Dame Deco

You go through your pages of finds one by one.

Great job, looks like a beautiful area!

Excellent job! I feel challenged to go out and make my first unfound mark--one without a witness post, lol! Gotta get going--will have snow and ice here before too long.

It could be, I did post about it before, I think. I might not have checked on the type on NGS, but you can bet I will from now on, not taking the datasheet linked from gc.com as the latest again. Thanks for calling my attention to the discrepancy!

No, I didn't. I guess that I should have! I think I checked the real thing from NGS by going through the search page--I was going through a list and checking for those specifically. Do you think they updated it already based on my log? When going for these, I make a point of checking the real thing through NGS. But I can't swear to the fact that I looked on the NGS site...I think I did, though. If they updated the page based on my log, I would expect to see the recovery note by a geocacher at the bottom. Very strange! The moral of the story is, check the real NGS sheet, not just what's on gc.com...but I thought I did. From the gc.com link: LF1239_MARKER: DG = GRAVITY STATION DISK LF1239_SETTING: 7 = SET IN TOP OF CONCRETE MONUMENT LF1239 LF1239 HISTORY - Date Condition Recov. By LF1239 HISTORY - 1958 MONUMENTED CGS LF1239 HISTORY - 1975 GOOD USGS LF1239 HISTORY - 1977 GOOD NGS From the NGS link: LF1239_MARKER: DS = TRIANGULATION STATION DISK LF1239_SETTING: 7 = SET IN TOP OF CONCRETE MONUMENT LF1239_STAMPING: HIGHLAND 1958 LF1239_MARK LOGO: CGS LF1239_STABILITY: C = MAY HOLD, BUT OF TYPE COMMONLY SUBJECT TO LF1239+STABILITY: SURFACE MOTION LF1239 LF1239 HISTORY - Date Condition Report By LF1239 HISTORY - 1958 MONUMENTED CGS LF1239 HISTORY - 1975 GOOD USGS LF1239 HISTORY - 1977 GOOD NGS

I know what you're saying, Gungadoy! I went after what I was hoping was a gravity station in Iowa that hadn't been visited by the NGS in nearly 40 years. It turned out to not be a gravity station, but it really was a thrill when I dug the Azimuth Mark out of the mud, poured water on it, and it appeared before me. Now, the 2 marks had witness posts, so it wasn't a hard job to find them, still I really enjoyed being the first to recover them after so many years. There were only coordinates for the main mark, so I did follow the directions to find the Azimuth Mark. I would like to go after something with a full set sometime, maybe I'll buy my own economy metal detector in the new year! You might have to dnf a cache, but you know it's been found recently. I went 100 miles out of my way just to see if this mark still existed, and lo and behold it did! The drive and hunt were worth it! LF1239, recovered 8/24/15

Touchstone-- Not true, really. You can ask questions that require the use of a sign, but still require thinking. Sending a pic of the sign would not be enough in such a case. I have a couple of ECs where the answers are on my cache page for the most part, with questions requiring observation, as well, just as the OP has done. In the modern world, ANYTHING can be found on the internet, even the average temperature of the water in a spring, I bet, when an EC owner wants a temperature reading. I can think of few things for an EC that somebody somewhere couldn't find a way to cheat on. I write ECs for people who want to learn. I don't worry that much about those who cheat to get it done--they harm only themselves. My ECs are out there to teach--I teach for a living. That means I'm used to acknowledging that I'm not going to reach everybody. I take the joy in the ones who take joy in learning like I do. I've logged over 350 EarchCaches, some of "lame," to use your terminology. I still learn from them by doing more research. You get out what you put in when it comes to logging ECs. I chose to concentrate on the positives and ignore the negatives.

Best post of the day, narcissa!

We need to stop once in every county we pass through.

Well, actually three of us posted pics of state survey markers for you... Dame Deco, . Sorry that I missed yours. If that 1939 is not an elevation, I suspect the disk was placed after the fact. See below https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/central/ and take a look at the rest of Jerry Penry's online publications. http://www.penryfamily.com/surveying/main.html kayakbird I'd say it's pretty doubtful that it's an elevation in Florida, lol! The Original Datasheet says it was monumented in 1939. Thanks for the interesting links! Here's a line from Penry's 2006 article on the state survey marks: "Parts of the program struggled on until 1939, but the work continued less than a year in many states." So the Deland mark might indeed have been monumented as part of the program.

Well, actually three of us posted pics of state survey markers for you...

I completed Gungadoy's challenge--it was a lot of fun finding the old, hard to find marks! Here's my state survey from Deland, Florida, and there are pics of the location, etc., in my log. It's AQ1245. I'm including my magnetic disc from West Virginia, HY0008. Gungadoy pointed out a Gravity Station reference mark in northern Florida, BE0315, and a Topographical Disc, AG1367 near Tampa--as he noted, it's tough to find one outside an airport. I used those to complete the challenge. I really need to get to California to get that last disc, the elusive Gravity Station!

Well, wasn't one of the very first ones for the 10-10-10 events? I like these well enough--but I bet that they'll sort in different places rather than next to each other in our profiles. I really wish we could move our souvenirs around...

In all honesty, though--I have to tell you that the majority of EC owners never email you back, even if you ask for help. I always do, and I think EC owners should--but many don't.

Nicely summarized, niraD!

I think it's a shame that they make the souvenir only available one day, and a Sunday at that. In many areas, they are few and far between, or folks have everything nearby. Why not let folks find one over at least the weekend, and perhaps even over the course of a week. This isn't like International GC day or February 29 where any kind of cache counts.

I think it's a shame that they make the souvenir only available one day, and a Sunday at that. In many areas, they are few and far between, or folks have everything nearby. Why not let folks find one over at least the weekend, and perhaps even over the course of a week. This isn't like International GC day or February 29 where any kind of cache counts.

And to take that one step further--good people who could be a real asset to the community could be turned off by that reputation and decide caching is something they don't want to be a part of.

I understand. There have been a couple I couldn't figure out without CO help, and I've even skipped a couple that I just couldn't make sense of.

As an owner of ECs, I try to think of my caches as being for folks like yourself. You are my audience, people who want to learn. I have to wade through the lazy logs at souvenir times, but I take satisfaction from the fact that many enjoy them and learn from them.

Honestly--I only think of it when someone posts a topic. It's not something that bothers me on a daily basis or that I think about when I meet a new cacher, etc. Souvenirs are sort of silly--but they should still mean something. They should be an accurate representation of what someone did. But you're right--I don't go looking at what folks have.

Someone posted a topic. They asked for opinions. People gave their opinions. It's how forums work.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it keeps me up nights or anything, but if someone asks for an opinion...well, I'll give my opinion. And if someone posts that logging physical caches on the day visited are sacrosanct to keep a streak alive, but fudging on EarthCaches is fine to earn a souvenir...well, I'll give my opinion on that, too. Why go for a souvenir if it isn't important to you? I didn't do all 31 days 2 summers ago, I haven't done the CITO souvenirs, and some others, because I don't care about them. I like and value EarthCaches, so I took most of a Sunday afternoon to get one because there were none closer. When folks say, "I don't care about souvenirs, but I violated the guidelines to get one," there's a clear contradiction in their statement.

Boy, did you twist yourself into a pretzel to get the EarthCache souvenir! Geocaching is about finding a place with your GPS, even if you answer questions about that place for virtual and EarthCaches. You didn't visit an EarthCache on International Earth Day, you shouldn't be claiming a souvenir for it. If EarthCaches aren't your thing, why bother with an internet souvenir? I don't have any of the CITO souvenirs. You are pretty regular on the forums--you didn't know that even if the owner deletes your log, you still get the souvenir? EarthCaches are about learning something in addition to visiting a place with a GPS in hand. I looked at the EC--it could be a little confusing, but it's shorter than many I've seen, and it basically asks you one question. Google or a library book would probably have helped you learn what you needed to know to come up with the answer. The very first day you visited, you could have logged a note, taken pictures, sent your observations and ideas to the owner, and gotten help with an explanation about what you had seen. After tweaking your answer based on that help, you could have gotten the find the very first time. Anyone who makes an honest effort on one of my ECs can claim it as a find--I'll help them come up with the right information because I want them to learn. I only delete the logs of people who don't even try--don't ever email or message me. An EC isn't a test you can fail where they chop off your head (or delete your log) if you're wrong. You don't state in your log that visited that day--but you don't state in your log that you didn't, either. Of course stating that you didn't actually visit that day would allow the CO to delete your log, and GS to delete your souvenir. Because, you know...that's against the guidelines. If you VISITED the site that day, logging it on your sixth try is fine, same as any other cache you dnf'ed. If you didn't visit that day, it's the same as people on a streak logging a find for a cache they visited one day but logged another when they needed it. So which is it? Did you figure it out and send in the answers without visiting the site to claim the souvenir? Or did you visit the place for the 6th time? Your post would seem to indicate you visited some time at the end of the week rather than Sunday. If you don't care about the souvenir, go ahead and change the log date and email GS asking them to delete the souvenir. That would allow you to uphold your "a streak only counts if you sign the log every day" standard.

Welllllllllllll, that outlook leaves me with a major fur ball stuck in my craw. Many times I have been out in the hinterlands and do not get back to a signal for days or weeks. Am I not to log caches as found because my circumstances preclude logging on the day of a find. This curious mind wants to know No, of course not. You log it on the correct date by backdating it to the day you found it, not the date you made it back to civilization. I wonder, sometimes, if everyone knows that you can do this...