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gravechaser

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Everything posted by gravechaser

  1. To geocaching.com, thanks for allowing/helping us: to search for caches along a route, to pay for a membership- I feel like I'm helping out with expenses to complain anytime we want to to ask questions anytime we need to have a neato forum to meet other cachers have pocket queries- this keeps us on top the game in our area get outside the house & away from the TV to see more of our local area Finally, to spend good time talking as a family about what we are going to do, when we are going to do it and enjoying what we find along the way. Thats priceless. Our kids will probably be geocachers for life because of the time we spend together, the laughter we've had doing all these caches, and the areas of the county that we'd never seen before! Thanks. I can't say that enough, really!
  2. While my username is gravechaser in the singular sense it refers more properly to me and our 3 kids. When we go out, usually on Saturdays, we split up when we are close to the X-spot. When one of us finds it, usually my oldest daughter, she discretely backs away and gives her brother & sister hints to guide them closer. Sometimes I find it first and then I give the littler ones hints like hotter & colder but they are pretty savvy. When I log our finds I make a mention on whether the kids were with me. I rarely go caching without them and on the few that I have done I've described to them where the cache was, what it looked like and what was in it so that they don't feel left out. Of course their ages make telling where the cache is a bit more acceptable since they are 13, 10 & 6. It's easier for us since my husband works all the time and absolutely won't go with us. When we've gone caching with my best friend and her kids whoever found it first backed off and laughed at the others till they found it too. Then we both went to our respective homes and logged the finds for ourselves.
  3. As a housewife/mother I am not employed full time but part time I run a 10-wheeler for a local township and I take my GPS with me to scout general locations plus that driving job has really given me familiarity with the area. I don't cache without our kids so that leaves Saturdays. I do genealogical cemetery photo searches for hire and it usually happens that the little obscure cemetery that I'm sent to has a cache hidden nearby so I log my time for the photo and after I'm on my own time we track down the cache. Makes it a two-fer! I love my life right now!
  4. Golly Dang but do I feel stupid! I thought I'd read all available on Premium membership bennies. I'm paid up and dumbed down because I missed that page. I'm sorry, Mopar, that I wasted time on this but truly, thank you, for pointing this out to me. I'll be doing homework of rereading the FAQ and help pages before I ask another such stupid question. Thank you again, at least I can get this notification turned on, now.
  5. What I'd like is an option for an automatic email notification when a new cache is listed within, oh say, 10 or 15 miles. Is this possible? I am currently getting my weekly notification email and I like it in general. However, if I want to have a chance to be a First-To-Find I now pretty well have to sit on the computer all day and check the listings. It would be really nice if it were possible to receive new ones as soon as they are made public in your choice of radius- 5mi, 10mi, 15mi, 20mi, etc. Is this wishful thinking of a newbie?
  6. Thanks for all the help! We have a meeting Monday about the event. I believe we are supposed to talk about narrowing down the lessons so I'll know pretty quickly or at least by mid-Feb if I'm doing this. If not then I have plenty of time to prepare for next year! I hadn't thought of Powerpoints.....that might help me, too! Thanks for all the great help!
  7. For a local Women In The Outdoors event later this summer I submitted an idea for a class on GPS use and geocaching. I'd like to flesh out the submission but other than printing out the brochures about caching I am not really sure what materials I would need to use. I would need materials to pass out to the ladies and materials for me to present from. What sites other than Geocacher-U and geocaching.com would be good to use? Should materials include info on Garmins and Magellans? There are three caches within the park that the event is held in so I could take the ladies on a little excursion to let them try to find one of them but that is the easy part. I want to present a great & complete lesson package and I don't know where to start. Any suggestions would be extremely welcome as I've only been caching about 3 months.
  8. We keep the caching maps and bag in the truck at all times: We got up Dec 30th. Had geocacher friend's family of 4 people coming over Dec 31st and our house was trashed. We are competing with the wife/kids of said family- fam who finds the most by midnight New Years Eve has to take the winner's family out to eat at a restaurant without a drive-thru. I mean the house was totally trashed. Ah, what the heck....the mess ain't goin' anywhere and if we aren't in the house it can't get any worse, right? We went caching. We also won by 16. I'm thinking Texas Roadhouse, personally. However, my husband was REAL UNHAPPY with me & the kids for taking the whole day to do this. We left the house at 8:15am and got home at 6pm and "bagged" 19 caches for the day. It helps that I know all the cemeteries in the county we live in and all caches in our friendly little game had to be within Clark Co., IL or else they didn't count. On Sunday I begged forgiveness from hubby, got the house cleaned up in 6 hours and friends came over an hour later. He's happy the house is clean again and I am tremendously happy that we beat my friend into the ground! She's so disgusted with us (in our defense we only go caching one day a week). I keep plat books in my trucks that I have marked the approx location of all the caches in Clark Co so that I can drive within sight of them. Cuts travel time to a bare minimum which is important if you have to take a quick side trip to log only one cache during a parts run for the farm.
  9. I guess since I started this thread I should at least stick my neck out again. I thought and thought about the altoids tin and even bought a rare earth magnet. Then, just when ready to sand and glue....the tin and magnet disappeared! I looked for 3 days and decided this was a sign that I wasn't supposed to use the little tin. I looked around the kitchen and voila! Rubbermaid oval container with a seriously watertight lid that I NEVER use. Stole my husband's archery camo tape and gave the oval thing a make-over. It's still right next to the thing it was originally attached to but it's harder to see, covered with leaves, and while small it can hold small trade items. The kids picked up a travel bug last weekend and I put it in the new container. While it IS smaller than a decon container it's larger than a band-aid box. I figure I'll give the kids each $2 and tell them to spend it wisely in Wal-mart for items than can all fit in the container.
  10. I've looked at the match containers....but I HAVE to have a magnet attached for this particular cache. The plastic worries me in terms of what type of glue will stick.
  11. Hi. I (& our kids) have logged over 20 finds so far and decided to place our first cache. We have a good location and it is currently up and functioning. The container is a key-holder with magnets attached that I bought at Wallyworld. This silly thing didn't hold up worth beans! It already had one magnet fall out and the log got soaked over the weekend. I have temporarily fixed it by putting a new log book with 2 very small items inside a new key-holder that I closed inside two zip-locked baggies. Hopefully the baggies will protect it from the elements until I get a new container put together. I need a little help with attaching a nice strong magnet to the inside of a round altoids can. I realize that it will rust and am constantly on the lookout for a waterproof same-size container. What will work best to attach this magnet to the tin? Hot glue? 2 part epoxy? Gorilla glue? What would I use to firmly attach such a magnet to a weatherproof container (once I find one, that is)? I want to get the baggie protected "box" replaced Thanksgiving weekend so this gives me a few days to get this done but I want to put it together in such a way that the magnet will stay attached. Also, what other things have been done to camoflage more appropriate waterproof containers? The ones we've found locally are usually sitting on or under things and aren't attached by magnets. We've found ammo cans, Altoids Breath strips (really hate these as they rust & are difficult to open), decon. pods, Gladware containers, Tupperware bowls, Rubbermaid & microware containers...yet other than a light paint job on one, none were camo'd to make them harder finds. I want to make our future ones a bit more challenging than these have been. We want to put out at least 2-3 more caches locally that are bigger than these little cans but are hampered by camoflaging issues and a prolific cacher who loves cemeteries too.
  12. Thank you so much! I checked my system settings and it was on hddd.ddddd, whatever that is. I have changed it to hddd degrees mm.mmm minutes. I'm going to try this again and I hope this is it. Thank you so much! I have regained my high status in my kids eyes, and that's saying something when one is 13 now!
  13. Hi. I, and my 3 kids, are fairly new since we've only been at this about 2 months. We felt confident enough to place our first cache today without any problems. However, the online form is giving me fits and I'm so frustrated that I'm having an Excedrin Migraine moment! I get everything typed in carefully, including the averaged-out longitude and latitude numbers that my GPS unit (Garmin eTrex Legend) gave me and when I hit the "Report New Listing" button it comes right back at me with "Invalid longitude minutes". What the heck am I doing wrong? The coordinates lines are N xx degrees xx.xxx minutes and W xxx degrees xx.xxx minutes. I'm entering the W line as W 087 degrees 64.734 minutes. Am I entering this incorrectly? My kids are crushed that ole Mom, the computer whiz in the house, isn't sharp enough get this done and submitted. My husband is laughing at me since he thinks this is a useless hobby (boy, am I getting plenty of exercise walking for these caches tho). I can't have him laughing and our kids crying at my stupidity! Can someone please give me some ideas of what I'm entering incorrectly?
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