mimaef

Ah thank you! I will definitely check out your recommendations and keep my eye out for the ones coming from GCC soon.

I'm glad you won't be making them sign up for accounts or actually make their own. Part of the issue we have in my area is a lot of the boy scouts and girl scouts, to get a badge, are supposed to create their own geocache and have a "long term plan" (I think it's supposed to be for up to a year) for how to take care of them for I'm assuming each troop. I don't think I've seen a single one visited to be taken care of maintenance wise afterward, so they fall into disrepair soon after. I've actually stopped visiting them on my map unless they're brand new.

I wish I'd gotten one! They're very cute. My friend, who I introduced to the game, got one though and he's waiting on the mail I believe. There's one that landed a little over an hour from me and TB's tend to migrate north in this weird Michigan trackable loop they can never escape from, so maybe I will see it when it gets here.

I'm in the same camp that I would prefer to have more of the description shown and the immediate visuals of the attributes, as it was in previous version of the app. Otherwise I like the look of it, but need to get used to the new format.

They were only my logs. That may be a difference, but it's odd that it would be different between the two when the mechanic is the same.

I'm surprised by the amount of people who think there is property left in inhabited areas that isn't owned by anyone. It's owned by someone or some organization somewhere, even if it looks empty. Though I'm not surprised, perhaps a little disheartened, by the amount of people who don't check or think to ask for permission when placing a cache. Recently I had asked the local DNR if I could place one at their sign out front, along the road, since the Smokey the Bear sign had been there for decades and was iconic for the extremely small town. While the officers there were super excited over the idea, after taking a week to look into it for me they were disheartened to say it would technically be trespassing on a federal building property and they had to say no. Despite receiving the "no", I think I had a wonderful interaction with the local field office and will likely be able to continue to have a nice relationship with them in the future because of it. If I had just placed the cache there because its "state property and I should be able to do what I want" wouldn't have boded well for anyone. Especially if I'd had to archive the cache after and called them losers..

I recently deleted all my personal logs off one of my TBs and it no longer showed milage. Feel free to repurpose away on that front.

I already have the 2010 coin, but I'd really like to get the first version to make a set (and have two feet!) I'd also be potentially interested in other cryptozoology themed coins, as well as aliens and ufos, on a case-by-case basis. Send me a PM or email. Thanks!

I always check the logs before I go out. A lot of people in my area don't log maintenance issues properly (if at all) and only leave a little note in their found log about how bad the cache was. DNFs aren't always an indicator that a cache is gone. One cache in the area continuously has a string of DNFs because it's that tricky to find its hiding place. I don't read them all word for word, but skim for words that will indicate the current state of the container and if people ran into poison ivy. I likely wouldn't check as much if I was in an urban area with a really high cache density, but being in the country and having to travel for my caches means I usually plan a day out in advance. I always try to find a cache with a bunch of DNFs anyway and take an extra amount of time at them because I find a bit of satisfaction in being able to find a really hard one! If there's enough DNFs and I can't find it either after some time looking, based on previous logs on if the cache is actually a challenge to find or not, then I know it's time for a NM at least.

Have you checked out sites like these too? http://texasgeocaching.com/ http://www.geocachingaustin.com/ There's a bunch of others listed in the Geocaching Austin website too. I bet you could find some events and people through one of those, especially the Texas Geocaching Association. The one up in Michigan is super busy and lists all of the events for the entire state too, including doing their own. Sadly it looks like the association for Houston was shut down, for reasons they don't say. Likely the owner was no longer interested in the game.

I have to vote no as well. If someone needs to get an internet sticker in order to want to maintain their cache, they probably shouldn't be a CO.

Their idea of effort and mine may differ slightly then. I applaud them as well. While there is a place for powertrail hiders in the world and there are people that enjoy them, I have a feeling that a lot of them wouldn't like to be bothered with constantly receiving and checking their virtuals logs and maintaining them. I have seen very few power hiders who actually take care of their caches.

The problem with just going by number of favorite points received (and not ratio) is someone could simply have an exceptionally high amount of hides, where majority likely only have a favorite point or two, if any at all, but the amount of hides alone puts them at the top. I wouldn't say that denotes quality or giving anything to the community if the hides aren't taken care of, leaky messes.

This is a town of less than 3,000 people and very little tourism. I highly doubt they have actual geocaching policies rather than just lump them into some other activity. Even our local DNR field office was unsure of their own policies about geocaching (they didn't know we have a form for our state among other things) when I visited this week as well to ask a question. It's not a place touched much by these kinds of things. I tried to find our parks department out on my own but our city website is "Powered by Wordpress" and less educational than I was hoping. There's zero mention of it aside from the phone number to call that lets you reserve the pavilion and that doesn't go anywhere useful either. For a place so small you'd think it would be easier to locate the answer. I'm likely going to have to do some leg work around town once the weather breaks. Thank you for the link, it's been something I've been going over for a few months now while the winter has been rolling on as reference to where I might want to place my series. I'll definitely be bothering my reviewers. Rusty does all the publishing. I don't mind paying a small fee to hide a cache so they know I am serious about taking care of it. $250 is a little too much though. Thank you for the small business idea. That may be my second stop if it doesn't work out for the river walk park area if I can find another lovely place in town that's connected to a business. I'm more interested in visual location over just placing in town itself.

If a cache is very expensive or hard to make, like many of the gadget caches, I think it'd be a great investment even if you had to replace a battery once a year. Not sure I'd worry too much about an ammo can, personally. If they want to make off with my ammo can and bring in the cutters to break the chain to even remove it then I guess they can have the can.

That's a good idea, I hadn't thought to ask them as well, thank you!

Right? I may go and bother the Chamber of Commerce on Monday to ask them since they have the little library out front. If it turns out they do pay the fee every year, well I guess I'm not placing anywhere in town unless we can work something out with the city, haha.

That's what I'm wondering, if I ended up being referred to the correct person. As for the other caches in a similar area, I have a suspicion that they didn't ask for permission to place on the city park property since they haven't done maintenance in years and only have under 30 finds despite logging in last august. The others have been archived for maintenance problems. So I'm kind of out of luck with asking anyone who hasn't placed on private property.

My local cachers forums aren't very busy so I'll ask here for some thoughts on the situation before I ask the organization for maybe some help with talking to the city. I recently went into my City Hall to ask about placing a nice cache on a river walk, surrounded by woods, within the city. They seemed to have an idea of what geocaching was and told me I had to get a peddler's license for anything I wanted to place on city property. Looking at the license, I would have to pay a $250 a year fee and be considered a solicitor or peddler of goods and services. The game itself, however, is a free and family affair for anyone to join in (though yes there is premium membership and a shop if you so desire) so I suspect this may not quite be right. We have a free little library directly attached to the city's Chamber of Commerce as well and as far as I know they don't pay the solicitor fee either. Does this sound right to you? In Michigan there is a fee to place in state recreational areas, which is waved for members of the Michigan cacher's organization, but even that was only $35. I'm curious if my city may just not have anything else to cover permissions for geocaching so they just lump it into the peddler's license and maybe that might be something we might be able to have a discussion with them about to help foster more family fun activities in the little town. EDIT: Additionally I don't believe I would be able to properly fill out the form anyway, since I don't represent or work for Groundspeak.

Has anyone had experience with these preforms? I'd like to get around that amount for some mystery/puzzle/multicaches I've been planning out to use as stage pieces with just some clues in them for the next stage. Not worried about a log staying dry since they wont contain them, but I am looking for a sturdier, smaller container like these that will do well when the winters roll around. https://www.amazon.com/Soda-Bottle-Preforms-Caps-30/dp/B008MB1QNY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523696826&sr=8-1&keywords=preforms I'm wondering if i might find them cheaper somewhere else.

If it looks like TBs tend to go missing from the cache, don't drop it there. Rural or urban won't really matter. Rural areas they're likely to sit in for a long period of time and that just gives a higher chance they'll end up missing due to cache problems. Urban have the muggle issue more often. I'd suggest putting it in a larger cache, maybe a TB hotel? There's a couple within a 30 minute drive of me, so I'm sure you'd be able to find one.

Well, at least the trackables were ending up someplace else and not just kept, haha. I would just put one of my own trackables in (as I'm planning to do), but depending on the amount of caches they have it might be too expensive. The same here. I grabbed several of them recently that had been sitting there for a long period of time or had very low distance traveled on them to free them. It was funny seeing some I had freed from a different motel (not a hoarder, but not very often visited in the fall-spring season so they can sit for a long time) ended up being plopped in that same hoard cache a day later. At least they aren't disappearing I guess.

I'm curious for the story on how you caught them.

There is one cache about an hour north of me I'm realizing today has every single TB put into it go missing. It's not muggles, because there are plenty of toys and things in there that are left behind and it's just the TBs. I took a peek into it today to see if anyone had picked up a trackable I left in it a few weeks ago out of curiosity because I find it fun to see where some of my favorite TBs I've come across end up going, and noticed it had already gone missing. I wouldn't have left the poor thing in there if I realized at the time it had this problem and wasn't just the typical TB's go missing thing I've seen in plenty of caches all over. The other caches in the area don't seem to have this problem Is this likely a local hoarder grabbing them without logging their visit? We have one hoarder in my area south, which I won't mention, but at least they put them into a cache (with about 50 other TBs logged into it) so others can nab them, but unfortunately with the amount in the cache some have been there since 2016. I can't imagine why someone would only go to this one cache to take the TBs out of either. Maybe the cache is just cursed, haha.

The armchair OM logs would just be a waste of time when the next person shows up and posts a NM log and a reviewer sees it pop up again. I think a mix of automated and hand looked at would be nice, but that would be up to Groundspeak's discretion of reasonable work for their volunteers. Though for a time period, I honestly cannot say. Like @justintim1999 stated, being open and honest with your reviewer could easily help with the situation. There are a few caches here that are disabled for a significant period of time during the year because of rifle hunting season and the safety of cachers in mind, despite the time frame sometimes going beyond the usual allowed date due to weather and other circumstances. It's never been any trouble for the CO or reviewer so long as there's an attempt by the CO to explain their circumstances. I feel the same would be done in these instances.