Sparrowhawk

I don't remember the name of it, but this one guy who owned a patch of woods decided to place a geocache on it. He had an existing container, so he put it among the trees, placed a bunch of large rocks on it and published it. He had a sign on the edge of his property that said "No Tresspassing - unless you are a geocacher". Anyhoo... the way this thing worked was that you went there to his woods and start looking for the cache around this one camping travel trailer that happened to be there. Cachers would walk around the camper, looking and looking for signs of the cache... ...until they noticed that there were a bunch of large rocks placed just over the doorway. The door was unlocked. When cachers entered, the logbook was the size of a coffee table book and there was an array of colored pens to choose from. The swag was in the cupboards. I wish to heck I could remember what or where this cache was.... someone told me about it at some cache gathering.

A cache that needs to be carried to it's coords before it will let you open it

I think it would be easy to contact the Tristan people and see who would want to be part of the fun. They have Internet access.

Here is an idea for you guys. Welcome to Tristan Da Cunha: Tristan Da Cunha - Wiki Idea: cachers create travel bugs out of small cache containers and enter it into the race. The race name: "Tristan da Cunha or Bust!" The goal of this race is to have your travel bug transform itself into THE first geocache on THE most remote, inhabited island on the planet! How this can happen, I don't know... I have no idea how to coordinate TB races. But I might as well put the idea out there. The only fly in the ointment would be if some prankster Tristan resident decided to mess with the whole idea by placing a cache of their own on their island just to mess with our minds. In that case, the winner would be whatever TB reaches the island first and then gets logged into their geocache. What do you think, sirs?

Oh, THAT could explain it. IN that case, I have an idea. Make the ammo can useless for sale. Spray different color spots on it, like black and brown. Make the paint job UGLY... like lots of drips everywhere. Spray a smile face on it. Then take a hammer and put a small dent on it. Enough to make it ugly, but not enough to make it useless. No army surplus place would buy a "vandalized" ammo can. Still good for geocaching, but not good enough to steal and sell. HA!

Just deliver copies of "Geocaching for Dummies" by Joel McNamara to the local police. Hahah! Honestly... that is not a bad idea.

I also called the Portland Police department and asked for whoever is in charge of suspicious objects there. I talked to a detective named "Ainsworth" or something like that. The detective says they are COMPLETELY clued in about about geocaching, to the point of every time they get a suspicious bomb report, the first thing they do is go check it out on geocaching.com. They get suspicious reports like this around once a month. I have no idea if the Portland Police would have kept the Army from laying some serious kaboom action on our longtime airport cache, but either way, it's nice that the the Portland cops are on the case the way they should be.

As the original placer of the "PDX Airport Travel Bug Embassy" cache, I must give thanks where thanks are certainly due. What a heck of a great start for a new geocacher! "September 4 by anitaspinner (2 found) This is my first time to go out by myself to find a cache. I looked around the parking lot to find a likely corner and drove over to that area and set my GPS in the windshield to check my setting. A desert-camo-uniformed man came through the hedge and told me that I was in a dangerous place and the bomb squad was coming to investigate a suspicious box. I asked him if it was a camo box painted red. He replied that it was. I told him I was looking for it and that it was a geocache. He did not know what that was but called his next in command who came out and asked me what a geocache was. I had my GPS and the book "Geocaching for Dummies" by Joel McNamara which I showed them. Then around the hedge came a Portland Police canine officer to find where he was needed. He did not know about Geocaching either. I signed in and left for work. Nice to see that others have been there since and it is still there.A great beginning!" Here's the scoop: I moved to Nevada from Portland 2 years ago (leaving the cache to be adopted by a new cache owner who has since done a fantastic job of maintaining the cache). The cache is in the corner of an Embassy Suites hotel lot - right across from the back of a small Army station. Five years ago when I first set the cache, I walked into that Army station and fully informed the military guys as to the presence of this cache and what geocaching is all about. They appreciated the information. So as soon as I read that log today, I immediately called the Army station back in Portland and asked for "whoever is in charge of suspicious objects". When I talked to that sargent, he told me "we have had a new crew since then". Also because of anitaspinner, they have since taken the time to check out geocaching, got themselves educated and now our Portland airport travel bug hotel is safe. A big round of applause to anitaspinner! Sometimes we see grumbling about newbies around here... but any newbie that can stop a whole Army station from blowing up a perfectly good airport cache deserves to be honored here in the forums.

The semi-famous Corps of Discovery cache was originally launched in 2002, back when traveling caches were allowed. It started it's journey a year and a half after geocaching was born. It was grandfathered and allowed to continue it's journey when traveling caches were banned. It originally was launched in New York State, with the goal of visiting the mouth of the Columbia River. It made it there in 2004 via some what-it's-name cacher out there somewhere. I have been watching it ever since... and I am glad to see what must be the one of the last, grandfathered traveling caches in existence about to make it home. A big salute to everyone involved.

Big, fat, YES! I REALLY support nanos having their own category AND icon - I propose a cartoon microscope for the icon. How to tell if it's a nano? Is there enough room in the logbook to sign your whole name and date legibly on the page? No? Only can fit initials at best? Can't fit swag or a TB tag into it? IF NOT, IT'S A BLEEPIN' NANO. Fact is... a 35mm film container can AT LEAST fit a TB tag into it. Nanos are NOT TB compatible, period. If it's not TB-compatible, it's not really a normal geocache. And that is why I think it deserves it's own category and icon.

It's all in the design of the geocache itself. How well-hidden it is, how popular it is, how well it gets bugs to it's destination. As of this writing, PDX Travel Bug Embassy has existed for 1674 days, has seen 2526 TBs move though it, which means approximately 1.5 TBs per day. The Embassy is only one commuter train stop from the local airport. TBs that need to fly to a distant place actually have a chance to get there. The cache "lives" in a clever location that looks like normal landscaping at an Embassy Suites hotel. Since 2004, it's been muggled a handful of times... however, doing the math, a total of less than 1 percent of the total amount of TBs were lost over the years. As far as safe design is concerned Burbank Travel Bug Lockdown is the best I have seen. The geocache is not only padlocked, it's bolted to a fence. Ya can't mess with it. Stargate TB caches take the idea of a TB hotel to a whole new level. If a TB is trapped on one continent, they can rush closer to their goal via a Stargate cache. So don't blame all TB hotels because some TB hotel owners can't be bothered to use creative and safe TB hotel designs and locations. Don't blame all TB hotels because some not-so-considerate cachers put rules on their TB caches that turn them into TB prisons. Honor the good ones, boycott the bad ones. The badly-designed-and-placed ones tend to go away on their own anyway. I think the positive effects of the good ones really outweigh those who do not serve TBs nearly as well.

Here's a cool idea for a travel bug which I have been meaning to get around to doing. Seems like my round tuit is missing, so I might as well pass the idea on to others to use. Tristan da Cunha is a remote volcanic group of islands in the south Atlantic Ocean. It is THE most remote inhabited archipelago in the world. Here is the Wiki page. There is no geocache on Tristan da Cunha. Travel bug idea: Attach a small, waterproof container to a TB tag. Call it "Tristan Da Cunha or Bust!" Goal: To become THE first geocache ever placed on THE most remote inhabited island of the planet! Heck... if more than once person looses a Tristan-bound bug, it would be interesting to have a race to see which one gets there first... if ever! Have fun!

Hi everyone, especially cache approvers! I am in Las Vegas, and located here is a special place called the Pinball Hall of Fame. It is run by a nonprofit and holds the worlds largest collection of pinball games, with many historic old machines. I want to hold a cache event there. Imagine a bunch of cachers going pinball crazy! I figure then we can go to a good local restaurant or pub afterwards. Now... I want to know if, the idea is appropriate and if not, how can a historic pinball place visit be structured to be cacher-compatible and follow proper Groundspeak rules? Thanks for any advice.

If you need a good, legal substitute for Photoshop. get GIMP. Don't be put off by the wierd name - it's a good program. Cost: ZERO. It's free. It contains no "gotchas" - as in hidden crap that installs on your computer without you knowing. Good stuff. GIMP is kinda like a rather old version of Photoshop... it's maybe equivalent to what Photoshop was around 7 years ago. That's perfectly fine for beginners - in fact, the program in itself is complicated enough to keep you busy and learning something new for quite awhile. Try it... it's worth the steep learning curve.

I don't know about physical challenges, but here is a puzzle cache that has defied EVERY attempt to solve it. I hang out on a very geeky website, and it's such a puzzle that another geocacher decided to post it on that geek site to see if THEY could solve it. (they couldn't)

I recently had fun watching every Breed All About It video from Animal Planet posted on Youtube. After seeing these vids, it seems that the obvious choice for the best geocaching dog would be a Bull Mastiff. In the video, they explained that Bull Mastiffs will sniff out anything that is out of the ordinary in the environment. The dog featured in the video found a bicycle seat in a field, simply because that was not the usual thing to find in a grassy field. That sure sounds like the best geocaching canine breed to me. However I am sure every cacher will have a different opinion. Let's hear it!

The coolness of Firefox is the ability to customize the HECK out of it using extensions. For instance... you know all those times when you see a link that is not hyperlinked, like this: www.apod.nasa.gov/apod Instead of this: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ There is a very good extension called Linkification that will automatically make the link clickable even though the original person did not do it that way. AndThenThereAreThoseTimesWhenSomeIdiotWritesInSomeLongLineWithNoSpacesAndItMakesYourScreen StretchOutWayTooAndCanDriveYouAbsolutelyNuts. If that happens, just use this extension to break up the line to a reasonable size. Adblock Plus helps get rid of obnoxious ads that are flashing in your face. Remove It Permanently lets you right-click and permanently kill any graphic or ad that annoys you. Now... I am sure that SOMEWHERE out there, there could be a YouTube video that you want to download and keep for yourself... ...and for this particular video, you have perfectly legal, written permission to download according to the originator of the video itself, RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT? And you would not do something so tacky as to download something illegal, riiiiiiiiight? Of course you wouldn't. So when it comes time to get a copy of that perfectly-legal-to-download video onto your hard drive, install Fast Video Download, then go grab the free VLC player to play that video for yourself, offline. No problem!

Check out the Oregon, I think you will like it much better, thats seems to be the buss that I keep hearing........... or better yet keep an eye out for the New......... California ......... LOL !! Not likely. I don't know why they started with Colorado, since it is the most outdoorsy state! What if they came out with the Garmin "New Jersey"?"

What is this mystery location? The writer of this page has mentions of Mayans and UFOs and unintentionally funny stuff like that. Now... I am sure us geocachers could come up with a much more logical answer! EDIT: Ooops! Screwup! Moderators, I am putting in a request to have this moved to the South/Southwest forum.

Don't worry... geocachers who obsess over the size of someone else's stats might be doing so for the same reason why some guys worry about... well... this is a FAMILY forum... I ain't sayin' nuthin' more than THAT! All ya gotta do if someone asks you about the size of your stats is to smile and say "Enough to really love this sport!" Then immediately ask them about the coolest location they've ever experienced. Then go right into some of coolest experiences you've had so far and ask about other locations. That's how you take charge and pre-emptively de-rail those guys who are obsessed over the size of one's numbers.

Check this out: Abandoned highway south of Big Bear google map I am thinking that would make a FANTASTIC cache series! Here's the inspiration. I am not in California, but if some SoCal cacher makes a cache destination outta this old highway, I'm gonna HAVE to make a goal out of it! (Edit: one nearby cache to there is GCP843, for easy searching)

There's a "scorched earth" fix... depends on how desperate he is... worked on a very brave friend of mine. I now use it for times when I have nasty itching for whatever reason and nothing else works. 1. Stick a rag between your teeth 2. Get comfortable on a sofa or something - ya gonna need it. 3. Count to three. Grit teeth on rag. 4. Pour rubbing alcohol all over the affected area 5. Proceed to confess your worst sins to your favorite diety. Let your body react to the shock in the meanwhile. Just let your muscles react. Stay with it... 6. 10 seconds later... pain starts going away. 7. 20 seconds later... pain is gone. 8. 30 seconds later... ITCHING IS GONE. 10. Wash affected area with alcohol again, this time with a sterile cloth. Your skin will have adapted, and you won't get the alcohol burn feeling. There might be a feeling of your skin being a little sore, but it sure beats the intense itching. The nice thing about this is that the alcohol does burn away the itch - and also cleans out the poisonous oil that causes the rash in the first place. If you can honestly deal with 10-20 seconds of "OMIGODHELPME OUCH OUCH OUCH" then this will take care of it. I've tried this with 100 percent pure everclear alcohol... and the strange result is that it goes straight to numb mode without the pain for me. Don't know how it would work with a poison ivy rash. Since this involves a bit of pain - I guess I should put in a legal disclaimer. Try at your own risk, entertainment purposes only, not to be construed as actual medical advice, etc.

So Garmin now has a Colorado and an Oregon. Hmmmm... this calls for a parody thread. I now live in Nevada, so I will start: The Garmin NEVADA: - Mostly makes a lot of flashing lights and exciting noise, takes your money, leaves you penniless but you still find it fun - Works best in a red-light district How about: The Garmin RHODE ISLAND: - Built kinda like an Ipod Nano. - ??? (there's got to be a better Rhode Island joke somewhere) The Garmin MAINE - custom-made for when yah drahv yah cah to the gee-yah-cahsh The Garmin NEW YORK (brooklyn version) - Hey! HEY! Ya gonna look for that cache already or ya just gonna keep standing there? The Garmin ILLINOIS (chicago version) - shuts down small airports in the middle of the night (my chicago joke sucks, someone come up with a better one) Anyone up for describing other Garmin "models"?

A whole lotta locations like this Enjoy!

Chicago Tribune presents: Great photos of Chicago locations What geocache would be closest to the particular location depicted in each photo?