RPW

I am just quoting Sparky but I could of quoted other people as well. My feeling is that sometimes parking coordinates are required. I agree with RK and others that the best way to do this is to make a multi-cache with the first waypoint being the parking area and the next waypoint the real cache. However sometimes this method does not work. As an example -- and if anyone has an idea of how to get around this problem then please post -- is a linear park in my county. Said park runs for 14 miles along creeks and rivers. The park itself is not very wide -- as little as 100 yards at times -- and is surrounded by private property. The county park department very strongly discourages people from entering the private property and thus any cache placement should encourage the use existing parking places and thus official park entrances. One might this this is perfect for multi-cache. Unfortunately if a person is not simply doing a park'n'grab but is instead hiking the trail then doing a multi-cache could be irritating. As an illustration, there is a section of the trail which has two parking spots separated by 3 miles. If I want to put a cache at mile post 1 and mile post 2, then how do I do this? If 'A' and 'B' are the parking spots then the cache placements would look like: A.......1.......2.......B You have to imagine the above trail surrounded by private property and roads so that the caches '1' and '2' are closer to a road then they are to parking spots 'A' and 'B'. A multi that starts at 'A' and then points to cache '1' and a different multi that starts at 'B' and then points to cache '2' would would force a person who is hiking the trail (not park'n'grabbers) to hike from A to 1 then to B and then to 2 in order to find both caches. Not too much fun especially if the person is continuing further down the trail. A multi that starts at 'A' and points to cache '1' and then cache '2' and a different multi that starts at 'B' and points to '2' and then '1' would allow a person to record the same caches twice. Not good form! I am really at a loss on how to force people to park at either 'A' or 'B' without explictly telling them in the cache notes "park HERE and stay on the trail". Any suggestions?

One thing I dislike about virtuals is having to prove that I was there when I do not have the tools to do so. A prime example of this is requiring a picture of myself at the cache. Since I do not have a camera ... well, this is hard to do. Sometimes the cache owner is lenient about this requirement. Sometimes not. On the other hand, spending many minutes hunting for a micro can be irritating. Often I just want to see the sight and enjoy the location instead of crawling on my knees looking for a altoids container that has been painted black and stuck to the underside of a park bench. Especially if the co-ordinates are off. Personally I think that there should a mininum size for micros. It is easy to make a hunt impossible. Where is the challenge in that?

Because for the general case it is not so simple. This is the hard part. Let us say I am travelling from Chicago to Atlanta. I plan to take a couple of days to drive this and so have time for en-route geocaching. Just building the pocket queries of the regions is difficult. There would many required especially since it is often hard to figure out where the overlaps between the queries occur. It would be much nicer to outline a path and just ask for caches within 'X' miles of the straightline distance between the points along the path. Example, my path is from Chicago to Indianapolis to Louisville to Nashville to Chattanooga to Atlanta. Everything within 15 miles of this route would be nice. I am not sure how hard it would be to program the above query however it should be feasible.

Yes the Indiana Geocacher's site is not very active. But it does exist. I go to it about once a week.

I've been around for since Mar, 2003 (first logged cache) and a bit before that without logging caches. While the forums are useful -- especially with them being a bit more directed -- I have not felt a need to post until lately. Today I actually had a question that I hope someone will answer and have been spending more time on the board than normal. I saw this thread and decided to do my 2nd post ever. As far as using the forums for non-GCing topics. Yes, I can see that some people would love to do that. Hey, if a person really likes GCing and if his/her friends are GCers then why not get together to talk about things. A chatting area. Personally I would not use it -- I have other chatting resources for my other hobbies where we BS all over the place -- but I think that it is only natural for people who like the same activites to want to talk about everything under the sun with each other. I have about 100 finds under my belt and a couple of hides. I have attended 3 Geopicnics this year. So I am not really a recluse but simply a person who does not wish to take the time to wade through non-GCing posts. Just keep the chatting area seperate from the area where directed GCing questions & comments are kept. Just my $0.02 worth. I know, I know, not the explicit point of this thread but perhaps the implicit topic.

Related to this topic is a question I wanted to ask. Yesterday a person posted a log entry in a a local "park-n-grab" cache that I watch but do not maintain. The entry said, in part, Also decided to hide a few prizes from Chicago while in the area. A $100 cash prize has been hidden somewhere near Indy. Visit http://www.TreasureHuntGames.com and sign up to receive clues leading to it's location. The "www" address was hyperlinked for easy access. I went to the site and found out that for a monthly fee a person can get clues to where the cash is hidden. 70% of the fees get turned into prizes; the site is nicely up-front about this. My "scam-o-meter" goes on high at this point but, hey, in some ways it is no worse than playing the state lottery -- something I do not do but that a lot of people enjoy. So I am not coming down on the concept itself but rather I am questioning the use of logs to do advertising for such a concept. If it was a cache that I maintained then I would probably edit the entry to delete the ad. But since it is another person's cache should I be concerned about this log?

From Lafayette/Purdue area. Perhaps we will see each other at the Fall picnic in a couple of weeks?

From Lafayette/Purdue area. Perhaps we will see each other at the Fall picnic in a couple of weeks?

I am back from my visit to Dallas. While I never got to Deep Ellum I did manage to make it to Fair park. There wasn't a whole bunch going on but I did enjoy wandering around and visiting some of the exhibits. The mammoth was fun to stand next too. Much bigger than a modern day elephant. Thanks for the suggestions. -- Rick

Thanks for the suggestions. I was looking at Fair Park on the map and thinking to myself that it might be interesting. Your vote of confidence will inspire me to go there. -- Rick

Dallas NC does sound like a nice place to visit. Maybe I will make it there some day. But it is indeed off to Dallas TX that I wander off to in a couple of days. -- Rick

Hello all. My wife is going to a conference in Dallas the week of May 12-16, 2003 and I will be tagging along. Naturally I plan on tracking down as many caches as I can -- subject to the limitations of public transportation. But undoubtedly there are some interesting places in Dallas that do not have caches. Does anyone have recommendations of places to visit? To stay away from? Thanks in advance! -- Rick