DLSeeAmerica

I went for a cache in a park, where a policeman was parked 100' or so away on his lunch break. Found the film can in a tree, but had left my pen in the truck. I started walking back to my truck, film canister in hand. Policeman met me halfway to the truck. "Whatcha got there, buddy? Drugs?" *heart leapt into throat* "No sir, it's a container for a log for a GPS game called geocaching." "I know, I was just messin' with you." He watched me sign and return the log, chatting the whole time. I didn't think it was funny, but I didn't tell him that.

I'm with you, Andy... just to lend a little moral support.

That would be great if this were hard facts, but we're dealing with opinions. I think for the now the raw count tells enough. There's always the chance that a person might not like a cache regardless of raw count or ratio. All the favorites number is meant to be is an indication of a greater possibility, not a mathematically proven absolute. This ain't rocket surgery. "Raw count tells you very little compared to the ratio" is an opinion? Tell it to my math professors.

Elementary statistics. Raw count tells you very little compared to the ratio. Why has been explained in excrutiating detail, repeatedly.

I've got a somewhat similar situation. I travel a lot, and end up being somewhere for anywhere from a day to a couple of months. Consistently, I see Found It logs that mention bad containers or wet logs, yet I almost never see a NM log entered. I always post both a Found It and an NM log if the cache needs maintenance, so the owner can't miss it. Why do so many not bother? Also, in a lot of places I find listings for easy caches that have a number of DNFs over several months, yet they're still active. The few I've tried have inevitably led to DNFs. Needs Maintenances isn't really appropriate, I guess, but there should be some way to notify the owner that they should confirm the cache is still there. With no NMs listed, I tend to think NA is probably overkill; if it was called Needs Reviewer Attention, I might consider that option. I throw these on my ignore list these days. Has anybody got a better idea?

GC2KRT0 is the first in a power trail of 87 caches in Florida called Bone Valley.

I found my first 17 caches in the fall of 2007. Fast forward three years for cache number 18. Over 1000 days without a find. Yeah, my stats look a little funny, but OTOH, they're accurate.

I expect that over time, people will start thinking of it as "best of the last 10." After my usual day, I'll have one or two votes available. I'll pick the one or two caches that stood out from the others on that trip. Over time, I think it will be a very useful figure. We travel fulltime in a fifth wheel, so when they get this fully implemented, it will be a wonderful thing for people like us. Visiting a new area with limited time, I can go for the cream of the crop.

Yes, I'm sure. I don't have greasemonkey.

I noticed there's a column for the favorites rating on the "nearest caches list" page. When I clicked it, it sorted the nearest caches by their rating. There were already some 2s and quite a few 1s, I guess from people marking some of their very favorites. It should get much better over time.

Power Rating = SUM ALL(Cache found * D * T) So a 1/1 cache is worth 1 point; a 5/5 cache is worth 25. Twenty-five 2/2s are worth 100 1/1s. Or twenty 2.5/2s or eleven 3/3s. That levels the playing ground a bit. I've got 106 finds, and according to MyGeocachingProfile.com, I average 1.65/1.54 for difficulty/terrain. That makes my Power Rating 269. (106*1.65*1.54)

From your profile page, find Create a Route under User Routes on the right-hand side of the page; scroll down to find it. Click twice on the displayed map to pick start and end points. Move the points around as necessary to get them where you want them. Change the search radius at the bottom of the page to what you want, then click Save Route Changes. From there it's very similar to any pocket query. You get to enter a name and description before saving the PQ.

Full-timing for three years here. Did a little geocaching in 2007, then picked it back up this summer. Now traveling with two other geocachers, so we're doing quite a bit more. Looking forward to a trip from FL to CA next summer; we'll hit caches in over a dozen different states. We've also gotten the first two of the 50-state challenge. It's very easy to change your home coordinates using the map from your profile page. I change my home coordinates to wherever the camper's sitting, and then my pocket queries work from the new location. I also use the Google Earth geocaching extension to get a look at the terrain around the new location.

Great tip, dfx. Now if only GS would add a button to do that...

It's really easy with the route feature, which seems to be Google Maps standard. You can add additional points, so just put the start and end a bit apart, grab the line and drag a new point in. Then arrange the points as you need them to make a loop. You can add more than one point. It's on the right-click menu, I think. ETA: No right-click menu, just grab the line in the middle and drag it somewhere. That adds a midpoint. You can add as many midpoints as you need. Move the ends very close together to form the loop. As someone said above, get it the way you want it before you save the query, there's no do-overs.

After reading this whole thread, I think I know what I'll do if faced with a CITO cache. I'll replace the container with an appropriate one from the car, then post a maintenance log, reporting I found the cache contents stuck in a piece of trash, so somebody apparently stole the container, so I replaced it. That way the cache owner learns it wasn't an appropriate cache, without condemning him for it.

We were in Yellowstone last summer, and all I can say is people are stoopid. They seemed to think Bison were just furry cows, and docile cows at that. We actually saw people posing their kids near them for photos. And this was in late June, when the calves were still being protected. We saw one get separated from his buds by traffic, and he then proceeded to jump up and down in protest -- all four feet off the ground, with snorts and bellows to go along with it. I was glad to be inside a large pickup truck, although I'm not sure that would have been all that helpful if he'd decided he wanted in. We were 20-30 feet away, and could feel the ground shake over the vibration of the diesel. I'm betting the people behind us, who were even closer and looking up at him from their mini-cooper, had to change their shorts.

Make a pocket query out of the bookmark list. Then on the pocket query page, click the "preview in Google Maps" button.

I took the same thing today. Except I forgot my cell phone and pen. Still found 14 caches.

We're full-timing in a fifth-wheel. We both use the net a lot, so we put a Hughes.Net dish on the roof. We're out of cell phone range for several months each year, but we're still on the net. Overall, I've been satisfied with the service given the technical limitations.

The History Channel might be a cool partner for this. It would be fun to visit a site I'd seen explored on a show.

The biggest issue I can see is that the Waymarking site is extremely limited in usability when it comes to finding WayMarks. "Search in Google Maps" is missing, and that's the number one tool I use for finding caches. Being able to browse along a route and bookmark my choices would make me a much more frequent visitor to that site.