GroverZ

I've got less than 100 finds, but I've never felt obligated to do hides at any particular point. We've got several extremely active and creative hiders in this area, so it's pretty tough to come up with a find in a good area that doesn't already have at least one cache! I saw one area I thought would be a great place for a hide...checked it and, sure enough, there was already a cache there. If I find a great place in the future that isn't oversaturated with caches and is close enough for me to reasonably maintain a cache, I'd consider placing a hide. Meanwhile, I'm not suffering any angst over not placing a hide. I try to do my part by recording good, timely logs...moving TBs and coins in a reasonably timely manner...carrying spare zipper bags, small notepads, pencils, etc. so I can do minor replace & repair if I run into a cache that needs a little TLC...letting cache owners know if their caches need further maintainance...supporting the hobby/sites (this one and my local) by becoming a paid member...and attending some local events so I can get to know people better and better learn how I can be a good cacher.

I got 200 ct. boxes at Michaels in a couple of different sizes. I also saw the smallest ones being sold in a local jewelry/bead store in packs of something like 25.

I just did that the other day, too. I've said elsewhere that using wap.geocaching.com on the cell phone can be handy...as long as you are in an area where your cell can access the Internet We're still at the point where we're lugging printouts with, but the next project is to figure out how to do pocket queries before we go on our next long trip. I can see where the cell phone would work well in that instance as you'd already have the waypoint in your GPS to access the cache logs and not need to have the printout if you could look it up with your cell. Problem is, we're going out west in September and I'm not sure if and where our cell phone Internet will and will not work out there.

Another tool you can use on the road is your cell phone (if you have Internet capabilities on it and you're in an area where you can access your the Internet with your service). You can look up a cache by waypoint (which might be helpful, for example) if you want to see if anything is new with the cache since you left home with a printout) or look up caches in a give Zip code at wap.geocaching.com or look up travel bugs by tracking number. You can see a few cache logs and the cache descriptions...as well as travel bug histories and goals. I think using the cell phone to cache is clunky and of limited usefulness...but it can come in handy. We were down for a weekend of caching in northern Ohio a few days back...I had a pile of printouts, but we found a geocoin in a cache that wasn't in the inventory on my printout. I had wap.geocaching.com in my favorites on my cell phone, and I could access the Internet where I was. I went to the site on my cell and plugged in the coin's tracking number to see what it's goal was before I just picked it up and headed north. I was able to find that the coin had traveled 7,000+ miles already and wanted to travel as much as possible (direction didn't matter)...so I picked up the coin and brought it back to Michigan to drop in a cache here.

Can I take out the illegal software, and add lanyards and sports team buttons/memorabilia?

I'm going with the live hamster...I don't like any of the hamster choices, but I figure if I let the live one out of the cache now...at least he has a chance not to become a dead hamster!

Hey! I may have finally found a good use for the Internet service on the cell phone Canoe Mich pays for every month! OK...I was able to get the the mobile site, log on and find caches with a zip code. Was able to look at a couple of them, navigate to find the hints and cache descriptions and recent logs. However, everytime I tried entering a set of coordinates, the system didn't like them--it kept saying it was an invalid value. I tried entering them nine ways to Sunday...with the directional letter (N, W, etc) before the numbers, with a space between the degrees and the rest of the number (like 42 16.304 and 083 41.464)...I was working with an actual set of coordinates that I had on a printout from one of our recent outings. Yes, I had the radio button selected for find by coordinates. Yes, the phone was connected to the Internet (I'd just done a lookup with my zip code and got a whole list of caches). I'm thinking it might be nice to be able to see where you were located with your GPS and enter those coordinates to see if there was anything nearby to look for. It'd be a clunky way of doing it, but might be a good fall back if you were out on the road and w/o the laptop and/or an Internet connection for the computer. How, exactly, should the coordinates be entered...I see where to enter them...I just don't know exactly what keystrokes to enter. Picked up a travel bug today and managed to check that out with it's number via the cell phone as well. But I'm still stumped as to finding a cache by coordinates with the phone

Hey! I may have finally found a good use for the Internet service on the cell phone Canoe Mich pays for every month! OK...I was able to get the the mobile site, log on and find caches with a zip code. Was able to look at a couple of them, navigate to find the hints and cache descriptions and recent logs. However, everytime I tried entering a set of coordinates, the system didn't like them--it kept saying it was an invalid value. I tried entering them nine ways to Sunday...with the directional letter (N, W, etc) before the numbers, with a space between the degrees and the rest of the number (like 42 16.304 and 083 41.464)...I was working with an actual set of coordinates that I had on a printout from one of our recent outings. Yes, I had the radio button selected for find by coordinates. Yes, the phone was connected to the Internet (I'd just done a lookup with my zip code and got a whole list of caches). I'm thinking it might be nice to be able to see where you were located with your GPS and enter those coordinates to see if there was anything nearby to look for. It'd be a clunky way of doing it, but might be a good fall back if you were out on the road and w/o the laptop and/or an Internet connection for the computer. How, exactly, should the coordinates be entered...I see where to enter them...I just don't know exactly what keystrokes to enter.

A lot of Georgers get upset when their bills end up in a cache. The bills are tagged as "geocache" bills and, while the hits (times someone logs a bill into the system during its travels) count for the bill's originator, those bills are not eligible to make any "top ten" lists (like the listing of bills that people have logged in the most). The guy who runs the site doesn't consider bills moving from geocache to geocache as "natural circulation", and the tagging and exempting those bills from the top stats list was the compromise position. Every once in a while I see someone on the "Where's George" forums post in dispair that one of their bills has become a "geocache bill". Some of them feel the same way about that as folks here might feel if a cache they'd placed had been "muggled". They feel it's interferring with their hobby and how they like to see their bills travel. I've entered and tracked bills at Where's George for about 18 months now (I've got 6500+ bills in the system), but I wouldn't put any of my own bills in a cache. If I found a WG bill in a cache, I'd log it and...if it somehow wasn't already tagged as a geocache bill...I'd e-mail the bill's orginator and ask if they wanted me to keep moving the bill in a cache, or if they would want me to just spend it naturally. If you're placing your own WG bill into a cache, that's great...but if you have someone else's WG bill, they might appreciate it if they were asked if they want their bill placed in a cache.

Makes sense to me. Stuff we've left includes: Caribiners Key chains Sports team pins (the metal/enamel ones) Luggage tags Lanyards (someone mentioned picking up one we left in a cache for their son's new GPS)

We had a somewhat frustrating day the weekend before last (I think the heat and humidity frustrates us more )...drove up to an area about an hour north of home and was 2 for 4 in finds that day. I logged both DNFs, though...someone easily found one of them in the next day or so, and the other cache's owner went out to check after seeing a couple of DNFs in the log and said that cache was missing. So I guess I'd agree that posting your DNFs are important. This past weekend, we managed 3 for 3 in finds...so it's all good.

Err...well I'm not sure "enjoy" is the word I would use. Note I said I went back without my husband to actually find the cache. I think for the sake of our marriage and my sanity he will be needing his own, dedicated GPS. There was a little tussle over who would get to hold it. We're still back on figuring out how to use our one and only GPS...let alone thinking about a second one CanoeMi and I found our first cache last weekend...and cache #2 & #3 this morning. We've stuck close to home (one of the ones we found today was literally behind our next-door neighbor's backyard!) so far. I hear CanoeMi in the other room has the Garmin DVD playing and talking about waypoints. Meanwhile, it looks like I'm the one in charge of logging our finds here. So far, we're having a lot of fun. It's fun to do as a couple and a great way to get -outdoors- together. We love to just get out and do mini road trips, so this will give us even better excuses to do so!