me_chris

Boo to members only listings for cool sounding caches... Poor college students can barely afford a GPSr, not to mention a subscription to this site... :-( Any cache that needed a private helicopter to place sounds pretty insane to me though! :-)

True - I wasnt thinking about the mullets... Those nomad children may, while out for target practice with their AK-47s, happen upon this cache and consume the rum... Shortly after this, the mullets, t-shirts, and cigarettes will start... then, all of Ethiopia might some day be overrun with trailers and chevy trucks on cinder blocks! Archive this cache immediately! :-)

I'm pretty sure that the rum won't freeze given that the freezing point for an 80-proof drink (assuming they left decent rum ) is around -30F (-34.5C), and the cache is IN A VOLCANO... Also, I'm pretty sure that kids will not be playing in the area, again, considering that the cache is IN A VOLCANO! And, as stated earlier, I think after hiking through a desert, avoiding armed nomads (like the sand people in Star Wars?) and rappelling into a volcanic crater, I would really not mind having a shot of rum :-) Now, all they have to add to the cache page is "remember to bring a bottle of coke"

There is an SLR gorilla pod that holds my Nikon D70s just fine (provided I don't try to extend it really far sideways) I also use an ultrapod II for hiking and such since it folds up nice and small (and flat!) - the gorilla pod is nice but bulky... for those long hikes to a cache site, try the ultrapod II

Yeah, I also thought Low Earth Orbit, and expected a thread about UFOs....

Check out http://www.testtubesonline.com/ - They sell great micro containers... everything from acrylic test tubes with screw caps, to cryo vials... cheap cheap too! But, think about placement for micros... I do not want to contribute to microspew....

Can you really ever be lost if youre holding a GPSr? Backtrack is a wonderful thing [edit: fixed the smiley]

Wow - talk about the middle of nowhere....

I bought the explorist 400 value pack and love it! A lot fo the bad reviews that the explorist series GPSrs get is because people cannot figure out how to use them... Granted, this GPSr is so feature laden that it is sometimes more complicated than it needs to be, but study the manual, and it works great... even does street routing...

The low-end magellan eXplorists are decent as well - I have a Garmin Geko 101 and a Magellan eXplorist 400. The 400 is not exactly low end, more midrange, but I appreciate the advanced features. The Geko works well for caching too though, although the lack of computer interface makes it a pain - my first 2 finds were with the Geko because I thought "hey, I don't need mapping for geocaching" - but now me and my trusty eXplorist are inseparable :-) A computer interface is mandatory, but all other features can be done without - for geocaching, all you reall yneed is a "goto waypoint" feature... Although, topo maps help a lot - my geko wanted me to walk through a lake to get to a cache, while my eXplorist clearly showed me a way around the lake...

GPS: The same one everyone else wants... Paperless solution: really, if money was no issue, I would easily drop the 2 grand on one of these A full featured Windows laptop, that fits in one hand....

:-) thanks for the reply! Now if only my cellphone were waterproof...

Having used Garmins that run off of AA alkaline or NiMh batteries, I have never had a problem getting my GPSr wet without worry of the batteries getting wet since I can just swap them out. But, as most probably remember from 8th grade science, water and lithium are NOT friends... So, with my recent upgrade to an eXplorist 400, which runs off of a cell-phone like Lithium Ion battery, I am a little bit more weary... Has anyone gotten their explorist REALLY wet and had it live to tell the tale? Or do the words "lithium" and "waterproof" not belong in the same sentence?

I've got the 400 (basically the 500 without color screen) and I find the larger a region I load, the slower the refresh times are when in map view... so, I generally stick to loading city sized regions (about 10 megs) and this has worked well for me. Not sure about loading the entire US though - why not just take the laptop with in the car and run the GPSr's location data into the laptop? Something like Microsoft Streets and Trips or something would work nicely for this no?

Uh, I wake up every morning in the fall to the sound of waterfowl hunting, so I think you're wrong about the "no guns in MA" part. I think you'd find plenty of landowners here who would would welcome hunting on their land - we've got plenty [too many] of deer and geese, and a rapidly growing turkey population. I think handguns arent allowed though right? Nobody hunts waterfowl with a pistol....

I feel you on the woods thing - though, there are some great caches in busse woods in schaumburg... :-) Anyway, I cache because it combines all of the things I like into one activity! 1) Hiking 2) Being outdoors 3) Solving puzzles 4) Exploring new places 5) Secret societies (cachers sortof count right?) 6) Maps and Navigation and.... 7) Fun electronic toys that I can keep upgrading every 6 months for no reason!!!!

Definitely had my first experience with "@#$&%! I wish I brought that with me!"... Was out caching today in a forest preserve... not a very big forest (busse woods, il), so I thought "meh, I'll just bring the camera and the GPSr"... man was I wrong... First, forgot to waypoint the car... again, didnt think it was a big issue since if you walk in any direction for no more than a mile and a half, you hit a paved walking trail... Again, I was wrong to think this... To make a long story short, there I was in the middle of the woods (all trees look the same by the way, it is NOT hard to get lost in even a small wooded area apparently) with no car waypoint marked, and the sun going down fast (Sundown was 4:26pm and I thought I had plenty of time but it took longer than I thought to find the cache and I lost track of time)... Since I like to think of myself as an experienced outdoorsman, I was very mad at myself for not coming prepared.... of course the one time I don't, I need to be... So, here I am, stuck in the forest, in the dark, with only a general idea of which direction my car is from where I am now... I can't backtrack on my GPS because I did not turn it on by the car, so the track wont lead me back to my car... plus, I can't see a thing... So, by the slight light remaining as the sun was setting, and my Treo 650 Emergency Flashlight I managed to find a deer trail that ended up at a paved walking trail which LUCKILY was not very far from where I was... Next time, I'm bringing a flashlight, and waypointing the car...

Those conflict. For modern hikers and other outdoor types including geocachers taking reasonable precauctions may very well include electronics. I hike and camp a lot, and for me, being reasonably prepared, especially for a mountain hike or climb means at least 2 GPSrs, flashlights, an FRS or GMRS radio for each member of the hiking party (in case of separation), always a cellphone (although I rarely get reception out in the middle of nowhere), and my camera gear which includes digital SLR cameras, strobes, and light meter. So, being "reasonably prepared" definitely requires at least some type of communication device... Strange rule...

I would go with an Explorist (either 400 or 500 if you must have color). Be aware though that color eats batteries... The explorist floats in water, which is a huge plus... The only drawback with the explorist line is that it uses a proprietary lithium-ion battery, so if your 17 hours of battery life run out in the field, you can't just swap in some AAs... But, if you are planning on spending more than 17 hours in the wilderness, bring a spare battery, a solar charger, or at least a spare GPS... I use an explorist 400 as my main GPS, and for extended camping/hiking/kayak trips, I bring a Garmin Geko 101 as my backup... Hope this helps!

22 here

I feel extra nerdy now - thanks for bringing up TNG and reminding me how sad it is that I know what all the Darmok means... Anyway, I got caught while hunting only my second ever cache, and the muggle actually answered his own question... it went like this: Muggle: Hi! Me: Hi... Muggle: What are you doing out here? Me: Uh... Muggle: Bird watching? Me: Yup, that's it... Gotta catch 'em before they go south Muggle: I know it... Good luck! Though, this guy may have been another geocacher who knew what I was up to the minute he saw me making circles in the far-too-dense underbrush while mumbling at my GPSr and telling my girlfriend who I dragged out caching with me "according to this, you are standing on top of it..." Good times. :-)

My Magellan eXplorist 400 has a built in function to calculate distance, area, and/or perimeter between waypoints, so no crazy math for me! It definitely does get complicated though since distance between longitudes can change depending on lat. Also, you have to be careful to not just calculate straight-line distance, else you will need to tunnel underground since the "real" distance has to take into account the curvature of the earth...

...it is 2am and instead of working on that research paper that is due for your Psychology class at 8am in the morning, you are posting things here and wondering when that second GPSr that you have ordered in the past week will arrive in the mail... ...you normally try to avoid spending too much time at the parents' house, except that there are two great forest preserves near where they live with plenty of caches to find and that is why you are excited for thanksgiving... ...you are planning on turning the normally 1 hour long drive home on the freeway into a much longer backroad adventure because there is a cache on the way that you HAVE to find...

I have only recently discovered geocaching, but I have been what I guess many would call an "outdoor enthusiast" for some years, so what I carry with me depends on where the cache is... If I am hunting caches in a suburban neighborhood, then I would just carry a pen, some extra logs, my GPSr and my cellphone. But, for a more forest-y or urban cache, I would carry my normal outdoor gear which consists of a Naneu-Pro Military Ops Alpha Backpack with my camera equipment (Nikon D50, lenses, tripod, flash, filters) and some survival gear (compass, rope, swiss army knife, rain poncho, emergency blanket, lighter, fire starter, some snacks, basic first aid kit, windbreaker, FRS radio, backup GPS, batteries, and various other odds and ends) and of course my CamelBak (except when it is cold out, because as mentioned earlier by another poster, the hose freezes).