VerySmartGirl

our underwater miss adventure is documented here : http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...p;#entry3085922

Hey Pieman! VSG's mom was in NOLA, thanks for picking up our gerber daisy coin! These England caches sound interesting and we are looking forward to a great family trip

Thanks for the responses! We are looking forward to our visit.

We are planning on visiting London in March and we will be stay near the Eye. We would appreciate if anyone can recommend caches that we should be certain to hit or if anyone can direct us to useful links/bookmarks. Thanks, VSG's dad

Near Boulder City (actually just down the road from the previously recommended Micro Mead) What a View! GCec78 is a trip! If you are willing to drive across the dam to the the White Bridge GC7d96 virtual cache it should be accessible in your rental and is a fun ride. Along with my brother and sister in law we hid a nifty cache near a gypsum cave a few miles on the LV side of Lake Mead called Sloth Cave Cache GC125jc. A giant sloth fossil was found there years ago, now it is a huge cave on BLM property. Explicit directions are on the cache page. If you take a flashlight you can safely explore (terrain 3 or so) much of the cave and see the gypsum sparkle with your flashlight! We love the Henderson area, and visit Ethel M's chocolate factory and cactus garden every trip. There is a virtual cache, Lucious, right at the parking lot for Ethel's. There are several neat caches in that area that we enjoyed especially Historic Duck Wash GCZAJW, and Not Geraldo GCG424. In the northern Suburbs, we liked My Other Exercise Spot GC11TB6 and for sheer numbers run the Starbucks series (Iced Macchiato, Venti Latte etc...) can't go wrong. Las Vegas is a great caching destination. Have fun!

Sputnik 57 thanks for the ideas. We have done the hard reset however that has not returned the arrow. Anyone out there know how to re-intall the factory settings on the Legend?

Did you check to see if you have just turned off the compass? Are you talking about the "Red" arrow or the compass line? Does the map screen work properly? By that I mean does the arrow on that screen show the direction you are moving, a direct line to the cache and the cache itself? I use the send to GPS function just fine on my XP machine. However, on my Vista machine it goes though the motions of sending the info, but the cache is never really sent. Rontro I am talking about the vector pointer on the GOTO screen. The GPS sensor part is functioning just fine, giving accruate distance and direction information, but will not show anything on the GOTO screen, only on the map screen (I guess it does show distance to all the caches on the find screen) we have been using it on the map screen to cache, albeit somewhat inefficiently. Yes, we have tried to turn it off and back on, but the unit thinks navigation is on but won't show us the info. Thanks for your suggestions.

We recently had a 6 month old Etrex Legend HCx go down, losing its compass pointer on the navigation page. While the rest of the functions still work, this makes it very challenging to use for caching. We have not been able to get any answers from Garmin tech support about fixing it. We bought a new Garmin 60 and took it out for a spin - worked great. After downloading some caches by a pocket query it worked fine, but after I downloaded 2 more using the "Send to GPS" button on the maps page, it has now lost its navigation pointer. Has anyone else had problems with the Send to GPS (a.k.a. Garmin Communicator) function? Any ideas how to fix the GPSr units? Thanks for any input.

Interesting story to read! On the neutral buoyancy, if the container contained air then wouldn't the buoyancy change with the item's depth? If neutral near the surface, would have have negative buoyancy at a deeper depth. It may be on the previously-mentioned scuba bookmarks, but there's one in the Turks & Caicos Islands. The description sounds like it is inside an underwater dome at 35 feet. "The Dome" GC12BPA Yes! We attached the 12 inch PVC tube filled with air to an approx 12 x 6 x 6 building brick. The brick weighed approx 5 lbs. WE designed it so the PVC tube would float about 1 foot above the brick. Once we set it into the water, the brick wanted to sink ASAP. The PVC tube provided little "lift" for the 5 lbs brick. Before lowering the brick into the water, we should have inflated lift bags to keep it neutral buoyant. These are what salvage divers use to lift a boat from the bottom. Fill enough lift bags and even the Titanic will come up. With the lift bags in place we could have controlled the decent of the cache. Instead we ended up with a quick, "oh did you drop it". Thanks for asking. We really thought we knew what we were doing, until we got out there. We want others to learn from our errors.

234 murders SO FAR in 2007 in charm city, Baltimore MD population 500,000 minus 234.

We had a quite a miss adventure placing an underwater scuba cache. Despite reading the forums and getting others advice, there were several problems. We planned to place it in 20-30 ft of clear water so it would be a scuba cache. The cache container was a PCV pipe (i can not recommend the use of this above water) tethered by a plastic chain and a plastic coated cable with stainless steel fittings. When filled with air the pipe was buoyant. Inside the tube was a dive slate log and an item to identify in order to log the cache (a plastic fork) We were good to go, found a place in the Gulf of Mexico 20 miles off shore with clear water. Anchored. I don't live in FL but a family member was set to maintain it for us. Dropped the cache while trying to lower it. In retrospect, we should have made it neutral buoyant, then lowered it. The boat pivoted on the anchor which made way marking the spot very difficult. We should have placed a string attached to the cache and an inflatable dive balloon. This way we could have better localized the cache at the surface. The winds changed, the waves kicked up and visibility fell to zero. Which probably means the cache will slowly be covered in sand within no time. We should have been more careful about scouting a good spot. On the way home, we did some caching and LEFT our GPS at GCQD2Y Slim Bob goes to Potts. Which was our only record of the underwater waypoint. We should have written down the coords and not rely on just an electronic record. So, basically we littered in the Gulf of Mexico . This seriously dampened our exicitment for placing an underwater cache. Hope others can learn from our mistakes. VSG's dad edit for spellin'

USNR 7 years of reserves during med school and residency, then full time from 1998-2002 Medical Corps, Naval Hospital Great Lakes

That is the beauty of a rating system aimed at matching caches you like to other caches you might like. I know it is possible to look through logs, pictures and terrain rating but that is different than an integrated "if you like this cache you will probably like this cache"

This is true. However, if you take into account what folks with similar tastes like then it's more likely the result will more accurate. For instance, folks have widely differing tastes in hobbies, yet here we are. We all like this hobby. If you look at the other hobbies we like you'll start to see a strong pattern. Then when you work it from the opposite end, someone who likes the majority of hobbies we see in that pattern when introduced to geocaching they will more likely like geocaching as well. Conversely, if they don't like the majority of hobbies in that pattern, they'll less likely like geocaching. While there are no absolutes the odds are much greater than mere chance. Yes! I like this idea better than a simple quality star rating. Sort of "if you liked this cache then you would probably like this cache" or "other members who liked this cache also liked this cache"

I mostly agree with the nice idea but not practical and the "what is quality" issues that has been mentioned here and before. I don't want to fill out a 10 part questioner after every find. I just wish all the positives "I really appreciated this hide" type of logs could some how be emblazoned on a cache page for all to see (like the scarlet letter, only opposite). This is not just for the hider’s ego, but to help guide new hiders to what the community generally likes and help guide seekers. If you visit Baltimore (duck and cover) there are some caches I want you to go to and others, ehh.

A new forum tactic, putting words in your mouth! Sorry fixed it.

opps! thx sbell.

Near our home we know who does good work. Coordinates spot on, clever hide, interesting spot, challenging, ect. Would a rating system, similar to E-bay's feedback stars, be helpful? Each hide would earn a positive, neutral or negative rating. Positives & negatives of these systems is that there is no standard, it is determined by the community, and creates a peer environment. Why burden the community with additional requirements and judgments? The last four logs on a cache don't always paint a complete picture. New cache hiders might model higher rated caches. We want a new GSAK column! When caching out of your home zip you have a rough idea of what others think of a hide. Just a thought as we hesitantly stick our toe into the tank.....chomp away.

Here's a pretty lame anecdote, but apparently in the spirit of the OP... We once went looking for an urban micro behind an outdoor gear store - and discovered the last day of a going out of business sale. We picked up a new coat to replace one that had been eaten by sticker-thorns while caching for 90% off the retail price. We'd never have been there if not for geocaching. We've found boat ramps and parks in our relatives backyards that they weren't aware of. I once found a dollar bill floating in a stream. We met some great folks who live 2 blocks away from us. We started geocaching after moving from one big city to another 2 years ago, and we now know the back roads and short cuts better than some born & bred locals. We've gotten lots of exercise, made our dog very happy, and seen tons of cool places.

1) Cache retrieval unit, daughter. Now attach whistle to her. 2) Garmin legend, ouch$ 3) Pride, with each DNF.

I don't think it is useless information. We have a ton of trackables and while it is great when people move them, we like to see them discovered also. It lets us know the coin or TB is safe and helps keep track of it. When trackables are logged into a single cache for a long time and there are multiple finds of that cache without anyone moving the trackable, we grow nervous that it is lost or stolen. For that reason, we are happy to see discoveries and we try to discover TB's that we don't move to let the owners keep tabs.

Nope, and I did not try to support it - if you discuss the whole post instead of out-of-context sentences the end reads: Got stats? Glad to hear the OPer is recoverying WITH his GPS.... now for a drift to off topic... There are stats on this subject, see the reference and quote below or in summary... People with guns in the home are more at risk of dying from a firearm homicide or firearm suicide . The breakdown on the deaths comes from the paper. You can see 1 in 3 are killed during an arguement, while 1 in 6 are killed during a robbery. Therefore if you have a gun in the home, you are more likely to die for the wrong reason than in defending yourself in a robbery. It, of course, does not estimate how many robberies or deaths were prevented by the gun owning homeowners. None of the surveyors wanted to knock on their doors! This is not a political statement, just a fact from an epidemiology publication. The data comes from 49 states (South Dakota has a law about looking at death cert for research, hmm wonder what they are hidding ) and a 10% sampling of everyone 15 years and older who died in 1993. Aprox. 2000 deaths make up this data. "Over three quarters (76.3 percent) of the homicide victims knew their assailant. Nearly one third (31.7 percent) of the homicides occurred during a family argument, 15.4 percent during a robbery, 4.1 percent during a drug deal, 0.2 percent during an abduction, and 44.1 percent for other unspecified reasons. In 4.5 percent of the homicides, multiple circumstances were reported." Guns in the Home and Risk of a Violent Death in the Home: Findings from a National Study Linda L. Dahlberg1 , Robin M. Ikeda2 and Marcie-jo Kresnow3 1 Division of Violence Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA. 2 Epidemiology Program Office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA. 3 Office of Statistics and Programming, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA. Received for publication February 9, 2004; accepted for publication June 7, 2004

welcome back! perhaps it is better that your caching was uneventful.

thanks for replying! i guess you shouldn't say too much, but it seems like everyone over there has a GPS

Recently we discovered troops are caching in Iraq and Afganistan - ok bash us freely for being the last ones to uncover this! It is interesting to read the logs. Shouldn't all war zone caches be 5 stars? Here are a few that stood out. Need a Flak jacket and helmet to get near this one: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...b6-00c8f5318f59 Got about 300' and was stopped by a guard. Need Flak vest and helmet to get through now. May need an arty guy to move it west a couple hundred feet or so. a real disclaimer: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...c9-6716c3af5074 This cache is in a war zone. Mortars and rockets impact near it on a daily basis. You will need credentials to get in the coalition occupied zone that it is in. Do not post logs that give any references to what is around it; this might help the rocketeers aim a little better. This person had to find a bunker to hide in: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...91-2e7566ffc2cf Actually found this last week but didn't get an opportunity to enter this website and change my ID until now. Got to meet a couple other Geocachers during my hunt. I was looking for this cache when a unannounced detonation by our Explosives Ordance Disposal heros fired off a shot. I felt my stomach fell to my feet and bounced back while I looked around frantically for a bunker! 'Bout that time Dudley Do Right and Pumkin Man came out to check what that noise was. They asked what I was doing and I gave a lame excuse about being around to talk to another unit and saw their display and decided to check it out. As I was about to leave, Pumkin Man came back out and asked if I was caching. I found the cache shortly after a brief scrape with some really sticky grease. Thanks for the rescue Pumkin Man, it would've sucked to go through all that and not log a find! TFTC TNLN SL HawkDoc Not sure they have WAAS which makes the finds more challenging: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...9e-7ccdcd63f11c The GPS was trying to take me off a cliff. The hillside has been dug out and is no longer there. I'm sure the cache is gone as well, ahhh, progress. This should probably be archived. Thanks for the try tho! These people were shot at near the cache previously: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...26-872a536418d4 I guess I'm the FTF? What an adventure! My crew and I were fragged through here two days ago, and when I took a break to stretch my legs, I turned my Garmin F-305 on and noticed a cache 600 feet away. Hmmm... I wandered off in the dark and found the cache area, but noticed an owl in the entry way. I decided to come back some other time. Well, here we were again, so armed with the cache description and my navigator [flashlight and copilot in tow], we made our way to the shelter. No owl in sight - good start. After an interesting climb (I'll have to get a picture of the outside sometime later), I started the descent with my nav holding a flashlight overhead to light the way. Cautiously, I walked over to start searching when I heard some flapping from my left and turned to shine my light on the owl as it came flapping to a stop at my feet, gave me a stern look, and then flew away. My nav started laughing at me while I took a second to breathe again. I quickly found the cache (by the way, I laughed when I saw the label, so I took a picture), signed the log, and renewed with a sense of bravery, ventured down the hall and through the second door to take a picture of the owl. Thanks for a great hide! P.S. - My nav is still laughing.