[Disappointed]

With the thousands of people that are out there geocaching everyday, there are bound to be people who are not happy or may have found the sport not what they expected. I’m sorry that Fria has had bad experience, but in the short time I have been involved in this community, I have placed 4 caches. I had a problem getting one approved, but I worked it out with my approver.

 

If you don’t like how things are working in the community, then work through the system to improve them. A post that flames and entire region and its approver with no suggestion on how to make things better is of little use.

 

As for the sport “dying”, I believe the reports of geocaching’s death are greatly exaggerated.

[Are There Limits To A Cache Owner’s Authority?]

Hard to close ALL loopholes for those that will abuse systems.........We just sort of "shun" them as a commuinity for such behavior.

I agree with Starbrand. This is a community; you could always plead your case here in the forums. I would think if you have a valid gripe the other members would apply pressure on the owner and give them a forum to plead their case.

[Cito Event On Colorado Springs]

Colorado Springs Cachers,

 

I’m considering putting together an event cache for CITO day on April 16th. My plan is to meet in the Kohl’s parking lot on South Circle drive. The Fountain Creek trail passes under the overpass there and is always in need of cleaning up.

 

I figure we could start around 9:30 and spend an hour and half or so cleaning up this spot and the immediate surrounding area. When have done what we can (quit around “noonish”) we could move next door to a picnic area at the youth sports park and have a potluck BBQ.

 

I’m trying to gauge the interest to see if this is doable. You can respond to this post or email me at slapshot52@hotmail.com

[Aircraft Crash Sites ?]

Is this any different than discovering passenger ship wreckage w/in the 3mile limit? Auto? School bus? Whatever? After the remains and personal effects have been removed by the rightful owners the rest is, in my opinion, fair game for exploration and/or plunder. This presumes that there are no laws preventig such actions, of course. It is up to each person to determine the extent of their presumed legal/ethical actions on such sites. Coming upon such sites that have remains and/or personal effects, then a person ought to try and determine if this site is known to the authorities before disturbing the items found there. As in most things, if you are not sure, then leave it alone. Being respectful of such sites is never the wrong thing to do.

I agree. Is this really much different than wreck divers visiting shipwrecks in scuba gear? I don’t think so. I say if the NTSB is done with the site and the locations falls inside the current rules, then it should be fair game.

[Direction Of Sport...]

The beauty of this sport is that there can be something in it for everyone, including players whom the original founders of the sport never dreamed of. That's an odd consequence of advanced technology. The DOD never imagined their system being used to locate manhole covers, much less 35mm film canisters. People for whom "a geocache" means "a walk in the woods" might look with scorn at lightpoles. But... to each his own.

 

Of the hundreds or thousands of caches that might show up in some area-query, some people will adopt the "Pokemon principle" .. gotta try them all. While others, and I'd probably place myself in the same category, might select from that list a half-dozen that look interesting and wind up visiting only three of them, and be perfectly content.

 

I think that we do need to continuously push to encourage people to think of and to try new ideas. But the secret, I think, is to encourage these new branches and explorations: there's really almost no reason to dictate them. (Necessary authority should be exercised with great restraint.) Given ready access to new ideas, and a free hand, people will be naturally inventive and the sport will continue to be Fun... with little or no "limits" being imposed upon it by anyone. Just plunk a seed into the ground, pour on some water, stand back, and watch! ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .

 

The secret, if there is one, would be "give back to the community the sort of caches that you like best." Geocachers in wheelchairs are out there, setting up caches that others with their limitations can enjoy. Folks who get their jollies by climbing on ropes are setting caches that you can only climb on ropes to get to. Scuba jockies are putting caches under water. In this way, the various naturally-occurring subgroups of cachers within the overall community naturally supply themselves with the kind of entertainment they enjoy. If that happens to include a lot of newbies and/or lunchtime-cachers who put easy 1/1 grabs in urban settings... I say... terrific! Six months from now the game might have adjusted itself in yet a new direction.

After following this post over the past few days, I think this post pretty much sums it up.

 

To each their own, but I think we should encourage all of those people we bring to the sport to contribute to the community with as many new and diverse ideas as possible.

[What Distances Do The Coordinate Numbers Represent]

OK... does anybody know of a Pocket PC program that calculates these distances? While I'm at, how about a program that converts between all of the ways to discribe LAT\LONG and UTM?

[Direction Of Sport...]

Who says the splattering of micros all over creation doesn't effect traditionals?

 

The archive note of a cache near here:

 

I picked up the cache this morning. Not much activity lately. The local trend of micro caches that the family sedan can drive to and 'Easter Egg hunt' has killed the sport in my opinion. Hiking and scenery has been replaced with adults searching for a film canister in a parking lot.

How sad.

 

Sad, indeed.

 

--RuffRidr

Ok… I don’t get this. This person wants to protest what he/she perceives as a plethora of micros in their area by removing a traditional cache from the community. The “there are too many micros” horse is never too dead to beat, but pulling a traditional out of the system seems like sour grapes. I wish the hider had put it up for adoption instead of removing the cache.

 

BTW I travel most weeks and I don't mind picking up an urban micro in a new city. It my be tiresome for the locals, but gets me out ans about in a new town.

[Golf Balls]

I found an almost-pristine golfball on the way to one of my first caches. I thought someone might find it useful so I put it in the cache along with whatever else I had planned to put in. Then I read a forum post much like this one where someone was howling over how bad it is to find golf balls in caches and I felt kind of stupid. Two log entries to that cache later, someone posted how happy their wife was to find the golf ball and that she took it.

 

Hmmmm....go figure...

Golf balls are like anything else in geocaching….there are cool and creative ones (I like the “Borg Ball”) and there are lame ones. I guess we just have to put up with them, but when my caches starting getting filled up with junk, golf balls are the first things to get cleaned out.

[Clear Acrylic ?]

I don't think they are making the container out of acrylic, just something thay ar eputting in it...?

Thanks for all the help. You're right, I'm looking to embed a clue for a puzzle cache in a block of something that submersable in water. A water tight container tends to float and I need for it to sink, so I thought I would try to craft something solid and non-buoyant.

[Clear Acrylic ?]

I’m working on a cache container idea that requires me to embed an item in a clear “acrylic like" block about 6”x4”x1”. I went to a Michael’s craft store thinking I could just buy a jug of clear stuff I could poor into a mold and it would harden. Either they don’t have anything like that or the people I didn’t get my message across to the people I asked.

 

Any ideas?

[Another Anti-geocaching Article]

So GC'rs were trespassing on his sacred site? Well, as a Geocacher, I consider all of the National Parks as sacred to my religion of Geocaching. Therefore, muggles are trespassing on my sacred space and I want them banned from the National Parks. And I want the freedom, as guaranteed by the 1st Amendment, to freely practice my religion and place caches anywhere within the forest.

I wonder how you file for Federal Tax exempt status to get this going. I don’t want to insult anybodies idea of religion or spiritually, but this really puts the question into context. The beauty of this country is that anybody can say what ever they want (just look at the posts in this forum!! ), but that right does not extend to some guy in Oregon restricting my right to access pubic land. Just because an individual says that public land should not be public land does not make it so.

[Tsln]

I have run in to this with my caches. I tried to get them started with some stuff I would like find. Nothing real expensive, but a good $20 worth stuff in a full size ammo can for initial caches. When I went back to do cache maintenance a month later, the pickings were pretty slim. I was a little peeved at first, but in the end, I added some new items to the cache and just let it go. I wanted to hide the cache, so I’ll take responsibility for keeping it stocked up. It might not be fair, but it is reality.

[Another Anti-geocaching Article]

I was thinking "sacred", as in a "Druid-ish" sort of fashion. You know, tree worship. Wouldn't his potential constituency be interested in knowing this?

I was also wondering whom this land was "sacred" to? I could see if it was a Native American ceremonial site or the equivalent. I'm open to all forms of spirituality, but I don't think that you can designate a place as "sacred" because you think it is a cool place to be.

[Batteries???]

I have find that my fresh NMHi rechargeable batteries do not have quite the charge a standard “throw away” alkaline batteries do. When I put them in Magellan Explorist, my battery meter shows about ¾ full. I still get 12 to 15 hours out of recharged set with pretty heavy backlight use. I have 4 pair of batteries and I have more than doubled my initial investment (in batteries & charger) since I got my GPSr in November.

 

In addition to cost, there is the environmental issue. My rechargeable batteries are not going end up in the landfill. If you took all the cachers in this forum and used a conservative estimate of 12 pair of batteries a month, that’s a pile of chemicals getting discarded.

[Pictures - Cool Cache Containers (CCC's)]

I have used the Master Lock Select Access on two of my recent hides.  They're weatherproof and highly muggle-resistant, so you can put one out in an area you would normally never consider (both of mine are locked to utility poles).

 

And for extra fun, the four-digit combo can be changed to whatever you'd like -- perfect for puzzle caches.  Without figuring out the combo you can't get in to sign the log.

 

A bit pricey $26 was the first price I found. But if it saves on replacment cost it may be worth it.

Does anybody know how weather resistant these are? Could I cable it to the base of a tree and cover it while it lay on the ground. How about submerged under water? Any ideas on how to camouflage it? I guess it would make a great urban micro if you culd find a place to blend it in.

 

Yeah, it's a bit a pricey, but by the time you put together a good traditional cache with an ammo can and decent swag, the price can get high. If this didn’t go “walk about” it might be worth it to me.

[Magellan And Air Force Commercial]

No, I didn’t see on TV and just jumped over to the USAF recruiting site to see if it was posted there. It wasn’t. Has anyone downloaded from someplace?

[Delorme Topo 5.0 Searches]

Thanks for all the help. I didn’t realize there was a forum for just software related issues, I apologize for posting in the wrong forum.

 

After posting here I went looking for a DeLorme forum and found one! Imagine that . I got the following answer from a long time Delorme user:

 

On the Find Tab...

- Advanced subtab (on the left side)

- Find: = Lat/Lon

 

Enther your coordinates and click <Search>

 

You can control the different types of ways to enter Lat/Lon on the Display/Units tab.

 

Thanks again for all who responded.

 

[Delorme Topo 5.0 Searches]

Thanks for all the help. I didn’t realize there was a forum for just software related issue, I apologize for posting in the wrong forum.

 

After posting here I went looking for a DeLorme forum and found one! Imagine that . I got the following answer from a long time Delorme user:

 

On the Find Tab...

- Advanced subtab (on the left side)

- Find: = Lat/Lon

 

Enther your coordinates and click <Search>

 

You can control the different types of ways to enter Lat/Lon on the Display/Units tab.

 

Thanks again for all who responded.

 

[Delorme Topo 5.0 Searches]

I just purchased the DeLorme Topo USA software package. It has some great Maps, but does anyone know how to enter a LAT\LONG and get the map on screen to jump to that location? It would seem like a simple search filter to take a location from a cache page, type it in the mapping software and get it to display the location on screen. I’m a premium member and the maps on the cache pages are a nice feature, but the detailed topos would be nice to have on a hunt. Any thoughts from the digital map users in the crowd?

[Cheap Toy Cars]

I took my nephews (ages 3 & 6) to their first cache after Christmas and made it a pretty big deal for them to pick out a small toy to exchange. When we got to the cache they were thrilled to take some stickers while, in my opinion, left much better than they took. But here’s the deal, they loved every minute of the hunt and sorting through the swag in the box. They thought they got the better end of the tade. It wasn’t about the value of the swag for them. I very rarely take anything and try to leave something in every cache I visit, but to see the whole trading thing through the eyes of a child has changed how I view swag. If you have placed a cache to see what people leave then I feel you have lost site of what it is all about. Don’t let some rude cacher make you feel bad if you did what you thought was best. The fact that you posted here and were worried about this shows that your heart is in the right place.

[Painting Rubbermaid?]

Has anyone come with across a good way to paint a plastic Rubbermaid/Tupperware container? I have found a few caches where the owner attempted paint them a darker color so they would blend-in better, but the paint does not seemed to have “stuck”. From reading the forums it looks like ammo cans are too tempting to steal for some poor misguided souls (insert profanity here ), so if I can’t paint a plastic container green, does anyone have a low cost suggestion for a green plastic container?

[Travel Bugs And Micro Caches???]

I carried a Travel Bug down to Florida from Colorado on a business trip. The only caches within walking distance of my hotel are micros. Can I take my TB to a micro, take a picture with the micro and the log the TB as having visited the micro? I would then have to log the TB back out of the micro and then return it to Colorado. It can’t stay there because of the size of the cache, but it did travel all the way to the cache and I would like to give the owner the mileage. Is this a breach of Travel Bug etiquette?

[How did you serve?]

10 years as a US Army Paratrooper with 1st and 10th Special Forces Groups (A)

[Saving Geocaching Web Pages To Pocket Pc]

I already paid the 30 clams so I can down load these files now. What do you use to view them? GSAK?

[Marine Caches]

Here’s one for you. I have heard a rumor that there is a cache 15 feet underwater in the Aurora Reservoir in Denver. There is an old airplane that has sunk there for scuba divers to train on. The rumor is that it has a chalkboard as a log. Urban myth? Too cold in Colorado in December for me to check!