farrtom

I am curious, did the cache page mention the carved initials? If it did not I think the reviewer overstepped their bounds, no mater how they found out about the carving. I don't think that the reviewer should be able pull a hid cache just because the hider did something they didn't agree with. What if the reviewer discovered I went over the speed limit on my way to the cache site or I drove off road and trampled some vegetation while I was parking at the cache site. Both things are wrong but it is not up to the reviewer to police wrong actions. BUT, if the cache page did mention the carving, even just in passing, then I think the reviewer was correct in pulling the cache because of the position of Geocaching.com in not defacing nature. On a little bit of a side note, I have been thinking about a similar topic recently after visiting Independence Rock ( see also ) recently. So when does vandalism become historic or even art? Why was it OK for earlier generations to carve there names into a rock or sandstone cliff and not us? And if it isn't OK then why don't we use our modern tools and go out and take the names off these surfaces and leave them "natural". We wouldn't want to give any one else the idea that it is OK to carve our name into something. Now I am not condoning defacing nature (at least nature that is not owned by you) it is just something to think about.

Email Sent.

Glad you liked it.

Here are my 2012 Fantasy Baseball winnings (2nd place) and an web auction purchase (my first purchases in awhile!)

My wife and youngest son are not into cacheing but they do come along some of the time. I now do most of my caching alone, either at lunch time for close and easy caches or when I am on the road for work. When they are with me I try to find an interesting place to go and some times they do get into the hunt more then others. Also my wife is into puzzles but I am not, so when we do a puzzle cache I "let" her work it out for us. Another thing I do is if I haven't found the cache fast enough we move on even if it means I get a DNF on one I really wanted to find. Fast Enough very's depending on the time, location or schedule for the day. I just have to read the body language to know when it is time to move on and give up.

That isn't true. The distance specified for railroads right of ways is specified in Law by Congress. The current Law says that the right of way is 100ft on either side of the central line. The only place that I see mention of 150ft is on that GEO-COURT virtual. I don't know how to look up old version of laws. If this law was changed from 150ft to 100ft then perhaps Groundspeak could change the guideline to reflect the change in the law. Not all right of ways are 100 feet. The law says "The right of way through the public lands of the United States". This would mean any tracks through BLM, Forest Service or State lands. There are many places the property right up next to the tracks is private, city or county owned. I have said in other similar posts that I think that if the cache is NOT on railroad property but is within in the 150 feet AND there is safe access to the site then no reviewer should reject or not allow a cache. I think they should do their due diligence to have the cache owner provide information that it is not on RR property but afterwards they should allow the cache. I have friends whose backyards are within 150 feet of active tracks and if they wanted to hide a cache there they should be allowed. I have a cache very close to some city owned tracks that were formerly owned by the UP Railroad. I just explained to the reviewer that they are no longer active and NOT owned by the RR and are on city property that I received permission to place a cache on. On the cache page I also posted parking coordinates and made it clear (i think) on how to approach the cache. My cache was approved with no problems.

How do I report a arm chair cacher? I discovered false logs on a archived cache. The "cacher" hasn't been on since 2011 but it still shows he has finds. king of zefa

I received permission to place a cache at a historic site that is city owned and now they want me to meet with them about putting together a series of caches to promote tourism in the area. They even asked me to make a presentation to a state wide organization next month about geocaching and with ties to tourism. I also received permission from our State Park Superintendent to place caches in the state park (there were some already there when I asked) and he was very supportive and to thank them we held a CITO there in the spring.

So is the 100 miles from another event measured by the road / travel distance or by a straight line? We are boarder line on distance from what I am sure will be another event in another state and with winter and mountain driving and the middle of the week, I would like to host one here, but I think the distance may be a problem.

We did something similar. My 3 kids launched a TB each from the same cache in Canada last summer while there for a wedding. They were racing back to our cache in Idaho. I don't think any have even made it back into ID let alone close our cache. In the mean time they have scattered. One is bouncing around the Pacific NW and California, the other is on the east coast (and hasn't been logged in a while) and the third (my youngest sons) is in the Netherlands after bouncing around the Pacific NW for awhile. I am beginning to wonder if they will ever come home. O-well they are meant to travel.

I am curious about the numbers of premium members. I would think that half of the total members is even way high. I have meet and talked about geocaching with a few people who have said they used to cache a few years ago but don't anymore or people who have signed up to check it out but never got that into it. I also think that there maybe multipule accounts in some homes but maybe only one is a PM. My teenage kids have their own free accounts but I am the only one with a premium membership in our house. I don't have a problem with the dues or how much they are making. They are providing me a service that I enjoy. I have cancelled our cable TV, newspaper and most magazine subscriptions, I go to very few movies a year and don't visit some business's because I didn't feel I was getting what I wanted out of them compared to the price I was paying. If I ever get that way with geocaching I will stop paying for the PM.

So is the guy on the center tag bowling?

I am in again this year but hopefully with better luck. I will get my coins in the mail later this week. Any of the day for the draft but the 31st works for me.

Because the 150 ft guideline is based on the usual railroad right of way. It can vary. There are tracks running through a nearby town right between buildings. Obviously the ROW is significantly less than 150 feet there. Maybe 5 feet. Similar thing in your case. Exactly. The railroad ROW may be significantly less than 150 feet in some locations. I suppose there may be locations where the ROW is even more than 150 feet. If you want to be certain that you are not within their ROW, place the cache 150 feet (or more) from the tracks. As I see it, the 150' guideline is just that, a guideline. If you attempt to place a cache within 150' of a set of RR tracks, you can expect that the reviewer will ask for more information which the reviewer *may* use to make an exception. In some cases, what may appear to be an active RR on a map that the reviewer is looking at may actually be an rail-to-trail. If the tracks are indeed active, it might require explicit permission from the RR company and the adjacent property manager (aka a town park) before the reviewer would publish the cache....and as every cacher owner and potential cache owner should know, there is no precedent when it comes to publishing a geocache. The fact that there may be a published cache 10 feet from a set of RR tracks is irrelevant, as would be the denial of a cache that is 200 feet from an active railroad. Because of the differences in the size of the right of way I think it good for the reviewer to question the cache placement, BUT if the cache owner can show that the cache is not hidden in the right of way or on RR controlled property AND that it is not required to (illegally) cross the tracks to access the cache then no reviewer should reject a cache just because it is within 150'. Question the placement, YES. Deny and not publish it, NO. I know this is important for safety, but living in an area with a lot of RR tracks I would not want to see any caches legally placed to be rejected. I think the reviewers need to remember they are called guidelines and not rules. That being said I have had good communications with our reviewer regarding this issue. One of my caches is in a former historic railyards (no longer owned by the RR) and if you were just looking at the map it would appear to be unsafe and to close to the tracks but in fact it is over 260' from the active lines. After explaining this to the reviewer I had no problems with its placement.

I am in. I don't think I have the time to be the commissioner(with out my wife killing me).

Great link (not the one I went to). I wasn't trying to leave anyone out, I was just trying to give people an idea how many (few) people there are here. Of coarse now I am going to have to try and figure out how many caches there are per square mile and how many caches per person. On a per person note, with as small a population we have, we might not be the bottom of the list. The reason for the original question is that I am working with a group that might do some state wide challenge caches with prizes and I will be making a presentation and wanted to know the number of caches state wide.

Great! Thanks! I knew there had to be an easy way to find out. To put the total number of caches in Wyoming in perspective, there are several places in the U.S. where there are more caches with a 20 mile radius and Wyoming has more caches than in probably 80% of the countries in the world. Stats like this just go to show how diverse geocaching environments are around the world. I know we don't have many caches around here, but according to the 2010 census (from a web site I googled) WY only has 5.8 people per square mile compared to California = 239.1 Washington = 101.2 Florida 350.6 Colorado 48.5 and New York 411.2. I am sure we have a lot less cachers around here hiding caches.

Great! Thanks! I knew there had to be an easy way to find out.

How do I find out the number of caches in a state? I know I can run a pocket query, but the most caches you can have on a pq is 1000 and I am sure there is over a thousand in our state (Wyoming).

I can't follow with anything other than +1 Completely agree with fizzymagic!

Most places in North America have thousands of BM caches within 10 miles. Not trying to get off topic (well maybe a little), I recently did two pocket queries with a ten mile radius. The first, a larger town (with what i felt were a lot of caches) I used to live in and still frequently visit and the second, a small town I recently moved to with very few caches. By the way, I live in the western US. The results were the larger town had 373 caches and the smaller one 133 within a ten mile radius of my houses. These were total caches. I did not designate premium or basic caches.

I just saw a cache today (and will look for it tomorrow) on a pedestrian bridge over railroad tracks, clearly within 150' of the tracks but on city property (they own the bridge) in a safe (with regards to the trains) location.

I have given hints that a cache is coming to a friend but I wait for him to get the actual emails to notify him. The last time I gave him a hint, all I told him was to keep his snow boots in his truck so he would be ready when the notice came in (the cache was hid in the winter off the beaten path!)

My son and I hid a cache and we asked for it to be published on Fathers Day (it is a tribute to my father). After the e-mail showed up saying it was published I took my daughter to find it. She was not with us when we hid it and I didn't help her but I made sure to have to the cache site right away so she could be the first to find. In fact we showed up a few hours after it posted and I thought she wouldn't be the first. I guess in the area we hid the cache First to find is not such a big deal.

The 150 foot "rule" should be a guideline. If the cache is not on railroad property it should not mater how close to the tracks the cache is IF the CO can demonstrate that they are not "leading" other cachers onto RR property or are putting anyone in a dangerous situation. The guidelines say: A cache like cosninocanines and one described by Mad Dawgg on city property, with approval by the city, should be acceptable even if it is within the 150 feet. Again these are guidelines. I do not like it when a reviewer treats the guidelines as hard and fast rules.