terratin

Recently i came across this log (translated from german): The mentioned pictures are a GPS showing his current location 16km from the cache and his access visa. What i don't understand is why he didn't log the other 15 caches in this country, including 5 FTF's (one of which was placed early 2004). After all, he has proven he's been in the country.... Mr. Terratin

There is a virtual in Washington state that is coal gas leaking. Flaming Gas That reminds me: GC23hnz is certainly one I really hope to visit one day. And the ECs on Antarctica. Mrs Terratin

Exactly 0% of our finds are between 50 to 250km from our home coordinates. Distance to Finds: < 1km 32 ( 3.46%) 1 km to 10 km 336 (36.36%) 10 km to 25 km 26 ( 2.81%) 25 km to 50 km 23 ( 2.49%) 50 km to 100 km 0 ( 0.00%) 100 km to 250 km 0 ( 0.00%) 250 km to 500 km 58 ( 6.28%) 500 km to 1000 km 226 (24.46%) 1000 km to 2500 km 42 ( 4.55%) 2500 km to 5000 km 166 (17.97%) 5000 km to 7500 km 3 ( 0.32%) > 7500km 12 ( 1.30%) Mr. Terratin

i've just noticed that the other half of terratin has posted the same already Anyway, carry on.

Here's our list, country level and 1st level administrative division as per geocaching.com: Belgium (1; Vlaams-Brabant) Denmark (1) France (1; Lorraine) Germany (4) (Niedersachsen) Greece (2) Luxembourg (3) Netherlands (1; Zeeland) Norway (5; Hordaland, Olso & Rogaland) Qatar (8) Sri Lanka (3) United Arab Emirates (3) United Kingdom (1; London) Oman (1) 13 countries with earthcaches on a total of 15 countries where we cached; it has become a sort of personal 'challenge' to find an EC in every country we visit, though we still have to find an EC in Mexico and the United States. We'll most likely add Spain and probably Sweden to this list before the end of the year. And maybe -just minimal maybe- Canada. Mr. Terratin

That's the small Quartz award, for 5 finds Mrs. Terratin

Just 'finds' for a level? Really, 25 in at least 10 countries should qualify for -euhm- garnet? Seriously, thanks for this new incentive. Guess it will be a though one to get to Quartz -let alone Diamond- for us; 34 EC finds now (in 13 countries!), but with no car and less than a handfull ECs within reach... (Quick tally count: holidays in Gran Canaria (+10), train trip up to Helsingør (+2), biking to a not too far away forest (+1), once over the Øresund (+1) to Malmo (+0). No i don't think we'll manage Quartz this year.) Mr. Terratin

Good question, and no idea. My guess is that there's not much of outdoor shops, or even a library. Doesn't mean much though. I lived in another country before where the library was closed for year as a new one was being build, and even if it was open, becoming a member apparently wasn't easy for non-locals due to bureaucratic things. I thought about some kind of geocaching evening, especially as there doesn't seem to be too much to do in general. If such thing would work though? I'd rather see a couple of people getting enthusiastic very quickly, throwing a few containers after a bush, and never looking at geocaching again. Because it's still hypothetical, but might not be anymore one day and might or might not come very quickly.

Nah, an alt account is no fun. I do like thinking about mystery caches, but mostly I like finding them. That's why I'm thinking if it's possible to get people into Geocaching. I think there are a few general reviewers around, I think mostly situated in the States who review those caches. Some Middle Eastern contries are also reviewed from there.

A theoretical (at least now) discussion. Imagine you move to a country where geocaching doesn't play a big role, to a region where the nearest cache is say 1000 kilometers away. However, there are some expats living in the area and more are continuously moving in. What would be your strategy regarding geocaching? Forget about it? Try to create interest amongst expats? What would you do? Mrs. Terratin

For our (and i guess all) ECs there always has to an email with the answers to the questions. And -so far- none of the finders on any of our earthcaches has answered all questions completely correct; there's always a wrong answer/some info missing/minor details incorrect/etc So what i do is send a reply email with a thank you and the correct answers; even in case of someone forgetting to include their email address, i go to their profile page and send my reply from there. In that light, i don't understand the mentioned auto-responders: it implies i can just send a mail with utter nonsense and still get an ok for the log? Moreover, eventhough Mrs. Terratin is a geologist, with most of the ECs we've found there's usually some guessing involved. I'd love to receive emails from the CO's with the exact answers, which unfortunately doesn't happen very often, which in turn sometimes leaves me with a nagging feeling about certain aspects of the earthcache in question. Anyway, to get to the question of Konnarock Kid & Marge, no, it's no waste of time at all. Replying as we do is -imo- part of the educational aspect of earthcaches. Mr. Terratin

Apart from the odd FTF (a few km) we have not gone out to find that one specific cache. We did -however- drive from the south of the Netherlands via Belgium, France and Luxembourg to the Hanover area in Germany, just to a) find caches in Belgium, France and Luxembourg and find caches in 5 countries in a single day; succes in both instances!. Admittedly we stayed overnight in Luxembourg, but all-in-all it was approx a 1000km detour just to cache. Mr. Terratin

Copenhagen, Denmark. I just checked and a PQ with 4.55 miles comes up with 987 caches; 4.6 miles is over 1000. Within a 10 miles radius there's 2040 caches. Which does explain why it's so hard to find a spot to hide a new cache here...time to move! Also interesting, the smallest distance (1km) in the PQ still yields 39 caches... Mr. Terratin

Agreed - but often in geographically significant areas I visit, I take photos of info boards in case I want to refer back, or keep the info booklets. Also estimating a height of a certain layer, description of a particular feature etc. may well be remembered years later if you are interested in the subject. Yup, so do we; quite often including pictures of various features with a pen, lenscap or geological hammer... There are a couple of earthcaches placed on locations we have visited before the EC was there, one of which we can answer the questions from memory (pics!) and with the help of google; and another one we might figure out the answers (pics and google again). Either way as we visited both places before we started geocaching, we're not trying to log those. However, if an EC gets published on a location we have visited after we started geocaching, i might be tempted to log a find (obviously if we can answer the questions), as -at the moment- i cannot think of any reason why not. But that's something to discuss with Mrs. Terratin when the situation arises. As for our own ECs: if the requirements are met, the log stands. "when" is not a requirement and therefore not a reason to deny a log. (Current opinion, we haven't had such logs yet) Mr. Terratin

One we logged DNF on; one which i meant to post here for a while but forgot about, until today. A cache in the netherlands which really wasn't there anymore, the finder even says it's gone, but still claims the smiley, as he's been on the spot...i guess most of our DNF's actually are finds, as we've been on the spots... Mr. Terratin Logs in dutch roughly translated (in Italics) by me: March 13 by Honest1 (xxx found) Returned twice. Apparently one doesn't always succeed immediately. March 13 by Honest2 (xxx found) Unfortunately not found March 19 by Honest3 (xxx found) Nope, no find. We searched reasonably extensive, but came up empty handed. One for another time i suppose... March 20 by Honest1 (xxx found) Searched again, but now with 5 persons. Pity. We'll watch this cache from now on. March 20 by Honest4 (xxx found) Third time unlucky! March 20 by WayTooHonest (xxx found) Today a tour through the east of the country where this one should have been the first, but i fear this cache is not there anymore. Looking at the pictures it's a magnetic micro and given there are just a few steel objects around and based on previous logs, i gather this one is gone. All in all i am convinced i was looking in the right place and therefore i logged this [as found]; if i'm in the neighbourhood again i will revisit the cache. March 22 by CO (xxx found) he is ripped. Soon we shall place another one

Aww, I'd love to participate! But lets be honest: roughly $13.000 for the cheapest option is a bit too steep a price for me

Yea, I know what you mean and I wondered about that myself. When I visited Siccar Point I wasn't into geocaching and thus don't have the coords of the perfect location to look at Hutton's unconformity. I would gladly write up an Earthcache for that special location but without visiting it again I can't place it there mrs terratin

Hi Cezanne, interesting that you have observed the same. Maybe I'm not seeing things that aren't there at all. Yes, I was referring to earthcaches in various European countries in fact. I can imagine that it's difficult to review an earthcache if you have not done all the research yourself, especially if the reviewer does not have a background in geology. I'd have problems reviewing an earthcache on rare earth elements, to just name something, without looking at the source materials. And pushy cache owners probably doesn't help. Maybe it was a mistake to say that the reviewing process would be faster with local reviewers. Such work just needs some time.

Somewhat difficult as I'd first need to learn much more of the language of the country I'm currently living in. Anyway, good to see your comments. As I wrote before it was only an impression I got from looking at new earthcaches of especially various European countries. Mrs. Terratin

Hello, since the change of guidelines and the use of local reviewers I have the feeling that I see an increasing number of earthcaches where the specific learning experience is missing, the questions are just about how many stairs you had to climb to get to the cache site, and much of the text is a completely copy and paste from wikipedia. On the other hand I've been looking more at earthcaches and it might just be that the quality is not decreasing but those exceptions have always been there. I don't want to point fingers as specific caches with this posting. I am curious if you notice the same, or if you disagree with me. Mrs. Terratin

The last one (#10) is Melnik Pyramids. Are you solving a mystery/puzzle cache? If so, which one? Mr. Terratin

We've moved to Copenhagen, Denmark in june. Map centered around where we live (we are here #3) with a cluster of finds just dropping of the bottom of this map. We've still got a lot of biking and puzzling to do! Mr. Terratin

I can't really remember anymore. Must have been somewhere in 2006. I do know in 2007, end of march-ish, i saw a car driving by with a geocaching bumper sticker on it. Having come across this geocaching before, i had a good look at gc.com and though it would be nice having a goal to go outside. So we got ourselves a cute little yellow garmin thingy and gave it a try on 1 april 2007. I enjoyed it, Mrs. Terratin wasn't that convinced, so didn't go 'caching' all that often. It took until we moved to norway end 2008, when we both started to really enjoy caching. Mr. Terratin

"GCHFT2 Earthcache I - a simple geology tour of Wasp Head" placed 10 jan 2004 in NSW, Australia, by Geoaware. Mr. Terratin

You must be one of them if you need explanation about us...Sorry to say, but if you're not initiated -ie one of US- you'll never find out... Mr. Terratin