Sol seaker

about two weeks ago, I went out with a friend to get a FTF, we spent 30 min looking and came up empty. Another local cacher came by shortly after and scooped up the FTF. GRRRRR grrrr I had this happen. I searched with another cacher for a FTF for an hour. I looked in one place many times. I didn't have a mirror. I was convinced that had to be the spot, but as much as I searched there, I couldn't it. The other cacher couldn't either. We finally gave up. Upon searching again later, twice I searched and looked again in "that spot." DNF. Finally I talked to one of the many finders. Yes, it is exactly where I thought it was and couldn't find it there many times. I'm going out and buying a mirror this week

As a Facebook user, do you understand that members of a group can sign up to receive notifications when someone posts to the group's page? Reviewers are allowed to be members of Facebook groups about geocaching. We are geocachers, too. So, when you made your post, any reviewer who was signed up for notifications would have received your post directly in their email. Upon receiving information directly from a geocacher (your Facebook post), what's a reviewer to do? You "tattled" directly to that reviewer's email inbox when you posted about your defacement of the tree. AGAIN: I take responsibility for doing the wrong thing, however, it would have been "nicer" if the Facebook user sent me a private message stating my mistake and I could have corrected it. As it stands now, the cache is archived/disabled. When my husband and I have a moment, we will replace it at another location sans defacement of the surrounding area. You absolutely missed my point. Looking over my prior post, I think I omitted one thing you need to know. (Sorry about that.) When a reviewer learns facts about a cache issue in another reviewer's territory, our normal operating protocol is for the first reviewer to contact the reviewer for the area where the cache is. So, in this example, the first reviewer (the one you keep calling a "tattle tale") received your statement in his email inbox. Following protocol, he advised the reviewer privately about the information he received. Your home area reviewer then advised you privately of the impact on your cache review. That was the right thing to do, to have the right reviewer communicate with you. "Tattling" would have occurred if either of those reviewers came here and started a forum thread called "look what LVDJ did." We don't do that. Thank you for the clarification. It is my OPINION, that if a reviewer sees/reads something on Facebook, then it should be off limits to use that information in approving/denying the cache publication. However, I realize we live in a computer mediated society, and college admissions offices look at Facebook before accepting a student and employers use Facebook before offering a position to a potential employee. Again, I think, strictly my opinion, the fair, kind and proper thing to do in my situation was for the person who "reported me" to the reviewer could have taken a more kind and gentler approach. To be clear, I was "reported" as per what the reviewer sent to me. To look at it in a different way, if a child does something wrong, would it be better to yell, and scream and discipline the child? or would it be more conducive to point out what the child did wrong, make it a learning process, and hopefully the child will carry the lesson with them. Of course, there are different scenarios, so lets save the back and forth. Plainly, it would have been nicer and more conducive for the Facebook person to have corrected me, not to report me. End of story.I have learned my lesson, however, by the wrong approach. The point you're missing, is that it's not within the geocaching guidelines. When you get mad at the person who reported you, whoever it is, you're blaming someone else for what you yourself did. You're saying, "It's their fault I didn't get away with breaking the guidelines!" You're the one who broke the guidelines. If the reviewer hadn't found out this way, a cacher would have reported it. Cachers report caches that break the guidelines. If it wasn't the reviewer, it would have been a cacher. Take responsibility for your actions that could only end in turning someone into a "tattletale". These rules are in place for a reason. One new cacher sees your tree and goes out and carves a live tree. The people who run the park find out why the tree was carved and bans caches from all the parks in the city. Etc. etc. The results of your actions could have had far reaching consequences. Thank the reviewer who kept worse from happening.

I agree. And let's archive all regular caches that require thinking too. Heck, too many of them require you to think. Maybe we should all stay home and watch TV.

I been to one that I still cant find! Yes, its way under rated. UGH!! http://coord.info/GC1HGVX Yeah, that's a great one. It's a 1/1 yet has 24 DNFs and 49 finds with a lot of them having a tough time. At least you're not alone in this one. There was one cache I DNFed that was a 1.5 and everyone before and after me seemed to have no problem. The annoying thing was I found a 4 difficulty cache right after it, then went back later and still couldn't find it. After many newbies raved about its simplicity I didn't log the next DNF.

Do you remember any of the missing caches? Were they all from one area or one cache owner? Can you give us any more info about them?

Marsha, thanks for your enthusiasm in being responsible with the caches you find. There are often cachers who do not maintain their caches. You did well to come here first to the forums to check things out. It seems that we had a reviewer check the situation for us, and it looks like this particular situation is alright. To someone new, it looks suspicious, but in time you'll be able to tell the difference. There are many cache owners who maintain hundreds of caches very well, while there are some who do a bad job of maintaining five. In the future, look for long lists of DNF logs on caches (did not find logs). There are some caches out there that haven't been found in over a year and are still there and being maintained. Relax and have some fun for a while. In time you can pick up on doing your part in making sure that the caches you visit are in good shape for the next guy. Thank you for caring, Sol

I agree a stake sounds like it violates the guideline about not using a sharp pointy object. A plastic bag is hardly a container. I've seen a couple, but I do have to wonder how many of them previously had containers. I keep meaning to carry a container for when I find plastic bags. It seems whenever I have a container on hand I don't find them. I've found a log in an empty chapstick container a few times. I'm surprised someone hasn't thrown it away as trash before I get there. But that is a container at least.

I put out a travel bug that was a sort of a 8 legged dragon thing, and someone just reported that it's now a Sierra Nevada Brewing Company bottle opener. Earlier on in it's travels someone reported that it's actually some popular animated character that I'm not aware of, so I'm surprised it really lasted this long. When I set out my bugs I let go of them, knowing I'll never see them again, so I'm not really bothered by this. In fact, I'm glad it got traded out, and something else put on the travel tag rather than it just be stolen outright. It's got a lot of miles on it and I can still see the miles pile up at this point. I'm just curious if this happens often. I haven't had any travel bugs get as far as this one so I've never seen this happen: trading travel bugs. curious. The guy who reported it said it came in handy. I guess at least I have a useful travel bug now. :laughing: (Edit for funny spelling error)

Funny dog. :laughing: I've had a lot of geocaching dreams. Mostly when I first started caching. I haven't had any for a while. Either that or they're not standing out anymore. I did a power trail in the woods recently. It was not at all like counting sheep. There were actually a lot of them with favorite points on them, and a few I added points too. Oops. Wrong topic.

I'm going to want to wear the harness. Did you HAVE to post the picture of looking down???

I've learned that it's important for me to be as grammatically correct as I can manage in order to be taken seriously in this world. But at the same time, I've learned it's important to have tolerance because I really don't know the situation of the other guy. Most often when someone posts on here using really bad grammar or spelling, it turns out that English is not their first language, they are very, very young, or they are deaf. We do have a person that is deaf who regularly posts on these forums who often gets it wrong, because ASL (American Sign Language) is really a different language. Firefox is definitely my friend though. When I get onto the internet using Firefox, it spell checks everything I write on any website, including this one. There is of course still the age old problem, as the Dog notes... I missed the "n" in "friend" just now and it let "fried" go through just fine.

Dayspring gets my vote too. Incredibly creative inventive hides. One of his multis (that I haven't even finished) is probably the all-time best hide I've found. And I've found some good ones! At each stage you've got to figure out what to do to get the coords. I can't say more without giving it away. Amazing imagination. I you're in the Seattle area his are "must dos". Do not miss them. Especially his multi with an incredible view of Puget sound.

See? As I said... its easy. No need to overthink this. i (However, your use of a note as opposed to a DNF for the "too many muggles to look" scenario does seem to imply that you feel some degree of failure by posting a DNF. I'd suggest that you simply look at it as a report, and not a value judgement) I will also log a DNF if I looked, but if I got there and didn't look (e.g. because of muggles) then I will also write a note, how can you "not find" something you haven't looked for? A DNF can trigger a CO (or subsequent finders) to think a cache may be missing, so it would be wrong to do that if I didn't even look for it. There are two reasons that I look for DNF's on logs. One is to know if the cache might be missing, the other is to know if the cache is tough. Ratings on caches are often off. Knowing others have DNFed a cache clue me in to it being a tough cache I may need to put extra time into. I log DNFs for these two reasons, but also for just not finding it. If I didn't put much time into searching, or other factors kept me from finding it I will write those things in my log. All of this can be helpful to the finders and hider. If the cache owner gets repeated logs that people don't hunt for the cache due to all the constant muggles, and he wants a cache people will look for, then his next cache may be in a more secluded spot. All of that information can be helpful.

So what song would you suggest?

Call it "published" or "approved". You're whistling symantics. If the reviewer doesn't think the cache meets the guidelines then the cache isn't approved and doesn't get published. "Approved" doesn't mean the review has to like it, just that if the cache meets the guidelines. No, I don't think it is semantics. I'm sure there are reviewers that do not approve of LPC's, guardrail caches and power trails. But they still publish them. Also note that the first log is generally the publish log, not the approve log. There is a world of difference between approve and publish. Not really, A reviewer published my cache because the cache is approved by the guideline. The guideline can't approve anything. The guidelines can't think. The reviewer can publish a cache. They often publish caches they don't approve of, such as lamp post caches where you can put a regular nearby. They publish caches when they follow the guidelines. Sometimes reviewers do make mistakes. They are humans, and volunteers at that. And people sometimes change cache pages after publication. It's good to point out errors or changes, yet useless in the case of archived caches.

There was at least one.case in which someone was prosecuted for stealing a geocache. I don't remember the details. Sure the police don't want to prosecute, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't. They don't even want to pursue someone in my area who broke into my house, stole a.lot, and continues to take what he can. Sometimes the police need to be encouraged. Yes there are people who are so desperate that they crave attention on these forums. We had one a while ago who was doing nasty things here for attention. When we quit talking about it he left. I guess there are a lot of people so desperate for attention they will try anything. It is a sad commentary on our society. These people will never be free of that desperation until they learn ways to find positive attention. The negative attention will never fill that hole inside them they are trying to fill. There are a lot of sad people in this world. A lot of hurting people. Yes, let's focus here on solutions. Making caches "premium member only" (PMO) has helped many places because the cache thief doesn't want to pay to steal.

Some avatars in the forums aren't showing up. It's pretty consistent. Mine is not showing up, while Swine Flew and Knowschad's are. There are others that are not showing up either, such as pnpure, TheAlabamaRambler, The Blorenges and others. It seems that those that don't show up don't show up anywhere, while those showing up are able to be seen all over. I just clicked on my profile to see if they are showing up there and it seems the website is down. So this may be a temporary problem related to the website being down. If so, please ignore this. Thanks!

Let us know what happens.

Oh no, WE'VE got the BEST reviewers here!!! Seriously, We do really have great reviewers. They work hard and are really prompt. I had a friend publish a cache... he said jokingly, "Why hasn't it been published yet?" It had been less than 20 minutes since he submitted it. He was joking because he was excited about his cache and that was his way of showing it. He knew it could be three days. Right after he said that my phone went off, announcing a new cache in the area. It was his. He couldn't believe it happened so quickly. The reviewers here are always polite and professional in their prompt relies and inquiries. There has got to be no better group of volunteers anywhere on the planet!! These are good people who put up with a whole lot from all the cachers. They are the unsung hero's of this game. I appreciate you creating a thread to acknowledge them. Thank You Reviewers!!! Cascade Reviewer Rock Rabbit Wizard of Ooze Barking Frogz And all the rest!!!

I found a cache that was down a drain grate in the street. Not my favorite cache, but I don't see the problem with it. Safe? I've done a whole lot of caches that were a whole lot more dangerous!!!! Just look both ways, just like you're crossing the street.

As others have stated, NOT revealing the cache name or ID# is going to allow continued visits. In mentioning here that permission should have been obtained, you are preaching to the choir! In order to avoid future issues with the cache you absolutely must: 1. Post a 'Needs Archived' log, stating your reasons. 2. Contact the reviewer, again stating your reasons the cache should be archived. 3. You might try contacting the cache owner, but you would most likely just get yourself into a pissing match. Before any of this, you might want to casually ask the landowner if they have ever heard of Geocaching...just in case they might have actually given the permission you don't think they would have. I was going to post essentially the same thing. If the OP knows it's there against the owner's wishes and the human traffic is unwelcome, then it would be best to have the cache archived, or that traffic will continue. Posting the cache ID here is not likely to increase traffic to the cache and may eliminate the problem. Whatever the OP does, he shouldn't remove it without having it properly archived because people will still come and they will spend more time at the site looking for something that isn't there. With all due respect Brian, posting the cache id here is going to have self appointed busy bodies posting NA logs and contacting the CO. How is someone that does not have personal knowledge of what is going on, going to help the situation from hundreds or thousands of miles away. I know that it is a favorite activity here to look up caches and make judgements. I do it myself. Unfortunately, not everyone can stop there. Despite warnings from the moderators to let the CO and his local reviewer work it out, we have people that simply can not help themselves from getting between them. This creates great forum drama, but it never really ends well. I could bring up three incidents that come to mind, by why open old wounds? And I can name.three that turned out well. All people here are not bad. Most have good intentions. That being said, he does not need to post the info here but I hope he follows up on this. I don't like seeing caches on private property. Mistakes happen, and they end up there.sometimes, but it needs to be followed up on to make sure its moved. I'm fine with letting this thread owner handle it.

Yes I could see the spare battery being a huge asset. You found 37 caches in one day so your battery plan is working really well! My own experience I was referring to was my friends battery dying after 2 hours. She did not have the spare battery. She also did not download caches but just received them "live". She could not do caching in the woods. I've been on all day trips in the woods, and she was unable to use her phone. She bought a GPS. Seems that you've got it figured out though!

Some GPS's need to be turned on to receive the Coords,.and some need to be turned off. My yellow etrex needs to be on, while my other Garmin needs to be off. Also.check the batteries. Some won't load with low batteries. You can call Garmin too. They have excellent customer service that is worth getting a Garmin for in of itself.

Did the cacher say they did not get the email? I get about a 50% response rate to the emails I send. I don't know why, but I doubt its personal.

If that doesn't work then your GPS might be full. Some don't tell you they're full, but just quit accepting new caches.