Tips for Newbies (Please share yours!)

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Originally Posted by covefarm

Hi_ I am new to this sport and bring along a gaggle of kids. I have read complaints about the quality of the contents of the cache. Do you season cachers have suggestions of good deposits?......silly putty, cards, play dough....................
I am also having a little trouble dechiphering some log shorthand. I have figured out TB, FTF, TN but help me with some of the others. Thanks for your help.

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The idea is to always "trade up" at caches, but unfortunately a few people think a stick of gum or a used, non-winning lottery ticket is a fair trade for a Mapping software CD. :(

I like to see anything unusual in a cache - something not seen at every Wally World you go to. As for kid items, stick with ones that can hold up to some possible moisture as well as abuse from getting tossed around in the cache, and it never hurts to place them inside a ziplock bag.

But my main reson for posting is to remind you and any others to be careful when placing any items that have an odor to them - the silly putty and play-dough may fit into this category. Any smells might attract local critters. Obviously this is more of an issue in a Gladware container than in an ammo box. Also, be careful of anything with liquid in them, they can freeze and break open in winter, and can leak any time of year.

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Originally Posted by brdad

The idea is to always "trade up" at caches, but unfortunately a few people think a stick of gum or a used, non-winning lottery ticket is a fair trade for a Mapping software CD. :(

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I fully agree. Seems like that I've seen more and more logs lately where someone has taken a "nice" item and left something totally undesirable. We try and make sure we "trade up", and do not substitute our signature item - our Maine Geocacher permit - as a trade item. We leave them without regard to any oter trade. We've seen some signature items that are beautiful, and certainly a "trade up" item. But some are just computer printed "business cards".

Play fair! LOL! :D

Greetings from Maryland. I sure miss the Maine woods.
1. Bring a compass with you and learn how to use it in case something happens to your GPS. I use mine when I get close to the cache in addition to the GPS anyway.
2. Do frequent "look backs" so that you will recognize an area when you approach it from the reverse direction.
3. If you're going on a long hike, mark significant waypoints, such as easy places to cross streams, trail heads, etc. as you go. You may (usually??:D :o ) find a much easier way back to the car from the cache (finding a major trail near the cache, avoiding briars, streams, etc.) but it's good to have these places marked.
4. Bring a small medical kit. Benadryl is also a good idea as you never know when you'll become allergic to an insect sting. I heard a report that one cacher down here in MD was bitten by copperhead and now carries a snake bite kit.
5. Carry some food, matches, spare socks and gloves, and other type gear if you're going into the woods, especially in the winter.
6. Check out the rules on travel bug etiquette. If you are going to take a travel bug, please log it in properly and send it on its way in a reasonable amount of time. If you are unable to do so, please send the travel bug owner a note.
7. HAVE FUN!!!!!

Lesson learned the hard way today: bring ziplocks for your cell phone in case you find yourself caught in a sudden rainstorm. Sure hope it dries out OK...

A reminder when setting out your first caches: make your terrain/difficulty settings as accurate as possible. I visited 2 caches today that I thought were highly inaccurate - one with a terrain rating of "4", which was less than 20 feet off the road and down a slight bank. I would consider it a 1.5, and certainly not more than a "2".

Here is a great resource for judging the terrain/difficulty ratings:

http://www.clayjar.com/gcrs/

(I used this on the cache I just mentioned and got a difficulty rating of 1 and a terrain of 2)

This is a very helpful thread...I never thought of doing a waypoint for the car! Duh!

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Originally Posted by covefarm

Hi_ I am new to this sport and bring along a gaggle of kids. I have read complaints about the quality of the contents of the cache. Do you season cachers have suggestions of good deposits?......silly putty, cards, play dough....................

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Ditto on the smells, and critters don't know if it's food or not. They will chew first, ask questions later.

If you're leaving business cards, trading cards, stickers not in the original package, or anything paper, I notice it doesn't take too long for them to get ruined in the cache. In a pinch, those can be tucked into a ziplock that's already in the cache.

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Originally Posted by The Family Three

This is a very helpful thread...I never thought of doing a waypoint for the car! Duh!

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I think that this is one of the most important tips. You'd never realize how often you'll get turned around even on a short bushwacking trip.

Once you've established a waypoint for "car", you can usually reposition the cooordinates to your car's current location so you don't have to keep entering the coordinates manually.

I rarely get turned around (lost?), but waypointing the car has saved me extra walking on many occasions. Especially helpful when the mosquitoes are hungry!

:D :D

A thing I learned very early in my caching "career" is to have a solid lock on as many satellites as possible BEFORE entering heavy cover. Once you are in there without a good lock, you may never acquire it. (OK, all you "x" model folks can just go blasting in).

Thanks for all the great posts. We are still really new to this game and need all the help we can get. :)

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Originally Posted by Quoddy

A thing I learned very early in my caching "career" is to have a solid lock on as many satellites as possible BEFORE entering heavy cover. Once you are in there without a good lock, you may never acquire it. (OK, all you "x" model folks can just go blasting in).

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:p :p ;) ;)

It's a very good idea to waypoint your car.

It's also a good idea to do a little research about the area that you are going to be operating in. You should have an emergency direction to travel if lost and carry a compass. Take a bearing from your car to the waypoint and the reciprocal can be your emergency direction if lost.

I like to know what it is that I am looking for and when the last time it was found. Reading the most recent logs may help you find the cache, but may also indicate that nobody has been finding it. Sometimes saves a lot of time looking for something no longer there.

My cardinal rule of geocaching is never assume anything!

Good luck!

Fismo : It's also a good idea to do a little research about the area that you are going to be operating in. You should have an emergency direction to travel if lost and carry a compass.

On the same note - Find the nearest enclosing roads of the area in which you plan to hike. A half-mile bushwhack through a swamp may suck heartily, but at least knowing you'll reach pavement at the end (which you then know how to follow to your car) beats the uncertainty of "I've run out of water and don't see anything I recognize, I may die here".

And yes, dumb ol' me has experienced that, on a "just a half-hour in and out" hike - Which actually prompted me to buy my first GPS and thus enabled me to start geocaching. But ignore the happy ending there and take the safety lesson to heart. :o

A tip for the upcoming winter caching....

Don't eat the yellow snow

A famous tune by Frank Zappa!!!

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Originally Posted by ribnag

On the same note - Find the nearest enclosing roads of the area in which you plan to hike. A half-mile bushwhack through a swamp may suck heartily, but at least knowing you'll reach pavement at the end (which you then know how to follow to your car) beats the uncertainty of "I've run out of water and don't see anything I recognize, I may die here".

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RULOST2? and I went blueberry picking a couple of days ago. It was on paper company lands, about 40 miles from home. We were in young growth, thick, but plenty of open spaces where there were berries.

I asked RULOST2? if she knew the way out. NO! So I asked her to listen. AHA! Trucks on the highway a mile or so away. Since she knew we were between the car and the highway, she just had to go opposite the sound of the trucks to get to the woods road the car was on.

Great example of knowing your surroundings! :D :D