Your personal geocaching enviroment

[+J the Goat]

I hail from Central Florida. During the Summer, the heat and humidity combine to make caching an oppressive activity. Winters, however, are quite pleasant, as it rarely gets below freezing. Spring and Fall are amazing times to be outdoors. Our terrain is very flat, with only slight elevation changes all the way across the state, though we do have some towns/cities with "Mt" in their names, which leads to some chuckling on my part. We have a lot of natural lands across the state, as well as gobs of fairly sterile city/county parks. Cypress swamps, oak hammocks, palmetto flats and pine scrubs make up most of the natural habitats.

 

As for dangers, I haven't met anything other than 2 legged critters that can't be effectively avoided with a stout walking stick and some common sense. Critters I've had close encounters with include alligators, wild hogs,ferral cattle , 4 species of venomous snakes, black bears, bobcats and panthers. Naturally, we have mosquitoes, chiggers and ticks galore, but those can also generally be avoided.

 

To date, I have never met a cacher I didn't like. Not sure that this is a geographic condition though.

I think cachers the world over just tend to fall on the nicer end of the personality spectrum.

 

Wait, what?

[Trader Rick & Rosie]

Despite what the OP says, there ARE spiders and snakes in Pennsylvania.

[+The Kamikaze Clan]

My caching area is the southern part of Sweden. My pictures at panoramio.com shows a large part of that area.

 

We have very few dangerous things here. Up north there are bears, but they only attack hunters for "some" reason. We have one poisonous snake, a viper ( Vipera berus ) that are not that dangerous. About one person every eight year are killed by that snake, usually due to an allergic anaphylactic shock. Bees kills about one person a year, also due to due to allergic anaphylactic shock. I´m not allergic to either bees or vipers. I have been bitten/stung by both, with no major problems after.

 

We have almost no floodings or other dangerous wether, very minor earthquakes, no volcanos, few hunting accidents, the traffic is very safe, the crime rate is low and no terrorists. Almost booooring...

 

We have the lawfull right to access privat nature areas. It called "all mans right", and give all swedes the right to roam free in the nature if we don´t destroy plants or disturbe people in their homes. We are allowed to raise our tents for one night at suitable place in the nature. Camping in most of the nature reserves are not allowed, but there are so much other places to go to that it´s no problem to find places to be totally alone at.

 

The winter temperature in my town can go down to about -20 degrees celcius and everything near +30 degrees celsius in the summer is considered extreme. We had 82 centimetres of snow here in february, the most in fifthteen years. At the moment it´s +18 degrees celsius outside and the wind is 9-11 m/s.

 

I guess Sweden is quite a good country to live in.

Edited June 18, 2010 by The Kamikaze Clan

[+Coldgears]

Despite what the OP says, there ARE spiders and snakes in Pennsylvania.

Not in the south eastern Pennsylvania area... Up near the mountains and pocono's sure, even in the vast farmland. You got to remember it is a BIG state, I only live in one part of it.

 

EDIT: Yes we do have snakes and spiders in our area, just not deadly. We have daddy long leg, and other harmless spiders. The only snake in our area is the garter snake, also harmless. I found a few of them in my back yard, I once picked up a garter snake and carried it from one end of my neighborhood to another... They are harmless, and fun to mess with.

Edited June 18, 2010 by Coldgears

[Clan Riffster]

ferral cattle

 

Wait, what?

Oops! Typo. Should be "Feral" cattle. Cows that receive no assistance from humans. Left to fend for themselves for generations. No food supplements, no water containment, no medical treatment. 1500 to 2000 pounds of agitated bovine, that, due to lack of human contact, has forgotten that we are at the top of the food chain. Rather interesting to meet way back in the swamp.

[+Twitch Hugs Trees]

I've not had much luck with friendly people in Roseville. Those I dealt with, and it wasn't on but one or two occasions, seemed very stuck up and overly conservative. Probably (hopefully) the vast minority. It is pretty there though, I have visited a few of the parks and they are quite well maintained and clean.

 

Were you near Sun City?

[hoosier guy]

We have the usual problems in the woods here in SW Indiana. Snakes, ticks, marijuana growers, meth labs. Our DNR recently photographed a mountain lion roaming around in the next county. The majority of people around here are, execpt for a few of the marijuana & meth types and good helpful folks.

[kobe008]

I am kinda into geocaching and I have seen that this is the cheapest gps available. Can I add a coordinate location into without having to be at the location?

[Ayeaka]

I live in an urban area with LOTS of nearby wilderness.

 

Since I live in Texas, the cities are large, flat, and sprawling. A few more developed areas have lots of skyscrapers, while most of the rest of the city consists of 1-3 leveled buildings.

 

Caches are similarly spread out everywhere. This makes it difficult for me to cache, unless I want to walk for 10 miles, haha... since I don't have a car.

 

I came from a suburb prior, where caches were densely packed... It's an odd change.

 

 

It's warm here, with cold, dry winters. Spring and fall are the wettest seasons. It's VERY windy year-round. The greatest danger is snakes, I guess. We have rattlesnakes here, which aren't aggressive... but we also have water moccasins, which are VERY dangerous, and VERY aggressive. We have both black widows, and brown recluse. We also have your usual spectrum of aggressive wasps and bees.

Flash floods are a huge risk whenever it rains.

 

Poison ivy, too.. I don't think we have poison oak or poison sumac, though. No nettles, as far as I'm aware, either. LOTS of different kinds of thorn branches, haha.

 

I've never actually gotten bitten or stung by anything while caching here, however. I got poison ivy once in Louisiana, but never here. I only had a mild reaction to the poison ivy I encountered in Louisiana, though.. and I've probably gone charging through the stuff here without realizing it. I may just have a higher tolerance for the poison ivy here.

 

What's interesting though, is that we're flat/hilly for the most part, we're also at the foothills for the mountain rage leading up and through Big Bend... So there are lots of cliffs and other neat, potential cache-putting areas. (Which I may take advantage of soon. (: )

 

The geocaching community here seems to be much smaller than it was in Bossier City.

Edited October 20, 2010 by Ayeaka

[+Team Laxson]

I agree with Kit Fox - easier with pictures

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[+popokiiti]

We live in a rural area on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. Five minutes to the local (stoney) beach, 15 to parks. 10 to the nearest lake, 20 to 45 mins to the next. 45 mins to Victoria, the provincial capital. 3 hours to the mountains.

Most dangerous thing for us? The increasing (so it seems) amounts of doggy-do, goose poop, deer droppings, rabbit pellets! Somehow they all end up on my caching partner's boots - in copious amounts! Except the goose poop - I had that honour. Parked at a trailhead yesterday and I almost trod in bear scat. We zipped in and out for that cache pretty quickly.

Thanks to those who shared their photos - they are beautiful.