airedales

Here's a couple: GCVTDG - Newfoundout GCVBER - Foymount

I'm doing a slow burn here. I hope this isn't the start of the commercialization of a wonderful hobby. I hate the fact that they are trying to promote this as a tourist 'attraction'. And putting company logos all over their website. Looking at the sponsership info however, the rate for a basic cache is now only $50 however, the $500 is for the 'Platinum' level.

Neither would I. And I didn't. I've included my original sentence again so you can re-read it. Let me make my point a little clearer then - I have never found any cache out in the open except those from the Ontario GPS Treasure Hunting organisation. All non OGTH caches have been hidden - not in plain view. All OGTH caches are in plain view, they make no attempt to hide their caches at all. Therefore, these are NOT 'good hides' by the OGTH organisation. They are NOT hidden. Having read some other posts from those who like these caches, I've noticed that they are people who live in the areas the caches are hidden. Since I thought the point of the OGTH caches was to attract tourists, they seem to have missed their mark there as well. When I attended the meeting where the OGTH guy was giving his talk on their 'wonderful' program, he stressed that a one day free stay won by a tourist would result in them staying for more than that one day and they'd spend money during their time in the area. But if that one day stay is won by a local, then where's the benefit to the local tourism industry? I appreciate the fact that in area where there are few caches these caches would be liked by the local geocaching population. But since the point of this program is to promote tourism, and the caches are so poorly done, they don't really attract many tourists, do they? I've checked logs for many of these caches in areas where I might actually visit and I find the caches have been visited by only one or two people all this season. And ones with more visitors usually end in a report that they've been muggled and only a bungee cord remains. But the cache will not be disabled, so you'd better read those logs to make sure the cache is still there! My main complaint about these caches is that the groups who sponser them are getting such very poor value for their money. I hope they are reading the cache logs and evaluating on the return they are getting for their investment.

danoshimano posted: "On average, the percentage of good hides out of the 17 is probably higher than the percentage of good hides for all caches in Ontario." I would not call a container bungeed in clear view of all and sundry to be a good hide. I've never seen other caches hidden so badly. Caches are supposed to be HIDDEN, not visible! "As for inferior cache contents, well, golly gee. How many caches have great contents? " I think there are several points to make here - if you go into an area that has four of these caches and plan to do all of them in one session would you be happy to find EXACTLY the same contents in each? Three items? A lot of cachers who find these caches report "took nothing but left.....". In other words, even though $250 is paid for these caches to be placed, there certainly isn't even $2 of contents. The cachers themselves are providing the startup swag. Heck, we aren't caching for the swag, but the fun of the search and then we get some enjoyment at looking at all the objects inside - sometimes we find something useful (I'm wearing a lanyard I found in Old Fart #1) but generally its just fun to see what's inside. I don't think I'd mind these caches if I thought the sponsers were getting value for their money. If they were great caches that people sought out because of the challenge in finding the container and the fun of looking at the contents then the sponsers would get more visitors and would perhaps see some of the 'payoff' that they are seeking. But as it is most of us are ignoring the caches so the only beneficiary is the group that gets the $250! One cacher took her kids out to find a bunch of them and the kids started saying 'not another one of THOSE caches' after several repetitive finds - she concluded that it wasn't worth the gas to go looking for them. And they could at least sharpen the pencils before placing the cache! I had to sharpen my first EOG pencil standing up to my ankles in slush! Hopefully the sponsers are following up by reading the cache logs, and maybe even reading some of the caching forums where people are having these discussions.

Hmm, this is a cumbersome method, but certainly better than nothing. There's dozens of these caches here that I can't be bothered with.... But I'll start 'ignoring' them until I can find another way of doing it. Thanks for the suggestion. Stephanie

I'd very much like to be able to ignore some caches in my area so I don't have to keep deleting them from my queries. I'd like to be able to ignore by user name or perhaps by wildcard 'excludes' on the cache name, since all the caches start with the same sequence of letters. It might also be useful to have other criteria for 'ignoring' caches. Is there a way to do this?

I am also ignoring these caches. I found a few of them early this spring - every hide was the same, the contents of the container were the same, and they hadn't even bothered to sharpen the pencil included to sign the logbook. And, the contents were minimal, a carabiner and a couple of whistles. Gee, I've just found my third of these caches, what should I take this time? Another carabiner? One kind soul went around all the ones in the Limerick Forest and stocked them with swag, but should the caching community be expected to stock caches that the Forest has paid $250 to have placed? (Yes, thats $250 per cache, the price quoted at the meeting I attended where the OGTH people were the keynote speakers). The hiding places were pretty lame - never on an interesting trail, or at a nice picnic spot - just tied onto a tree in the middle of the brush about 30 feet from a road. These are so easy to find it is ridiculous! And what is the incentive to 'Stay'. If it was a nice picnic area or historic site sure, I'll stay for a while, but I'm not to keen to hang out in the brush being bitten by bugs. To my mind the organisers have completely missed the point of geocaching, there's no challenge at all to finding these, no ingenuity in the hides, the containers or the theme of the caches. Also, the description on Groundspeak is always the same too, there's no information to give you a reason why you might want to visit the cache site. I don't want to have to read the story on the sheet in the cache when I'm being eaten alive by bugs - I'd like to see the info on the cache description so I can decide beforehand if I want to pay a visit. I feel the sponsers of these caches are NOT getting their money's worth. It would be so easy for them to set up their own caches and make them much more interesting than they already are. In a word these are BORING. McCaches. A predictable formula that wears thin very quickly.

Thanks for that info - I guess I can save the $180! Fortunately they don't move or build too many new 'backroads' so I'll just keep on using the Canada Enhanced Basemap. Stephanie

Since the Canada Enhanced Basemap for Garmin seems to be discontinued now, I've been wondering of the Topo maps might be a good substitute to get all the backroads. Am I right in thinking I can control the display of the contour lines on my 76S and get just the roads from the Topo maps? And then turn them on when I need them. The other maps from Garmin are useless for rural areas, most of the roads simply aren't there... Stephanie

Hi adrenalinejunky and babygurl! I live in the North Gower area but I'm up in Lanark almost every weekend during the non-winter months on my bike. I prefer the rural caches myself and there are quite a few up where you are. My favourite so far was the Bonnie and Clyde cache! I've seen your signature in a few of the logs recently so howdy, you'll probably see mine as well! Edited to ask: Would the Pork-u-Pine cache be a good place to take a pair of dogs, off leash?? Stephanie

Hi! I've been using my Garmin 76s for about a year now, mostly to find my way around the backroads of eastern Ontario, Canada on my motorcycle, as well as for geocaching. So this question isn't really a geocaching question, but a general use question. I'm trying to get the city and town names to show up. I can always see the teensy little hamlets, but towns don't show at the zoom level I would expect them to. I generally run the unit at the 5km zoom level, and I've experimented with the City tab settings - trying them at Auto, and a higher zoom levels than 5km, but I don't see the names on the screen until I zoom in further. For an example, using Prescott and Brockville (Ontario) - if I change the font sizes I find that Prescott is a 'small town' and Brockville is a 'small city' (I change the font settings and see how the place names change). I can see Prescott at 800m zoom level, and Brockville at 1.2km zoom level. This is no matter what I've set the zoom level to be for these types of towns. I've got Detail set to MOST. Can anyone suggest other settings that might be affecting this display? Stephanie near Ottawa, Canada