ALPINE-X

Here is an image of the Trinity blast site. This was the first manmade atomic blast.....

Congratulations on your purchase of a GPSr. You now have no excuse for getting lost.... I have an older Garmin Emap, but you are on the right track with locking onto roads. When in the car (and not off-roading) I set it to lock to roads, as this will keep you on the most likely road you are traveling on, even if the accuracy of your location is off by a little bit. Once out of the car (or off-roading) I turn lock to roads off, as it will cause your location to jump around if there are any roads in the area you are walking in. Also, get used to checking your position accuracy when getting close to a cache location. If your accuracy is more than normal (20 feet), try walking to and from the cache location a few times from different directions, as this will often give you a better position. An alternate way is to use the 'averaging' feature of your unit ( I assume it has this, check your manual) . Another trick is to try rotating your GPSr around slowly to allow it to pick up different satalite signals (the more you have, the better your accuracy). My unit shows which satelites it's picking up and how strong the signal from each is. Happy Caching.....

I agree with the above, I bought my Garmin Emap as an open box at BestBuy over 4 years ago for under $200 (about a 40% savings). It's performed flawlessly ever since, even though I've used it for off-roading extensively (re: lots of dirt, dust and vibration). This way I got a fully mapping GPSr for about the same price as a non-mapping system normally went for. One other thought:, Figure out what level of GPSr you think you need at this point, then buy a unit several levels up. This will keep you from having to upgrade anytime in the near future as you will undoubtably find yourself looking for more advanced features once you get into caching.

Funny you should ask, I've thought about this myself. My older brother was a sniper in the army. When he got out he bought an upper gillie suit (just covers the head and chest), as I guess he missed his old sniping days. We would go out in the woods by our family cabin in Mt. Laguna, CA and he would hide and I would try to find him. With no movement and the suit on he would simply disappear into the surroundings. Anyways, I did a quick word search and found a couple of forum topics on qillie suits:' look here or here

Your correct about pasting the co-ord into the search bar. I did a few caches that I know the exact location of, and this does bring back a more acuate location. The search feature is just a handy tool for figuring out how long a hike might be.

Playing around with Google Earth and discovered the 'measure' feature under the tools toolbar. This is really helful when figuring out the shortest route to a cache, or adding notes to a cache page about distances to a cache. Just thought this might be useful, as it's a lot quicker than trying to measure distance using the GPSr at home. The below image shows the measuring line (white line) from the cache to a possible parking location, not shown is a pop up window that shows you the distance.

For those of you who've never visited Sidney Nebraska in winter, I was sent to inspect the installation of a gas pipeline pumping station we were installing just across the border in Colorado. If it hadn't been for Cabelas next to our hotel, I would have gone mad.....(thank you Cabelas for letting me browse your superstore for 3 days while we waited for the weather to improve) Here's the best part of Sidney (Cabelas)... And here's the bad (the 1f was the current outside tempature...) "That cache has got to be here somewhere!!! Here's the link to my on-line album of my trip to Sidney... Sidney-Trip

Thanks for all the input. Temp extremes aren't an issue so the batteries should be ok, but I think I will avoid the heavy camo, and dessicant bags.

I'm working on placing my first cache and have the following questions: 1) Has anybody ever added a couple of desicant bags (silica gel bags that absorb moisture). I know this won't help if the container gets really wet, but with just normal swetting of plastic (I'm using a medium sized 'lock n lock' container), I thought this might help keep things from getting damp. 2) I'm thinking about adding a couple of AA battery 2 packs as swag. Is this considered safe for a cache? They do contain battery acid, but I wouldn't think this would be a real problem, unless one of them exploded, which seems fairly unlikely. 3) I've wrapped my container in camo-tape, but was thinking about hot glueing some leaves, branches and dirt (taken from the area I'm placing it in) to really add some stealth to the container. I think it might be interesting to try to make the container look as 'natural' as possible and have it fairly out in the open, as opposed to trying to conceal it with a rock, or bushes. Has anybody had experience with creating or finding a cache camo'd this way? The cache will be located off of a hiking trail in an area with shrub brushes. Thanks for any input, as I'm trying to create a decent first cache, as opposed to throwing a sucrects tin under a light skirt

I know how you feel, my first cache was about 500 feet from my front door, I have walked by it on a regular basis for almost 2 years, without a clue it was there....

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU HAVE BEEN ASSIMILATED....

check E bay, there are usually about 4,000 listings for garmin cables at any one time...

The above response was too funny, I've memorized your face from your gallary photo, just in case I ever meet you on the trail, I'll just keep on walking......

Around here, groups/people get pretty(very) upset about people driving in rivers, wetlands, etc- Anti off road advocates use pictures such as this to support the claim all we do is "ruin the environment" Snorkles are frowned upon too, since with your hood underwater, you're obviously "harming the environment" Groups such as mrr browse the internet, looking for ammo to use against OHV users in MN. We almost lost access to all public lands recently. We are fighting to keep our access, but it isnt easy. As for the jeep TB, some MN cachers might be known as anti jeep. The first and second years contests- the circulation was bad, and was intenetionally derailed by many. They didnt participate this year. I sense its the promotional aspect, or the anti advertising/commercial aspect. I call 'em Buzz wreckers..... Oh, and Ps- I know your not doing damage in the pic, but the point is- its still ammo for "them" 32s? umm, no fender trimming and running 37s now, back on topic (its all good, i love to mess with jeepers) now, in that above pic of the samy he is on a road, the road goes through the river. we have lots of those kinds of crossings in the mountains. Normal stuff. Now, if you go off the trail and start making your own trials, thats bad. following a trail, you should be good. a lot of trails start off as logging roads also. and "ammo" for serria club Nazis is everywhere. Any offroading pic they have an issue with... Good eye Paranoid56, the Sami is on 3N16, a forest service road in the Big Bear area. The Crossing is Lower Holcomb creek. The ironic thing is, this photo was taken on the only section of this entire road that is paved (in order to keep if from washing away during the wet season) It would serve the Anti-Off-Road types right to use this as an example of how we "Off Roaders" are destroying the envirement, only to find out the vehicle is actually "On-Road" p.s. No fish were killed in the taking of the above photo....

Forget the garden light (they tend to stand out in the forest), try this little guy from Harbor frieight at , http://www.harborfreightusa.com/usa/itemdi...do?itemid=94412

Because you can't EDIT a subject line once submitted....

Is it just me, or does this logo from a local charity look vaguely familiar.... p.s., does anybody know how to edit the 'topic description' line

While creating my first travel bug I noticed that the word 'goal' under the header 'Current GOAL' on a travel bugs home page is all capital letters. Is this on purpose?, does 'GOAL' stand for something like 'SCUBA', or was this just a typo? See my example below: AMERICAN-EXPEDITION Owner: ALPINE-X Released: Thursday, August 31, 2006 Origin: California, United States Use TB121GC to reference this travel bug. How do Travel Bugs Work? Recently Spotted: In the hands of the owner. Current GOAL: My mission is to TRAVEL TO ALL 50 STATES

I've always been an avid camper, hiker and off-roader, so naturally I've used a GPS for many years. I stumbled upon a cache once while off roading in the Anza Borrego desert in Southern California. I had heard about geocaching, so I went ahead and signed the log, and kept he idea of geocaching in the back of my mind. Recently my 3 year old son decided he wanted to go searching for burried treasure (pirates are big right now). My initial response was to tell him that there wasn't any buried treasure around our area, but then I remembered geocaching. I logged on and found out that there were three caches at our neigborhood park, the closest being 500 feet from our front door. Now were hooked, as my son and I try to search for a cache almost every day, as it gives us a good excuse to GET OFF THE COUCH and head for the woods!!

2001 Xterra for around town caches (or cave caches) 1987 Suzuki Samurai for hard core cache locations

Here is my list of items, all fit into a medium sized fanny pack. The Survival items all go into an inner small bag, as does the medical supplies PERMANENT SURVIVAL ITEMS COMPASS MIRROR PONCHO ZIP LOCK BAGS ZIP TIES SEWING (SUTURE) KIT TOILET PAPER BUG REPELLANT WHISTLE DUCT TAPE SURVIVAL MATCHES FIRE FLINT SHOE LACE BELT GEAR GPS (IN BELT POUCH) BATTERIES (IN BELT POUCH) MULTI-TOOL (IN BELT CASE) WATER BOTTLES (IN BELT POUCHES) WALKING STICK (NOT IN BAG) CAMERA PERMANENT MEDICAL SUPPLIES IODINE LARGE BANDAGES (6) ANTISEPTIC PREP-PADS (6) ANTIBIOTIC OINTMENT SCISSORS TYLENOL/IBUPROFEN/MAXALT GAUZE &TAPE KNIFE, SMALL CLEAN SUN BLOCK BAND-AIDS, SML,MED,LRG, NITRILE GLOVES STING RELIEF WIPE TWEEZERS/MAGNIFY GLASS MOLESKIN 2X3 (2) BUTTERFLY BANDAGE BASIC MEDICAL GUIDE THERMOMETER STRIP LOOSE GEAR (IN OUTSIDE POCKET) CHAP STICK NOTEBOOK PEN, PENCIL FLASHLIGHT, SPARE AAA BAT SWAG FOOD

Great clip, it blows me away at the imagination and creativity of the members.

The funny thing is, I've walked within 20 feet of this cache at least a 100 times The Viridian Queen by Parsa and Yrium [profile] N 33° 08.988 W 117° 01.449 UTM: 11S E 497747 N 3667894 N 0.1mi from your home coordinates. or convert to NAD27 at Jeeep.com

I carry this (sword of destruction) as they're good for opening stuck caches, and dealing with muggles and one of these, as they even tend to last longer than LED's, and are hard to loose...

Has anybody's bio, Hobby and news information dissapeared from your account info since the new update. All my info is gone!!!