Capaldo

As the finders in question are noobs, it seems more likely to me that their find is a mixup of some kind and not intentional 'cheating.' It seems quite likely that they simply logged the wrong cache. I've had this happen on my own caches before, and a polite email exchange sorted out the situation.

In Florida, there is a widespread Monofilament Recovery & Recycling Program. You can read on their web site about the problems with monofilament in the environment. Or, you can just view their photo gallery of entangled animals - Entanglement. With this awareness, I agree with others posters that the cleverness of this idea does not outweigh the potential problems.

Here is a link to a flash mob event I didn't get there in time. but it looks like it was a success. Good luck with yours!

Thanks for the support Whether or not it gets published on GC.com. we'll have fun.

I can understand why it might be perceived that way, but nope. My reason for wanting to publish it as an event is so I can utilize all the functionality of the cache page to facilitate hosting the event. It will make it much easier to get the information and any updates attendees, and allow them to post their logs and pictures, etc. The cache isn't really all that hard, even though the logs play it up, and anyone who asks for help gets it from me or past finders. Here's a link to it. Edited to fix link - wrong lizard

Thanks, that's the kind of example I'm looking for.

In my area, there are nearly monthly listed events, plus CITOs, plus biweekly informal dinners, so there is ample opportunity for everyone including new folks. To be clear, I very satisfied with my local reviewers and discussed the idea with them. When I pointed out this event that requires attendees to find a series of caches in order to attend, one of the reviewers suggested I submit my event to GC.com for review. The logs look like it was well-received.

Thanks for that. I forgot to mention that I am well aware of that guideline. Yet, I think it's only fair that if a particular type of cache is allowed in other 'jurisdictions' that it at least be considered by the local reviewers. While the 'precedence' rule could trump my argument, I'd still appreciate any examples anyone has.

I am attempting to submit an event cache that requires attendees to find a particular puzzle cache in order to attend. The point of the event is to thank those who have hunted my cache with food, drink, and token gifts, and to allow them to discuss their hunt freely, without worrying about sharing spoilers. I discussed it with my local reviewers, and they said it probably wouldn't get approved because events must be available to all geocachers. While I think there's an argument to be made about that, I chose not to, because I can just make it a private gathering. However, I've since read here in the forums of at least one recent event cache that required attendees to find a series of caches to get a password, in order to attend. I'm looking for examples of other event caches that have special requirements for attendees. If there's just one or two out there, I can understand an anomaly resulting from the variances of local reviewers. But, if 'Challenge' events are accepted practice elsewhere, I'd like to present that info to my reviewers. So, if you know of an event cache like this, please post it here. Thanks in advance.

Decisions, decisions.

I haven't looked at this thread since I got my answer. It's always interesting to see how the discussions here 'broaden'. Since some folks seem to be interested, I'll add a couple bits of information. I'm a charter member, which means I've been supporting the site from the get-go. In my area, there are very few MOC's, and in most cases, I think the owners just enjoy the audit log. I doubt any of the MOC owners would delete a find by a non-premium member who found the cache with a premium member. Of course, they would be within their rights to do so. If I thought this was 'cheating' the system, I wouldn't do it or share the method with anyone. With GC.com's website/programming abilities, I'm sure they could have closed the backdoor anytime if it was unacceptable. My understanding is that it was left in place to allow family members to log MOCs without additional memberships.

Thanks for your help. That does it.

I tried to search for this answer without success, so, how does a non-premium member log a members only cache? I know there's a way to do it by manipulating the url, I just can't figure out how. My kid will be with me on hunts, and I want to track his experiences, but I'm not buying another membership. Thanks in advance, and if there's a tutorial for using the search function out there, I'd appreciate a link.

I can't believe there's not a single cache in Purple Pickle Park Nearest one is .4 miles away

We've used one like this for a couple years now, and have been happy with it. We're in Florida so there's no elevation changes or rocky terrain. It's mostly been used on grassy fields (disc golf), but I've had it out on single track, rooty trails and it's held it's own. Slings and packs are good in the right application, but the stroller holds 'gear' and makes a good containment device for the kid while you're trying to do things like find a cache. This is real helpful when you're by yourself.

There might be opportunities for you to use your gps skills and equipment to do trail mapping for your local parks or conservation programs. I work for an Environmentally Endangered lands program in Florida, and we use gps extensively. We sometimes use volunteers to map trails, species (ie. gopher tortoise burrows), etc. We helped the parks department map bike trails and so forth. You might call around to parks, natural resources departments, conservation or environmental lands programs, etc. Many programs like this use volunteers to do other outdoorsy work like trash cleanup, plantings, exotics removal, etc.

Thanks for all the good suggestions! I'm going to do a little more research and probably buy off eBay.

Along my travels, I lost my trusty old digi-cam, and need to replace it. It was a fairly small Kodak easy-share that cost about $100 new. What I liked about it was that it was small enough to fit in my camelback or my cargo pants/shorts pocket, took decent pics, used AA batteries, and was cheap (i.e. expendable). I bought my wife a better camera, but I'm looking for something that's reliable and inexpensive. I'm a bit of a cheapskate, and I enjoy having something that I don't have to fret over losing or destroying. Any advice is appreciated.

I used these guys and was pleased. They seem to almost always have a sale on, so don't buy full price. The order went prety smoothly. Some of the text was not the color I wanted, but it wasn't a big deal.

You'll probably get a better response over at Florida Caching. I'd suggest looking at the caches in The Villages and contacting the cachers who've hidden or found them. Here's a search for the general area - LINKY

I'll offer a couple ideas I used in a presentation in an interpretive guide course recently. This was part of a class on presentation skills. We needed a POW statement in our intro - something to engage the audience like a question or provocative idea. I used something like, "Do you realize that most, if not all of you are muggles?" I asked them what a muggle was, and they said that they're people who don't know about the magic world. I explained that in the game I play, people who are not aware of the little treasures hidden all around them, are called muggles. Then I explained geocaching. For the theme of my presentation, I used something like, "Geocaching is an adventure, hidden all around you, waiting to be found." I mentioned how many caches were within 5 or ten miles of our location. I brought a few different types of caches and hid them where the audience was sitting. Then as talked about micros, or cache contents, or camo, etc., I'd ask one of the audience members to look under the handrail , or behind the tree, or whatever to find an example. It reinforced my theme. They seemed to like it and it kept them engaged. And they could pass the props around. Just a couple things that worked pretty well for me.

Hi, I'm mainly a lurker, but I've been a player longer than anyone who has posted in this thread thus far. This may be eqivalent to the old man on the porch talking about, 'back in my day', but... The OP is right. Geocaching is a lot of fun, but the forums are negative and icky. Everbody knows that. Masses of people that post on local boards avoid this one because they know that a handful of opinionated/skilled forumites squash and/or ignore what they have to say. It is not welcoming. I think everyone should be able to share their opinions, but the reality of this forum is that a handful of voices dominate the discussion in a way that does not parallel the way the game is played. It doesn't help that mods uneccesarily make light of contentious behavior. Thanks, Capaldo

I think David Hasselhoff would be cool with it. That's good enough for me.

I think it is more of a clarification in interpretation of the guidelines. Several posters ohave commented on this over the past several months. So, how does the average cacher who doesn't follow the forums get wind of these periodic 'clarifications' of the guidelines? It's got to pretty disheartening to work on a creative cache, only to have the listing denied because of an unannounced change in how the guidelines are applied. On balance, I think the 'problems' this rule is intended to solve are minor compared to the resulting restrictions on creativity.

If it's just written in hobbit font, you might be able to just download the font and figure it out. Here's some fonts - Hobbit Fonts