SeattleWayne

2017 goals: To finish the power trails in Washington State and hit another one in Portland, Oregon.

Greetings from the Pacific Northwest!

I found a cache right after it was published once. I was driving home from work and I was about 20 miles from home when the email popped up on my phone. I was thinking, "I'll get there and there will be like, three geocachers all looking around for this cache.." Honestly, I didn't want to go after it. I was tired from work and I wanted to relax and kick my feet up. But I went after it. I pulled into the parking lot of the small dental clinic and walked up to GZ. It was a micro hidden underneath a lamp post skirt. I was hoping for something a little more challenging but I'd take it. Just then a car came barreling around the corner. The headlights hit me and I stood up with the cache in my hand. I was thinking, "Oh, man! Here they come! Those dreaded, ferocious FTF Hounds are on the prowl!" I looked left and I looked right, desperately trying to find an escape route. I dashed back to my car, still holding the precious cache. The car whizzed by me and took a sharp turn down a side street. Feeew! I was safe. I unscrewed the top of the cache, dug out the fresh log and put "S.W" on there, because, you know the log was so tiny and all. I had placed the cap of the cache in my pocket but I didn't realize it was magnetized and the top actually stuck to my car key ring. When I went searching for the cap, I couldn't find it. My heart started racing. I lost part of the cache! I figured something bad would happen if I didn't get the cache back together, and I was worried that car might return. I struggled to get the tiny log back into the cache because it was so tiny. Blargh! These fricken' micros, I yelled! I could see another car coming. This one just had on its parking lights and was creeping slowly down the street. More FTF Hounds. I had to get out of here. I finally realized the cap was on the key ring, I snapped it off, screwed it back on and ran back across the street. I lifted up the skirt, replaced the cache and ran back to my car. I was sweating bullets. The FTF Hounds were closing in! I quickly logged my find, and later learned no one cared. Not even the CO. I never even received a cool fashionable mention on the cache page. I wanted to take a photo of it saying something cool like, "And Congrats to SeattleWayne for FTF honors!" But nothing. Not even an email. My heart sank. How could this be? I beat out two vicious FTF Hounds to be the first one to sign the log of a new cache that was hidden underneath a lamp post skirt. Maybe one day I'll get the recognition I so deserve. Until then...I'll just have to keep not caring about FTFs.

But of course we should all remember that Yeah, you should keep that in mind. It's a game and the point of the game is to find caches. So go find them, and stop worrying about all that other stuff.

Would your enjoyment of power trails become any smaller if it would be easier for others who do not like the power trails in their area to filter them out? It would make no difference in my life if people were able to filter out power trails or not. I go Caching to cache. Simple as that. At least that's how I understand the game; find caches. So I go find them. If there are 45 along a trail or road, then so be it. If there are three around a mall parking lot, same thing.

Too bad there isn't a search feature that could help weed out micro caches or a map that could help people avoid power trail caching... Geocaching has become too competitive, and geocachers only care about competing for numbers. Maybe we should come up with a way to find the least amount of caches possible. The more DNFs the better. That'll solve that issue.

I solved a puzzle cache by reading previous logs and going to the area only to find an obvious spot where the cache could be and there it was. A find is a find.

Did you read the opening post? Yeah. "I couldn't find it so it has to be missing"

You are are a lucky guy. The game has been designed around your preferences for about a decade. No filtering required, just turn on the app and go. While I do love PT series caches, my most favorite are moderately busy areas in urban environment. I just love geocaching, actually.

Locally, our PT's are along a busy 4 lane highway. I'd be too afraid to walk my dogs and be distracted every 528 feet to find a geocache. I can't imagine pulling on and off the highway back into traffic every 1/10 of a mile not being a safety hazard. I can't even run a PQ without that dreaded PT showing up, there are about 500 or more that clutter up my PQ now. I see the PT as a very negative part of geocaching. LPC's seem to be the popular choice now, but parents of small children may view PT's along highways just as I do, and they are to be avoided. I've never cached along a busy highway for caches. Here in Washington we have paved walking trails that go deep into wooded areas where we can observe nature and listening to babbling brooks, cross over wooden bridges, etc. Its quite refreshing. And my dog loves it because she gets to chase squirrels while I find caches.

Yes, of course. What I argue against is that the reviewer should do whatever we tell him to if the CO is out of the loop. Naturally the cache's situation is more precarious if the CO is not defending it, and that's how it should be, but that doesn't mean the CO being absent is in itself a reason for archiving the cache. It's just a game, anyway.

So after two DNFs the cache is considered missing? Spend more time looking for it, and contact one of the previous cachers who found it for a hint. Ask for container size etc. If you've actually spent some quality time looking for it and contacted someone else for hints and still DNF, contact CO and ask for hint AFTER you've logged your DNF.

The audacity that people have to put a cache under a lamp post in a Fred Meyer parking lot instead of under a beautiful cascading waterfall with baby sea otters frolicking about with a majestic lion on a huge rock on the horizon watching while basking in the sun.

I enjoy Power Trail caches. And there are a lot in my area. I take my dog out and we walk for miles finding caches every 528 feet and it's awesome.

Just be like, "Hey, I didn't appreciate your comment after finding my cache so therefore I'm deleting your log. Feel free to log it again without being offensive" then commence to deleting the log. And if something happens to your cache in retaliation well I suppose you'll just have to deal with that too.

"Everyone is happy" meaning the FTF hounds are happy. No one should have to wait for a cache to be found before they go find it. You were the first to find a cache, wow. That'll go down in the history books of No one cares.

My advice is: make sure you log your Did Not Finds (DNFs). If you don't find it after a valiant search, it's okay. Like most have said, nano caches can be challenging. Once you've found 25-50 and have figured out where typical hides generally are, you ought to move on to more challenging caches. You notice a lot of common hiding spots seem to trend which will summon your inner geo-senses. Good luck.

How's Poland? I want to visit Poland but just don't know when.

Pretty cool story!

I skim the description and browse the logs to make sure there isn't a string of DNFs. I also look at the hint every time if available.

I have only ran across critters...

I would suggest that if you come across a Scout cache or a school project cache that is in bad shape and appears to be abandoned, why not Needs Archived and haul the trash out of the location? I agree with most; maybe geocaching for scouts isn't the best thing for them. Changes need to come from their end.

I gave you a day. Then I sent a private message to the owners, as a courtesy to them. I got a nice thank you note in response, which is what you might have gotten if you'd bothered to contact them in the first place. But I don't want to risk a long, dramatic response here, so tell you what, I'll keep my response short this time: If you come across any of our TBs in the future, feel free to leave them in the cache for someone else. If you need anything else, I'm going to require you to submit the official form through your chain of command, see below. I also got a nice response, and the CO stated that it wasn't a big deal. So that's the end of that. Have a great holiday!

Lol. Yeah, they hate us.

Make sure you log your DNF (Did Not Find). You'll start to notice some of the easier caches are generally hidden in the same spots like guard rails, lamp post skirts, and trees. Like everyone else has stated, start with easy ones so you get an idea of what kind of containers people use for caches in various locations and how they hide them. Earthcaches are fairly simple to get and most COs give you a couple days to answer the questions and send them in. You can also expand your search on just certain caches if you want like Mystery Caches and search difficulty for 1.0-1.5 with a 2.0 terrain. You'll find a lot of easy Mystery Caches that way that are solvable without taking all day. Also, if you have any long walking trails or bike trails there's a good chance there will be someone who laid down a "series" of caches and those are always a good bet that they will be very simple to find and a lot of them. Like 30-50 caches in a series. Those really help boost your numbers. Happy caching!