spot200

Big rant! Why doesn't anyone follow up when geocachers "keep" (steal, sell, add to their personal collection or whatever) travelbugs, geocoins or jeeps? If I track back logs I often see geocachers say things like "grabbed from this cache and will move along soon". Then you see they never did. I found one geocacher who from the logs appears to have collected one jeep travel bug from every year they were issued. And each time he/she took one they said they would move it along. How come cache owners never follow up on these logs? How come geocaching.com doesn't do anything? I have placed two travel bugs and now 3 coins. Of those one travel bug is gone and one coin almost from the minute I dropped it in a cache. The last two coins I just dropped and I don't expect they will last long either. So depressing! Why can't people look and not take?

I'm not a computer expert either but I purchased the Garmin 76 Cx -pretty much a twin to what you are considering-and I have been extremely happy with my purchase. You might struggle at first- I had a heck of a time just figuring out how to input coordinates manually- but it is nothing insurmountable. I did get a premium membership for the geocaching.com site so I could get pocket queries-these will give you things like all the new geocaches in your area. You will have to learn about pocket queries on the geocaching.com site. Then I got GSAK, for a slight fee, so that I could download any caches from geocaching.com straight to GSAK and then, with the USB cable you send them from GSAK to your Garmin. Slick! Then I even learned how to use my PDA so I could do paperless caching. That was a little tougher to learn but there is plenty of help out there and it is not too complicated if you just work your way through it. Lastly, I got City Navigator, and a 1 GB microSD chip. With those two items you can load at least half of the United States maps, driving directions, points of interest (like the all vital gas station you need when your tank is running low), etc onto the chip, plop that in the Garmin and you are ready to drive to any geocache, complete with directions, and then zoom in to the spot, or almost-you still need a geo-nose to find it at the end! As someone else said the Garmin is a fully loaded device. You will need to do your homework to learn all the tricks. For example, switching from road, while driving, to offroad, while narrowing in on the cache. But as someone who had never owned a GPSr nor found a single geocache before I got one, I wouldn't trade mine for a lesser unit. Yes, they cost, and the maps are expensive, but it has been worth every dime I paid for it for the fun and usefulness the unit has provided. It found me that gas station and a restaurant for my hungry child. Some fun geocaches in four states. And it has kept my middle aged brain working to figure it all out.

I would take 5 of the Puget Sound coins and one each of the other 3 chapters.

That's almost what I did-toss it- before I did a double take and realized it was a check! So strange.

I thought the spirt was to find the cache. Well I found one, the second part of a multi cache, but the person before me had run off with the pen. Seeing as how I had no pen to sign the log I claimed the find and informed others via my on-line log that someone best take a pen to leave next time they went. Should that be a DNF...I don't think so. Sorry for being new and not always carrying a pen. Now I learned my lesson but I still think I get the find. Go back with a pen and sign the log. It isn't the cache owner's responsibility to make sure that you are prepared to go caching. Boy, you must be perfect, never forgetting anything! Sorry some of us are human and make mistakes. I didn't blame the cache owner if you would re-read my post. I still don't see what the big deal is- is there some contest or grand prize for most finds? Those that lie about finds are only really lying to themselves correct? Who really cares??? I for one would never lie about a find, why bother?

I thought the spirt was to find the cache. Well I found one, the second part of a multi cache, but the person before me had run off with the pen. Seeing as how I had no pen to sign the log I claimed the find and informed others via my on-line log that someone best take a pen to leave next time they went. Should that be a DNF...I don't think so. Sorry for being new and not always carrying a pen. Now I learned my lesson but I still think I get the find.

How about giving some of us newcomers a bit of a break. I technically could have a couple of my finds converted to DNF because as a newbie I didn't quite understand all the rules...like one of my first finds was a virtual cache and I didn't even know what a virtual cache was. That is because there is no obvious place to go to decode the symbols for caches and since the very first cache I ever saw (by accident) was was an ammo box I thought that's what all geocaches were! So I didn't retrive the proper information from that first virtual cache. But that doesnt' negate the fact that I was there. What's the point of lying about a find anyway? And another time there was no pen to sign the log and I was a half mile from the car. I wasn't going to drag my child back to the car and then back to the cache just to sign the log. I notified the cache owner that there was no pen. Not my fault. I am learning to always carry a pen but I didn't know that at first. You all can check the number of finds someone has and realize that for some of us newcomers we might not have all the "rules" straight yet. I read this site almost every day to try to learn new information but as you all know there are many, many pages to read here on this site. And they are spread out amongst many topics.

No, that is never acceptable. You as the cache owner have the right to place whatever logging stipulations you choose, within certain parameters (the cache must be available to all geocachers, etc.). While you have that right, keep in mind that tight requirements will never make you popular, so expect some negative feedback from some. Geocachers have the right to state their opinion on those logging requirements, but not to attack and insult you over them. I believe that there is a mechanism in place to report unruly geocachers, if this continues you might investigate that. Ed

Can you tell me what auto mount is in the picture? I have the 76cx unit. Thanks

Press and hold mark, it will bring up an edit screen. If you choose not to change the coords then just scroll down to OK. Here you can also assign it whichever icon you like. I figured it was something easy but I just couldn't get there! Thanks for the help.

I give up. I figured out how to enter my house as a waypoint and then edit it to get a new waypoint . And when I push the "find" button it goes to waypoints but only to edit, not input a new one. I can't figure out how to manually enter a new waypoint without doing the edit thing. I know I can download waypoints, but I want to make sure I understand how to do manual entry also. I have read the user manual but it doesn't make any sense. Can someone help me out with this? Thanks