Have you ever seen a PROXY card?

These "proxy" cards are placed inside geocaches "in stead of" the real coins.  Al and I have come across these occasionally and have moved them along to new caches.  We even have some of our own geocoin "proxy" cards. 

Why would someone make a little laminated card with a picture of their coin on it??? BECAUSE OCCASIONALLY GEOCACHERS OR MUGGLES PICK UP AND KEEP GEOCOINS! We have had soooooooo many geocoins and travel bugs go missing that when we noticed other cachers starting to put the "proxy" cards in caches, we hopped on the bandwagon. 

I admit, I love the thrill of finding a "booty" of geocoins and travel bugs, but there are some geocachers who don't respect the idea of "travel" bugs.  Once they see the coins, they seem to think that it is to be kept for good.  :( boo hoo! So.... as a solution to our existing problem, Al and I made our "proxies" and relaunched several of the geocoins that we've had missing over the last year. 

Now, every time we get a new coin, we automatically make a proxy card to send out "in place of" the original geocoin.  These coins are just too beautiful to be "lost" in transit! 

What are your thoughts???

New Additions to Our Collection!

To cache or not to cache??

We know a lot of cachers that hibernate in the winter.  Many of us get BORED staying inside! It truly is the preference and tolerance of the geocachers themselves and snow definitely makes finding a cache much more difficult and often, impossible to find once the ground is covered in snow.  So, the question is... what do geocachers DO in the winter???

THIS geocacher goes for the more URBAN or C&D variety of cache hides.  We also go to a lot of events, now that we got started! Neither of us like the cold, but we love a good find. We often "tag team" as we cache in the wintertime. 

First, Al will get out of the car and attempt to locate it. Once he gets thoroughly frustrated, I go out to find it and he warms up in the car.  If after this much searching and we still can't find it, we regroup in the nice warm car and then go together.  Most of the time Al will find it without my assistance and I'll be busy logging the last find via my trusty cell phone, the Envy Touch, and loading the next set of coordinates in the Garmin Nuvi.  We have a great system and it works well for us. :D

As for events, we go to plenty to share stories, meet new people and just GET out of the HOUSE! Last weekend weather spoiled our trip to Wilkes-Barre, so hopefully we'll still be able to go to the "Skook-mas" party on Sunday! Cross your fingers that the snow stays away!

The Missing or Moved???

Have you ever gotten an email from a fellow cacher that thinks your hide is missing??? Of course! We allllll have, especially those little nanos! I don't mind checking up on caches, in fact isn't that part of the agreement?? LOL We hid the little buggers, so why not make sure they can be found! :D

We get emails about once every other week that someone thinks we've got a MIA cache. Sometimes, however we discover our caches aren't where WE placed them originally, but 50-75ft farther away from their original locations! YES!

Just a quick reminder for all of us geocachers to place the hidden containers where we FOUND them, so that we don't inadvertantly move caches farther way from the GZ.  I know, sometimes our coordinates are off, but essentially caches are placed in a specific place for a reason.  So, I'm expecting this weekend to be visiting at least 2 caches that we are thinking are missing... but just might be moved! LOL

Ok, I'm gonna jump off my soapbox now! :D

Oh... the weather outside is Frightful!

So our weekend plans for caching were basically foiled this time.  We had family things going on Saturday and stayed longer than planned (not a bad thing!) and then we were struggling with finding "clues" for the Port Penn series of caches in Muncy, PA.  Turned out that the snow was hindering our actual "finding" clues, but we were finding the cache containers fine! Go figure! There was one cache we had to Phone a Friend for (THANKS JOE) and we smacked our foreheads afterwards! lol... After getting chilly and kinda frustrated, we made our way to dinner and a bathroom! :D Good food and a good drink is always a moral booster!

Come Sunday, we had plans to go to Celebrating Lucia in Wilkes-Barre.  I had the alarm set at 730, but we also knew the weather would be on the "not so nice" side.  Alarm went off, I turned over and asked Al if he still wanted to go, he said "YOU DECIDE".  So.... without hesitation, I hit snooze button.  At 10am, we woke up again and said "oops!"

We decided to stay in anyway, not that we'd have made the event (which started at 10).  I had plenty of papers to do for work and to keep Al occupied I had him rearranging the caching binder and wrapping Christmas gifts! :D Next weekend we'll try to get out and go to Schuylkill Co for that event and some Christmas cheer!

Too Cold for Tux!

Many of us geocachers in the Tri-State area braved the cold and snow to meet up at the Wachovia Arena in Wilkes- Barre on Saturday night to see the Penguins play Hartford.  The mascot was supposed to come out and take a picture with the group before the game, but I guess it was even too cold for Tux to come out and play! Oh well, we still made a great group photo! :D

A huge thank you and a "well done" to our fellow cacher CaptainMath for organizing and pulling off such an amazing event! We had the largest group in attendence and even saw the Lil Pens win that night!

 I was hoping for a little more fighting and hooking, you know... the dirty stuff, but for whatever reason, there was only ONE awesome fight.  :P Hershey would have been more physical! lol Just teasing Kevin!

Merry Cache-mas!

On Saturday, Al and I trekked to Hazleton for another Christmas Caching Event.  This one was held by pumpkinking and he did a fabulous job! There were lots of goodies to munch on, lots of geocachers to share stories with and meet, and lots of wonderful items for the raffle! Al and I walked away with two raffle prizes, beautiful trackables! That added to the geocoins we gained yesterday from the giveaways and the gift exchange! We took another "coal" bag and placed a cache container filled with goodies and a scratch off.  By the way... Joe and Jeni, did you win anything???? :D

While we were driving to Hazleton, the dreaded white stuff started to fall.  We still grabbed some "cache and dashes" along the way, but not as many as we'd hoped to find. Damn snow! :P

After the event, we cached our way to Wilkes-Barre for yet ANOTHER (yes it WAS a event crazy weekend!) event.  We struck out way too much on the caches we were hoping to get, so I wasn't in the best mood... and neither was Al.... but nothing another event couldn't fix! More on that in the next post!

Caching event craze starts with....

Thanks to HTruck and 2CatsNJ for the borrowed pictures!

TGIF HO HO HO! Several of us "local" cachers met up at the Lewisburg Country Cupboard on Friday night for a secret santa exchange, good food and good conversations! This was the first of many events we were going to this weekend, so let the games begin! :D We took a bag of "coal" for our secret santa filled with a cache container and a lottery ticket. By the way, TwoTenderfeet, did you WIN anything??? lol

We got lots of little goodies from the Merchlinsky's swag donated by various geocaching companies and exchanged a small gift with the Merchlinsky's themselves.  As you can see from the picture, there was a nice turnout! I'm in bright orange in the pictures (who'd have thought! :P) and Al is in his habitual white hat! :D

The GeoPowells made this event their 1000th find, so they were congratulated with lots of praise and woohoo!s :D Way to go!!! Someday, we'll get there too!

Yes, that MOUND of icecream yumminess was Al's desert.  He loves to tease me since I can't have any... so he gets a bunch of cherries for me to pick out :D What an awesome, yet teasing man! :D

And.. can't forget Cameron being passed around! It was like musical chairs! He'd get on one person's lap and then reach out for another.  Boy do the Merchlinsky's have their hands full :D As always, the girls had stickers to plaster us with and especially Christian and Emily! They seem to always get the brunt of it, but all in good fun! :D See everyone at the next TGIF event in February, if we don't see you sooner!