GeoMeerkats

Your post intrigued me so I looked at your profile, the geocoin page and the profile of westcoastwarrior. You aren't going to find that geocoin for many reasons. All of that happened in 2007. Why think that after five years a geocoin can be tracked down? Why wait so long? westcoastwarrior has never even found any geocaches according to their profile. Again, according to their profile, they've never been to any events, I seriously doubt that anybody is going to know who they are. I have my fingers crossed that you have some good luck but, personally, I doubt you'll get anywhere in your search. You can try contacting Groundspeak and tell them the story and hope that they'll send the info to the police but I doubt the cops will do anything to hunt down a geocoin found in a puddle five years ago. Best of luck!

Have you looked for a cache page for the GPS Maze? That's where you'd log a find, not on the museum's website. I doubt the museum even knows that geocachers can log a find for it. As CanadaKate said, we were able to log a find for the maze at the Best of the Bad Mega - WestCan 1 in Alberta last July.

Aloha, we are visiting the Big Island. What are the must do caches, must see sights, must do activities, etc? Mahalo GeoMeerkats from Canada

Too bad we can't make it. Like t4e, we will be at the Best of the Bad Mega in Alberta GC2GA1J http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GC2GA1J during that time.

I like the idea. It's not much different than some meet & greet events or the monthly pizza & beer event that we have here at a local restaurant. I suggest that you both wear TB dog tags so you can be "discovered" by the geocachers in the crowd. Geocaching has proven to be a big part of our relationship too and this would be a beautiful way to honour the role geocaching has played in your lives. If I lived there, I'd certainly attend even though I've never met either one of you before. Congratulations on the upcoming wedding and keep on cachin'!

Great idea FC. I'll try that.

I've been trying to contact ClarkeCachers but with no success since they don't have a contact link on their profile. If anyone knows how to get in touch with them, please either let me know how or have them contact me through my geocaching profile. Or if anybody has any suggestions, please let me know. Thanks. Mr. GeoMeerkats

Found coin numbered S077 in Lying Mathematician GCQ9ET

Concerns have been expressed recently about the policy regarding geocaching in Fish Creek Provincial Park. Several posts have stated that Park Wardens are removing geocaches and several geocachers have disabled or archived their hides. I recently posted a query on the Alberta government website and received the following reply: Thank you for contacting Alberta Tourism, Parks and Recreation. Sandra Myers, a senior program/policy planner for Alberta Parks is the lead on a working group established to discuss issues and concerns related to geocaching in Alberta’s parks and protected areas. The end result will be development of a program statement that outlines Alberta Parks' position on geocaching. We are moving forward with our discussions and would be very interested in obtaining your input. Please set up a time to speak with Sandra on the phone. She can be reached at 780- 427-1742; or, if Sandra isn't available, you may also contact Maria Lynn, who is working with her on the policy - Maria can be reached at 780- 427-3120. Thank you for contacting us - we look forward to speaking with you. Alberta Tourism, Parks and Recreation I spoke to Maria Lynn this afternoon and she repeated the statement that the Parks Department is currently developing a policy regarding the placement of geocaches in provincial parks. We discussed environmental concerns, such as people going off designated trails, trampling vegetation, causing erosion and so forth. However, Ms Lynn gave geocachers credit for generally being environmentally responsible and sponsoring events such as Cache In Trash Out. It is not their intent to interfere with recreational activities or people's enjoyment of provincial parks. Her group has been in contact with people from geocaching.com and local geocaching groups for input into the policy and they hope to have a position published within the next month or so. The Parks Department intends to set up a user name and post a page on geocaching.com where the policy will be available. Ms Lynn was not aware of any policy on the part of Fish Creek management to remove geocaches from within the park boundaries, but she said the park staff may be acting on their own initiative without any guidance from Alberta Tourism, Parks and Recreation. She said she would check into that and get back to me with an answer. In the meantime, there is an opportunity for geocachers to influence government policy. Please contact the working group at the numbers listed above to express your concerns. Sandra Myers will be out of the office until March 10, but Ms Lynn is available. GW

That should be an easy one for you. What is more important to you - your friend or only a possible FTF?

What difference does the cache description make or where it is located as long as it is located in a CLEAN, SAFE PLACE (ie: not someplace that is a mini garbage dump and needs a CITO or near where homeless people camp - Calgary cachers are you listening?) How many people read the cache description indepth anyway? I think most cachers download the caches in bulk for a certain area and go out caching without looking at or remembering what the description was for that particular cache. Sometimes we have printouts when we go caching but usually we don't. When we do have printouts, when we are at the site, we just skim through the cache description for the cache size, a possible hint and any other useful info so most of the info contained in the cache desription is irrellevant and ignored anyway. I thought the point of caching was to find caches that someone else has hidden. If nobody hid caches because they were afraid they might be considered "lame" by a judgemental few, you'd be sitting at home every night instead of out caching, having fun, enjoying the season and getting some exercise. As long as the cache location is clean and safe, I'm happy to get another smiley. Cache on! (lame or not!)

While I'm not familiar with Kamloops so I can't offer any specific cache or hike suggestions, I do suggest that you keep the dog on a leash so you can control if it goes in muddy areas or wades into a creek, etc. I hope it helps.

I thought they were archived but they must be temporarily disabled. Also, how long can a cache be temporarily disabled before it is archived? There must be some sort of time limit on it.

I don't understand the obsession with signing the log if it's full. Surely you can squeeze your initials on a log sheet somewhere and note on the website that the log is full, it needs replacing and you only had room to squeeze your initials on the sheet, (or abreviated form of your caching name.) Also take a photo of the cache to prove that you were actually there and post it with your log entry on the website. I don't see that finding a full log is the end of the world. The important thing is that you were there and you found the cache. I didn't like the idea of all of the self-promoting you seemed to be doing in the name of doing a good deed. I also think that if YOU take someone's log, it is YOUR responsibility to contact the cache owner (not the other way around,) because they didn't ask you to take their log, you took that responsibilty upon yourself to do so, so you should also take the responsibility to return the log to them at your expense. Not everyone is going to want to give you their private contact information or mailing address so that they can get their log back, which wasn't your responsibility to take in the first place. By being so "helpful" you could be depriving a cache owner of their own cache logs if they don't want to give out their personal information to a stranger. Not everyone is willing to meet face-to-face with a stranger to get a logbook back either. Adding pencils, extra log books, extra log sheets, a pencil sharpener, fresh baggies, etc. is totally acceptable but taking log books and sheets, just doesn't seem right. Cache owners who aren't interested in properly maintaining their caches now, are more than likely not gong to be maintaining their cache in the future either so it seems like a good idea for them to either give the cache to someone else to permanently care for or to archive it. Just my opinion.

The ability to hide archived caches when searching and on maps would be nice.

I missed getting the Friday weekly e-mail as well two weeks ago. Last Friday's came through though.

I never once thought about it. It's possible my TB has traveled in and out of a PMOC. I don't know that it's ever been in a restricted cache. However your preemptive complaint may or may not be a waste of your time. If it moves you wasted your rant. If it doesn't, you won't know until later. If it moves along quickly then great! If it doesn't, then that proves my point. Either way, I've made people think about where they're dropping off TBs and to keep them moving along as quickly as possible for the fun and enjoyment of everyone.

What do you think of these people logging "finds" where they note that they were there when the cache was placed. How is that a "find"? Should it qualify as a "find"? Did they have to actually hunt for it like every other "finder"? What do the rest of you think?

My geocaching partner put out his first TB and it was picked up from the cache and has finally been placed in a preium members only cache. I'm upset on his behalf. We're both eager to see his TB travel the world and this person has already hung on to the TB for two weeks and now who knows how long it's going to take for the TB to be moved from this "restricted" cache. How do other TB and geocoin owners feel when their TBs or geocoins are placed in restricted caches?

When I downloaded geocaches to the unit from geocaching.com, they used to show up in both the geocache folder and the waypoints folder. Each geocache would have the treasure chest symbol and the name of the cache in the notes section of the display. When I found the cache, I could click enter and the symbol would change from the closed chest to an open chest. The geocache would disappear from the geocache folder, but remain in the waypoints folder. Now, for some unknown reason, it doesn't do that anymore. It just downloads them as waypoints, with a blue dot for a symbol, no notes, no name, nothing. GCXXX doesn't really mean a lot to me, it's much easier to go by the name of the cache. I've been through all the setup options in the menu, tried to change symbols, looked through the owner's manual, Garmin website, geocaching.com, did a Google search. I haven't found an answer. Obviously I changed something in the settings so it's not doing what it used to do, but I'm at a loss to know what. Can anyone help?

My suggestion would be not to use GPSrs, just make it a treasure hunt or scavenger hunt with clues written down on paper. 4 & 5 year olds seem a bit young to be using GPSrs.

This week people all across Canada will be participating in the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup! If your cache goes missing this week, this maybe what happened to it. For more information: http://www.vanaqua.org/cleanup/home.php