CMSoliday

Thanks NightPilot, I am not good at creating links. Nice Sikorsky by the way! I have 2000 hours between a CH-46e and a VH-60N with 400 on goggles. I was a Crew Chief (In-flight Mechanic) in the USMC for 8 years. Scott, the nice thing about this jacket is how light it is. That makes it work nicely for layering. You will be just as comfortable in it on a light spring day as you will with layers in some serious cold climates. It has built in vent zippers in the arm-pits allowing you to cool off if you’re over dressed. It also has what is called a shooting pocket which is a Velcro flap by the chest zipper. Most who own it don’t even know it is there. It allows you to hold your weapon with a gloved left hand, and you can put your bare shooting hand inside this pocket between shots. While geocaching, you can stash your GPS there or your compass etc leaving the main pockets for your hands. Here is a link for one at $55 - http://www.elanstores.com/newcart/shop/pro...hp?panum=162105

Hay, by the way, two people in the picture “passingwind” posted in the “CITO 2006: photos photos photos, Show off your best shot!” are wearing the Gore-Tex military jacket I mentioned.

Sunshine, I too am sorry for your loss. To my new friends, hello! I have had my GPS for 8 days and I just got back from my 22nd find. Wow, this is so much fun. I don’t know what I will do once I clear out my local area. I need more daylight! As it stands, I have already been doing a lot of this by flash light. For me, this is family time at its best! For those in VA, you will recognize me by my load: I carry a 4-month old in a chest carrier and an 18th-month old in a back pack. My wife and 4-year old are always close by to give me a push or to do the low searching. I don’t think I will be considered a lurker – this is simply to exciting to keep to myself! Cheers, CMSoliday

Currently, I use a Vasque mountain running shoe for most of my ventures. Unlike a regular running shoe, it has a stiff shank and ankle cup to make it very sturdy and it also keeps pointy rocks from being felt by the foot. It has Gore-Tex and is waterproof.

I have never seen a cache get spooked by a shadow! : ) Thanks for sharing! I have meet three fellow cashers so far. One was a family/team that helped me find my first micro. The second introduced himself as the local area GeoClub VP (I subsequently joined the club). The third drove me home after we discovered my car battery had died! : ) Nothing but good experience here! Cheers,

FFof5, I agree that mtbikernate has nailed this (layering is the key), but you mentioned jackets at the army surplus store and then brainsnat warned that “a lot of them are cotton or cotton blend” and the topic got dropped. Though brainsnat is correct, key in on “a lot of them” meaning not all of them. I suggest you check out the surplus store and look for the modern military Gore-Tex outer shell. I am a Marine and I have used the same Gore-Tex outer shell set (jacket, pants, and gloves) each winter since 93. I have thrashed though the thick and full mountains in Albania, scrambled the rocks in the Samaria Gorge, hunted in PA, skied in MD, and worked on helicopters in VA – all in this same shell and never once has it let water in or been effected by the thickest of thorns! The cheep military polypropylene is also a score for your under layer. The boots: the military made a winter boot called a “firewalker” and it was made generically by Maverick – these are heavy but a very good bang for the buck. So, in short: don’t skip the surplus store just because my father had to ware a cotton field jacket! Cheers,

I am only at 17 caches found, but I thought you might find this interesting: I had 15 minutes of day light left the other day and went to find the last cache to close out a region. With two kids in my arms, I ran into the woods with only a small pen light. I searched under everything within a 30 foot perimeter but found nothing. Out of frustration, I took one last look around each standing tree – reaching as high up as I could reach. On the last tree I found a Micro cache on a branch 6 feet off the ground! The tip is this: I had read all the posts the night before and after a day of successful caches, I had forgotten this one was a micro – I had been looking for a covered ammo-can or Tupperware container. All the other senior members above have hit the nail on the head when they talk about reading the hints and other information on the post pages. I now make it a rule to print off the page and keep it with me during the hunt. Just remember to hit the “Decrypt” button before you print! Cheers,

I have hit 7 caches in the last 14 days and I am having a blast (started on 12/28/06)! My kids have loved some match-box cars and I was really impressed with some fancy laser pointer / led light contraptions that were left in several boxes. I must say that the trackables are my favorite: the coins and the bugs with hitchhikers. As a family, we will now get to track where they go – how fun!

I had a double post some how. How do you delete a second post? I have edited it to this new post, but dont know how to delet it. Sorry.

joehewes, I also have an e-trex, and have been experimenting with the bicycle mount. For $17 bucks, it’s not too scary to think of modifying it. I have one for my bike right now and the design is nice: it replaces the battery cover with one that has a simple mount. I am thinking of taking a second handle bar mount and cutting it: this would make a flat connection point that I can be bolted or zip-tied to an “L” shaped mount kind of like the one budophylus mentioned. This can then be attached to my pack strap.

That is a good question: I dont see that option on their web site.

My boys and I use binoculars! Yep, we look like bird watchers!

If I may make a suggestion, the Boy Scouts have “Merit Badge” books that specifically detail information on specific topics. They make great reference materials for anything outdoors oriented. Most likely, one of your local outdoors stores sells Boy Scout materials and you can pick up a copy of their “BSA – Orienteering Merit Badge” book for under $2. This will teach you how to use a compass, take a bearing, how to pace off a distance, etc, and the book is small enough to take with you for any future questions that may arise. Hope that is helpful; scouting surely helped me and is the spark that caused this current obsession! Cheers,

turkeytrack, I am only a newbie with a basic e-trax that was given to me, but I offer this: think about what you want to do with this tool and hobby before you make a purchase. As with most addictive activities, most people wish that they purchased better gear at the beginning. I am having a blast in my first 7 days and have already found 14 caches with my basic GPS, but I am already dreaming bigger and better. I know that I will soon have my memory filled – more memory would be cool. I also wish I had the ability to down load maps – that would be really cool. An electronic compass – yes, it would be very nice to have my GPS continue to point in the same direction when I slow down to my search pace… Overall I am pleased, blessed and overwhelmed with joy, but if I were in your shoes and still had the initial purchase before me, I would get the best GPS for the price that had the electronic compass and map software. Cheers,

I have the same GPS unit and have been successful even though I am a newbie as well. Here is what I do, hope it helps: Keeping in mind that our older and basic GPS units will not give an accurate compass reading (or direction to travel indication of any kind) if we are not moving – so I use either a standard compass or a tree or a person up ahead of me (as a reference point) to keep me on a straight course as I approach my find. My unit will count down as I get close and it usually goes like this: 10, 8, 4, 30 (feet). At the 4-foot mark, I drop my back pack and keep on walking. Once about 30 visual feet away, I turn around and walk a straight line back to my bag. My GPS will take a couple feet to figure out that I turned around, but the location indicator will start to indicate that I am getting closer even if the arrow is telling me to go a different direction. When it reaches the 4-foot mark, I always find myself at a different location than that of my back pack. I move my back pack to a location halfway between where it was and this now spot (kind of averaging out the points). I then take a 90 degree turn and simply walk another 30 visual feet away. As I return on this third approach, I usually find a third location and again move my bag halfway between the two points. If you need to, you can do this one more time creating an “x”, but I have not found that to be necessary: in fact I have usually located the cache while performing this quick field average (using the techniques already discribed by Super_Nate). On the tougher finds though, like the micro’s, having my bag marking an average location is the key to my search: I simply check every possible location close by and slowly fan out. I hope this is helpful! Happy caching to you!

I have found a couple caches that had well defined paths leading right to them. Besides re-covering the cash, you may even want to cover your tracks back away from the location as a favor to the next treasure hunter! For instance, it is winter: if you go about 20 feet away and grab a large handful of leaves, you can go back to the cache and then sprinkle the leaves as you back away for a couple feet. Just give a thought to the next person and do the right thing! Cheers,

I got my e-trex for Christmas this year after my wife heard about GeoCashing at a home-schooling event. She new I would love this and she was right! On 12/28/06 I set out for my first cache: it was named after the ruins of an old mill only a mile down a bike path from our house – I could not think of a better first find! This was a family outing; I had a new-born in a baby carrier on my chest, an 18-month old in a backpack and my 4 year old blazing ahead on his scooter. My wife was more excited than I was until she realized we needed to cross a raging creek to get to our treasure. I took 4 trips across the creek carrying one at a time – the first sign that addiction was on its way! We found the treasure quickly and performed the happy dance – this was a blast! It has only been 7 days since that first find and we are now up to 14 caches! Happy trails ahead!