succotash

As others have said, it's up to you to find the best choice for your situation. My husband and I have one caching name - for us geocaching is a shared hobby. We find almost all of our caches together with rare exceptions when one of us is traveling. If we had two separate accounts, we'd end up telling essentially the same story twice. Since he's Corn and I'm Bean (succotash!) we can always get our different perspectives into the story if we need to. Have fun!

Congratulations! It's great to achieve a goal. The great thing about placing caches is that you can place what you like to find. And, you can often incorporate other interests (hiking, boating, history - and even other seemingly unrelated hobbies by way of puzzles or stories on the cache page)into your caches hides. Welcome to the forums, too!

North and South Dakota became states on November 2, 1889. We happened to notice that both souvenirs are identified as "39 of 50". Was this an intentional tie with no "40 of 50" or an oversight? Wikipedia and Infoplease ( and the U.S. Mint) recognize North Dakota as 39 and South Dakota 40.

We have not had that happen, but we haven't used the personal notes section very often. However, I have solved puzzles on paper and lost the solutions... more than once! So I understand the frustration.

The puzzle looks interesting and fun. The thing that might keep me from seeking this cache is the unknown size. I'd definitely do it if the final were an ammocan in the woods. Bean

This is a good idea.

I laughed when I saw this forum topic. When we got the Alabama souvenir we looked at each other and wondered how that represented the state! Our favorite one so far is Maryland (a nicely drawn blue crab).

Welcome! Glad you are sharing this fun activity with your daughter. Enjoy!

One thing to add to the good discussions above. We have a lot of ammocans and prefer them for any hide. But we placed two caches in a park where the land manager requested that we use only clear plastic. If you know where you want to place your cache you might want to check if the person giving permission has any special requirements. It's also true that where you live makes a big difference. Good luck with your first hide!

If you're going to do something like this we recommend placing it in a nice area - someplace where a cacher wouldn't mind being while they look. We found a decoy-type cache in a beautiful woods with the sound of gurgling water nearby. Did not mind searching for a while in that case! The next decoy-type cache location was a trash-filled area behind a supermarket. Took a DNF rather than search in that location. This is personal opinion - others might focus on the cache challenge, not the location as much as we do.

We hadn't noticed this new feature - it's very helpful! We like to look for the same reason uxorious does and this makes it easier. I sorted the Favorites column just for fun - very interesting. Nine of the top ten most favorited caches (other than #1 View Carre) are virtuals.

We already had a Favorites Bookmark before this new feature was implemented, so we had a good idea what defines a favorite for us. The caches themselves are very different - a nice hike in the woods or across the western landscape (usually with an ammocan at the end), a cache on the water, a cache that taught us something new or took us to a unique or historical location, a physical challenge, a creative container, a creative puzzle. The consistent attribute is very simple... we would look forward to doing any of these caches again.

We hope you get permission and make it happen! Also, we agree with the comment about good clues. We'd love to go after a cache in a place like this. Sounds like the real treasure would be visiting the area. But we'd also hope to find the cache with the minimum of disturbance to the area once we got there (particularly if the cache is rarely found).

Like johnsingleton our primary motivation is to hide what we want to find. So, we place mostly larger-sized caches that give people another reason to get out and walk on a woodland trail, or take their boats out, or discover something else interesting (like an old log home).

We got to see this nice sunset as we hiked back through Bussey Point after picking up some caches on the Georgia side of Lake Thurmond.

When we're headed on a road trip we look for solve-ahead puzzle caches along the route. We've often added quite a bit of time to road trips by diverting to go get them - it's a thrill! If it turns out our plans don't allow us to get to the final we'll often post a note to the owner letting them know we enjoyed the puzzle. But for us it is exciting to get the chance to seek the physical cache. I agree with M5 that finding the cache is a way of letting the cache owner know you appreciate the effort put into the puzzle cache. Placing a note in appreciation of the puzzle is another way to do that. We had a puzzler from far away send a nice email about our crossword puzzle when we first put it out, and we really appreciated that too.

It would be helpful to know what you found unsatisfactory about each method. We're definitely fans of planning ahead. We enjoy looking at maps and learning about new places so the planning process just adds to the fun. Also, we're more interested in certain kinds of adventures (parks, walks/hikes, interesting history, etc) than just being able to find a cache that is close to wherever we are. We usually set up bookmarks to highlight caches of interest. We print out the bookmark and usually only print a cache page if we want the details handy (e.g. for an EarthCache). If we're going to an area and are not sure exactly where we'll be we'll supplement the bookmark with a broader PQ of the area to give us more options. Good luck!

We've found several of the OPs caches - he places excellent caches with a lot of thought in the cache page and placement. The response and the suggestions in this thread have been great. IkeHurley hopefully you'll carry on and keep up the good work and maintain your high standards.

We visited the Heartland Country Corn Maze in South Dakota during a recent caching trip to the upper midwest. It was our first time visiting a corn maze and we loved it. We didn't bring our GPSr. Keeping our bearings visually and reading the map were different and welcome skills. This corn maze had marked waypoints that included answers to questions about the maze (which was a dinosaur this year) and also had a hidden treasure not marked on the map. We were motivated to find the hidden treasure (and enjoyed the ice cream sandwich reward!). To the OP, if you include the "hidden treasure" as part of your corn maze, there's no incentive for people to go off the trails heading straight for a set of coordinates. .

Our first find was Not Your Garden Variety Cache. It was placed in 2004 and is still active.

This sounds like a really interesting idea, and redsox_mark's suggestion seems like an excellent way to incorporate this with geocaching.

It sounds like you might already know there is a forum thread dedicated to hiking and backpacking, but in case not, look under Geocaching Adventures or click this link. You've gotten great advice. As the wife half of a caching team, I agree with those who say it's best to work up to the overnight stay. I know from my own experience that I love to be outside all day - hiking through woods, desert or swamps; kayaking; etc. But part of the reason I can really get into a day like that is looking forward to a warm shower and nice place to sleep at night. That's just me, but if you don't know for sure that your wife would love to camp overnight, it seems like working up to it gradually would be the best way. Good luck and enjoy those great caches! Bean

It is best to use a cache container that is not so easily breakable as glass, and has a waterproof seal.

One other option is to look for "favorites" bookmark lists on the type of caches you like. There isn't any easy way I know of to find them, you just have to look. You can perhaps combine this with your method - finding a park and then using the maps function. If you look at some of the more promising cache in the park, they may be on someone's bookmark list that will lead you to other great caches. My husband happened to notice "View Carre'" on someone's bookmark of favorites before we took a trip to New Orleans. It turned out to be one of the best caches we've ever done, and we might have missed that urban gem if we'd stayed to our usual methods. View Carre'. This cache is on 96 bookmarks! (It's a PMOC.) Our Favorites

Can you provide a link to the geotrails you reference? Georgia State Parks has a Geo-Challenge but I'm not sure it is a "geotrail" since it does not follow a path around the state, it just encourages caching in the state parks.