HistDrew

I, too, have tried to get permission from folks at two different spots in a national park in Peru. I was met with blank stares and "just do it" from employees. But this is not official permission, so I'm a bit at a loss. I'm still writing those up. The other one is in a park there was no access control, and the park has many people living in it, but they are residents, not park employees. When I asked a local where I'd find someone who was a manager I was told there wasn't any such thing.

I'm usually somewhat lax. If they made a fair attempt at it and came close with the answers, I'm OK. I've rarely deleted a log where they send answers. Though, last week on one of mine that requires six answers/tasks, the person got one right, two wrong (very wrong) and claimed they couldn't find the spot to get the answers to the other three. The final three answers come from a map embedded in the cement at GZ. I wrote back and said "sorry" and deleted the log.

Ooh! Sounds like a lot of fun! I'm planning a vacation around this one next summer! Who wants to join me?! Count me in. I'll make an event cache for it, and then not show up.

I'm trying to figure out how I can hide a cache that incorporates all of the irks listed in this thread (aside from the TB stealing).

I think you're missing the point. It's not about "conform[ing] to [a] view of the way things should be." It's about being courteous to the CO and, to be honest, following the guidelines set forth on the geocaching.com website. In that sense it's about conforming to the way the people who set up and run the site want it to be. It's not "a view." The guidelines might be worth quoting here, though I suspect you know them and simply don't care: Notice that it's not "You have the option of logging your experience." Logging caches is how the game is played, according to the site that you use to find the caches. You've decided, on the other hand, to refuse to log caches on the website based on what seem to be an atypical experience with a few COs. Boo hoo. I suspect it's more out of convenience for yourself. After all, the extra step of logging in and typing something and submitting it is more work. But it's part of the process for a reason. It helps the CO, it maintains the social aspect of the game, and it helps the next cacher in hir own search. You don't care about the social aspect, which is fine. You don't seem to care that it helps the CO, and you don't seem to care that it might help the next cacher. That's a shame.

Interesting point. If someone is worried that their cache "hardly gets finds anymore" they should re-consider location, type, and D/T rating. If the Co set it up intending frequent finds, then maybe s/he ought to replace it with something more appropriate for the spot. Or, archive it and move on. But I agree with the point that it's irksome for a CO to simply archive and replace a cache anytime someone posts a NM. We have a local who is on a fourth iteration of the same exact spot. Each time there's a problem with the cache the CO archives and replaces. That person has about a half-dozen others around town with similar histories.

Here is part 1 of an epic 11-part log, written across 11 caches in a series, culminating in a puzzle solution 5/5. First paragraph is an intro cut-and-paste, but everything else is unique. Never heard from the CO, but the series was something I'd planned for a long time, and with all the care the CO put into the caches I figured that a long thoughtful log was the least I could do.

The second-to-last "find" of one of the most popular caches in the US, before it was archived: ---- Closed for repair today however the lady at the front desk said she would drop my trackable off once reopened. Wish we had made this stop yesterday to take in the view! ---- Glad it wasn't the last one.

A cache with an inactive owner is not perfect. An otherwise perfectly good cache disappears.

Agreed about the inactive owners. I have seen some newbies put a NA on a virtual, and the owner ends up as inactive and so a perfectly good cache disappears. That's too bad. Seems to me that if a cache is archived, it's gone.

I was curious about the propriety of logging caches that have been archived. After I returned from Shanghai, China, I was hunting around for various caches and noticed this old Virtual cache It was archived back in 2011, but folks are still logging it. What gives?

Along these lines, I was surprised at regional variations among the Reviewers. When I lived in England I NA'd a cache that was missing, and tnd the CO hadn't logged on in six months. The local Reviewer archived it the *next day.* In another place I lived I've posted NAs for missing caches, the CO hadn't logged on in years, and the local Reviewer went through the 30-day warning cycle *3 times* before archiving.

How about "irks me a lot" instead of "irks me most?" Some of the geocachers in my area don't get along very well, and it's become a thing that's affecting the local caching scene. They talk crap about each other, boycott each others' events, and tell newbies not to attend each others' events and not to find each others' caches. I've even seen a log taunting one of the cachers--not by name but it was obvious. Seriously, people. It's a game. It's supposed to be fun. For me it's a break from the everyday BS, not an extension of it. And, don't try to involve me in the BS. I'm just interested in finding weird/cool stuff that people have hidden.

People jamming swag into micro or mini containers like match containers or magnetic keyholders.

So, I just returned from two weeks in China. Among other things, I got some caching done in Beijing, at the Great Wall, in Baoding, in Singapore, and in Xi'an. Here's my take on things: After a few tries at Traditional caches I ended up sticking with Virtuals and Earthcaches. Poking around for Traditional caches made me very nervous. I am very obviously not from China, and in many places white people attract a lot of attention and curiosity just standing on a sidewalk. So, poking around in some bushes or standing in the ivy alongside a wall, peering into a hole, is very very obvious. There are very few times and places where there aren't other people walking around nearby. I didn't want to have to explain things to security if confronted, so I focused on, as I said, Virtuals and ECs. It made me much less nervous, and in those cases I was just another tourist taking notes or pictures. Your experience may differ, of course, but that was how it went for me.

Love the Lackeys! Thanks, folks.

So if you call up the map, and it's blank, and you activate the pull-out on the left, you don't have access to preferences there? I don't mean to be pedantic--just trying to avoid multiple posts. In this picture, do you not have the "Set Map Preferences" option? Or is it that in preferences you can't change maps?

Changing it from Leaflet to Google Maps in the preferences brought up the caches. Though for others it's the opposite: switch from Google Maps to Leaflet and it works.

Not working for me, either. Not in Preview, not after running a query. I get a blank map, and a whole lot of options for map types. Mac OS 10.8.3, Firefox and Safari.

OK, so I'm going to claim what I think will be the furthest find from GZ ever (until the next poster comes along to say "Ah, but mine was yours+x") So, a new cache popped up a couple of days ago, sort of near my house. I have my FTF search set at around 30 miles, and this was about 15 or so. I didn't have a chance to get to it right away, but I looked it over on the street and satellite maps. From the description and satellite it looked to be at a rest stop, though the satellite seemed to indicate that there wasn't really a rest stop there. Maybe a pull-off of some kind. But the location looked like it could also be accessible from a back road instead. I sort of knew the area and though "OK, I can get this." So, a few days later, still nobody's found it. I drive up the highway, past the area, and see that there's no rest stop, but an old, covered-over pull-off. I stop the car on the shoulder and consider running the .64 miles to get to the cache. Hey, FTF, right? But I was late for work, and wearing slacks, button-down shirt, tie, etc. So I figured I’d come back later. [Later] I decide to make this approach from off the highway, coming up the country lanes that look like they might provide access to the 1.5/1.5 cache. This was tricky, but I got close. Then the road ended in private property. Weird. I tried another direction. Also nothing. I checked the cache page, nobody had logged it yet. So I e-mailed the CO. He came back with “Stumped? It’s right at the end of the dirt road.” I replied with my location, to which he replied “Oh, I thought you meant my other cache, ‘Stumped’. The one you’re looking for is in the Rest Area, right off the highway.” I started to get a sinking feeling, but wrote back to say “there’s no rest area there.” After some crosstalk I sent my phone number. He called, with a caller ID location of Jackson, TN. About 200 miles away. He insisted that the cache was right in the rest area. Easy to find. Plainly visible. In fact, he and his wife, kid, and mother-in-law stopped at that very rest stop and placed the cache as they were passing through the area. I said, as I’m driving along, “listen, go look at the satellite picture and tell me what you see. It’s not at a rest stop.” There was a long silence, and then “Oh. Wait. Hang on. That’s not right.” Then came a long explanation about how they are new cachers and were passing through the area, and they were all excited to place a cache and so they put one at the rest stop. But they (claimed that they) used an iPhone to do it and the coordinates were off. Now, I use an iPhone. I’m sometimes off by around 20 *feet*, and occasionally the direct gets goofy. But this is silly. I know the rest stop to which he was referring, it’s up the road “a fair piece,” as they say. So I figured that since I had a bit of time, I’d drive up the road to get it. Unfortunately I didn’t realize quite how far away the real rest stop was. In the meantime, he’s calling me to apologize, talk about how much he loves caching, and to say that he knows exactly where the cache is because some other people already found it. What?! The day before, as it turned out, he directed his cousins to the cache by phone. And they were excited to find it and signed the log. Great. So now I’m heading out of my way, and it’s not even an FTF any more. I’m such a sucker. Finally I got to the cache. It was an easy find (once I was there). In fact, it was in plain sight, at the outlet to a drainage culvert. The first good rain that comes along will wash it away. I texted the coordinates to the CO, who sent them to the reviewer with the note “coordinates were off. They were WAY off. Entered them wrong. Sorry! Blunder.” How far off? “Distance from original: 101030.7 feet or 30794.2 meters.” 19.1 miles. That’s gotta be some kind of record. I've let the reviewer know how far away the CO is based.

That was fast! Thanks!

I've been doing some searching, and cannot find an explanation of Geocaching in Chinese. Do you have a link to that website? I'm headed there next year and have started preparing. Thanks for any help! HistDrew

What about the Jasmer Challenge? Shouldn't there also be a checkbox for "Is hidden in a month I haven't found" All those checkboxes are going to get pretty unwieldy pretty fast. True, it could get crazy. On the other hand, the Groundspeak stats page shows you the D/Ts you've found, as well as "months I've found." So, if they're going to show you what months or D/Ts you've found, why not something to facilitate the D/Ts or even "months hidden" that you haven't found. Seems like if you can have an automatic display of the one's you've found, there might be a way to figure out the opposite.

You only have 2 options: 1. Run a series of pocket queries, each specifiying a single D/T combination. You'll have to look up which combos you still need and manually run PQs for each. 2. Download a large number of caches and filter them offline. There's no way to do what you want all in one shot with PQs. Edit to add: Keep in mind that you can preview PQs. If you only expect a handful of results for a D/T combination, you don't need to run the PQ. Just preview it, and you can manually download the few caches it returns. Yeah, I do the PQ for each D/T combo, but there's 16 of them. Kind of a long process when I go to a new area. And, filtering them (ie. in MacCaching) is the other way. Not ideal, but it's faster than individual D/T searches. Ah well. It'd be nice to have a checkbox in the "That (And)" section--in addition to "I haven't found," "I don't own," etc. that is something like "Is a D/T I haven't found." Seems like it should be an easy one, considering all the other options that are on there.

I love the way the search function on GC works, but I also would like to be able to do some types of searches that it just doesn't do. For most of these, there are workarounds developed by people far cleverer than me. So here's my "How Do I...?" I'd like to be able to search, in a pocket query, in the all the usual ways. But I'd like to be able to have it return results limited only to those caches (that I haven't found) and with a "Difficulty/Terrain" combo that I have not yet found. Does anyone know a way to massage the searches to do this? Right now I just do a general search for caches I haven't found, load the PQ into MacCaching, and then manually scan for D/Ts I don't have. It's cumbersome, though, and it would be nice to have a workaround. HistDrew