Astro_D

Geez, I haven't encountered any views/scenery that neat yet while benchmarking. But my own little corner of the BM world is flat, boring and doesn't offer much in the way of fantastic views. I am envious!!!! edit: spelling

Stick with it! When we first started, we looked for ones that have been recovered recently and if the data mentions that there is a survey marker sign or post in close proximity. If we could find the survey marker sign, then there's a good chance of finding the BM. Once the BM was found, we "practiced" with the logs -measurements, compass readings etc, to get a better feel of how to read/interpret the data. It gave us a good foundation of what we were looking for and how to go about finding BM. We are now expanding our horizons to attempt to find ones that haven't been recovered in a while. No luck yet, but its been a fun ride so far! Even though I'm fairly new to this, I noticed that this a great group of people here who are always happy to help out. Katrina AstroD-Team

Hmm.... CCD? I think of Charge Coupled Device - that fancy camera thing several people use to take pictures through telescopes....... Seriously, keep the name you have. By standing firm in your resolve (and the obvious support of many here as well), it begins to silence "them". Katrina AstroD-Team

My OPINION is as follows: I know several teams who go into parks after dark when its prohibited just to add another cache find before they call it quits. I don't agree with it. Ignorance (i.e. didn't see a sign, didn't know the park hours etc) on the part of the cacher is NOT a valid excuse to go wandering around after dark in search of geocache - FTF or not. Then to say that the cache owner should post the hours the cache is available on the cache listing? What happened to individual responsibility and common sense? It is the actions of a few bad apples that will ruin this for the rest of us. As a cache owner, if a cacher logs they were at my cache after permitted hours, I would delete the log (thankfully, I never had too). I'm not in the habit of condoning illegal activity.

I held an event last year that received the support of the city of Green Bay and the Brown County Historical Society! Why? Every cache that was placed showcased the rich history of our city and some of the surrounding communities. It took well over six months to research the history of the little known places, obtain permission for some historic areas (houses, state park grounds, City Hall and historic businesses), but it was well worth it. Cachers got to cache and explore the history of one of the oldest settlements in Wisconsin. To keep in the spirit of geocaching, we offered an "Intro to Geocaching" seminar before the event (had 25 attend) and a potluck dinner at the end of the day. Oh boy the stories that were told.... This event was so successful (150+ people attended), that I was asked to do another event this year. I would like to think it was sucessful in part because it offered more than finding an event cache in the woods at a local park. (Not that there's anything wrong with that)!

I have done several "evil monkey" caches. They all require the cacher to climb up 10 -15 feet in the tree to retrieve the micro cache container. Some of these have used fishing line tied around a nearby branch to secure the cache if it should be ejected from the knot hole.

AstroD-Team is compromised of me at 33, my hubby at 35 and our son age 7. Those teams we usually cache with are much older than us. Weird, I have not encountered too many "young" cachers unless they are the chlidren of geocachers.

This is somewhat common in our area. We have some caches that have been temp disabled for over a year now! We take it upon ourselves to email the owner of the cache and if we get no response and its been awhile - we submit a SBA with the stated reasons (too long disabled, no response from owner etc). Our approvers do a pretty good job of getting those caches archived and off the listing. I realize that some caches have extenuating circumstances that require it to be temp disabled a good portion of the year in our area (ie under water thats frozen), but I think anything longer than 3 months without any attention, needs to be archived.

Thank you Holograph. Maybe I'll just start sending reports to the NGS. Katrina AstroD-Team

I am new to benchmarking (32 finds) and saw this topic. First off, I never knew average people could make reports to the NGS. We've just been logging them on GC.com In relation to the Geocachers Recovery map in a previous post, I clicked on it and loaded the files for extreme challenges and double challenges. Two BM listed on the challenges file for Brown County, WI was found by us this past weekend. Obviously they were found previously as there was the witness post with the bright pink ribbon next to it. I was surprised to see that Brown County, WI hasn't any shading on said map as many BM have been logged. Is this because they are not being reported to the NGS? Thanks for putting up with my stupid questions. I am finding that hunting BMs is much more fun than finding tupperware! Katrina AstroD-Team Green Bay, WI

We have a team that is taking TB's from caches and never recording them (they are well near 100 finds). They have a bogus email account with geocaching as it is always bouncing back so no one can get a hold of them. I have a TB listed on our cache page which was taken by this team (as they recorded in the logbook at the cache, but never on the website log). If I mark it as missing will it be removed from our cache page listing? Kat AstroD-Team