zoothornrollo

We just returned from a four-month road trip - drove the Alaska Highway, spent 5 weeks in our 50th state together, slept in our van (not a campervan, just a regular van with a sleeping platform and room for our gear) 90+% of the nights, found a cache at the Arctic Circle, and pinched ourselves often to see if it was all really happening. We are both 68 and were wondering how our age was going to affect us on this trip. Well, on the second day out, I experienced my first-ever grand mal seizure. Hubby got me to ER and then had to drive almost 600 miles back home in a state of anxiety. As for me, I remember none of that day. After a consultation with a neurologist, brain MRI, and obtaining several prescriptions, we set out again two weeks after the first departure. The anticonvulsant I am taking has side effects (low stamina, unsteadiness on my feet, not feeling like my regular self) so I compensated by using trekking poles and sticking to easier trails, letting my husband get out of the van to find the caches by himself more often than I used to, and knowing my limits. We had a fantastic road trip and returned safely. I suspect the medication more than my age is the culprit, but we were already slowing down after 16 years of caching anyway. We burned out on power trails long ago and are more selective in the ones we attempt to find. The best thing about this hobby is the wide variety of types of hides, difficulty levels, and the plethora to choose from... something for everybody and for every age. We have no plans to stop caching, but are quite happy to pass up a bunch knowing there are plenty more ahead.

That helped. Like I said, it should be easy to find. I never would have found it. Geocaching isn’t a competition to me.

Last month’s challenge was easy to keep track of - number of finds. Since it wasn’t meant to be a competition with others, a leaderboard wasn’t important (it was mentioned, but I couldn’t find it).This months, though is a bit more complicated. I think there should be a ‘personal progress’ feature or option that should be easy to find, letting you know how many points you have received. I asked HQ and got a double speak, gobbledegook answer about coding, and a suggestion - bring it up here. Let me say now that it isn’t important in the grand scheme of things - souvenirs are not a big deal to me, but I think they should make it easy to keep track of personal progress.

I DO NOT like my Oregon 700. I had an Etrex Legend HCx and LOVED it. It crapped out, so I went with an Oregon. The documentation is terrible, and it is anything but intuitive. I'm trying to add geocaches using GSAK, and it isn't recognizing the unit. I've been caching since 2007, and may just use this unit as an expensive paperweight. BTW, I have never used the compass to find a cache, I use the coords and the map. Thanks for letting me vent.

I see that this isn't a very active forum, but I'll ask. How do I use my Garmin Oregon 700 with Wherigo (or can I)? Downloading cartridges is my big question.

The new dashboard does the trick! Thanks!

This is what I see when I am looking at my dashboard: zoothornrollo took Mr. ZHR His Own Self to Fair-Meownt Park . I don't want to see this on EVERY cache I do, but I do want the TB to visit each cache.

I created a TB to visit the caches I go to, but it shows up on my profile that it visited (I get a "Found" and "TB visited" notice on my profile). Is there any way to turn it off?

Hubs and I are both 62 and purchased our lifetime senior passes this year for $10 before the cost went up to $80. We broke even on that deal the same day because we were at a national monument and saved half of the camping fee. FYI, it's an interagency pass so we get half-price camping at national parks, national forests, BLM, and Army Corps of Engineers campgrounds - an awesome deal!

We completed the Colorado State Star today and ended up on private land for #23-31. All of the northern point is on private property and the riders on horses were not happy to see us today. Does anyone know if permission was given?

"One man's junk is another man's treasure." IMHO, anything that is clean and unbroken may be desired by someone. We always pull out matches, shotgun shells, candy, etc. when we come across them. And we always announce to each other if we encounter golf balls, Mardi Gras beads, or both!

In our first few months of caching, we found one in New Mexico that had a metal tape measure that you pulled out and signed with a sharpie. (In fact, we stole the idea for one of our own caches.) Our favorite one we signed is the trail log on the Bright Angel Trail at the bottom of the Grand Canyon . . . it also counts as a traditional cache.

When we award a favorite point, it is for a cache that is out of the ordinary, something new that we haven't seen before, something extra clever. We have almost 2000 points we can award, but are stingy with them. I think accruing a fav. pt. for every 10 finds is too many - makes them rather too easy to give away, IMHO. We sometimes find them awarded to skirtlifters, I assume by cachers who figure one of those out for the first time so it appears clever, not commonplace.

We don't post NM unless we find physical evidence of a container that is cracked, missing a lid, wet & moldy, etc. Otherwise, it gets a DNF if we find nothing. When enough of those are logged, we will ignore them and hopefully the CO will check on it. From time to time, we have found caches that were purportedly missing, but are actually there.

We are very fortunate, my spouse and I, to enjoy caching together. We have camped and hiked for 40 years (with and without our kids) together so our retirement is a natural extension of that . . . just waiting for our grandkids to get old enough to go with us. :lol:

While I understand the suggestion for a field puzzle attribute is probably closer to correct for this sort of thing, I think it's fair to say that more people read cache descriptions than actually look at attributes. Since this one is a straightforward find as far as how the cache container is hidden at the posted coordinates, making the type a mystery is much more likely to give folks a reason to read through the description. Either way, just rolling the log into a flashlight in the cache feels more like deception than any sort of puzzle. I'd be more impressed with some sort of hidden compartment or a puzzle box or combination lock for hiding the log. I rarely look at attributes.

That's not a safe assumption. The NPS leaves geocaching policy decisions to the unit management. Some allow geocaching and some do not, depending on considerations like the mission of the unit, environmental sensitivity and traffic. Perhaps your reviewer knows that this NPS unit never allows geocaches. We recently found 5 traditional caches in Everglades National Park - CO is "EvergladesNPS"

As we approach the one year anniversary of retirement, I reflect on our caching habits. We still love caching on road trips (Newfoundland, Florida Keys, Gulf of Maine Geotour, county challenges in other states) but not near our home coordinates. We are not interested in the urban/suburban hides after spending 5 months on back roads, national forests, out-of-the-way locations - not a new phenomenon for us, but one that has become more true with each passing year. Knowing that we can go out almost any time we choose means we aren't compelled to go out any chance we get. We prize quality over quantity and usually filter out micros from our PQs when we are traveling. Of course, we have aged a bit since we began caching 9 years ago. Just wondering if other veteran cachers have noticed any of the same things.

Definitely reach 20,000 finds - probably in Feb. Add more U.S. counties (we have 1490 so far), a new Canadian province or two (Sask. and Alberta), work on more state stars, and keep having fun.

Thanks for the suggestions! We'll definitely look into some of them.

As newbies, we posted that we had found only a magnet under a bench. Turns out it was a nano (our first) and we didn't recognize it as the entire cache. Live and learn.

I've been looking through old threads here on the forums and this one jumped out to me because I've thought a lot about how our caching behavior has changed since we started 8 years ago. We live in a suburb of a huge urban area (Houston, TX) and we used to go all over the city to cache. Now, urban caching has little or no appeal to us. We really enjoy caching in out-of-the-way places on our road trips, doing state stars, and completing state county challenges. We recently completed the Jasmer Challenge and need just one more spot for the Fizzy. We set our own goals and enjoy the game our way. We will soon head out on our annual summer road trip and look forward to discovering new places that geocaching will lead us. Happy Trails to all!

Update on the Texas County Challenge: at least 90 cachers have now finished it and lots more working on it. We are very close to finishing the Mississippi County Challenge and will be heading that way in two weeks to get the last 12 counties done. I just retired and hubby is already retired and we are itching to get on the road and head to New England and maritime provinces of Canada with our county outline maps ready to go!

We just made camping reservations at Parlee Beach Prov. Park so we will be in the area for the big event. Any suggestions for "must-do" caches in the Moncton area? We live in Texas and haven't been up to New Brunswick for 25+ years....getting excited to spend all of August in the maritime provinces!

Hubby and I had the hike to Phantom Ranch at bottom of Grand Canyon on our bucket list for years. When we turned 55, we decided we had better get on with it. We spent about 3 weeks hiking (and caching) 6-8 mile stretches in NM, CO, and UT at higher elevations (we live close to sea level) to condition ourselves before starting the "big one." We hiked South Kaibab Trail down to Phantom (approx. 7 miles), spent two nights, then hiked out on Bright Angel (about 10 miles). Of course, the hike was the objective, but we were able to complete a 6-stage virtual/multi cache "South Kaibab to Bright Angel" and sign the Bright Angel Trail log book (one of the few traditionals in the NPS system). Longest hike just for caching purposes was "Four Cache Loop" in Sam Houston National Forest, TX that was 10 miles round-trip for one smilie.