TeamTrekkerz

It's not that I mind paying to be a premium member, it's just the fact that they have made virtually no improvements. At least not in the 4+ years that I've been a member.

So here's GS reply: Request Update Hello Darrell, Thank you for your feedback and suggestion, we appreciate your time. Best Regards, Community Relations Specialist I'm sure they appreciate my money even more. IMHO GS is becoming a real joke. Why pay for a premium membership if they are just going to keep doing away with stuff???

I got the standard form letter back from GS when I asked the reasoning behind getting rid of anything to do with Challenges, so I sent them the following reply: I'm having a little bit of trouble understanding why you would retire something that people obviously enjoy. Each time that I would get on the Challenge page, there were challenges being completed WORLDWIDE. Virtual Caches - Gone but still logable. Moved to Waymarking.com Webcam Caches - Gone but still logable. Moved to Waymarking.com Locationless Caches - Gone but still logable. Moved to Waymarking.com Project A.P.E. Cache = Gone but still logable Now Geocache Challenges - Gone On the Groundspeak cache type page : http://www.geocaching.com/about/cache_types.aspx Geocache Challenges are still listed and it states "Challenges are not technically geocaches, but you do earn a smiley for completing them." Therefor Geocache Challenges should still be logable, just no new challenges accepted. It appears that Groundspeak is very good at getting rid of cache types yet never adding any new cache types. I've been a member since 2008 and I have yet to see one new cache type. And your plaque that reads “Let’s make better mistakes tomorrow.” makes absolutely no sense. Maybe change it to read "Learning from yesterdays mistakes" makes a lot more sense. Maybe have Cache type contest open to all GS members to come up with some new cache types. Then all members could vote on them. Just a suggestion to make GS better. I'm sure that if I get any reply at all it'll be another form letter since GS is obviously to busy getting rid of stuff to actually write a reply.

I love finding lonely caches. Especially if the last few cachers didn't find it way back when. Anybody can get a FTF but finding a forgotten cache is even better. Poor little lost caches need love too...

The only time that I archive a cache is when it is physically missing and I always check to make sure it's actually gone. I've had a couple hides where cachers couldn't find it and logged it as a needs maintenance, only to go check and sure enough, it's right where it was supposed to be. From now on if I find an archived container, I'm gonna take it and re-use it.

We have a couple hardcore cachers who only leave their caches out for anywhere from a few months to a few years then archive them. This is all well and good since they hid the caches in the first place but they archive the listing BUT leave the cache. Meaning that the cache is physically still there. Personally I don't archive caches that are still being found but if I do archive it I retrieve the cache to re-use. Kinda like a CITO. What's everybodies take on this? I kinda see it a litering but maybe that's just me.

I'd say that this is a tricky subject at best. I think the best way to avoid potential law breaking is to USE ATTRIBUTES which a lot of owners do not do. I personally have a couple Nighttime only caches that because of high muggle activity can only be safely found at night but that is listed on the attributes of the cache. As for the park issue, if an owner is concerned about after hours activity they can always include something like this: "Park hours are XX - XX and is patrolled by rangers and the police so please obey the law." Other than that you can't really control when or how cachers look for your cache. Sure, most of us cache using common sense but there are some cachers who are totally clueless when it comes to common sense. Another way to avoid this situation if you're too concerned about it is to not put caches in parks. There's plenty of other locations to make some fantastic hides. Personally I don't like placing caches in parks because of muggle activity and since most parks close at dusk you know that there are some cachers who will go for it even if it's midnight just to be the FTF. Most of my hides are out in the country for that exact fact.

I know but I bet that there will still be a huge increase in hides when we get really close.

We may have 3,000,000 users BUT alot are not active cachers. I did some checking (since I have nothing better to do): The 500K user has SIX finds and no hides, The 1M user has ZERO finds or hides, The 1.5M use has ONE find and no hides, The 1.75M use has ZERO hides or finds, The 2M user has ZERO hides and finds, The 2.5M user has ZERO hides and finds, and The 3M user has ZERO hides and finds (although they just registered). So, saying that geocaching.com has 3M users is kind of a miss statement. I wonder if people are registering new accounts just so they could be the 1M, 2M, 3M user...

I've never ran into anybody on my night caching but we have during the daytime. Especially on FTFs. It's kinda fun to be looking and have someone pull up and ask "Ya found it yet". Then after you find it you stand around and gab for an hour.

Well, what I "meant" was the 1,000,000th ACTIVE cache. Yes, I know that there are way over 1M caches that have been hidden over the years but to my knowledge we haven't yet hit 1M active caches.

I wonder who will be the lucky cacher to place the 1,000,000th cache. I know that I have a few that I'm saving. Good Luck to all of the fellow hiders out there.

Hi Beau, If you check out the small local hiking, fishing, or mining shops in Roseburg I'd bet someone would be willing to make a deal with you. If not Ebay would be your best bet. Personally I use a Magellan Explorist 210. It was a VERY cheap GPS but it's accuracy can't be beat. They can still be picked up on Ebay for around $100 - $125. Magellan still has updates on their website for them as well. Hope this helps, Darrell AKA Team Trekkerz

You evidently misunderstand and did not read the instructions! There are only 10 balloons nation-wide so your being remote is no more a disadvantage than for anyone else. The contest is about communications - and you can do this just as well from home, nay, much better from home on FaceBook, Twitter and other 'social media' tools. You still have time... get involved! I did read the instructions. If you would have read MY post you would have seen that I acknowledged the fact that there were only 10 ballons NATIONWIDE. The nearest ballon to my location was 245 miles away. A vast majority of states didn't even have balloons in them. The plains states had ZERO. To me getting involved is actually having a chance to see a balloon. Furthermore, allowing MIT to find the balloons should be against the rules. MIT does R&D for the military which should have made them exempt from participating. All that I meant in my original post was if you wanna get more people involved make it a little more fair for those of us who do not live in major metropolitan areas.

Here's my only problem with this contest. I live in rural Southern Oregon. We have a TON of geocachers around here who would love to get involved but I can almost guarantee that there won't be a balloon within hundreds of miles of us. Only having 10 balloons in a country this big is very unfair to us country folk. What would have been alot more fair would have been to put multiple amounts of the same balloon number all across the country. At least a few in every state BUT any individual could only log the location of ONE of each number for a total of ten logs. That way a ton more people would have gotten involved. Possibly even people who have never heard of geocaching would get curious and maybe join our ranks. Just my $.02 Darrell