Realistically speaking, it would be difficult for me to pick a cache site that would be useful because I really couldn't predict where I would be and where I would be passing through. If past experience is any indication, I would NEVER be in the vicinity of a cache!

But it occurs to me that if you did have a place where you wanted to bury something in the ground, a metal detector might be a way to do it. People see someone with a metal detector and a shovel, and they either think he's not going to find anything THERE, or they wander over and ask if he's found anything interesting. You could point to a small pile of useless artifacts (beer can, bent fork, two corroded old pennies, a small broken piece of badly rusted galvanized pipe, etc). They smile, shake their heads, wish you good luck, and wander off with their hands in their pockets.

The fact that you sit down on a 5-gallon bucket to rest occasionally wouldn't attract attention, and if the bucket disappeared about the same time you were carefully filling in your holes so no one would fall in them and get hurt.....

But the friend's house is probably still the best place. You could even bury it there. False pet graves could be a good place, and could could even provide a concrete marker: "R.I.P. Fluffy, 1997-2009". Or, "Jim Quackenbush, died of Cholera".

Sue