Sol seaker

Very good point here. I'd bet this was never even considered. Anyone have R/G colorblindness? Get that in the bug reports quick-like! I don't think colorblindness is a bug. Can't be fixed with an upgrade, sorry.

I for one, will gladly accept your governing body. Other than that, I think things are best left as is. I think I like just a touch of anarchy, and I don't like the competitiveness. Anyway, I'd like to see how fast the Guiness book of world records would get tired of running out and watching every time someone thought they would break the record for finds in a day on a power trail. I could see that getting really old really quick. You realize they'd have to see every cache find, which means jumping out of the car and seeing every signature for 24 hours. Oh yeah, this could be funny with the older judges. Then we will hear all over the forums how the observers slowed them down, that they would ha e gotten so many more, etc. Etc. Such great drama and something new on the forums:maybe I should change my vote.

Please find some caches before jumping into hiding them. There is so much to learn about the game and so much to know that can only be learned by finding them. After a while you'll find out what makes a "good hide" and a "bad hide", and so, so many other things. Some people think it's good to find 100 before jumping into hiding them. That gives you an idea of how much there is to learn here that can only be learned with experience. Look for some caches with many favorite points. That will give you some ideas of a good hide, much sooner than later.

Try looking for a cache that is large to begin with. Try a park with a lot of caches. Look for caches that have a 1 difficulty level. Don't give up, some caches do go missing so look for a lot of them. Look for piles of sticks or other things that might conceal a cache. Look in a 20 foot radius of where your GPS puts you. Looking for your first ones by yourself is tough, but people do it. Try a lot of caches. Soon you'll find one and then the next will get easier. The more you find the easier it will get, so don't give up.

Your summary is good: it's about common sense. Pictures are great and show the cache owner that you appreciated their cache, but a photo that spoils the fun for the next guy is not showing appreciation. I have a cache with a special container that I wanted to be a surprise for people. No one posted a photo for a long time, until just recently. I decided to leave it at this point. It's not a big deal. I know most people don't look at tba cache page, much less the photos until they post a find.

I've gotten a couple of GPSs off of eBay. They have some good deals. Just make sure the seller has a return policy so you don't get stuck with a bad one. Don't get anything over a few years old. Some really old ones are worse than using your maps. Don't get a car GPS either. An inexpensive GPS is often better than a smart phone, and cheaper in the long run. If you can put a few extra bucks out and get a GPS that is "paperless" you will be so much happier in the long run. There are threads on finding a good GPS. I hope someone will link there. Im on my phone and can't right now.

Take a serious look at your life. What is really most important to you in life? When you are on your death bed, what will you look back on and think about? Will you think, "I'm glad I continued that streak, even though my family didn't get their gifts that Christmas" Or will you look at the loving faces of your family around your bed and say, "I'm glad I put my family first"? What's really important here?

I'm very happy about finding 86 in one day. It didn't even take all day. We had a hard time quitting after that but we were pretty tired. We started before noon, and were done in time to go get some dinner. It was a power trail, but one in the woods, which was a lot more fun. The people used very inventive cache names and some really amazing cache containers. Some were absolutely hysterical. (One was a cow mooning) A lot of the caches on that power trail had favorite points, and to me that says a whole lot right there. It was also unusual for a power trail because the reception was really bad. Our GPS's often were 100 feet off from each other. They bounced around really badly and had us looking all over. Not exactly like a desert trail. We continued to find a few after the trail, on our way to dinner. It was funny because one would think we'd had enough for one day, but it was really hard to stop. No leap-frogging, or other tricks. We did use the 3 minute rule. If you don't find it in three minutes, go on to the next. That's about it.

I like what you've done with the cache page. It's very entertaining and approaches the problem in a really funny manner: -This cache is NOT a discarded pizza box. First please note the cache size is listed as micro. That means small. Then please note that the soggy pizza box probably just didn't make it to the nearby garbage can when its previous owner tossed it drunkenly through the air. Hopefully at least you used rubber gloves, hand sanitizer and a face mask while you scraped away moldy old mushrooms looking for a place to scribble your name...? Good one!!!! :laughing: I like someone else's idea of actually describing the container, which I think is a key hider. A lot of caches say what the container is, and it sounds like this one might be a good one to do that with. I think you may have been encountering "throw-downs". Unfortunately the practice of dropping something, or it seems, signing something when you can't find the cache seems to be spreading. People can't seem to be bothered to find the real container anymore. I would delete any "finds" that are from caches without signatures on the real log. No find, no smilie. If they didn't sign the log they didn't find the cache. Simple as that. The game is not about just getting somewhere near the cache and signing whatever you find, it's about finding the cache. I'd email the people first and give them the chance to actually find it, or delete it themselves. If they didn't, then I'd delete it with a nice note with what the cache looks like. This is why they give us the delete button.

I wonder if you're asking about a stamp for geocaching or for letterboxing? For geocaching the stamp would be simple and small to sign small logbooks. It would say his caching name and that would be about it. If he plays letterboxing the stamp would be more detailed, as in the examples in the last post. They would not be limited in size either.

I recently saw someone's stats who had 28 finds that were repeats, out of about 300. I don't remember who it was, it was someone pretty new. I think I noticed they posted 3 finds at once on one cache, and looked at their stats. They had 28 that were multiple finds. Very strange. I didn't know if I should do anything about it. I wouldn't know what to do. I'm not the geocaching police, so I just let it go and even forgot who it was. pretty strange though.

I went looking for a particularly tough to get to cache one day. It was a hairy hike through the woods on an unmaintained trail. It was slow going, fighting sticker bushes and avoiding nettles all the way. There were a few really steep slides that were tough to get down without flying head first. Our reward was a beach that no one ever goes to. We managed to get around a landslide that went into the ocean, with only getting a bit wet, and proceeded to hunt for the cache. My friend, a new cacher, showed me a plastic milk jug with some writing on it. "Nah," I said. "No one uses milk jugs for caches." We searched for some time, and I ended up coming back to the jug for lack of finding anything better. I picked it up and read the writing on it. It was something like, "In memory of Joe Smith. If you find this, smoke one on me, in memory of my brother." In the jug was the biggest joint I'd ever seen, wrapped up in a plastic bag. Unfortunately, it had been out to sea too long and milk jugs aren't waterproof. It was a stinky mess. It was nothing more than an interesting piece of beach debris. I left it for the next crazy who attempted that trail. I figured it would give them something to write on their facebook page that day and give them a reward for making it down that trail. A reward as in something unusual and interesting to find. Nothing more.

I vary a lot. Some days I'm only for the best caches. I like caches on hikes, with great views, or caches that take me somewhere great. Then some days I've just got to either go for it, or fill in the blanks. I just get an itch to find as many as I can. Then other days I need to work at increasing the radius of my pocket queries. I keep pocket queries running of the areas in which I drive on a regular basis. I keep them loaded in my GPS and I'm set to go at any moment. The problem is, the area I normally drive in is bigger than my GPS. I've got some queries planned out, but there are spaces between them. The more caches I find within each query, the larger the radius of the query. I've gotten a couple of them to merge, but then just created a new one I need to merge with an old one. You know what that means: numbers caching!!! Clear 'em out!!! It's a tough job but someone's got to do it!!

I'm not getting anything on that link. sorry. First, take a deep breath and relax. Second, know that this is really common. A great deal of us go through that at the beginning. I didn't find any of the first 20 caches I attempted at all. Now I find most of them really quickly. Now I'm glad for the ones I can't find or the game would get boring. This takes a while to learn to get the hang of it. Really. We see people say the exact same thing as you in these beginner forums all the time. You are not alone. 1. Choose caches that have a really low difficulty rating. Make sure it's not above a 2 difficulty. I've seen some nasty 3's believe it or not. 2. Choose larger size caches. The larger the better. Don't try micros at first. Some micros are incredibly small or very evil. Start out with large size caches if you can. 3. Try finding them in the woods or parks first. City caching by nature, has to be tough to find or they get found accidentally. Go for a walk in the woods if you can. Really large parks can be almost as good. 4. Go with others. More eyes are better. Check out events in your area. If you're signed up for the geocaching.com newsletter it will list events in your area. (If not then sign up for the online newsletter.) You can often find people to cache with there. Doing it with others helps you learn how to do it. There really is a learning curve to this game. 5. Be patient. It does take time to learn this game. The more you do it, and the more you stay in practice at it, the easier it is. I find even if I don't cache for a couple of weeks it gets harder the next time I go out and cache. I find them easier when I stay in practice. If you've never done it, you can't be in practice at it. Be patient. It's okay to not find a lot. Go for the easy ones and it will get easier. Savor the time while it's tough. Soon it will get easier and be less challenging. You will always be able to find tough challenging caches though, don't worry. I find this game has developed my attention and how I see things. I was with some people at a store recently. I suddenly stooped down and dug a little in the dirt in front of the car at the parking lot, next to the concrete parking block. I got dirty looks from the people I was with, and snide remarks. They were embarrassed I guess. I reached down and pulled a 20.00 bill out of the mess there. They hadn't seen it. I know I would not have seen it either if I wasn't a geocacher. I see things now all the time that I would not have noticed before. It takes time to develop this eye. Don't worry about it. It will come.

Well another idea is spelling insurance for that keyboard of yours.

Competition is a great motivator. We would probably lose most of our geocachers in the process, which means less income for the website. To be fair, that money is what has driven this site to be so incredibly user-friendly. You can see the effect of successful cash flow on the way this machine works. Alternatively, without the public find count, there would be only people like you and me, who just want to find a box of goodies every now and then, some nice box in an interesting place. We're like wine connoisseurs; I'm surprised we don't sniff the lid when we open the cache (Ah, 2006. That was a good year). Contrast that to the beer-bong geocachers, who don't care about quality; they just want as much of the stuff as they can get, as fast as they can get it. I still like to think I might be out to find something special. Perhaps I'm being naive. I do think, though, that the only thing that could motivate the site to drive us back from the current state of things is if it leads to a loss of revenue, and so far I don't see that happening...yet. Then, again, my foresight tends to be slightly worse than a coin toss, so don't take my word for it. The fact is there was a time when Groundspeak hid our find counts and everyone screamed. They had to put them back. It was the people screaming for numbers not Groundspeak screaming for money. What do you really think would happen if GS tried to do that again? Do you really think everyone would say, "Oh good, we can finally have the game we want without the numbers?" Do you believe in Santa Claus too?

This cache may have had 145 finds, but that's been since 2007. It has 74 favorites for a good reason, but the fact it only has 74 favorites says this one is way under-visited. This is one of the most extraordinary caches I've ever seen. No, I think it's THE most extraordinary cache I've ever seen. A lot of people skip multis. But the logs show that people come long distances to find this one... for good reason!!! Tubulaire Extraordinaire! No, it's not my cache. My caches are all doing fine. Some get few finds, but I don't mind. Less maintenance.

I thought you had to at least be close to qualifying before you were able to publish a challenge. Is this something new? The cache owner only has 57 puzzle caches total for his entire caching career, and the most he's found in one day is 13 caches of any kind. This guy has no idea what it would take to complete his challenge in a very real kind of way. Have the rules changed so that this is okay?

People in this area generally will log a cache they help place, but not FTF it. When I was FTF on the Ape replacement cache there was a small list of names at the bottom that had a note on it that they would log it once there was an FTF. They left a large space at the top with "FTF" on it. I see no problem with this. I'd rather actually find it myself so I try not to help friends hide caches

There's a great powertrail of puzzle caches only a few hundred miles from me, but unfortunately the final is 2700 miles away. Sorry, I'm out of this one.

Yes, a whole lot of people used to place caches while traveling. That's why they don't allow it anymore. We ended up with a whole lot of caches that were not maintained. If you have a good maintenance plan in place, contact the reviewer, but your family member should probably have a geo-account and be using it. Most non-cachers couldn't be bothered. Perhaps if your family member writes a note to the reviewer, but the fact is they don't want people to place vacation caches. A lot of people used to all the time and it really didn't work out.

I generally agree with your post, but not this statement. I work a full time job. I have 4 kids. In the evenings, I help my wife with her home based business. Yet I still manage to get a FTF every once in awhile. I am not a FTF "hound" by any means, but i do get them every couple of months or so. People who don't get FTF don't get them because they don't try (or don't try hard enough). I could say anyone who hasn't found 2,000 caches or at least 40 terrain 5 caches is lazy too. I guess you just don't try hard enough. We each play our own game our own way. There are many, many ways to play. Just because someone doesn't enjoy the same game you do makes them different, not lazy. If someone has different priorities than you it is no reason to insult them. It's good this game can entertain so many very different types of people who enjoy very different things.

Thou hast committed a sin most foul! I'm just doing my part to turn prophecy into reality. I shall not rest until I have destroyed geocaching. Why don't you go play somewhere else??

Let us all give thanx that this spat occurred, and pray that it expands to the rest of the country. HEY! I just hid the best guardrail cache EVER. Would that be like the cleanest dumpster hide?

It was part of an interview: Q ) "To finish with, a hypothetical. If you could hide one last geocache, what wouldn’t it be and where wouldn’t you put it?" A ) "I wouldn’t hide a tiny geocache in a Wal-Mart parking lot under a metal lamp pole skirt. That’s not my idea of a fun adventure for anyone." The irony in that statement is so sweet that my teeth hurt. Since every cache listed and active adds somewhere between $10 & $20 to Groundspeak's actual sale value at present. Somewhere around $30 & $40 to it's speculated but unoffered sale value. Garmin didn't park its tanks on Groundspeak's lawn for no reason at all ya know. Yep that guardrail micro I just hid is worth exactly the same as Necropolis of Britannia Manor III as listings go. Sorry dude, I've met these guys a couple of times. They are really into this. They are not just out for mass quantity of caches for the bucks. They love this game. They really do want to see the quality kept up. There is a photo somewhere of a reviewer with a gigantic clothes pin on his nose with the caption: publishing another NRV micro." Or something. I've learned attitude comes down from the top in an organization. Jeremy and Bryan have awesome attitudes. It shows when you meet them, but it also shows in the attitudes of those below them. (edit for spelling)