[Az-Geocaching] Clueless Newbie

[Jim Scotti]

On Fri, 9 Aug 2002, Joanna Strohn wrote:

> Many thanks for the warm welcome. With the thunderboomers hovering over the
> park that was going to be my first exploration, I think I'll have to put off
> my first search effort.

Yeah, it made lots of racket, but didn't drop much rain, at least on our part
of town.

> I've been doing some looking around on the web, but there really isn't that
> much there for the completely clueless newbie. For example, what kind of
> goodies does one leave? I make hand-dyed scarves, for example. Would these
> be a good goodie?

I've seen so many different types of items in geocaches, that I think you can
use pretty much anything that will fit in a cache.  I've used keychains (my
favorite is a combo whistle, magnifier, compass, thermometer keychain),
eyeglass repair kits, model rockets (I always loved the Estes Mosquito
rockets), and golf balls amongst other things.  I've seen all sorts of things
in caches, from buttons and stickers to computer video cards.  One thing I
wouldn't recommend that I have seen are bic lighters.  One of my caches even
had a Playboy magazine dropped off by a team that will remain nameless in it
before Team Wyle visited it and removed the rather inappropriate item
(imagine if a 10 year old with his pop had been the visitor instead).  
Sounds like your hand-dyed scarves would be a great item to trade!  As soon
as you find a couple geocaches, you'll get a really good idea of what the
common types of things you'll find are.

> I haven't found anyplace that has photos of caches. I read about
> Tupperware, but I have no clue how they may be hidden. Or not hidden. Do
> I have to climb trees? Wade swamps? Do a dance and chant? Turn my dogs
> into retrievers?

Skim the cache logs and you'll run into some pictures soon enough that may
include the cache itself.  Most often, you'll find the container buried in
some rocks or hidden in the base of a tree.  Really, there is a lot of
variety - almost as much as there are caches hidden!

> I got my GPS at Wal-Mart. I know they don't have any PC cables there (I
> looked). Any other place in Tucson that might have cables? Or does one
> have to order online for anything other than the basic units? What about
> paper maps? And what about mapping software? When I need a map I go to
> one of the online sites so I don't have anything that is new.
> Recommendations?

You can find PC cables for most GPS units at Summit Hut, Popular or even at
Best Buy.  You can order them online if you can't find them locally.  I've
seen the Garmin cables and other accessories at all 3 places I just
mentioned, though the first two I think are better stocked and can answer
your questions a little better if need be.  Check out the Arizona Geological
Society bookstore downtown (URL: http://www.azgs.state.az.us/ and they are
located at 416 W. Congress, Suite 100 - in the Arizona State gov't building.  
They have fre short term parking in the lot on the West side of the building
and the bookstore has lots of geology books and a full stock of Arizona USGS
maps and other maps - cheaper, I noticed, than Tucson Map and Flag!).

I've been using Delorme Topo 3.0 and Street Atlas 9.0 for maps and routing,
and with my Garmin Legend, the Mapsource programs for downloading maps into
my unit is essential.  EasyGPS works well with the Snaptek site for importing
waypoints into my Garmin too.  The links on the cache webpages to Topo Zone
are a great start when trying to plan a route to a cache, but I've noticed
that the map datums do not match reality perfectly (I think the topos use
NAD27 and geocaching.com uses WGS-84).

Jim.

Jim Scotti                              
Lunar & Planetary Laboratory         jscotti@pirl.lpl.arizona.edu 
University of Arizona                
Tucson, AZ 85721 USA                 http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/