First, a big congratulations to drtmn for his 2000th cache find. There is a man with way too much time on his hands. Also, to Fishpounder for his 1500th cache find. Another major milestone hit during the short time between newsletters.

The IGO Board of Director’s Election is scheduled to start on December 10th and run for two weeks. Please take the time to vote for the people you think will help move IGO in the direction you want it to go. Those members nominated, seconded and who have accepted as of this newsletter are Welch, Mole275, Morgue, SuperGoober, Spothors, The NVG and Ricann. Drtmn, Hershy, Uncle Frito and IowaRohn have been nominated and seconded, but have not yet accepted their nominations at the time this newsletter was posted.

If you haven't noticed the Unite for Diabetes promotion on the main page of GC.com, you should take a look at unite.geocaching.com. This is a promotion to raise support for a UN resolution on diabetes. They are giving away 20,000 travel bugs. This is like the Jeep promotion with a photo contest and quarterly prizes. I hope people don't try to collect these like they do the jeeps.

Finally, the ever present plea for cache highlights. I have a couple profiles, but no one wants to talk about their new caches. Come on you cachers, brag up you great hides a little and send me a highlight to “newsletter at iowageocachers.org”. Also, if you hold an event or have a funny caching story (if someone falls in the water or mud it is a great story), send them in and we will try to get it in the newsletter.

Nothing on the radar in Iowa.

GC.Com Username: boasark

Number of Finds/Hides: 861 / 20

Occupation? Professional Girl Scout - I am a Membership Specialist with Girl Scouts of Moingona Council - soon to be a new council - we are realigning with 4 other councils in western/central Iowa. My job takes me to meetings with Girl Scout leaders in 7 counties now. I am the liason between them and the Girl Scout office.

How you got your username? I worked at Girl Scout camp about 12 years ago - they had a lot of staff quit mid summer and called volunteers to come in and help and when we got there we had to have a camp name. I chose BOA - I am also an outdoor trainer for GS and the first level of training was then Basic Outdoor Awareness. I ended up working at camp for 4 summers and I drove a big old Ford stationwagon. When staff would go into town they would pile as many in the wagon as I had seat belts. It was soon dubbed "boasark". The camp name stuck and so did the boasark for my vehicle - I have had 2 since the wagon and that is what we've called them all. My license plate reads boasark and has since way before I started caching. When I first logged into GC.com and had to have a user name, what else would it be?

How long have you been caching and how did you get started? I have been caching since October of 2003. I actually got to go to an Outdoor Trainers Conference with Iowa Copper through Girl Scouts. Geocaching was one of the 2 hour sessions we attended - we were hooked in the first hour. We did have another session afterwards and were late getting back to that. They let us keep the GPS's till the next day so we went out after our sessions were over and continued searching. We did learn a valuable lesson that night - take a flashlight and raincoat with you. It got dark on us and was pouring rain, but we "continued to look for caches. We found all but 2 that night and got up early the next morning to find those. We did find out that we were the only 2 who found them all. NO we are not addicted!!!

Favorite cache/why? It is really hard to pinpoint 1 specific cache - I have several - Probably Madison County Dash for Cache (GC1FCD) - it was my first cache and we took our granddaughter with us. She was so excited. Christmas Cache (GCC3CC) is another - my first out of state cache - we were in Estes Park in October and had to hike up a mountain to get this one - awesome view. Some of my other favorites are American Gothic (GCAA61) - I took my parents and Dad & I posed for a picture that won the contest in 2004 and is still on the cache page - Urban Woods (GCM2G3), The Insider (GCKRP2), Who Has The Cache (GCKF1M) - I loved the challenge on all of these.

Least Favorite/why? I don't really have a least favorite - if so it would probably be Creature At Walnut Woods (GCK18R) (I know all of you guys loved that one). It was a long hard hike in (the gate was locked so we had to hike that part in too) and then the coords were so far off that we just had to search. Mostly I don't like finding film canisters in the woods or caches that are just too darn hard to find - if I drive 50 miles to find a cache, I want to find it.

Current caching goals? Last summer I would have said to hit 1000 caches by the end of the year, but now if I can hit 900 I will be satisfied. Iowa Copper and I have both had a lot of stuff prevent us from caching like we used to. Life in general.

Let’s take a break from our columns on the fine art of making and placing geocaches to talk about the approaching holiday! For new cachers, some of the ideas below will be informative and helpful, and for experienced cachers, you might wish to print the column and “accidentally” leave the list in view of your household gift-givers. I mention some commercial names, none of whom I have any connection with, because they will give your personal purchaser a place to look for the presents. The items here are presented by my idea of their order of importance to the well-outfitted geocacher.

The GPS - This is the big item! At first I was going to say, too, that it’s the item that none of us can do without, until I met part of the Warden’t That Be Fun caching team of Marion, Iowa, at a recent event cache – they currently have 80 finds without using a GPS. I recently participated with cc8c4 in a hide that Warden’t got the FTF (First To Find) on, and it wasn’t an easy find, plus it was raining. Oh, and it was night, too, and they got it! Kind of makes the rest of us look bad when we whine about coordinates that won’t hold still, doesn’t it?

At any rate, we all start with a basic unit, usually a Garmin or Magellan, and some find that the first one meets all of their basic caching needs. Then there are others who want color screens, easier-to-use buttons, the new SiRF chipset or mapping abilities. For many, a current favorite is the Garmin GPSMAP 60csx. I have had occasion (due to accidents, loss, etc., which we don’t discuss) to buy a number of the unit mentioned from www.gpsnow.com online. I’ve found the pricing very competitive and the service quite speedy. Various accessories and software items are available there, too. And, prices seem to keep dropping on the units themselves, along with some new rebates.

Clothing - While being too warm isn’t usually a problem in Iowa geocaching, being too cold can be! Because we’re often out for 6-8 hours at a time on hiking/caching trips, I find the need to change clothing sometimes in the course of the day. Good pants and a good coat are of prime importance, and I usually layer everything else underneath for adjustment during the weekly trek.

Besides temperature, the other consideration for clothing is durability. Sometimes, I would swear that the Iowa state flower is the thorn, based on how abundant such plants are when we cache. For that reason, I like a really thick pair of pants, almost canvas-like. I also prefer the ones that zip off at the knee – if it’s too hot out, I quickly have shorts, and if I get the bottom parts of my pants wet from streams or muddy from trails, I can zip them off and enter a restaurant without getting odd looks. As far as coats, I actually prefer the oldest one I have, since I’ll probably push on in the bush despite thorns and then I don’t get upset about tearing the material.

Oftentimes, you can find sharply-reduced prices on pants, shirts and socks in online “bargain bins” at sites like REI or Sierra Trading Post. Let me mention socks real quickly – it might seem counter-intuitive to wear thick wool socks all year round, but that’s what I do. Many kinds like Smartwool have a “wicking” action to keep your feet dry and cool, and some claim “anti-blister” construction, although I’m not sure how that works. They say that an army “travels on its stomach,” and I guess we could say that geocachers “travel on their feet,” that is, their comfortable feet!

And, of course, that brings us to the hiking boot. I see lots of my friends wearing old sneakers of various kinds, and they’re perfectly happy with them. I buy a brand-name boot like Columbia, Timberland or North Face at an outlet store or discounted online, usually for around $50-70. I’ve been wearing the same pair (with the same shoelaces!) for at least 5 years now, and that includes walks through mud, sand, water, rocks, lava and snow on a yearly basis, so the cost is minimal when spread over that amount of time.

Hiking Sticks – If you’re going to do anything in the woods, especially with changes in terrain, this is a must. I don’t know how many times a good stick has come in handy – helping me jump across a stream where there is no stone to step on, keeping me from falling while climbing a slippery hill or keeping my knees from absorbing too much shock going down sharp, rocky surfaces. Many sticks include literature that says shock to the joints is reduced by about 25% with stick usage. I just know that they make everything easier. I hiked for years before I cached, and I first used a stick on the Big Island of Hawaii, while clambering over the uneven lava fields in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, along the ocean where the lava flows into the water. I witnessed a number of people returning with cuts on their faces, arms and legs because they slipped on the varied surfaces.

You don’t have to pay a lot for a good hiking stick. A friend of mine, IowaGerd, often hikes in the mountains in Austria with sticks that he buys for about $10 apiece at places like Target and WalMart. Those same sticks work just fine on the trails at Coralville Reservoir or the parks in Iowa and Illinois that we explore. A couple of years ago, I bought a pair of sticks (Leki Makalu) meant for snow sport use, but they’re my favorites due to the shock absorber feature that is built-in. I usually only use one, but I’ve occasionally used both at the same time.

Unofficial uses for hiking sticks by cachers might also include: a way to reach under that scary log or inside that rocky space, improvised machete for beating away thorny things, and for the more worrisome of us, a means of snake defense.

One caution: you might say, well, BGT, I can just pick up a nice stick for free on the forest floor. Quite true, and then you can also find out how it’s possible to get poison ivy in February like I did! My doctor said that the active irritant in that plant remains potent for some time, and that he wasn’t surprised to see the occasional case in winter from someone putting logs into their fireplace that had been formerly resting in a poison ivy patch.

One more freebie in the BGT advice library for you: there is one FDA-approved poison ivy preventive called Ivy Block. I searched the web and found it for as low as $9.99 a bottle. I also read that the U.S. Forestry Service did research to find an effective, inexpensive poison ivy preventive. The winner was....(drum roll)…a can of spray deodorant! I tried it on my legs when wearing shorts this past summer – didn’t get any spots, and I smelled real nice, too. Price: $1.99 at Hy-Vee. Either makes a good gift, too, although the actual Ivy Block will probably not be as offensive as giving someone a can of deodorant.

Stocking Stuffers – There are some good, handy gift items that are also relatively inexpensive. Compasses of various types are always useful, especially in thick overhead cover. I read recently that a lot of GPS compasses are not that accurate unless you’re traveling at least 4 miles an hour. For those of you who keep track of such things, you know that this is moving at a pretty good clip on a trail, and if you move that fast off-trail you will probably get to meet lots of fallen trees up close and personal. IowaGerd pins a little globe compass on his sweatshirt. Fanny packs are quite cheap now at your local discount store. The ones that fit in front are good for tools like pointy things to get micro logs out of the cache with and to hold cameras, batteries and your CITO containers. The ones that have the pouch in back often have one or two holders on either side for beverages, necessary if you’re going to be out for some time covering long distances.

If you’re a cache-placer as well as finder, you can often purchase spiral notebooks quite cheaply at supermarkets. I don’t know why, but they’re often marked down in the stationery section, and more expensive at office supply stores where they have more of them. Snack items are always good. The little packets of powdered lemonade, ice tea, etc., help flavor the bottled-water you’re carrying, and my son, cacher Hawkeyelaw, always likes beef jerky!

And, last but not least – batteries! Lots and lots of AAs. I haven’t gone to the charger and rechargeable batteries yet, but I know a lot of people who like them, so it’s probably something in my future, too.

What do I want for Christmas? I informed Hawkeyelaw that a cordless drill with some of those circular things that cut holes in things like a dead tree would be nice. Just a heads-up for some 2007 hides for you BGT cache fans!

Have a Merry Christmas, and keep on caching in 2007!