Rainbow Spirit

I live in western Sydney, and have been caching since June 2008. Like barefootjeff I am noticing less and less cachers hiding caches my area, and in fact less and less in general in the greater Sydney area. I cache more often then most as I am retired and average about 1000 finds a year. For this year I made a new years resolution to try and find 2021 caches for the year, to achieve this I have had to do something like Goldenwattle and travel away from home and spend two or three days in cache rich areas, but even that is getting harder to do. Thankfully our national capitol Canberra has come to my rescue twice so far this year and I'll be back there again once the weather warms up. BTW I have hidden around 280 caches myself, remember if people don't hid, people can't find, so lets try to pay back the game and hid a few more.

I have been using the old geocaching site to check on lists of total finds for myself and others, now it just reverts to the standard search site that has no find lists that I can see. Anyone one have a solution?

Here in Australia all of our local reviewers have posted that no new caches will be published, owing to our government advising people not to travel unless it is for essential purposes. Reviewers are advising us that cachers should not travel to find caches. No mention of whether posts on caches will be honoured or not.

Just a day? How about five days of consecutive disasters? I set out to combine my two loves, sailing and geocaching. First up was the sailing, a racing regatta over two days in Canberra (capital city of Australia), so I had a 300km drive on the Saturday, towing the boat, got to the lake, rigged up and went out in my 14ft boat (NS14), it blew dogs off chains that day, I ended up with the boat upside down and being rescued, the next day was just as bad, but this time I drove a power boat and rescued other sailors. Two days down, now came some relaxing caching, or so I thought. I had loaded a pocket query into my GPSr, so all should be good, but no, out at the edge of my target area, nothing on the GPSr! What the? Just as well I had a back up smartphone that I could use, only trouble was the battery was going flat, so I had to deviate off to get a car charger fitting to keep the phone charged, so not too bad of a day. Day four, off on a power trail out to a small town, going well until... I tap my pocket where I keep my wallet, no wallet! I search backwards along the PT, no wallet*. So off to a larger town to cancel all my cards etc, and have a fight with the RMS (like the DOT in the US) to get a replacement drivers licence Then ring the wife to tell her not to use the cards she has as I have cancelled them... Day five, run into a series of DNFs on a hot day, throw in the towel and drive home... Not my best experience caching. * The wallet was found intact about six months later, under a bridge where I had been caching, and was returned to me by the police.

122, on a smallish power trail, I was alone and driving, and I stopped and signed every cache.

I'm 65 and still enjoy climbing trees to find and set caches, in fact I'm about to buy a telescopic ladder to assist me get up to those sneaky ones that are hard to get to that first branch or two.

There is no need to find the three caches, just load them into your GPSr and go to the sites you want to use. You should be able to see how far you are from each cache on the distance to cache reading on the GPSr, (or smart phone)

I've always liked to think that spies used them for exchanges of microfilms...

The most I have found by myself in a day, sunrise to sunset (about 12 hours), is 122. It was a countryside power trail. I must say it got pretty boring in the end, even with some great scenery.

Mint tins...

I rarely use the new search page, the old one is so much easier and user friendly. Like a lot of people I access the old search page off my favourites on my browser.

I always try to write something specific about the caches I find, even the power trail ones. Of cause I don't know how to cut and paste a log, so...

The usual find rate for me and many others is about 90%. At one cache it took me five visits to eventually find it, and in the mean time between searches others were having no problems finding it! I swear I looked were I eventually found it every time I went there! Just log a DNF and move on...

I used to get exited at a FTF, but now I just realise that every cache I find is the first time I have found it, so who cares who got FTF?

It's really strange, if I go via my (PC) Google 'speed' search (frequently used sites) it comes up straight away on the old search site. If I do a typed search for Geocaching it comes up with the new search site! Maybe I hit a button somewhere and asked for the old site off the 'speed' search? I also did a search for the same location and filters while I had a chance to compare the speed of the two. In my case I searched for traditionals only and ones I hadn't found, on the map display. The old search site took 22 seconds, the new search site took 30 seconds, and I got all traditional caches in the world on the old site, not a radius of 50km, and a restriction of 1000 caches. Guess which one I like best?

Now when I search geocaching, it is back to their old system of searching! What is going on?

Gitchee Gummee, Thanks so much, your instructions did the trick! Loved the simple directions for a computer illiterate like me. By the way I have a PC.

Can anyone help me, it seems I have exceeded the 2000 Geocaches in my Dakota 20,(probably by my inapt attempts to download PQs), and I can't get rid of them! All it shows on screen is 10 available Geocaches (ones I downloaded singularly) , and when I try to add Geocaches one at at time they don't load, Thanks in advance, Rainbow Spirit. By the way I am pretty computer illiterate so dumb it WAY down PS, when I turn on the GPS it comes up with a green download bar, before it shows the full screen.

How does one follow other cachers find histories on the new layout? It used to be easy to just scroll down on the find/hide page to the bottom and type in a cachers name and it would pop up, how do we do that now?

I hate the 50km restriction on your search area, is it possible to extend this?

Would that be any worse than the road worker who built a road and someone died on that road? No one forces us to do dangerous caches, it is our choice to take the risk. I've left a few caches deeming them too dangerous.

Finders on my caches can write as little or as much as they like, I'm not the cache note cop.

Any type of traditional cache is my preferred hunt, with an occasional multi thrown in. I really like interesting containers and well hidden caches. Puzzles, virtuals etc are not for me.

I usually cache one day a week, and download around 30+- caches, all within a days return travel. For me a days travel is a return trip of about 160kms (100 miles). I have almost cleared my local area of caches so I am finding that I have to travel these distances more and more to make a day of it. Twice a year I go off to cities around 200kms (125 miles) to 300kms (187 miles) away and stay overnight for a few days mid week, and I take about 250+- cache downloads with me. That way I can start early and finish late without worry about family commitments.

Thanks for all the replies, I tried a different USB/mini USB cable and that seems to have solved the problem so far.