Sammydogs

We are so unhappy and disappointed to hear that benchmarks will no longer be on geocaching. It is part of geocaching to us and we enjoy finding them and have put in a photo for every one we have found. It is fun to find benchmarks and even exciting if they are old or haven't been found in a long time. We had a goal of finding 1,000 and now our count is 947 benchmarks. So now there is not enough time to find 53 more. Of course, after we had reached our goal, we planned on continuing hunting for benchmarks. It takes extra effort and research to find a benchmark. First you have to find ones in the area you are going. We used the link to nearby benchmarks on a cache page to find ones where we would be geocaching. Then sifted through them to find ones we thought we could find. We printed photos, if available, of the ones we were going to try to find because sometimes the cords were not exactly right and we had to "hunt" for them. After we found one, then we took a photo and posted it and our find log on geocaching. It was very satisfying to find them. Beside not having benchmarks to find anymore, it doesn't seem right that our benchmark statistics, photos and logs will just be gone. With benchmarks gone from Geocaching, if we try to find them on Waypoints, how will we know which ones we have found? We know if geocaching has decided to get rid of benchmarks, they will. It won't matter that some geocachers love finding them and will be quite sad. It won't matter that to some an important part of the game is gone. It seems that benchmarks just don't matter anymore. That's too bad.

Since the new list was launched my wifes MAC only gets a blank page to print now and my Windows can only print one page. If you make the page bigger you lose most of your list and if you have like a hundred in your list you still only get the first page of about 8 caches and the print is way to small. When we go on a trip we enjoy having our bookmark list with special notes printed, but now that is not possiable and just being only able to look at the list on a tiny phone screen is just not practical. Please make the old list an option for those who don't cache with their phone, but use a real GPS and carry their list with them. Disappointed in the new change that doesn't work period.

The new Search is so lacking the flexibility of the old search. #1 Only 30 mile max range, where before no limit #2 only can search in one state at a time, compared to all states and countries before #3 the search as it is now is pretty useless to most of us that have been using the original for years and years with no complaints. Why change something that is not broken. If you want to fix something that is broken, bring back Virtuals, web cams and allow pictures as proof. Everyone on the planet with a phone has a camera or a real camera they carry. #4 one more complaint, I see no use for lab caches, they are just dumb and don't count as a real cache so what's the point to have them at all.

There used to be a whole month of Events listed, but lately Events are being missed because they are listed after the Event has happened. Where is the old news letter that gave us all the info on Events and caches out to 100 miles. Events were listed the same week they were published. Now we have to run a pocket query every week so we don't miss them. Also why are smart phone users getting the news letter days before the E-mail news letter, sometimes we don't get it at all, only the geocaching blogs is weekly now?

There is a Souvenir for 10-10-10 and 12-12-12, what happened to 11-11-11 ? And how about a Souvenir for 10-11-12-13, 10th month-October, 11th day at 12 noon or midnight, 2013

Finaly the new maps work for PQ's, but we lost the scale of feet/miles when you zoom in, no way to see how far it is beween caches. Need the 1" scale at bottom to show the distance again, like the old maps.