going camping in Germany in Sept and plan on getting a premium membership so I can get all the caches in the area we're staying at in one go. Will I have to wait and do that in Germany then? Or can I do it here from the Netherlands?

While I've only managed a few more caches since my last post in this thread, I can really attest there's all sorts of caches out there. In the 14 (working on #15 since I refuse to log the bloody thing as DNF) I've found so far there's been unintentional bushwacking, wading through nettles, climbing a steep hill, 2 "hidden in plain sight", having to climb a tree, having to be taller than 5'4 to reach it (thank god for tall dutchies), having to wiggle under a bike bridge on your belly like a snake, and a few "walk right up to it" caches. I've found it's really important to read the cache page for anything the CO writes as well as the logs because then I know how to dress or who/what I should bring with me!

Up until I got my garmin last week, I was using a htc sensation with the same app. Unless I was right under power lines, under extreme tree cover, or it was a real cruddy day, I got within 5-10 meters of the coordinates. Sometimes it put me right on the geocache (specially some hide in plane sight types), sometimes I've had a little search. My first multi, the most accurate GPS wouldn't help me find that sucker. The hint was a word in dutch that meant trunk. Of course my husband then informs me that is the literal translation. It could also mean "branch" or "small log". Well, the end coordinates was a 15-20 meter area full of stumps, "small logs" and branches all over the forest floor. It didn't matter what kind of GPS used...it was only me being clumsy and dumb luck that allowed me to trip over the bloody thing! ;-) Oh, and you may want to go watch some geocaching videos on youtube just to get ideas what you're looking for. I watch them for creative ways people hide nanos since they're the bane of my existence!

+1 with Google Translate. Even I use it when hitting up local caches in dutch (my 2nd language), just to make sure I didn't misread the cache page. ;-) I've been plotting out german caches for my upcoming camping trip. I plan on just keeping the cache translations on either my phone or tablet so I don't have to rely on my reaaaaally bad command of german.

Ahha! I hadn't pressed menu yet on the waypoints. Perfect! I have a feeling I'm going to be learning something new every time I go out. ;-) Thank you so much!

Thanks! Got it up and running. Nabbed 2 caches tonight and it did pretty well. Haven't gotten that multi yet...can I just blame it on the GPS rather than my poor command of dutch AND failure to add and multiply correctly? LOL Is there any way on the etrex 20 to add bearing and distance to a coordinate like on some apps? Or will I have to figure out the proper way to do this manually (I obviously didn't do any orienteering as a girlscout) and then add the new coordinate as a waypoint?

Cheers! Hopefully, I'm going to get to test it tomorrow on a multi I've been working on. ;-)

Great, thanks. ;-) Just making sure I didn't break it already (my husband claims I'm certain death to any electronic item that gets within 5 meters of my presence..LOL).

Well, my googlefoo is really off today since I'm sure this has been asked somewhere out on the internet, but I can't find an answer! I just got a spankin new Etrex 20 yesterday and can't seem to figure out if it's picked up the satallite or not. The manual says that the bars will turn green...well, I've had 5 bars for ages, but they haven't turned green. Is orange just the default color? Or should they actually turn green?? TIA!

For big caches, you could leave toys. I found a dog rubber ducky in a cache a few weeks ago. ;-)

I'm short and the dutch guys I hang with are tall. They like following the arrow as the crow flies. I just wear long pants, hiking boots, and I'm now considering getting a real hiking stick. Not necessarily for hiking mind you, but to wack those really tall dutch guys that lead me on unnecessary bushwacking goose chases in the knee caps when I finally catch up to them. ;-)

Well, as far as the VAT# goes, that's a pretty easy one to solve. Someone from the EU simply needs to purchase a membership and as per EU law, their VAT# should be on the final invoice. I do invoicing for my company in the EU and have just gone through the headache of making invoices EU compliant.

1) I'm personally using a HTC Sensation and my other half uses a Samsung Galaxy 2 (I think). Really, any modern smart phone (as in the last 2-3 years) will work OK for GPS games. The downside of using a phone over a hand held GPS is I'm finding that it's not as accurate and I'm personally finding if there's the slightest bit of cloud cover (which is 99% of the time i the Netherlands) or some trees, my phone goes wonkers. Also, my phone doesn't seem to like cities much with 2) The geocaching app. How much does it cost and do you get to try it out before buying? Is there just one app or different ones to choose from? There's several apps out there, several free (for droid phones/tablets at least). I use one that lets me store the cache so I can turn off my data while I'm out and about to save battery life. There's also caching tools you can get. I can't remember what the one we bought is called, but it allows us to do caches that require triangulation since we seem to have failed that course in scouts. ;-) 3) Is there a phone that will work where there's no cell coverage? As others said, no mobile will work without cell coverage for talking on the phone. However, you can still use GPS in areas with no coverage. You just can't search for nearby caches on your phone if there's no data coverage. Pros of using a phone: you can look things up on the internet if you have data, you can search for more caches nearby through whichever method you want (if the app allows it, or on the internet). You can make a quick find while on your lunch break if there's one nearby. Cons (my own personal cons): The biggest is the battery life. Mine which is 1.5 years old only gets about an hour and a half with the GPS constantly running. If we're doing a multi, we have to stagger the use of our mobiles if it's a long multi. This causes fights because we both want to hold the compass (yea, a bunch of mid-30s kids). Also, if you're not paying attention you can break your phone. I'm currently sporting what my friends have started calling the "rugged look" because I managed to drop my phone while going to find an urban cache and cracked the screen.