Lightning Jeff

The clause I omitted above: "... other than a voice-activated global positioning or navigation system that is permanently affixed to the vehicle ..." Is a permanently-installed navigation system "wireless"? And does anyone know of one that can be used for text messaging? "No" on both counts, I'm pretty sure. My take: Don't use your phone to text in the car, but don't worry about using your GPS for navigation. My personal opinion (not legal advice!) is that this law is not written in a way that would extent to use of a GPS (permanently installed or not) for navigation. PN-60 with Spot Communicator. ... is not "permanently affixed to the vehicle." My point was that the clause mentioning GPS is essentially pointless. A PN-60, if used for texting, will not not fall into the "permanently affixed" exception to the prohibition. A PN-60, if used for navigation, is not, by my reading, being used for text messaging, and is therefore just fine.

The reference to GPS in this statute is dumb. The statute is intended to deal with text messaging, only: The clause I omitted above: "... other than a voice-activated global positioning or navigation system that is permanently affixed to the vehicle ..." Is a permanently-installed navigation system "wireless"? And does anyone know of one that can be used for text messaging? "No" on both counts, I'm pretty sure. My take: Don't use your phone to text in the car, but don't worry about using your GPS for navigation. My personal opinion (not legal advice!) is that this law is not written in a way that would extent to use of a GPS (permanently installed or not) for navigation.

Gee, thanks Abby! I get myself in enough trouble as it is. In all seriousness though, I agree - see if you can get law enforcement interested. Park Rangers are law enforcement officers, I believe, so if you have a ranger who has a particular fondness for caching - or, better yet, a particular distaste for theft and (false) vigilantism occurring in his or her park - that might be a very good starting point. I probably have no other valuable insight to offer, but PM me if you think I can help further.

If law enforcement was interested in treating this as theft (as in the recent New York situation), it should be quite trivial to track this person down. As someone else pointed out in the other thread, state park caches are placed with explicit permission of the park, which implies that the state itself views them not as trash or abandoned property, but as personal property allowed to be left temporarily on state land - and thus, I would think, susceptible to being stolen, and the thief susceptible to prosecution as such. Heck, someone with standing (i.e., one of the victims of the theft) could even sue the person as a "John Doe," and then subpoena a couple of companies to get the information needed to fill in the "defendant" line on the lawsuit. Easy and fun!

I've had this rig a couple of years, but the plate is new...

I just (belatedly) added these to those of my caches to which it applies (most of 'em!). Thanks again for your work on this project!

I think they can make the "environmentally friendly" case too based sheerly on numbers. I've never heard of a letterbox site where vegetation was torn up or a rock wall disassembled. I've seen a few, but it's rare. As a broad generalization, I see far fewer geotrails and other signs of search-related damage at letterbox sites. Two reasons: First, many if not most letterboxes have explicit clues leading more or less directly to the container with no need for a broad search area. And second, most letterboxes seem to get a lot less visitors. I agree - similar enough that in my mind cachers and letterboxers should be on the same page on land use issues. But trading is really irrelevant to the damage land managers are concerned about, isn't it? If anything, micros can lead to more damage because the possible hiding places are almost unlimited.

Bah. The agencies I know have amazing lawyers.

Yup. Unfortunately, at least some of the stated reasons were pure hokum and that makes it difficult to address their concern. But do read the earlier posts on this subject. Yes! I think that's due in no small part to people like Abby who calmly and productively work with land managers (versus the approach some of us might be inclined to take ). I have no inside information other than what I learned from my public records request, but the Discovery Park situation still feels like a lost cause. However, it seems like things are looking up elsewhere, relatively speaking. So thanks to the calm heads who work on land access issues on our behalf!

Yep, exactly. They are not trying to exclude legal visitors, including geocachers; they just don't want caches placed in potentially unsafe areas. (Personally, I'm happy to comply!) Yeah, I know about public agency fear of liability, believe me. I just hope this particular bullet point is a short-term concern. Seems kinds of silly to worry about someone climbing out of a canoe if they're not also chasing the illegal squatters out, don't you think?

You know me, I couldn't pass this up: What, HUH? So, people who are using the park property illegally, and are continuing (allowed?) to do so on an ongoing basis, are a motivating factor for excluding visitors who wish to use the park for entirely legal and generally positive activities? I know we don't want to be adversarial with land managers, but I hope there is an opportunity somewhere in the process to point out the subtle irony here.

Not "the" favorite, but definitely a high point of my recent caching: Cephalopod's Garden II in Ocean Shores. The journey is definitely the thing here - I could have spent hours here and I'm sure I missed a lot. I'm not normally a fan of "private property" caches, but this one is totally approachable, you're not on display as you "search," and it's fascinating.

Yeah, I was in there today (to pick up an Oregon 550t - thanks for convincing me, Jon!) and saw that. Boy, is some of that stuff expensive! I can't imagine they're selling many of those Pelican cases - at over $30 each!! They had a little shrink-wrapped collection of 3 nested Lock n Lock caches (complete with tiny log books and golf pencils) for about $20. As I was marveling at that I overheard one of the employees talking enthusiastically about geocaching to a family that was perusing that end cap. I talked to him for a couple of minutes and got the sense that he hadn't done a whole lot of caching (but he had definitely done some), but still it was nice to hear him plugging the game. I think. Now if only we could undo that awful L&O:SVU episode the other day!

As I stated in my previous post, everyone makes mistakes...it happens. Get over it or get another hobby. Hmm.... I'm hesitant to reply, as this is a couple of days old now, but I guess I'll go ahead and throw myself under the dogpile... This remark seems unnecessarily harsh in light of the good faith reason the OP brought the issue up. I think there is an important and real issue here, that being the degree of vigilance with which we as a community (not just reviewers, though they of course have the initial crack at it) are policing ourselves. The cache in question here was not in fact in someone's back yard, but I do regularly see caches published that clearly are on private property, without any indication of permission. That leads to conflicts that can give the game a very bad name. And, that's not much diminished when it's just a case of bad coordinates - if the cache "looks like" it's on private property, some people will attempt to go there for it. I think it threatens our activity to take the blithe position that, well, sometimes "stuff" just happens. At some point that "stuff" could lead to greater regulation if we can't do that job ourselves. OP here did the right thing by posting a DNF log (hey, not everybody does that!) that brought the issue to the CO's attention. I say, kudos!

Yup. As for local news reporting, it is uniformly terrible. I guess we'll see what ends up getting closed off. My point is just that if an area is officially closed, I think that means closed to geocaches.

Fenced or not, a closed sign probably means you're trespassing if you enter. That may or may not ever lead to citations (misdemeanor), but regardless, it's hard to see how we as a community could keep caches active in parks that are officially closed and officially, ostensibly, if not actually, off limits.

By OP's own description, that isn't what's happening here. The property owner has chosen to allow that use, for a fee. And I find it hard to understand what relevance/validity their (perceived) nationality has to the discussion.

After poring through every record Seattle says they have on the issue of geocaching and letterboxing, I've seen no evidence that that was anything more than a myth. If it happened, Seattle has absolutely no record of it. That's a mighty thin reed upon which to build policy, but neither that fact nor anything else seems to have lessened their commitment to it.

I asked because I know the National Parks have entrance fees, but I've never heard of National Forests having them (aside from monuments within them - but not generally). The blurb refers to "Forest Service", the link to NPS - two different agencies and sets of lands.

"Entrance fee"? Is this a waiver of the parking permit requirement, or something else?

That's not true, is it? Keystone (I think) pointed out that if you make your (U.S.) caches PMO now, it's too late to affect what's already included in the 250k preloaded on the Geomate. But I don't think anyone has definitively stated that existing PMO caches are included in the 250k. It would be really nice if someone in the know would answer that question; the silence isn't very reassuring. IF PMO caches are included, some folks may take up pitchforks and such. I also kind of object to various people calling this thing a "POS." I don't mind the terminology, but I don't think we know that term really applies to the Geomate. Actually, the concept of a very low cost, but high-sensitivity, GPSr that is simple to use and can hold a large number of caches is pretty intriguing. If the update add-on (which shouldn't be) turns out to be functional (allowing updates that aren't themselves stale, and allowing a degree of flexibility as far as what is included), this could be a nice kid or grandparent unit - but definitely only in concert with someone/something that has ready access to full cache descriptions and some connection to "the geocaching community" - i.e., at least an account. It's that one piece - selling a boatload of coordinates without the other necessary info - that bothers me about the implementation. But the tech itself might be pretty darn cool.

Not to make too big of a deal out of it, but to me it feels like a bit of a breach of trust. Until a few days ago, everyone who listed a cache here had a very good sense of what would happen to that listing, and who would have access to it. If you listed it as non-PMO, all registered users here could pull up the listing and get the coordinates, and premium members could get a PQ with your cache included. If you listed it as PMO, only premium members could get the coordinates. In either case, nobody who is not registered as a member on geocaching.com could have the coordinates to your cache (isolated sharing with non-members aside). Now, we learn that Joe Blow, who has never logged onto geocaching.com and may never do so, can nevertheless have access to the coordinates of your cache. I'm not saying there's any breach of the terms of service, since I'm sure Groundspeak covered themselves. But it does feel like a breach of trust. Yes, this does concern me. I've looked around the Geomate site quite a bit. Aside from a tiny CITO logo on one of the pages, I see no real discussion of proper etiquette. It goes beyond trading fairly. What about safety/preparedness, and treading lightly? (Stuff like this.) What I do see there are some videos. Yeah, I know they're promotional, but still, they bug me. One shows kids dancing around when they find the ammo box (we don't see what, if anything, they're trampling, but they're in a pretty tight bunch, apparently right where the box was hidden). In another, we see the kids opening a box. In neither case do we see any sign of trade items brought along, though of course the kids are excited, anticipating the fun things they're going to take from the box. And this isn't just aimed at kids in families that already cache, it's aimed at people entirely new to the game. From their product sheet: Ugh. At least they didn't say "hits the ground."

That's only your assumption. They may be people already interested, who may buy the device from the website. Breathe. That may be true for some, but this thing is also on REI store shelves, ready to be purchased on impulse. Do you think more will be sold at REI or shop.Groundspeak.com? I have to say, it really does bother me that those of us who found our way to caching the "hard" way (you know, signing up for a free web site account; learning how to input coordinates into a GPSr) will now be joined by a lowest common denominator group who couldn't, previously, be bothered to do those things. I think the idea of a cheap, high-sensitivity GPSr is great; I know people who would like to cache but feel they can't afford it. But inviting people to hunt my caches ("Individual geocaches are owned by the person(s) who physically placed the geocache and/or submitted the geocache listing to geocaching.com." - Groundspeak's disclaimer) without reading the cache page description, without reading the Getting Started page, and without requiring them to join the community that every person who has placed a cache has joined - the more I think about it the more it bothers me. I want to know more about what comes in the box - is there anything included about the "ethics" of geocaching? And I want to know whether PMO caches are included in the preloaded database. Boy howdy, that would tick me off. If Groundspeak really is a "partner" on this thing, I hope someone will speak up and offer Groundspeak's position. Right now, this is pretty confounding. (The old "offline database" thing is pretty ironic too, but to me doesn't jeopardize the integrity of the game and of my own property the way the stuff discussed above does.)

Moun10bike has directions for downloading MapSource here (see "What if I don't have MapSource?"). It's a two-step, since you have to install Training Center first, but it should work.

It looks like there's data-gathering to be done in the new Paradise Valley Conservation Area. The current NW Trails data for this area doesn't seem to bear much resemblance to the newly published trail map. This area opened to the public sometime in the last week, and there are already two geocaches, a terracache and a series of letterboxes in place. I'm hoping to get to explore it some this weekend, if I can shake my plague.