CAVinoGal

This^^ I too, carry a backpack (my "geo-bag") with me when geocaching, and a ziploc has the dozen or so trackables in my inventory so they DO go with me to the caches I visit them to. I visit selectively, usually only once in a new location, or if the place has some significance to the TB's goal (be photographed on islands, or with turtles, etc). I try to get photos when I can to assure theTB owner that I do, in fact, have their TB in my possession and I am moving it along.

You can log a trackable visit from the computer as well, in a couple of different ways. When you are editing or adding a log to a cache, below the log entry is a list of your trackable inventory, with options to Visit, Drop, etc. You can also just go into your trackable inventory, choose one of the TB's, and on the TB page itself log a Visit, Drop, etc.

The cache owner decides whether to make the cache available to all or only premium members. Here's a list of Premium benefits - once you start geocaching seriously, premium membership makes a lot more sense. The added features are definiely a benefit, and at $30 a year, it's well worth it for me. Mobile geocaching: Go geocaching anytime, anywhere — even offline. Learn more about Premium features in the Geocaching® app. Premium-only caches: Find geocaches designated for Premium members only. Advanced search: Sort and filter geocaches to find the perfect one. Lists: Plan your next big adventure. (All the great explorers do it, promise.) Instant notifications: Be the first to know about newly published geocaches. More map types: Select your game board. (New: Trails in the Geocaching® app.) Geocaching stats: Track your D/T ratings, geocache types found, and more. Favorite points: Give kudos to the geocaches you love. Sneak peeks: Get the scoop on new features and souvenir challenges before anyone else. Beyond Geocaching.com: Unlock Premium features on Authorized Developer partner apps.

Yep. I've seen listings with both variations of a T4.5 rating. Sometimes it's "T5 light" and sometimes it's "extreme T4". This one - https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC6PB6X_the-belly-dancer-havacache-series and https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC6PB7N_jamison-havacache-series - both a 4T rating but neither was particularly difficult to find. Seems they combined the T and the D ratings - the only access was by boat, or jetski, or kayak. Shouldn't these be terrain 5 as the description states you need a watercraft to access? They were on the Colorado River, campgrounds and such on the AZ side, but the caches were on the CA side where there was no access except by boat from the river. A fun find, with a pontoon boat full of geocachers and muggles (a family campout and a rented boat!) It would be nice to get the 5T rating though. Once we got to the site, one find was about 1 or 1.5, the other a bit more but still not a 3 OR 4, maybe a 2? How do you get corrections made? NOt that I'm about numbers or filling a grid, but Jamison is more accurately a 5/2 or so, and Belly Dancer is a 5/1 or 1.5.

I was going to report this, as I was not seeing trails this morning as we "plotted"our day. Tonight, when I checked I saw you had responded while we were out. I checked the app on my Google Pixel and the trails are back!

Photobucket on Wednesday also turned back on millions of users’ images that were still linked to around the web. That's the good news for me. I didn't use the service but several locals DID, and their cache listings were broken, showing a speedometer as the background or sometimes crtical puzzle cache images. Theses should all work again for those who never got around to finding a new service. The new pricing structure sounds much more reasonable.

I'm only "amassing" them temporarily, and will drop all or most of them off in either NY or FL, and hopefully pick up a bunch to bring back to CA with me. I fully intend to drop them off, just not right away. And I've cleared my plan with about 80% of the TB owners, they are ok with me hanging on to them in order to give them a lot of mileage.

Lately I've been gathering up trackables in anticipation of a trip to the East Coast - and the gist of these posts is it's OK to take them without dropping off any in return. That's good, because the ones I'm "collecting" want to go to new places, and none of them have been to the areas I am going. I don't want to trade them out, at least here locally. And I want to gather a few more to take with me. Now I will do so with a clear conscience. I guess I was confusing the SWAG convention to trade up or even with the trackable game and felt I needed to swap TB's, even though I have in most cases just taken those I could help on their journey and only dropped off those that I got closer to their goal.

**UPDATE** (for those who are interested) June 5, day 158, and still enjoying the challenge. We recently got an FTF on a cache 1 mile from our house at 7:30 in the morning! Done for the day! I am happy there are a few new geocachers who are hiding new caches for us to find! We are also working on some new hides ourselves. We have a cross country journey coming up in a couple of weeks and will be traveling for 3 weeks with LOTS of new (to us) caches to find. I'm excited! The Spot (GC39 in upstate NY) is on our agenda, and we are both hoping to make it our 1000th find. Got the hotel (a B&B) booked and everything! We have 3 weeks before then to find 93 (for me) and 107 (for hubby) caches. I think it will be awesome if we can do this! It will take a bit of planning but I'm excited about the challenge we are making for ourselves!

OK, thank you StefanD. So Wherigo is simply a platform to use to create a variety of different experiences via an app on your smartphone. Finding a geocache is one of those experiences so there's a Wherigo cache type. And the completion code is not needed (at least for the cartridges I've played) to log the find on geocaching.com. Using the code to "unlock" the cartidge on Wherigo.com allows more options for play and verification that someone has actually played the whole thing. I think I understand it a bit better! Thanks again for taking the time to help me make sense of it all. I'd read some of that but it still wasn't making total sense.

OK, so all the Wherigo's (a whopping 11 of them) I've done I've found via the geocaching .com website, and all have had a completion code that I haven't had to use to log as a "find" on geocaching.com I can see the "smilie" on the app and on geocaching.com, so I know I've done those. I'm still not "getting" the value of a completion code or logging on Wherigo.com. Wherigo's don't have to be geocaches? So they are two separate games that overlap? A Wherigo CAN be a geocache, but not all Wherigo's are geocaches? Is Wherigo a separate game? I'm confused???

Make sure to DROP the trackable into that cache. If it shows in that cache's inventory then you have successfully placed it in that cache for someone else to RETRIEVE.

I (we) recently started playing Wherigo cartridges, and have logged the ones we were able to complete on geocaching.com. We never needed the Completion code we were given at the end of the WIG. That led me to look at Wherigo.com, to see what the Completion code was all about. Then I see you can log on Wherigo.com also, with the code. ??? What is the value in logging twice? The two apps we have used (WhereYouGo and WhereiGeooh) don't give an option for logging (that I could find, but I am still earning my way around the apps), so I would need to log twice, once on geocaching.com, to get the "find" in my stats, and then on Wherigo.com to ... accomplish what, exactly? And what is the completion code for? Thanks for helping me to understand how this all works!

As coachstahly said, look for TB hotels nearby and see what the activity level is on those. Do trackables often get dropped and picked up in a timely manner? Do local cachers use it as a TB drop spot? I like to help trackables move along on their missions, and try to make sure the logs are accurate for as long as they are in my possession. If I want to keep one a bit in order to help fulfill it's mission, I email the TO to see ifthat would be acceptable, or if they just want it to move sooner. Either they don't reply (in which case I'll keep the TB to move it as I like) or they have replied to say that I can keep it for the month or so till I can get it closer to its destination. About 75-80% have responded to me. I don't purposefully seek them out, but I will check to see if there are TB's in caches we are hunting, and look for them if they are supposed to be there. I won't take them if I can't help with the mission, if it's known.

Buying trackables, spending money on official geocaching stuff (such as containers and clothing), and becoming a premium member are three distinctively different actions. When you "buy" a trackable from GC.com, you are essentially buying the right to use that unique code. You can attach it to anything you like; engrave it on a metal washer, 3-D print it and send that out - you paid for the code that you send out with a "mission" or attach to something you carry with you. Once it is out of your possession, you can't control what happens to it. You can only hope other discoverers or cachers play it the same way you want to play it! I recently picked up a travel bug and it had been in "limbo" for 5 years. 5 YEARS! Someone had put it in a cache Jan. 2013 - then there was a note on a cache Mar. 2018, where I found the TB May 2018. I dropped and retrieved in the cache I found it in to put it in my possession, but where it was in the 5 years is a mystery. For the TB owner, prior to the note in March 2018, the TB was missing - no activity at all! And now it's in play again, and I will be taking it traveling with me. I've released a few, knowing they may go missing, but excited to see where they DO go when cachers take care of them. A few things to keep in mind: I prefer to place them in PMO caches if I can, if not - I look for TB hotels that get a lot of activity, and seem to be well maintained by the CO's I look for frequent visits of local cachers for "TB drops" - that's a cache that sees turnover, and TB's moving as intended. No guarantee that your TB will not go missing once it's retrieved from where you carefully place it, if the cacher who picked it up is not as conscientious. But then, once you drop it, it's out of your hands. The point? The fun of watching it travel, with the knowledge that it may not. If you don't like the uncertainty, then the TB side game may not be for you. I enjoy picking them up and moving them along, and giving the TB owners photos and assurances that at least their" baby" is in play and in MY good hands for a bit. But TB's want to move, so I pass them on to another cache or event or cacher - and only hope they will use the same care and diligence that I did.

I picked up a trackable from a cache this morning, Mini Me, whose goal is to be pictured with other Mini-Coopers. It's a Matchbox model of a mini-cooper. As we drove away from the cache, a mini-cooper was following us! He turned off before I could snap a pic, and I hadn't even logged the retrieval yet!

Same here, as I did with the other ones. I guess I will have to "hide" a bunch of souvenirs again in 4 weeks time. I will not change my cache preferences for whatever souvenir anyway. I found I did not have to make any real effort to "earn" the previous souvenirs; my usual caching resulted in receiving them. We did look fro higher favortie points and did more puzzle caches, but it was fun. And I rarely even look at my souvenir page, so no need to "hide" anything. I've been averaging just over 3 cache finds a day, and we will be traveling to the East Coast during this promotion, so again, I'll probably earn all the souvenirs without doing anything different than what I would have done anyway. Except for going to find GC39, The Spot, I'm planning a special trip just for that one!

I'm going to tack on to this thread, as we were having the same / similar issues and I just tried something else and it worked It might help someone else. We've been doing Wherigo only a short time, because I could not get a cartidge to play correctly in either WhereYouGo or Geooh Live. I tried a bunch of stuff and one day it just started working and I have no idea how or what I did. But WhereYouGo works now and hubby and I completed several cartridges successfully. We both have Google Pixel phones, identical except for the color, purchased the same day, same updates, and same settings, same carrier, etc. We both use the phones and the official Geocaching app to geocache, quite successfully, I think. We downloaded WhereYouGo on his phone and tried to download cartidges so he could play along on his own device. It logged in, and gave the same download error as a previous poster shared. Over and over. We uninstalled and reinstalled, we checked settings, we changed folders, we tried Geooh live, all this over a period of a couple of weeks. We could not get cartridges to download, through the app, from the website/browser - nothing worked. Today I downloaded a cartridge to my computer, emailed it to hubby, he opened the email on his phone and downloaded the attached cartridge file. We opened WheriGeooh, and lo and behold, the cartridge showed in the list to "Select a Cartridge" and he could Start with the first location! I then went into the geocaching app, selected another nearby Wherigo, and tried again to download it from the app, and this time it worked! It's like the app had to see another file in there first before it downloaded another. Weird, but now he can play Wherigo files in WheriGeooh and we can see if we like that better than WhereYouGo. WhereYouGo seems clunky at times, we'll compare and see if it's the app, or the cartridges we have been doing. There's only one person in our area who puts them together, so I have no other "authors" to compare to!

How do I participate?Go geocaching and attend events! Earn a point for every cache or event you log. Each Hidden Creature souvenir is valued at a certain number of points. Once you reach that amount, earn the associated souvenir. View your Hidden Creatures progress in the Geocaching® app or on the Hidden Creatures site. Sounds like you can earn all the Hidden Creatures by finding and logging 100 caches/events between June 27 and July 25. We'll be traveling for 2 weeks of that time, which means we will be caching away from our home area and have lots of unfound caches to find! We'll probably get these Hidden Creature souvenirs pretty easily! It would be more of a challenge if we were at home the whole time.

We've used our phones since we started, and the GPS seems to be pretty accurate. We've found a lot of caches in just over a year! We've placed a few as well, and used nothing but the phone GPS to take readings and average them; the system seems to work. We've considered buying a GPS unit; interesting to hear you say you did but don't use it. Can I ask which one you bought? We waver between learning to use a "real" GPS unit, and simply using our phones as they seem to work just fine.

That is incorrect. Ahhh, I see now... https://www.geocaching.com/play/geotours I stand corrected!

Right now the only GeoTour (as I read it) that results in a virtual souvenir is the HQ GeoTour, and it's a test. purplepotter51 asked about "credit" for completing the Butler County Donut GeoTour, so I was answering that. It doesn't look like there is a virtual souvenir at this point for anything other than the HQ GeoTour. What about the physical prizes?Some GeoTours offer geocoins and/or other prizes. Those are unrelated to the completion souvenir.

At each location fill in your Passport with the official GeoTour code word. Complete all of the caches and code words, log your caches at Geocaching.com and we’ll reward you with a SWEET Donut Trail GeoTour coin.* * Stop by or mail completed Passport to: Butler County Visitors Bureau 8756 Union Centre Blvd. West Chester, OH 45069 Limit one coin per team. Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery. For more information, call 513-860-4194 or visit GetToTheBC.com/GeoTour Found this info on a simple Google search. Although I wasn't there, my son, daughter in law, grandson, and a good friend of theirs was there, and sent us a photo that they had done it. They are traveling back today home to Arizona today - I can find out if they applied for or got the coin for completing it. Did you complete the passport and apply for the coin?

Experience, and the guidelines, state the guidelines are 161 meters, and the reviewers are quite firm on this. The "type of location" is not relevant - saturation, and spacing them according o to the guidelines IS. You can ask the reviewer for a "coordinate check" before creating your hide and they will say yes or no. Apparently, you already know there is a cache in place that is too close. TriciaG's suggestion is what I would do, as you can still bring people to that beautiful art, even make them gather information about it and study it, and then take them to the actual cache that DOES fit the guidelines. Our first hide ran into this issue. We found a good hiding spot, crafted a careful camoed container that blended perfectly, hid it, submitted it (and spent quite some time on the write up as well!) and hit the proximity issue with a puzzle cache solution final. We hadn't yet done many (any?) puzzles, and this one was a challenging one. We did it, and went with our son who introduced us to the hobby, to find the final and see just how far it was and where it was in relation to where we wanted to put ours. It was JUST close enough (like 10 or 20 feet too close). And on the other side of a chain link fence and a very wide culvert. You had to walk about 3/10 of a mile, cross a bridge, and backtrack that 3/10 down another path to get to the other cache. We were considering presenting the situation to the reviewer for reconsideration, when my son, who knew the CO well enough to have him on speed dial, called and asked him if he could move his final far enough to get it out of range of ours. To our surprise and great delight, he offered to archive it after we had logged it so we could then publish ours. (Now that we know this active, local CO a bit better, it's not such a surprise that he was so quick to archive the problematic cache; he's a prolific hider, depends a lot on the local community to help with maintenance, and this was an older puzzle that all the locals already had solved and it was unlikely that a casual cacher passing through the area would attempt it). It made for a memorable first hide, and it's still in play! So, there are ways to work within the guidelines and the proximity issues of trying to plant a new cache; asking the owner of a cache that is already in place to archive theirs so you can place yours is, IMO, a bit rude. If they offer, be happy and grateful they did so! But I wouldn't expect that as the first option. I'd see if I could move MINE first, and not even bothe the CO that's too close.

I'm reading this thread with interest, as I am currently on day 145, with a goal of a cache-a-day in 2018. We (hubby and I) started geocaching in March 2017, cached for the enjoyment we got out of fully sharing a hobby with our son and daughter in law (we'd been peripherally involved, but didn't have our own accounts or actually gone out on our own) and were not in it for the numbers or challenges or any of that. As our find count grew, we started exploring Earthcaches, Puzzles, Virtuals, Multi caches, and very recently Wherigo's. We found a cache on the last day of 2017 and the first day of 2018 for the souvenir, just because. And then we thought it would be fun to try and find a cache every day in 2018. We set a goal, and most days we go together; there are days when we have to go individually and find a cache. There are lots of caches around us, with new ones being published daily. We haven't really had a problem with not having any close enough to find. There's a challenge cache for filling the 365 day grid; we should get that done by Dec. 30 this year. 366 will have to wait till 2020. And there's a 400 day challenge that we might just go for once we get to 12/31 - as that will be 367 consecutive days, so what's another 33 days? But we may decide to end it on December 31. We'll see how we feel then. Right now, it's still fun, and challenging. And if life happens and we don't make our goal, we'll keep on caching and say, oh well. In the meantime, it's nice to wake and ask where we are going to go find a cache today?