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mimaef

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Posts posted by mimaef

  1. On 5/25/2018 at 7:42 AM, fox-and-the-hound said:

    There are quite a large number of cryptozoology based coins out there and probably at least a dozen bigfoot based ones in particular.  The latest ones I know of are the Ts'emekwes from the Geocoin Club last fall, the Wendigo from GCC in February (might still be available) and there are another 2 coming up in the next couple months from the same.  Not sure if you can still find them readily, but there's also a Daoine Sidhe, White Hart, Yeti and Jack Frost out there, too.  I'm a fan of all things mythical so I've spent quite a bit of time designing around this theme.

     

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

  2.  

    3 hours ago, StumblinMonk said:

    I was going to try find a way to use CITO to clean up a park and use it as a teaching point there.  As for creating a cache, My initial thought was to have each den make one, but now I think I am going to use one of my larger ammo cans and ask them to contribute swag for it, and name it after the pack. 

    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.

    • Upvote 2
  3. 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.

  4. 1 hour ago, cerberus1 said:

    That's odd...  Were they all your logs only? 

    In the  Help Center , it does say, "When you delete a log, the count associated with that log is decreased. However, deleting logs does not affect trackable location or mileage, or any action associated with the log (deleting an archive log does not unarchive a cache page).

     

     

    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.

  5. 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..

    • Upvote 3
  6. 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.

    • Upvote 2
  7. 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.

    • Upvote 1
  8. 32 minutes ago, fizzymagic said:

    From the reactions of local cachers I saw, high-numbers-placed cachers felt that they deserved a virtual because of all the effort they put into their hides.  My impression (and it's only that) is that virtual rewards were given to cachers who had hidden and maintained a relatively small number of high-quality caches.

    I, for one, applaud that HQ rewarded non-powertrail hiders.

    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.

    • Upvote 3
  9. 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.

    • Upvote 2
  10. 6 hours ago, cerberus1 said:

    Similar to others, I'd be real surprised if any head of parks and recreation didn't know about geocaching today. 

    We attended many local government meetings years ago about geocaching, introducing them to the hobby. Some took us months of meetings to finally get them to "trust us" with this odd hobby.  Now years later, most areas (even the cities) have a parks department (that open space, health thing you know...),  and a simple stop gives you whatever geocaching policies they have in their area.   :)

    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.

    5 hours ago, noncentric said:

    Just realized that none of us has mentioned this resource yet.  Geocaching Wiki for Michigan

    It's a good idea to read the entire page, but certainly look at 1.8 and 1.9 to see if the area you're thinking of is listed there.

    Additionally, at the upper-right of the page are the Reviewers for your state, in case you are unsure of whom to reach out to.

    Good luck!

    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.

    8 hours ago, Mockingbird559 said:

    I wouldn't give the city any money for hiding a cache. -snip- Cache Happy

     

    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.

  11. 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. :lol:

  12. 1 minute ago, barefootjeff said:

    It might be worth asking your local reviewer for their take on it. I know the ones here are well versed in what places require explicit permission and what don't.

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

  13. 4 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

    Wow, that doesn't sound right to me! And you're right about the forms...how could you possibly fill them out? That in itself is a clue that something is amiss. I'd do some further checking. Thanks for sharing all this information, too.

    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.

    • Upvote 1
  14. 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.

  15. 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.

  16. 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.

  17. 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.

    • Upvote 1
  18. 4 minutes ago, cerberus1 said:

    We  noticed a CO was taking trackables from his own caches when they'd get logged in.  Turns out (in a couple FTFs) that they used those trackables to "start off" every new cache they put out.  That seemed piggish to me...  

    Though "the same cache" could be hit by anyone local, as you experienced, the couple times we've seen a cache with a ton of trackables in it ("motels" mostly), many trackables were placed inside by that CO.  Hoarder.   We'd sometimes grab a handful of trackables just to free them, and head to a different area the following weekend.  :) 

     

    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. :P

    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.

  19. On 3/3/2018 at 10:41 PM, cerberus1 said:

    Unlike a car or something with as many parts, an ammo can doesn't have any  spots to hide something like that.

    "In deep forests", I'd simply use a sturdy chain and lock.  Not many interested in them if the handle's ruined for some reason.  

     One premium member stealing ammo cans was caught by us. 

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

    • Upvote 2
  20. 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.

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