bernsa

I am also an active county hunter, though I have gaps in my logs going back about 2-3 years. Once everything is logged up and proper I stand in the 1174 neighborhood (1173 now that Bedford City, VA was folded into Bedford county). My goal is actually 2 in each with a 3rd for good luck. I know Alaska is going to be the ruin of me, I've got a lot of the easy ones down, but some of the more remote ones are going to be brutal to get to. Kalaweo in Hawaii might revert back to Maui once its last resident passes on. I'm kind of hoping the county status will disappear when that happens or it opens up to tourism/development at that time. http://mob-rule.com/user-gifs/bernsa.gif is a great map I refer to as it's fairly high resolution. I am based near Washington, DC. Counties will remain a key caching goal for me, and I don't really cache much on the local scene relatively speaking. My style is to hop an airplane somewhere and clean out a region. Getting tougher and tougher as I squeeze myself out of the Mid-Atlantic to do much else out of my home base. Many of my map holes are intended to be reached from certain airports (Hudson Valley - ALB, SYR, BDL) - Central Ohio (CLE, CVG), North Carolina (CLT, RDU, GSO). I've also been striving to connect my blobs together.. the Texas-Colorado blob was intentional to link up what had been a hard hit area near Austin to the "Great Western Blob" as I call it. I've been stretching my Mid-Atlantic blob south and west with good intention of creating a link to at least Birmingham, AL. Where the bridge between East and West will happen, I'm stil uncertain. Kansas City - Chicago - Fort Wayne looks like an easy gap - as does the Sioux Falls to Des Moines option. But New Orleans to Austin is quite possible too with a short linkage through Birmingham. I only recently linked in the Kansas Doughnut to the western blob and connected what were random isolated mess in the Dakotas to a new Dakota box where I had a friend with me who's patience was dearly tested in my OCD to get as many counties as possible. I hope to eliminate that baby blue as much as possible. I tried to celebrate my 1,000th county (or as much as one can say it was the 1,000th find) in Mills County, TX but the event I had was a bust. I plan to do my 2,000th county in Mills County, Iowa. At my current rate, I cover about 200 counties a year - so I've got a lot of time left (~20 years) who knows if Caching will be around that long? FWIW I still work full time, though some good friends do wonder about that sometimes. Since I don't expect any more new ones this year, I figured for next year I want to focus on Minnesota/Wisconsin for a bit - Minnesota is my "lite" state with only 3 finds and Wisconsin is still untouched by any metric I have. (Not even an airport visit or the like). There's no particular reason why I haven't gotten to the "middle" of the country other than the $/airline mileage earning ratio is quite poor for this region. I have visited the 4 major Hawaiian counties P.C. (Pre-caching). Also there are many counties where the caching is quite barren... Portions of Appalachian Kentucky are rough area in topography, and cache availability as well as diversity. Likewise there are suprisingly sparse areas in Northern Missouri and perhaps not so surprisingly in the Dakotas. It's not just the fact that a cache is listed... it has to really also be findable and loggable (not a forgotten mush of paper that has 4 DNFs on it - which was the biggest problem in some areas, such as Appalachian Kentucky I've seen. I have to say my favorite places have consistently been the open plains and western mountains. Texas, Colorado, Western Nebraska, The Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Alaska have been great so far. My experience has led me to think it's more difficult to cache in Florida and Appalachia. I can tell you I have a greater appreciation for our country having taken on such a challenge. It's great to see all the places, some popular and some hidden gems all over. I understand how a lot of our lands are all connected.. and the transitional areas between them. How does the landscape vary from Cincinnati to Charlotte... or Austin up to Denver and over to the Pacific Ocean. How difficult was it for the likes of the Corps of Discovery, the Mormon Trail, Oregon Trail, Santa Fe trail goers. I've geocached a lot - but I can't imagine trekking on foot across these landscapes in the days before automobiles and trains and airplanes.

I posted my angle and ultimately failed to steer the discussion in any way.

So when I saw the topic - I was reminded of this activitiy I did a little over a year ago while on my way to cache in the San Francisco area: I happened to recognize where we were flying and took a few snapshots and compared them to my finds (using GSAK)as I made my way across the country. Made for interesting use of time while in flight. No GPS was used in flight. I call this Geocaching on a commercial flight.

Hey buzzard boy, are you laying a trap for me????

Coldgears: I urge you to carefully reconsider hiding this series. Ericles and Ekitt10 have made excellent and factual points and I reiterate them for emphasis: 1) This most certainly would not be the first powertrail or even roadside powertrail in NJ 2) The locals (at least those who are very active in the area) have come out and said the trail is unwelcome on points of style, safety concern, as well as private property concerns. 3) Expecting community maintenance is grounds that if the reviewer ever found out that was your plan would have enough reason to not publish them. Don't expect the locals to do it for you they've made their feelings known. 4) You're likely to find your caches on many people's ignore lists should this come to fruition. You won't be receivng much praise. 5) I am of the theory that fun and interesting caches are much more doing than a series of caches thrown down at a regular distance. Have something unique or interesting or humor associated with them. This offers nothing more than an opportunity to stop every hundred feet on a dangerous road where I'm likely to not be welcomed by the adjacent property owners. Just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should. 6) County 537 is a dangerous road with limited shoulders and pull offs and IIRC - plenty of No Parking signs. My own points: I won't be shy that this has zero appeal to me. I know 537 quite well and it simply is a very poor fit for powertrail purposes. In full disclosure, I'm a known critic of powertrails, and as an example I only found 5 caches on the ET series in Nevada and mocked it entirely while doing so if my physical logs remained longer than a week in their respective caches, but in defense of the ET - it was far more suitable to a power trail than 537 is. And note in that case the many concerns the local jurisdictions had over the series that were required to be addressed. With that in mind, I sincerely ask that you think about these questions I have (i.e. don't feel you need to respond): 1) Why do you think this is a good idea? 2) What is the "point" of this cache series? To highlight a nice part of NJ or to provide people an opportunity to run up numbers? a) If the latter, there are much better places including a number of rail-trails and state forests that don't involve real safety and property concerns 3) Is this purely self-promotion? 4) Who is your target cacher? 5) Are you prepared for the social blowback that you likely might face from the locals who have not been shy in voicing their opposition? 6) Your video reveals some rather derrogatory views of NJ. Is this just an expression of those feelings? If you find New Jersey is so boring, I'm sure your attitude may be adjusted if you attended one of the regular events in either Central, Northern, or Southern NJ or checked out the local GO groups websites/facebook pages you will find plenty of interesting and notable caches to do. I can think of a number of caches created by the locals above, as well as several regions, e.g. Watchung reservation and Wharton with some interesting and exciting caching opportunities. 7) What do you think (assuming you care) about the potential risk to the reputation of geocaching in the communities along this highway should an incident occur while someone pursues this series?

Yup... Thanks to those hamsters I got 'em!!!! Thanks Hamsters!

Since the website update, I created and enabled 2 brand-new route PQs that haven't run... I also ran a brand-new area PQ which ran with no issues... Anyone else having a problem getting the system to return their Route based PQs?

Never mind - found the forum for website concerns now... swear it wasn't there a minute ago.

Since the website update, I created and enabled 2 brand-new route PQs that haven't run... I also ran a brand-new area PQ which ran with no issues... Anyone else having a problem getting the system to return their Route based PQs? Would post in the feedback section, but I can't find it anymore.

The Enchanted Mountains Geotrail. That's located in Cattaraugus County, NY Just north of McKean County, Pennsylvania. Overall I did not find that one as satisfing as a series, although individually the caches are pretty nice, just not in the context for a tourism directed geotrail. There is a coin that you can get, but it is not trackable as well as wooden nickles for each cache you find. All of those can be redeemed through the mail or the county's website or in person. It is implemented as a series of keywords in which you must find each and every cache (31 at the moment - although normally its 32) to get the coin. That's where the geotrail sort of fails, as some of the caches are extrememly difficult - 3 in particular are somewhat notoriously so. I'm not knocking those 3 caches - they are actually great caches in a stand-alone context, but are inappropriate to a geotrail where the county told me they had expectations of caches falling within 2/2 guidelines. As a whole the trail AVERAGES at 2/2 but I would give at least one cache in the series 4/5 ratings and another 3/4 ratings. I shared my feedback with the county, and hopefully some changes will be made to make the series more appealing to a broader audience of cachers, in particular to relax the number of caches required, however don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen as again - that's my personal opinion. Many of the cachers who helped set up the AGT also set up caches for this series as well. The Phantastic Phils puzzle in Punxsutawney is recreated in Olean as the Woodland in the City cache. I believe most, if not all, are ammo cans. Overall, it has a similar feel to AGT though the prizes are inferior and the requirements are an order of magnitude more difficult. That series took approximately 3-4 days to complete due to the higher terrain of many of the caches in the series. I hope to write up a longer review about it when I get another burst of writers energy.

I have done both and I would rank both very high in terms of quality, perhaps giving the edge to the Seaway Trail. I found the Seaway Trail caches were in terrific locations and were fairly solid in quality, without being ridiculously difficult. If you're doing it for the coins, I think the Seaway Trails are among the best I own, not that the AGT coins aren't great either. Consider also that the AGT is likely to be hit extremely hard for GW9. Passport demand has been through the roof according to my informal discussions with the Oil Region Alliance. Right now AGT is viable (I cannot speak to ST's viability at the moment). Last night, I wrote up a lengthy review of AGT for my two affiliated caching organizations - It can be found here: Allegheny Geotrail (Review) - on NoVAGo.org If I were to choose, I'd go ST over AGT, but recognize that post-GW9 the AGT coins may be done for (This is my own personal opinion).

I have not tested out any of my trackables until theres some sort of update, but yes, logging caches in order, the trackable map is placing them in reverse order. One good example to look at is: http://www.geocaching.com/track/map_gm.aspx?ID=1112809 and compare that to http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.as...6f-4aabababafa4 You'll see the map page and the log page are showing up in completely different orders. I logged the coin with the following actions: 1. I picked this trackable up at FSC2010-Hartley (marked as 3 on the map on April 10 2. I dropped/"Dipped" the coin in the Delaware Delorme Geocache (marked as 2 on the map) on April 10 3. I retreived the coin from the Delaware Delorme Groache (marked 2 on the map) on April 10 4. I Placed the coin in Special Olympics (marked as 4 on the map) on April 11. The issue comes with coins picked up/dropped off on the same day. I have no comfort in logging caches with personal trackables as a result and cannot begin to tackle my logging backlog. I'm still waiting for some sort of concept of when this will be fixed so I can begin to log caches again.

Nate, pardon my lack of insight in your software release schedule, but when you say "next release" is that a hotfix or is that a next major update to the website ALA Next Month?

As this is for now holding me up in terms of logging caches - Any timeframe for when this might be fixed? Hotfix or major?

I have 2 Route PQ's in the queue I need for Sunday that appear to be Stuck TOO!

Wait am I one of those... I log -- just am super slow in doing so

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