Ageleni

I would appreciate a reply worth reading. A one-sentence reply, however, would feel like obligatory junk to me. If you are going to reply, make it something uniquely for them, that they will take time to read and think about.

Are there not enough caches around to give everyone plenty of finds for free? So some can't be accessed without paying a fee. Big deal. Ignore those and go on to the next one. There should never be rules or guidelines about this. (BTW, some caches can't be accessed unless you pay a fee to geocaching.com.)

I recently went around to a half a dozen multiple-DNF caches where a 20K-find couple placed new ones (it's easy to claim 20,000 finds when you turn every single DNF into a smiley by throwing a new one down), and removed them! Left a note asking them to be archived. And they were.

Logically, if you had to leave one when taking one, no one would ever be able to take one! I would never consider it a trade, because sometimes the ones I have in my inventory don't want to be there, or it's very close to their last home, or some other reason why dropping it there wouldn't make much sense. I only have one owned trackable in play right now, but I definitely wouldn't want to see it circling around the same town forever simply because people felt they needed to drop something off when they take another.

Sometimes the little issues can help take your mind off of the bigger ones, ya know?

Yesterday, while I was out geocaching, my vehicle was stolen. (A moment of silence. Okay, ready to continue.) While there is a possibility that I will get it back, that possibility grows narrower as each hour passes, and I am facing the reality that I may never see my van or its contents again. Two TBs were in the van. What is the protocol for this situation? I had every intention of continuing their journeys, but now I cannot. I don't want the owners to think I took them and never moved them along. Should I post a log on each TB's page saying that it was stolen from me and might never be logged again? Or is there something else that I should appropriately do?

I started because my young son liked geography and was interested in trying it. We didn't have a GPS so we mapped the urban caches on Google Earth and found them that way! We did it for a few months in 2009, and got about 20 caches, and then we stopped doing it. Last summer, getting sick of waiting around to find someone to go caching with me, I finally started to take it up again alone. What makes me keep caching today is that it takes me to so many places I would never have gotten to see without geocaching. Not just the monuments and parks and "important" stuff, but also little towns nearby that I didn't even realize existed, neighborhoods with interesting houses, new stores and restaurants. And each cache seems to have a little story attached. This is where I almost got attacked by a dog. This is where I slipped and ripped my coat. This is where I saw that really cool car. This is where I saw the grave of the 19-year-old woman and her unnamed infant son. This is where I saw the fox. This is where I saw that funny misspelled sign. This is where I found the dead raccoon with a beer can under it. It adds so much to my life in such a simple way.

I've never gotten more than some cuts and bruises (including a spectacular purple bump on the forehead when a stubborn magnetic on a STOP sign flew off into my head), but have come dangerously close to stepping on used hypodermic needles on more than one occasion.

I often go through my DNFs to check up on them, see if others have found them. Always get a little bummed when others can find them and I couldn't! Most seem to be legitimate finds, but there's this one couple who throw down all over the place, and cheerfully announce it in their ("Found") logs. Suddenly, my DNF means nothing. I can't even say how mad that makes me. When I searched, it was an honest search. Maybe it took me a while, and maybe I couldn't find it because I was simply not clever enough. It is not my place to determine that a cache is missing. There have been several caches that EVERYONE seems to be able to find, but I cannot. Each seeker is individual. There is such an enormous arrogance attached to the notion that, since I can't find it, it must absolutely be gone. Today, someone reported that one of my caches is missing. I checked, and they were right. I plan to make a new one to MY specifications, and fill it with new swag that represents ME, because this is MY cache. No one else has the right to put a new one there in my name.

While I agree with a lot that has been said here, I will say that I have logged a few caches as Found when I did not sign the log. Some of the reasons: Container too high for me to reach or too deep in a hole (I could see it), container lost inside a sign (I felt and heard it moving when I put a tool inside), cache in thick brush while a suspicious person lurked nearby (I saw it but didn't feel safe going into the thicket knowing that someone was watching me in the woods), forgot to bring pen (still held the cache in my hands), brought pen but log was stuck or too wet/moldy to sign. In each case, I found the cache. I had it in my sight and sometimes even in my hands. I usually take photos, too, just in case the CO asks about it. I think if you find it, you can log it as a find, even if you can't sign it for some reason. I would never log a find if I didn't actually see or touch the cache.

My biggest peeve is throwdowns (why do the people after me get to log a find just because they replaced a container that may or may not have been missing?), but since this has been mentioned many times, I will talk about this guy in St. Louis who either takes the logs, or the containers themselves. He even notes it in his logs. "Easy find. Took log." People who come after note that the log is gone, and sometimes there's only DNFs after he logs an "Easy find." Granted, he's sort of new, so maybe he doesn't understand that you're not supposed to actually take the cache or log, but wow, it's annoying.