elrojo14

The way I found TB hotels on my trip was to do a search or a pocket query and then look and see which caches had TB and coin icons on them. Move your mouse over them and it will tell you how many are inside. I would then try to hit those up for that day. I still disagree with you guys. I think you can have bug hotels that are not prisons. Taking 5 bugs that were just placed in the cache three days ago and leaving nothing is selfish. The bug hotel shouldn't be just for moving bugs, but for introducing bugs into an area. If those 9 bugs had been there for weeks, I might understand, but they weren't. They didn't last three days. And my cache gets traffic. The reason there are no bugs left isn't because it isn't interesting or it is a bad spot, it is because selfish people come through and take all the bugs and don't leave anything behind for anyone else in the area. You can't blame bug traffic on the cache; caches don't pick bugs up and move them. People do.

Over an 8200 mile trip I slowly built up my inventory of trackables. So I drop off 9 trackables in my hotel cache near Interstate 5 on the 15th. I am hoping to have some guys come through and do some swapping so people in our area can enjoy some trackables. The next day a guy comes through and takes four of them and leaves nothing. He at least apologizes and promises to return with some in trade in September. Ok, I can live with that, I still have 5 left. Yesterday this guy with over 4000 finds and who hit 28 caches that day comes through and takes the other five and doesn't leave a dadgum thing. So my 30 caliber ammo can that is perfectly suited for travel bugs is now sitting in the desert, easily accessible off of the interstae with not a dadgum thing in it. I am sorry, but that pisses me off. I most certainly understand that TB prison suck and that isn't cool, but come on. What about sharing trackables with everyone else? I am just a bit miffed that I went from having 9 trackables in my hotel to having zero in three days. No new trackables are going to get dropped off there anytime soon and now people will probably just drive on by. Try to trade even, if you can't, why do you need to take more than two trackables?

My wife and I don't discover bugs or coins. We either move it or we don't. Now recently I took a 8200 mile road trip across America and I did use the discover feature. Since my wife and I have our own accounts, there might have been places where I picked up a trackable and dropped it off at my next stop. Instead of logging it into my name, then having her grab it, it was easier to just have her discover it. We moved it together so we don't feel bad if she discovers it to get the stat, since we were actually moving the thing. Other than that, discover is a dirty, dirty thing that I wouldn't feel comfortable telling my mother I do.

Man I am kind of mad. I slowly accumulated a lot of trackables on my cross country trip and brought a lot home to California. I dropped them all off in "If ya lived in Taft..." hoping to kind of establish it as a bug hotel. 4 days later none of the 9 bugs I dropped off are left. One guy came through and took 4 without leaving any in trade and another guy took five without leaving any in trade. That pisses me off. I know they were meant to travel, but come on. Why in the hell does a guy with over 4000 finds need all five of the trackables left in my cache? Am I wrong to be pissed off about this? Share the trackables a little. I never did such a thing on my trip.

Is it too late to say yes? I kind of forgot about the forums until I got into it with a cacher in Wyoming. I am peeved that people don't wait at least 24 hours and try to contact the last person with a trackable before just grabbing it from you. It is like they don't realize that a travel bug hotel along a busy interstate might have more than just them stopping by that day. They also don't bother to check the trackable's history and notice that you just picked it up two days before or notice in the cache log that you were there that day before them! Sorry, I am just irked. On my 8200 mile trip I e-mailed two people and reminded them about logging and one person replied within an hour and updated the trackable and the other person did the same in just short of 24 hours. How freaking hard is that to do? So when I send you an e-mail and I am not real nice to you for screwing up the trackables log because you couldn't wait, no kidding I am rude. So were you in the first place. Get a clue! Ok, back to what I as doing. Long live the Redneck Roadrace!

My wife and I made this mistake early on. Since then I have a TB log book. Every TB I retrieve goes into the TB log book once we get back to the car or even while at the cache. That way, if I drop the bug off at another location that day, I can do the proper logging when I get home. I highly recommend you just get a little notebook for this. I use the same type of notebook you find in most caches for a log. A spiral bound memo pad. We also started writing where we dropped the bug off at too. This can be especially helpful if you hit multiple caches and multiple bugs in a day.

I am in a travel bug race and I dip my racer everywhere. I don't see what the big deal is as long as the bug is with you. I took tons of pictures of my bug just to prove I was there. I also wouldn't care if one person took my bug all over the place as long as they kept it moving. You can think of it as hogging the bug or you can realize that some day that person is going to drop off the bug just as if they had logged it one place and then dropped it off. Either way, what does it matter as long as the bug isn't staying dormant. I just picked up a travel bug in Blythe, CA and carried that thing all the way across the country to FL, NY, MA, IL, WY, NV, and back to CA. I took pictures of the bug the whole way and the owner from England loved it. Sure you could be upset that I hogged it the whole way or you can realize I had a great time with that bug and added a lot to its life in 18 days and on a few days when I let Torus the Bull go (if I do, I kind of grew attached!), he won't be any worse off than had I just logged him once and let him go because he still will get a chance to travel after I let him go. Just my two cents. What I really want to talk about are people who grab trackables in your inventory without giving you at least 24 hours to log them.

I just planted my first travel bugs the other day and I was wondering why I was getting these discovered logs. Then my wife informed me that they get logged in as found/discovered. At first I thought that was awfully cheap. I still don't know how to feel about it. To me it kind of seems like cheating. For example, I don't even like to drop travel bugs off in caches I have already found. When I find a travel bug, I try and take them to new caches to log them in. Since the wife and I have different accounts, we will often find a micro cache and I will "drop" it off and she will immediately pick it up, so we kind of use the micro as a transfer point. Other than that, that is the only thing I feel dirty about. To me the point of travel bugs is to travel. I probably won't get into this discovery thing. If i don't pick the bug up and take it with me, I won't log it. And that is when I realized that Geocaching is what we make of it. If you are all about numbers and want to drive them up, then go for it. If you are about trading items and trinkets, then go for it. That is the nice thing about Geocaching, it is what you make it. Keeping that in mind, I will choose not to "discover" travel bugs. If I don't move it, I won't log it. For those of you who want to add to your count and "discover", I will go ahead and leave your log on my TB. And that is the key that I think so many of the incredibly rude posters have lost in this thread. Really, I am surprised that for such a fun activity, there is so much nit picking on this board. I don't get on the boards much, but man are people touchy. I think we would all be best served to relax and make the game what you want it. I look at it this way, I will never have as many logs as some of the people here. I will never catch up. So why worry about it? I don't need to inflate my numbers to make myself feel good. I am just going to go out and enjoy the hunt. I think all of us should remember that. YOU make Geocaching what YOU want it to be. Don't worry about others. And with that said, although I won't participate, discovery seems to be here to stay.

I tried using the search but didn't see anything. Should I upgrade my base map for my Explorist 500? What map options do I have? I like using Google Earth and the only thing I would want is maybe to have a litte more detailed road maps instead of just the main routes. Is it worth the money to upgrade to a new map? Where and how do I do that? How much will it run me? Let me know. I appreciate the help.

I just go into Geocaching this week and so it was time to buy a GPS. I decided I probably want the Exlporist 400 or 500. I started saving all sorts of searches on eBay when somehow during my searching, I see Radio Shack has them on sale for $183! I ended up getting the Explorist 500, San Disk 1 GB SD for $29.99 (after rebate), and a case for $12. Shipping was free and tax was only $17. Everything on eBay was starting at $240ish plus $10-$20 shipping! So if you are looking for a good deal, the sale ends August 9th. http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.js...rentPage=family