LatonkaGal

I believe I know the challenge of which he speaks. In fact, if I have the right one in mind, I've completed it. Basically, an alphabet challenge. But the "placed prior to" requirement in question was to keep people from going out and hiding caches for the seldom-used letters. It made it harder and I gave the CO some good-natured grief about it. That said, I am not one of those people that thinks "it was hard for me, it should be hard for others." My vote is to drop the date requirement all-together. If I had my way, when they came out with the current list of guidelines for challenge caches, all older challenges would have had a year to either comply or make a special case for being allowed to be grandfathered. And I would have wanted the reviewers to be TOUGH and have that be a rare case. If you wish to keep a date requirement, then by all means, check with the reviewer about advancing the date some if you can. If you do move it up, maybe instead of making it an anniversary date of when you hid it, go a little further than you meant to and choose something like "Placed before Jan. 1, 20xx." The date of when you hid it made sense at that time. But an easily remembered date would be so much better for current searchers. There are requirements that "up the difficulty level," and there are requirements that are just "annoying." Working with a date that is random or the anniversary of the cache being posted is just annoying, not really more difficult. It adds nothing to a sense of accomplishment that it had a date that to the searcher feels random vs. really dealing with a year. I remember every time I planned a trip out of town I took a few moments to check my PQ's for qualifying caches for letters I needed. Because that date meant nothing to me, I had to check on that date every time so I could filter my list and look. I could have remembered a YEAR. Of course, if I had skills for writing GSAK macros, maybe that would be different. But I think the list of macro writers is much MUCH shorter than the non-macro-writers. But I'd check with the reviewers to see if any changes would alter the grandfathering.

The new Girl Scout caching badge has five steps, and each step has three options. 1. Learn about geocaching (go to event, have a speaker in, explore geocaching.com), 2. Learn about gps (the three options are all simple set up, take down, practice kind of things), 3. Make a peice of swag (something personal, something GS related, or a peice of jewelry), 4. Find a cache (either a themed cache, a hiking cache, or a multicache), 5. travel bug ( make bug with International goal, make bug with a GS related goal, or simply track a bug that has gone four places and see where it has been). As an avid cacher and an avid GS adult, I don't think you'll be running across problem caches placed. You might see some interesting bits of childmade art as swag, but hopefully that won't offend to many people.

This is a fairly strange question, but I don't see it addressed anywhere. I'm pretty new to geocaching, so maybe it's obvious to experienced cachers. I think I know the answer, but I want to check to be sure. I work for a Girl Scout council with several properties. We obviously would not want to hide public geocaches at our program centers (official term for "camps" and other outdoor properties) because we wouldn't want strangers wandering around where girls sleep, play, learn etc. I'm thinking about creating a closed Facebook Group for members of our council who are into geocaching - both teens and adults. I think we could have some fun supporting each other or even having two troops meeting to cache together in an area etc. I also think a "find a cache per county in our council" would be a neat internal challenge, especially since our council is now at least half the counties in the state! If we set up a cache at each of our properties for our members only, would we have to find a way to share that info (using "notes" at the closed Facebook group for example) on our own, or is there some kind of "locked" system (other than premium members) at geocaching.com? I truly doubt there is such a feature because I think it probably conflicts with the overall goals of the site, but I would feel bad if I did not check and it was an option. If we do this private circuit of caches away from the site, obviously they would not show in the counts of caches found because they wouldn't be on the site, and that might disappoint some folks who are "numbers based."

I use my iphone to geocache, and the app DRAINS the battery big time. Sometimes I type a message while in the field, other times I choose to click the "found it" button and say little or nothing from the field, and close the app immediately. However, when I get home, I pull up the website and use the edit log feature to try to add a little bit more. I also try to add pictures if I've taken them at the cache site. I have left a few TFTC when I didn't have much to say - which may be for reasons having NOTHING to do with the cache itself, or it might be because I just wasn't inspired. I have to admit, just like the thread starter and some of the other posters are offended by short logs, I am highly offended by the line "logs consisting only of sent from my mobile device will be deleted" in the cache description. I find that statement MUCH ruder than a finder leaving a blank message. I have decided not to go after particular caches because of it. I researched on the Groundspeak site when I started, and read the logs from other posters on my first several finds....and what I got out of that was TFTC was rote (like a retail store employee saying thank you to every customer instead of goodbye) but quite acceptable. If you want "better logs," ask for them NICELY and don't come out in attack mode. I loved the phrase that one of the earlier posters was putting on caches about the value of longer logs. THAT'S politely educating people. And I don't think you have to be a cache owner to appreciate logs that SAY something. I scroll through the recent logs of every cache I go looking for before I even try to look for the cache. Sometimes they give me info beyond the description that helps me decide if I want to go after that one at that time. Things such as "it was real muddy" on a log tells me that I need to stop and think about recent weather because of the cache site. If someone says they really enjoyed it, it inspires me to choose that one to go for.