[Team Deejay]

This happens occasionally with Firefox. I usually just switch to the “low bandwidth” version (or whatever they call it) and the problem goes away.

[Team Deejay]

Wow! Who knew that Bill was such a Pokemon fan?

[Team Deejay]

When I taught this up at the NKMSF, they were supposed to have GPS units for people to use. Unfortunately, they forgot to get them. Oops! Fortunately, we had a bunch of geocachers show up who were willing to let the new folks borrow them to find caches. Note that we placed temporaries around the Ice Age Center to keep people close, which is probably a good idea for any sort of class (rather than sending them off long distances. On the other hand, if you held it at the Ottawa Lake campground, we could just have people find Sweet Smelling Land to get a good feeling for what real geocaching is about.

[Team Deejay]

The new link format has been available for a while, but they just started using it for the emails.

[Team Deejay]

Dean, you must have the demo version of the geocaching app. If you have the full app, you can give it your name and password and it will only give you caches you haven’t found. It seems to give you an unlimited number of caches and provides all the information you can find on a cache page, with the only exception being that you only see the last 10 logs (you can see more by opening the cache page in a web browser, which I had to do a couple times.) Note that the program will show you the closest 5, 10, 15, or 20 caches based on the settings, but regardless of what you pick, it will give you a link at the bottom to “show the next X results”. The whole key is you have to hit the “Settings” button at the bottom of the screen and set up the app to your liking. (This is generally true for all but the most basic Iphone apps.)

You can also save any recent pocket queries to the phone memory, so that when you get to Timbuktu (or Door County) where you have no network coverage, you will still have your information. In theory, you should be able to upload gpx files for download to your phone, but this has not worked right since the beginning, so don’t count on that.

I can’t really speak to the other Iphone apps, as I haven’t used them, but I have used Cachemate, and I can tell you the gc.com app is WAY better. It isn’t even a fair competition.

[Team Deejay]

The problem is, if you find “remnants” without a log, how do you know that it is the cache and not just random garbage. I see this all the time, where people log “I found your cache, but the logsheet was missing. TFTC!”, immediately followed by “Tricky find, took me three visits to find it. Trashed out empty yogurt container that someone had pitched near GZ. TFTC!” Remnants indeed! If you don’t sign the log, you didn’t find the cache.

[Team Deejay]

Give a call to Garmin support. Even if your unit is out of warranty, they will probably do a swap for a refurbished unit. Just don’t forget to remove your Map chip before you send it in.

[Team Deejay]

If you want to adopt a cache, you need to contact the cache owner and have them send it to you at http://www.geocaching.com/adopt. If you can’t get in touch with the owner, just wait until it is archived, then place a new one.

Of course, most of us would prefer that you go out and find some cool spot to highlight with a new geocache. There are lots of nice places out there, so just go out and hide something.

[Team Deejay]

@PCFrog wrote:

@Team Deejay wrote:

So, why did I bring that up? Placing a normal hide in a wild area can provide quite the challenge without resorting to “tricks.” Whenever I see a thread about placing “clever” tiny containers in wilderness areas, I always cringe. This sort of thing tends to tear up the area and give us all a black eye with land managers.

I thought caches were placed to be found. However I tend to find more and more small to micro wood caches.

You know, there are micros, and then there are micros. People place micros in the woods because they are cheap and relatively easy to hide. Usually people realize that a placement needs to be done in an environmentally sensitive fashion, but remember that we get new people playing all the time. They see a micro hanging in a cedar tree in a evergreen forest (pretty much indestructible) and a nano in a city hide, and they think about how clever it would be to attach a nano to a blade of grass in a sensitive prairie. As a result, the area gets all stomped down and the land managers think we are a bunch of idiots.

We also have a copycat factor. I know of one hider who thinks it is cute to drill bolts into live trees and put magnetic containers on the bolts. Now I hear of at least two other hiders who have copied that technique. I will tell you that this hide technique has been mentioned by land managers in two different county park systems as one of the reasons they need permit systems and complex rules. I try to assure them that the vast majority of geocachers don’t behave like this, but this stuff doesn’t go unnoticed. Everything we do is done in public. As hiders (and finders) we need to keep the needs of the public and the land managers in mind when we play our game. Otherwise, we will end up with more permit systems and banned areas.

[Team Deejay]

One thought on the calculator. There is a website out there, http://www.mygeocachingprofile.com, which has several Delorme challenge maps on it, but not Wisconsin. I suspect they would be glad to add us if we asked them, and I have the coordinates of the grid if you don’t. Of course, we can’t require people to use this, but I think most people would prefer this to doing it manually.

[Team Deejay]

You know, yesterday we were searching for an ammo box that hadn’t been found since November. It took us the better part of an hour at GZ, and that was after a phone-a-friend to confirm it wasn’t up a tree, buried, or hidden in some sort of diabolical fashion. It was only 50 feet away from GZ, but with 7 months worth of nature on top of a ground hide, it ended up being very difficult to find.

So, why did I bring that up? Placing a normal hide in a wild area can provide quite the challenge without resorting to “tricks.” Whenever I see a thread about placing “clever” tiny containers in wilderness areas, I always cringe. This sort of thing tends to tear up the area and give us all a black eye with land managers. A former WGA board member used to add the following link to his forum sig, and I think it applies here.

Any fool may throw a stone down a well which a hundred wise men cannot pull out.

[Team Deejay]

We don’t worry about firetacks for proximity. The one place people usually fail is not including GPS usage. At a minimum, you need to start your night cache at some random spot, rather than a parking lot, trail junction or other easy to find location. This is just like a LBH in this respect. Note that some people go the extra mile and have intermediate waypoints, so you go to a spot, follow a trail, find a container, go to the next spot, follow another trail, etc. Note also that parks take a very dim view of placing firetacks along bridle trails (horsemen ride at night with headlamps as well, and the flash from the fire tacks startles the horses). Also note that placing this sort of cache in a hunting area is bound to be screwed up by some hunter placing his own trail right across yours. (I’ve seen it happen 3 times!)

[Team Deejay]

I’m sure there are some hunters here who would take the ammo off of your hands.

[Team Deejay]

You missed Sheboygan Falls.

[Team Deejay]

@cheezehead wrote:

I haven’t forgotten mine. Just been busy with some family things. But I got the caches all worked out in my head! 8)

Finding anything in there is going to be a 5 Star difficulty hide…

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