Tassie_Boy

I did the Drunken Bee Dance today. First time looking for a cache. Using my phone (Motorola Droid Turbo 2). The app would tell me 220' but I noticed in gray colored numbers it would display +/- 185'....or it might tell me 165' and again in gray numbers +/- 125'. Whats going on there. I was for sure a Drunken Bee...never found the "Easy" Cache. You just need to hold off for a minute and let your caching machine get it's bearings. Should only take a minute or two, use that time to take the opportunity to get your bearings and start narrowing down possible hiding spots.

We once found a cache (Ten Wells 04 near Exmouth, WA) where I was nearly cut off getting back to the car by a bunch of Emus. I already had picked up a few rocks just in case trying to make my way around them. In the end, no animals or humans were hurt in finding the cache. You know we fought a war against the emus once right? And lost!

And Micro's don't allow trading, writing of novellas for logs or temp homes for TB's. For that reason Nano's fit in the same category as Micro's, just the same as a Wheelie bin or a 40ft shipping container fits in the Large category the same as a 20L bucket.

Hold up a minute. Have you spoken to the owner of the TB about any of this? You can't just go shoving them in the mail on a whim. Is your friend a geocacher and knows how to handle a TB?

I had a 3 stage multi that I named Quack! Quack! Quack! (it had a theme.) That works, unless it's dog themed.

You're going to have to give us now to work with. Where is it? Is there any theme? Is there anything in particular special about it? Is there any trick to finding it?

Don't be afraid to give the cache a miss, even if you can see it. It's not as though there's a shortage of them out there.

2B1ASK1 I've always found it funny that freemasonry is considered by most of the population to be highly secretive and all very hush hush. The lodge local to me had an open night in the last fortnight.

It's worth noting that the "Caribou Park" cache is not located in a Minnesota State Forest like your cache is. So, if you're bothered by the fact that the Caribou Park cache does not comply with every provision of the Minnesota State Forest geocaching policy, that's how come. If you're bothered by the fact that the cache was wet when you found it, you were the first find after a thing in Minnesota called "winter." Report the maintenance issue in a polite, matter-of-fact way, and the owner will take care of it. Your a moderator that has called me "vindictive" and condescends me about a "Minnesota winter" Take the hint mate, they are trying to help you out here.

What happens if something like this is left to be self regulated/governed? Do people run amok? Oh, wait, I can tell you what happens when something like this is left to be self regulated: mature people enjoy playing a game with each other. Once in a while, someone that isn't mature enough to play with adults doesn't get it, but it's explained to them and usually they're fine after that. Sometimes people are banned, but not often. I think SUX would have a heart attack if we told him that Geocaching Australia, which exclusively lists something like 20% of the caches in the country, doesn't have reviewers at all like we do here and manages to do alright without to many issues.

Where to begin... Do you have any idea how large a territory most volunteer reviewers cover? Let's just say that it's orders of magnitude larger than the territory any FTF-hound could cover. So we'd need orders of magnitude more volunteer reviewers. And they certainly would need training. Even with the current (tiny, compared to your proposal) number of volunteer reviewers, there are occasional issues with inconsistent interpretation/enforcement of the guidelines. And of course, the current goal of an initial review within a week would be completely impossible under your proposal. And what exactly is the problem you're trying to solve, that isn't being addressed by the current system? Pr....oh never mind, you wouldn't understand what I mean by it anyway. No.... go on, we're interested. A state like tasmania would need around 10 reviewers to make sure they are all "local". Even then there are caches that are a 10 day round walk to get to gz and back, or a flight plus walking but since they are volunteers.... What happens in parts of Africa or the Pacific islands where you have only a few caches and only a few cachers for thousands of kilometres?

Can someone kick this thread please, this broken record seems to be repeating over and over.

Is not that odd when you think about it. FP's are seen by some as a way on quantifying quality. I suppose it's just another way of trying to show what basic members are missing out on.

There are other apps you may wish to try. I'm not an iphone user but they were talking about Cachely on Podcacher the other week, sounds like a likely alternative.

Nup, just add it to the list to try again if I'm back in the area, if anything it just makes the eventual find even sweeter.

Go and find a few and use those to get your ideas, jump on websites like YouTube or pinterest. Anything but a string from a branch inside the canopy of a tree.

Correct, if you are that worried about it then make sure you keep on top of maintenance and ensure there is a decent log book there so no one has to log with a scrap of paper then make sure you file them away properly. Whinge and complain all you want but the onus is on the CO to explain why the log should be deleted and i suspect that if a log deletion were to be taken to HQ they side with the cacher until proven otherwise.

Rubbish. Yes, I suppose that is another word you could use for this situation. The good news is that you can avoid these unpleasantries by adhering to the cache placement guidelines, i.e. don't arbitrarily delete logs and don't antagonize cache finders with ALRs. Sorry but can you explain what ALRs means? Additional logging requirements. Making the cacher do more than just sign the log before accepting they found it.

Yes, I would consider it reasonable for a CO to assume a "TFTC" log on a cache archived 2 years ago was just a simple mistake and delete it out of hand. If I were the CO, I'd look into it more, but I can't really fault a CO that doesn't bother. I would assume anyone legitimately logging a find 2 years in the past would appreciate that and include the explanation you suggest even though, as narcissa points out, such an explanation isn't technically required. I think many of these discussions are predicated on exactly your point. There's a difference in being right within the rules and doing the right thing. What's the right thing? It probably isn't punitively deleting logs because a cacher has run afoul of arbitrary, unofficial rules created by individual cache owners. The right thing might be to think better of your fellow geocachers and, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, assume the log is valid. The right thing would be to log your finds and your trackables in a timely manor. By timely I don't mean weeks later. It would also mean not automatically expecting a two year old found log to be accepted without some sort of explanation. The right thing to do would be for the CO to accept that sometimes life happens and caches don't get logged for some reason. Looking around on the map the other night i found a cache marked as unfounded that i did actually find 2 years ago, away with family did the cache and logging online was at the very bottom of my lady of things to do that weekend. Heading down there this weekend and after i check the log I'll be claiming the date from 2 years ago. If you were the CO on that one I'd be fighting you all the way to the top over your silly "standard" you have.

Yeah, good thing you've never asked for ideas. Be nice to the new guys. You were one once. Bit of a difference between asking for opinions on an idea that has already been thought out and asking for ideas of places to hide and container ideas, basically everything that makes up a cache. Could i have worded it better, yep. Should OP be placing a cache if they need to be asking questions like, Nup Could OP learn a lot by geocaching more, yep.

Correct. A good CO is one who who can respond to issues with the cache and perform maintenance on a regular basis, even preventive maintenance. A CO cannot respond to "I Stood on the cache and crushed it" when they are half a world away, which only leads to propping up crappy caches. I know everyone has "A friend" who can look after it.... but why doesn't that friend place it instead? The OP stated he has a friend who will maintain the cache. Your ludicrous over the top reply is irrelevant to the question that was asked. I disagree. The OP asked whether it would be acceptable to place a cache while traveling if they had a friend that would take care of it. Several of the responses (many based on actual experience) discouraged doing so with the premise that someone that is only acting as a care taker for someone elses cache will not likely maintain the cache as well as if the placed, and owned the cache themselves. If there are issues with the cache only the cache owner can disable/enable the listing (unless they share their username/password with the caretaker). While there are exceptions of vacation caches, maintained by someone other than the cache owner that are actually maintained, I suspect that the percentage is so low that it doesn't justify encouraging the OP to go ahead and place some while traveling. As others have suggested, why not suggest to the friend that they create their own account and hide the cache themselves. So you're saying that because poor caches of other types are being propped up already we shouldn't discourage a different practice that props up poor caches? Do you see a flaw in that logic? I don't see vacation caches as a bad thing if you are able to provide for it. The poor quality caches I have in mind are the ones thrown down by locals for power trails or other ways to inflate find counts. In the past, I've had positive experiences with vacation caches. Vacation caches in my experience are not going to be part of a PT or a leaky pill bottle. A few of the vacation caches I logged were placed because of some special meaning the location had for the CO. The first cache I ever found that got me into geocaching just went inactive after a 15 year run. It happened to be a vacation cache. Great, so it's not a Crappy cache that's a part of a PT or dropped for numbers, it just becomes a Crappy cache when the "friend" loses interest in putting their time and money into someone else's hobby that they have no interest in.

Correct. A good CO is one who who can respond to issues with the cache and perform maintenance on a regular basis, even preventive maintenance. A CO cannot respond to "I Stood on the cache and crushed it" when they are half a world away, which only leads to propping up crappy caches. I know everyone has "A friend" who can look after it.... but why doesn't that friend place it instead?

Yeah... Anyone who needs to ask for ideas isn't ready to place a cache.

Or military bases.

I believe the 'light blue line'referred to is simply the straight line route between you and the cache. It gives you a rough direction and that's it.