Trotter17

My best is 53 in one day. Not a super high number compared to some but it was a great day of caching. We were visiting my wife's family in her hometown in far Northwest Ohio and I had a full day during the week to jump out and check out an area that was fairly new to me. There was a minor trail (only about 13-18 caches) but they were pretty unique with a great finish, lots of parks and cemeteries, and even the chance to head into Michigan to look for a few caches. While I usually value time spent caching with others, this day was a great caching experience!

Update! It has now been confirmed that this item is a geocache. There wasn't much information given but the seller has canceled the sale and says they will be returning the cache to it's hiding place. I wonder who recognized it?

I think the answers you'll get to that question depend on where you ask it. On these forums it seems Geocache has been "dying" since 2005, which is when I started playing. If you talk with your local caching community/communities, I think you'll find that events are getting larger, caches are becoming more numerous and varied, and many folks who play the game are as invested as they ever have been. A few cities and groups near me have been collaborating on plenty of new, excellent Geotours, I've seen an upswing in cool, unique caches lately, and local events have become even better. In all my years of being involved with internet forums related to various hobbies, I've never been to one that didn't believe it's particular hobby was in danger or dying.

A friend and I just finished Lost Treasure of the Confederates, a 5/5 in Charlotte. It's the first 5 terrain cache I've attempted but, talking to many other cachers, it seems to be one of the most challenging around. It's a 10 stage multi that's a real beast.

Maybe a permission box to be filled out by the CO might be a better idea on future hides. Something that asks who gave permission for the hide or if no permission is obtained why the cache owner feels they have the ability to place a cache there. Maybe these must be filled out or the cache can't be submitted for review. I have only a few hides, four of which are on the property of local businesses. For those hides I have spoken with and obtained permission from the business owners. Unfortunately, I cannot write that I received property from the owner of business A or the manager of business B on the hide page, as that might be considered to be a commercial endorsement, so I just have to go with a generic "permission for the hide was give by the owner/manager of the nearby business.

I'll always trade for any kind of plastic army man or minifigure. I collect these guys (I have hundreds and hundreds) and use duplicates as my SWAG. Of course, I usually only trade for other plastic army men and minifigures.

I had an interesting weekend. On a short road trip with my family I had the opportunity to cache in 5 different states and was surprised by the amount of variation I saw in how commercial caches were labeled. A few weeks ago I had to work with my local reviewer to make sure a cache I placed near a local business wasn't overly commercial because I made reference to the revitalization of my city's uptown business district. While traveling, though, I saw caches that specifically mentioned businesses by name (in the title), caches that talked about businesses and their products, and caches that never even mentioned they were near businesses. It was interesting to see how varied the placements were in different areas and at different periods in time.

I'm in a fairly small town and have placed a few of my caches at local businesses. In all honesty I'd rather find a cache at an interesting local business than in a random light pole, guardrail, or cluster of bushes (not trying to bash those hides; just stating a preference). Yes, I love adventuresome caches that require hiking, climbing, and crawling, but I also love exploring new cities and towns. I have discovered many great places to eat, shop, and visit through caching. I find that cachers are generally pretty in touch with their communities and often know the cool places about their town which they want to celebrate. Every location speaks and tells a story and might be more suitable for certain cachers. I've also found that many small business owners are typically rather easy to work with. When you work with a small or local business it's usually rather easy to find out who is in charge and who permission needs to be secured through in order to gain permission to place a hide. Of course, many of the geotrails I know of have been organized by city councils in order to promote tourism in their region. Obviously, tourism dollars are part of the reason why cities and towns support these efforts. If geocaching does nothing for a city, county, land manager, or parks department, then what purpose will they have for working with cachers? I get that the intention is not to have a massive company sponsor a cache at every one of their stores but, if we can work with a cool local business owner or manager to ethically place a cache at somewhere that could be interesting for cachers exporing a city or town, why is that a bad thing? Of course, i sounds like the OP was concerned about permission. Maybe we just need to be more clear that permission has been obtained on the cache page.

That is a really good idea. I'd be pretty happy with something like that being implemented.

I've gotten into really natural geocaching lately. I typically find the spot where I want to place a cache and look for the materials to form some sort of rudimentary lathe. I then make my cache out of any available wood or stone.

I think everything that has been said about the church already having liability insurance for the folks who come there every week is pretty much right on target. Most churches have plenty of guests and visitors on their property each week. My church has service three times a week as well as having folks visit for special events, VBS, weddings, funerals, and events when members use our fellowship hall for birthday parties and such. if your church doesn't have liability insurance covering all of those normal functions they probably need to address those before worrying about a few geocachers showing up! Me and a friend just posted a cache at our church (I'm on staff there, too). We have let the church know and even showed out groundskeeper and house and grounds committee see where the cache is. We're also happy to show anyone who wants to see it. The only stipulations I added to the cache page is asking people not to seek the cache at night or during Sunday morning worship. That's more for the comfort of church members and because I think the kids (and me) would be distracted if we saw folks out seeking caches! The room I teach Sunday school has a window that looks directly at the first physical stage of our Letterbox! I know I'd be tempted to stop class and run out to talk to a fellow cacher!

GC5D3Y5: Chach-the angel on my shoulder. Good luck! Northern SC and Southern, NC have some great caches if you know where to look! Spartanburg, Rock Hill, Pacolet, the Broad River Greenway, and Northern Cleveland County are some of my favorite places to cache.

Replying to the OP, boosting a cache's popularity is something I've been working on lately. We have some wonderful, well thought out caches in our area that have only been found by a handful of people. On our local caching group's Facebook page I've started trying to do a profile of one local cache a week that's definitely worth the time. We have a great local multi cache that was placed on the ground of a beautiful church. It was placed by a mother in memory of her son. The church allowed her to use their very lovely gardens and part of the grounds that overlook their graveyard. There's a great final surprise container and a nice field puzzle. To me, this is a fantastic cache: Nice location, fun field puzzle, and it's a cache that tells a story. It's been around for almost a year and it's only bene found twice! What a shame! I haven't seen any new found it logs yet, but we'll see what happens!

Awesome to see that added back. I think having both really is the best of both worlds for searching.

Geocachers maybe?

I'm 31. I started caching in 2005 when I was 21. I kind of put the hobby on hold for quite a few years (which I now regret). I'm still typically one of the younger ones at events, though. Other than my wife and daughter (she's 20 months), the other two guys I regularly cache with are in their mid to late 20s.

Ever since I got back into caching last year I've kind of noticed this same thing: There are lots of unmaintained caches in my area. I live near some great caching cities like Rock Hill, SC and Spartanburg, SC where the local cachers are very active and work to maintain the caches. Our city just isn't there yet, though, leading to lots of caches with maintenance problems. I agree that there is a tension that exists between being a responsible cacher who logs NM's (and NA's when needed) and appearing like a cache cop. For me, I just want every cacher who comes to my area to have the best experience possible. Whether it's a someone who just wants to see what caches exist in their area or a cacher who is driving through on a road trip, I'd hate for them to have to keep logging DNFs and NMs when their are local cachers more familiar with the area who could be maintaining caches (maintaining in the sense of posting NMs and NAs when needed, not replacing caches and such). Just a month or two ago I noticed a cache in our area that had a note from the CO which was well over a year old that stated the cache had been removed from a nearby restaurant due to angry confrontations with the staff and cachers. No archival, no disabling, just a note. Why not just archive it?

Is adding the "send to gps" button next to the standard search list entries going to be added in at some point? Also, looking at the new method of listing caches after making a search, I think one of the biggest problems is that the lines are not separated. They're all somewhat spaced out text on a white background. Simply giving the text alternating backgrounds would help to make the text more readable. I don't think it would be as instantly accessible as the symbols from the old method but it would help to prevent searchers from confusing information between adjacent search results. In the image above you can clearly see that the different searches use alternating background colors which, at a glance, allow you to see what information belongs with which cache. Also, I found it very helpful that the old search method allowed you to see not only when a cache was last found (at a glance) but when it was last found by myself. That way if I was checking in on local caches I would know when they have new visitors. I can't always remember the exact day that I found a cache so this was a helpful feature.

Hi Keystone, Which link am I clicking on after I've opened up a cache listing in order to open up the old style list of results? I think this could be very helpful for me.

I have no idea who might have been on test panels before the month and a half sneak peak/feedback period occurred, but I was very active during the discussions that occurred in the forum and one of my suggestion which others agreed with was implemented. During the sneak peak/feedback phase we saw how it worked as a stand alone feature. What we didn't see was how it was going to be integrated into the complete site, how the final release would work, or how it would be presented to different member types. There were quite a few people that did provide feedback. Don't blame the fact that we couldn't predict how or when it would be implement and what GS would choose to implement based on our feedback on those that chose to get involved and try to help GS release a major piece of code. Totally joking and not blaming folks who participated in this and gave their feedback at all!

I guess quite a few armchair loggers were on those test panels.

I have another question: I read the FAQ but cannot find events. I live in between (about 30-50 miles) from about 4 or 5 major cities and caching hubs. Do I have to search each city for events or is there someway I can search for events in a radius from my home location?I tried doing a locationless search and a search with mileage from my home but nothing is popping up except one local event in my town. Am I doing something wrong?

I read the FAQ. Some of the new searches are neat but why change the appearance of the results? I really find them much, much harder to read than I did the old results. It seems very counter productive considering that now they look nothing like the cache pages (the D/T symbols are gone) or the paperless images on my phone. Also, is there any way to download the cache to my device from the results page or do I need to click on each cache page and add it separately if I want that cache?

Mark me down as another PM who is not liking the new search function. Personally, I like the filters (for the most part) but I find the actual results very hard to look at and view. The previous listings page showed me when I had found a cache right under when it had been most recently found. This was really nice for checking on caches in my area, which I like to do. The new listins page seems intentionally stretched out and not very readable. I also do not see how to download a cache onto my gps without going into the cache page itself, something I could do on the older results page.

A week or two ago I went after a cache in SC. It was under a covered awning and instead of the cache I found a note from someone who had taken the cache and claimed to have hidden another clue across the street in an old graveyard. I followed the hint but didn't find anything. Turns out the note had been there for at least 6 months or so as a former seeker had mentioned finding it. That's the first that I'd ever experienced something like it.