Car54

WIGASs = plural of WIGAS. More than one WIGAS. Great. So nobody's going to tell me? I see someone has already answered you, but this acronym appeared in post 72. Yes, I actually read all of the responses, including the long-ish ones from Toz. Mrs. Car54

I missed the part where we all "agreed" to your assumption. In fact, I see several people who have posted that in their areas, challenges appeal to many of the locals. I do not understand how you arrived at your conclusion. Please explain how you determined the low level of cachers to which challenges appeal and please explain why you think they should be handled differently from other arguably "niche" cache-types, ie puzzles, Wherigo's, power trails, etc. Mrs. Car54

Who knew we were in the rare 1% of cachers? We (OK, me more so than Mr. Car54) like challenges - they help keep the game interesting to us. Power trails *insert whatever type of cache you dislike* are often lame, poorly maintained, *insert perjorative of choice*. I think it's possible to find both good and bad examples of just about any cache type and I doubt that restricting any one or two given types will result in a sudden upswing in quality of caches. JMHO - YMMV Mrs. Car54

Depending on the date, we, too, might be interested!

So if we Skype in during the event, can we log it as found or do we have to be in the US military to do that?

Hi, jampoi, from a fellow Hoosier! Of the 9 active cache hides of ours, 5 were placed with swag. 3 are earthcaches and one is a micro. We respond promptly to any reports of problem with containers or logs, but swag? Not so much. If we're making a maintenance run anyway, we may update the swag, but we also may not. We actually have very similar concerns to yours. Our oldest grandaughter - currently 17! - used to go caching with us when she was 6-8 years old. We carried swag with us back then, as did she. If there was swag in the cache, we helped her make a good choice about what would be considered a fair trade. If there was no suitable swag in the cache, she could trade with us. That worked out well for us as she was guaranteed to be able to trade - but Grandma & Grandpa had to be willing to put some effort into it. Two of our grandchildren - ages 6 & 8 - were actually caching with their dad in your area last weekend. How many kid-friendly, swag-filled caches have you hidden for them to find and enjoy? Actually, they had a blast and are looking forward to "interviewing" us at Easter dinner about caching, since we've been doing it for longer than they have been alive!

Cool! Thanks for this - have bookmarked the cache for whenever we make it to New Mexico.

How cool! We plan to be in Victoria in late October, so I've bookmarked this cache.

Done.

Bingo! I thought I had avoided that problem by using my home co-ords (don't think there's anything but private property and a cemetery within 528' of our house), but nope, the 2 caches I had ready to go including logbooks with GC codes on them got archived a couple of weeks ago. They had been traveling in our car with us until we can find a good spot - they are both unique containers/hides and need the proper spot. We have traipsed around several areas but hadn't found a place yet. Life gets busy and we end up caching in bursts, if you know what I mean, so we don't really hide very often. Guess I just need to get those caches out of the car and wait until we have more time to cache.

It has gotten worse as others have piled on and the page count is now 328!

Jayme...you've been nothing but a great addition to GS. Thank you for acknowledging this tragedy. IIRC, GS was pretty quiet when the last geocacher death happened. Agree wholeheartedly! Our sympathies to everyone touched by this tragedy.

The thing is That they did not tell us the site is going to be down today or it is down right now. I am not able to get on it either. It has been down for three hours already. Off-line here in Indiana - Eastern time zone - as well. Surely they're not doing an update at 6 am Pacific? Nothing in the announcement forum, either.

I have to wonder, then, why the published guidelines were not updated by TPTB "months ago" to reflect this new requirement? It seems we're hearing more and more about undocumented guidelines... I agree - this sort of communication gap is very frustrating and my perception (admittedly limited) is that it is becoming more frequent. Mrs. Car54

Mrs. Car54 - Lafayette Great Banquet #58 - table of Ruth Mr. Car54 - Lafayette Great Banquet #56 - table of Matthew Since then we have both served on Great Banquet teams and Mr. Car54 has served on a Kairos team. De Colores

Another "older" cacher whose bifocals are having trouble distinguishing the new icons in their gray status.

I know the advice is often given to ask a local reviewer if the co-ords of your proposed cache are clear before you go to a lot of effort setting up a cache. What if the website let you do that? Enter your co-ords and get a "Y/N" for proximity issues. Hmmm, then I suppose it would be possible for cachers to hone in on the location of a puzzle final using that tool. Oh well, I got nothing. Mrs. Car54

The difference, as already mentioned, is that we already KNOW the co-ordinates for all these other "dorky caches" (your words) and can thus avoid them. It's not, "Oh no, I can't put a cache here." It's, "I wonder if there are any puzzle finals here that would prevent me from putting a cache here." Ya, I dig. Mrs. Car54

I just received an e-mail from the IDNR and it included the following info: "Earthcaches will NOT be archived - Groundspeak staff we are working with are communicating with the Earthcache team, and they are aware of what's happening. " I thought I'd share that info for anyone else who might also be wondering as I was. Mrs. Car54

We've still not received any communication, so I'm guessing our earthcaches in Prophetstown SP are somehow exempt?? I'm a bit nervous about the timing because we're going to be out of state about 10 days in early November and wouldn't be able to do anything about our caches while we're gone. Still don't know about virts - just to be safe, we headed down to Portland Arch yesterday to grab the final virt for the Epic History Virtual Challenge. I, too, don't quite understand why there's not more of an outcry. Sensitive areas, sure, enforce some restrictions. Otherwise, isn't one of the purposes of public lands for the enjoyment and recreation of the public. Mr. Car54 for some time now has tongue-in-cheek felt that the purpose of "public" lands was to keep the land "from" the public. So will we all still be eager to hold our spring and fall picnics on IDNR property? How about CITO's? Mrs. Car54

And here I thought it meant "Thanks from the phone" as in a new found it log acronym. Mrs. Car54

So have all cache owners been notfied? We haven't heard anything, so maybe "containerless" caches, ie virts and EC's, won't be archived? Mrs. Car54

Cool! Thanks for that list - will be checking those out soon!

Sorry, I don't understand what you're asking. Can you define what you mean by "put up", and how that specific date and time relates to it? At 15 seconds past 1:14 pm, the date/time will be: 10/11/12 13:14:15 Mrs. Car54