Cooter and BJ

I've been involved in the hunt for two caches lately where I asked that same question... was it hidden too well? The first one is GC1AP35. My in-laws have taken up caching after going with us several times, and they're usually pretty good at finding stuff. They had looked for this one a couple of weeks before we all tried it together, and couldn't find stage 1. When we found stage 1, they said they'd looked in that same place and it wasn't there (it was laying out in the open when we found it). In between searches, the owner posted a verification that stage 1 was still there. Stage 2 has a hint, and between the hint, 4 pairs of cachers and 4 kids (everyone knows the kids are much better at it than adults!) and about an hour of searching we came up empty handed. This is a two star difficulty. I posted a DNF with the story, and no one has looked for it since. With all those people and all that time, I strongly suspect stage 2 is missing, or else buried - literally. It had a lot of finds in the beginning, and no one said stage 2 was difficult. The other one is GC154R5. I haven't logged a DNF on it yet because I'm not sure quite what to say. From the description and difficulty rating, it should be pretty much a park and grab. Between 4 of us and about 45 minutes of searching we came up with nothing. We combed every inch of that LP. The base is not a standard skirt-lifter. It has screws that have to be removed, which obviously have been removed several times before. We took it completely apart (yes, we put it back together), and came up empty handed. We also had a police officer drive by while we were standing there with the thing all taken apart. He slammed on his brakes and put his car in reverse like he was going to come back to see what we were doing, then took off in the original direction he was heading. I don't know if he had a call, or what, but I wasn't sure how much he'd like our explanation. It's pretty rare for us to have a DNF. I'm obsessive - I'll keep working on it until I come up with it. There's some things I avoid, like nanos in the woods, for example, because I don't like looking for a needle in a haystack. I prefer something like a fake water faucet that is in a place where it looks and feels real. That's the kind of difficulty I like. I mostly prefer walks in the woods though - the best part of geocaching is the new scenery, and how many things/places we've found that we never knew existed.

I think I figured out at least where a couple of the caches were that disappeared. There's a sanctuary near here that has (had?) a ton of caches in it, including a brand new one. I was just looking at the listings, and I know we found either 2 or 3 back in that sanctuary, but now I don't see any found back there. From looking at the map, I know there's at least 3 that are missing (1 we never got a chance to look for, so I know that wasn't part of our count). There used to be 7 back there, and there's only 4 on the map now. If you look at N 42° 15.542 W 085° 46.977 on the map, you'll see the area. There was one that was over toward Woodview, and one that was basically right on top of 24th Street (near where Oak Leaves comes in). The other one that's missing was kind of in the center of the sanctuary, as I recall, and would appear on the map to be between the three traditionals that remain. Very odd that they just disappeared. Oh well.

I kind of wondered if something like this had happened. Unfortunately, I've never kept a list anywhere of what caches I've found. The best I could do probably is go back into my GPS and look there. Oh well.

I'm having a similar problem. I would swear that on 6/21, one of those caches was number 150. Now it's showing 148. (Yeah, I don't have nearly enough time to go caching!) It looks like about 4 caches are suddenly missing. I've never gotten any deleted log messages, either. Is there any such thing? Is there any way to see if any of my logs have been deleted?

huh, I'll see if I got a copy, if not then I'll check my drafts folder! Hey BlueDeuce - I got your email - if you want to drop the cacher who left my bug on the ground a "friendly" email, go for it. I've thought about it more than once, but I just can't think of anything nice to say. On that note, I got a really weird email today about someone's geocoin that's apparently been picked up by a newbie cacher (who only found one cache), and now the owner of the coin is emailing everyone who found the cache on that same day as the newbie to ask them if they know the newbie cacher, and can remind that person to please move the coin along. I have to wonder if they ever bothered to email the newbie cacher - and no, I don't know the person. Heh. Took me about 5 reads to even figure out what the heck was going on! Oh well.

Hrm. I didn't get an email from you, BlueDeuce. I get all kinds of email from the site, so I don't know why it wouldn't have gone through. I wonder if the "send email" thing is kind of buggy?

I'm sure this isn't the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever done, but it definitely is high up on the list. I decided to launch my (only) travel bug in Arizona while visiting down there in March. I thought I'd just try one out to see if it was worth doing anymore because I know they don't always move along as planned. The person who grabbed it from the cache I put it in didn't know how to log it, and posted the tag number in their log! I politely emailed them, explained how to log it, and said it's considered bad form to post the tag number. He was nice about it, took the tag out, but still didn't log it. Another month went by, and he finally logs it out of the cache it was in. He said he was going to take it to Georgia at the end of April. A few days ago, I get some emails with some new activity. Turns out he gave it to a friend, who apparently dumped it on the ground somewhere in Texas. He logged a "did not find" on a cache, and put this in the post, along with logging the travel bug into that cache: "2 dissapointing days in a row. I left a travel bug within 50 ft down hill near a lg bag of trash I collected from the area. Some one bring a trash bag for trash out part. Trashiest area I've seen in TX. No clues here" I really want to email him, but I just don't see the point. I can't even fathom what this person could have been thinking. I'm guessing my travel bug is pretty much done for... if it's sitting with a bag of trash, I'm guessing it will become part of the trash before anyone can go looking for it someplace 50 feet away from the coords! Is it really that difficult to maybe take some time to find out the rules of the game before you start playing? *sigh* Oh well.