Fugads

When I lived in the US Southwest I was pretty keen on the site https://www.lonelycache.com/, and would regularly go after lonely caches. But I wasn't alone, a number of people liked this website and we competed with eachother to rack up LCP or Lonely Cache Points every year. This actually had the effect that a lot of the really lonely caches would get found by people trying to up their LCP score for the year. I've since moved from the area and my new area doesn't have quite the same lonely cache competition going for it, but I might get back into that. Going after those rare, hard to find caches was rewarding and offered many a fine adventure. Checking Project-GC, it looks like there is a pretty darn lonely cache not too far from where I am now that is 5 years lonely. Might have to give it a go.

Checking back in on this to see if there has been any other experiences. I really hope someone comes up with a solution to this. I contacted HQ Support and got a very generic response: I played around with a bunch of things, like publishing my own Youtube video containing the song I want a user to hear... even that gets the same message. I suspect it has something to do with Youtube's copyright algorithms. All the songs on Youtube are picked up by some kind of copyright algorithm so that you can't monetize using them without explicit permission. I don't really care about monetization, but I think this might be somehow related to the videos not playing in the Adventure Lab app. Just a guess though. I tried embedding a video I uploaded that had no music in it, and it plays just fine in the AL app. I went ahead and made my AL public a week ago and put a note in the text field of each stage that reads: Really clunky, and I bet most people playing the AL will not bother to watch the youtube links if they don't play in the App, but it was the best I could do. I've asked a few people who completed my AL already if they could see the embedded video and was told by both that they got an error message. One of them watched some of the links by copy-pasting the link, so that makes me happy. But still, I really wish the AL App would just play the darned embedded videos. Really disappointed that it seems to have problems with this.

Yes, I've checked that videos are public. For my Lab, I am referencing popular or semi-popular songs. for example, one stage is near a slide and I post a link to a song called Slide by the Goo Goo Dolls : https://youtu.be/yP4qdefD2To The video is public, posted by what appears to be the band itself, and yet when I use this link in my Adventure Lab, I get a "Video Unavailable" message. What strikes me as odd is that while in the Adventure Lab App, where it says video unavailable, the youtube player embedded in the app has links to other videos by the same band, and those play fine. What's even more funny is that if I use the URL for one of those other videos in my adventure lab, that video won't play either (same message of Video Unavailable). Something is weird here with the software, and it is frustrating me quite a bit. I'm hoping to figure it out though. Any help or advice people have is welcome.

I am having this problem as well as I work on creating my Adventure Lab. I am linking to popular music videos at different stages of my AL, but wen i run a test, I get a message "Video Unavailable". I suspect this has something to do with Copyright material, but am not sure. Any help or insight people have on this issue would be appreciated. My AL is still in test mode.

I just ran into the same problem. When i ahve a video displayed in the journal page, the message does not appear. Is there any way to work around this? I am considering creating a video which has the text embedded, but it is a bunch of extra work, and seems like a crude work-around to something that seems like it should work already.

Super cool! I've never done an official Geotour before, but since my family is moving to that area of the country this summer, I may have to give this one a shot.

Following this thread with interest, it has me reminiscing about my first months geocaching, and then reflecting on if there was some kind of rule dictating when you are "eligible", if it would have affected how I evolved as a geocacher. Always fun to play the "what if" game. I hid my first geocache a little after a month of playing this game, and by that time I had racked up about 70 finds, both urban and rural/wilderness and felt like I was ready to "give back" to the game by placing a cache of my own. Right off the bat, I made a rookie mistake by not fully understanding the proximity rule, and my first cache, GC2WRJ3, which I had carefully thought about where to place almost did not get published because it was about 500 ft from two different existing geocaches. The Reviewer ended up granting me an exception, and I learned later that this leniency is partially given to newbies like I was, so that we don't feel discouraged by the cache hiding process after making this first mistake. My next hide was an attempt at a puzzle cache,GC2XCYE , and I'll be the first to admit that it was based on a terrible idea, but one that probably many newbies make. I came up with a hare-brained way of hiding a cache but not giving the actual coordinates, and basically getting it published just to answer my curiosity if any one would actually be able to find it. This is maybe the most frustrating way for anyone to create a puzzle cache, as there is almost no way of actually solving the puzzle and getting a find is an exercise in grim determination, and exhaustive field searching. Were either of these caches good quality? I don't think so, but they became my entry point to the game. I think Barefootjeff said it best: Ultimately, it was the feedback that I got from the local caching community that had the biggest impact on my cache hiding style, and got me thinking about what it takes to be a quality hide in that region. The well written "Found logs", and email/messages I received from the locals provided the valuable feedback that got me thinking about how to improve my cache hiding, and how best to add to this game in a way that was consistent with how I like to play. With that thought in mind, I would suggest letting people make mistakes, and not being overly restrictive in creating barriers to someone's first hide. Rather, it is up to the community to reach out, help rookies realize what mistakes they may have made and why, and ultimately help mentor them so that future mistakes are avoided. I don't think that a waiting period, or quota of found caches would have changed the mistakes I made. And I share some of the sentiments posted in this thread, that such new regulations will not help in promoting geocache quality. Now if you are a newbie and happen to be in an area without a supportive and helpful local geocaching community... well, good luck!

Sounds just like the MOGA comps, I'd definitely do that. The team competition sounds like an entirely different kind of animal and I bet I would enjoy participating in it too. You need to have good team dynamics for that one I bet. or at least some really strong team leaders.

My oh my, there is a lot of grumbling on this thread. I guess that's what forums are for? Back in February I got an email recommending a cache to me. It was a 2/15 hide with 90+ favorite points (60%) and was in a nearby area of town that I simply had never been to. Went to check it out and it was indeed a great cache, one that I had mostly overlooked and in a part of town I had never been to. What do you know? I ended up doing a bunch more cache sout there and discovered a great network of biking trails. Will have to go back with the kids to bike and cache some more. Received another recommendation more recently and it is for a cache a bit further away at a National Monument. Probably a pretty cool spot, but we visited the National Monument years ago and I'm not terribly inclined to go back just for this cache. Then again, maybe I will ...

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. MOGA 2018 was held in Lincoln, Nebraska and was kind of prairie-like. We still had a pretty fun course, running through the prairie to find that one tree where the cache was hidden. I think you guys in the prairies must get extra creative when it comes to cache hiding.

Thanks for posting Forest-Ghost! I've competed in MOGA for the last 4 years and really enjoy it. I'd definitely be interested in checking out other similar events. The Texas Challenge looks intriguing, but it's hard to get a good sense for what the course is like. According to the rules, you can have a support crew for communications, transportation and puzzle solving... so it sounds a lot more complicated then MOGA. I wonder how much of the race is driving around to different locations versus running around to different locations? Unfortunately, looks like I missed it this year. I'll have to keep an eye out next year. SCAR looks pretty cool too, but again, it looks like it could involve a lot of driving. And a 24-hr competition period... sounds brutal! Seems like a good way to encourage people to hide new caches, but it also seems like it would result in a lot of power-trails. Quantity seems to be emphasized over quantity, but then for a race that is probably the way to go. For what it's worth, I'm organizing my own small geocaching race here in Santa Fe, NM, GC84WHR, but I don't expect it to be highly attended. It'll be similar to the MOGA races, a footrace on trails and through brush. Looking forward to setting up a fun course through the Pinon/Juniper forest.

A technique handy in the dry Southwest US is to use a cactus spine. Very carefully poke tiny holes in the logsheet to spell out your name. Not immediately visible unless you hold it up to the sky, but I like the result. I've used this a few times in a pinch. These desert hides almost always have cactus nearby and I tend to lose pens all the time.

On another note, people come across other forms of vandalism that do not necessarily involve the caches getting stolen. A year ago I found a cache that had a whole bunch of disparaging comments written in the logbook, all apparently from the same person who views geocaching as offensive. While these kind of things can get me riled up, I find the negative feedback beneficial. In a hobby that thrives on making hidden objects that "Muggles" would mostly never know about, it is good to sometimes reflect on how the hobby may be perceived by those that do not see it as just innocent fun. It helps me take a step back and try to think how my "awesome geocaching idea" might be perceived by those outside the hobby.

I know how the OP feels. I think in general it is rare for this kind of thing to happen, but if you play the game long enough you are bound to run into examples of this. Some law of human nature where there are some percentage of folks that will have both differing views about what is acceptable, and also the gumption to act on those views. My own experience with having a geocache stolen came after I had been playing for about 4 years. I put out a very ambitious multi cache in a local Greenway that covered 8+ miles of hiking/trail-running. Someone who did not condone geocaching in this park discovered it somehow and systematically removed every stage. I wrote a long blog post about it. I never did find out about who did this and why, despite doing my best to reach out to this person. A few other geocachers had some of their hides stolen from the same Greenway, but I have since moved away from the area and do not know if it is still an issue there.

I disagree that it seems like GS wants everybody to get them all. I think the 500 pt threshold is plenty high and for many many geocachers will be a significant challenge. I see the above statement as a humble-brag, kind of like saying "Why doesn't GS make something challenging to ME, and take into consideration the geocaching situation where I live. There are just so many awesome caches where I live that I'm wading knee-deep through 100 FP caches every time I go out." It is awesome for you to get 1980 points after a single day of caching in your area. I too recently spent a full day caching, and did a 10 mile hike involving 5th class rock climbing, post-holing through snow at 10,000ft, and strenuous route finding in desert heat for a descent. Found over a dozen caches that are well regarded by those that have found them (have FPs) and got maybe 75 points. I think getting to 500 will be challenging... but then... that's just me. GS is in a difficult position of creating something for an entire globe of geocachers. It would be tricky for them to tailor the challenge to every communities needs. But I give them the benefit of the doubt in that they can assess data regarding how may caches the average cacher finds in a 3 week period and what amount of those have high favorite points. And that they used this data to set the levels for their promotion.

Following up on this. I accept that logging archived caches is acceptable provided you can demonstrate that you did indeed find the cache at that location (pictures of logbook etc...). However, is there a different etiquette when it comes to logging archived Virtuals or Earthcaches? I have done this on occasion, but not wittingly. I had some caches loaded on my phone from earlier in the year and didn't realize that a virtual I found had been archived until after I visited and completed the requirements (caching offline with my phone is pretty common for me). Discovered the cache was archived when I went to log it. I am also aware of other archived virtuals in my area where it would be pretty simply to visit the location and complete the requirements. There was no access reason why the caches were archived, the archival had more to do with the COs losing interest in the hobby. However, it seems to me that it would be kind of suspect to seek these out and post find logs on them now. What would be the point? Padding my find stats? I suppose it would help me work towards some challenges which require finding a bunch of Virtuals. But that feels wrong to me. Ultimately, the reason I like finding archived caches is basically the same as finding active caches, they can bring you to cool spots. Anyone have thoughts on logging archived Virtuals/Earthcaches where there was never any container to begin with?

I started geocaching in 2011 ostensibly to learn how to use a new GPSr that I had purchased. The reason I purchased the GPSr was because of a harrowing search and rescue mission that I took part in. Two girls narrowly avoided freezing to death while stranded on a desert tower/dome, and part of the reason that it took our teams so long to reach them was that a storm rolled in and covered the entire landscape in a thick snowy fog. If it weren't for my team member's GPS, we surely would not have been able to navigate the rough terrain. That experience made me realize the value in having a rugged GPS unit as a navigational aid. When I did get my own device, I somehow thought about geocaching as a way to elarn how to use it. I can't remember if I had heard about geocaching somewhere, or if there was a brochure that came with the Garmin 60Csx that I had bought. But I soon found myself exploring all over my neighborhood and the nearby mountain ranges looking for geocaches, and became hooked pretty quickly. What keeps me going today is mostly the great excuse geocaching gives me to explore really remote areas. I am particularly motivated by 3rd party sites like www.lonelycacheproject.com, which highlight caches in your area (if you live in certain Western states) that are lonely and in remote spots. Finding lonely caches in hard to reach places really keeps me into this hobby. It helps that I enjoy most other aspects of the hobby, like cache ownership, meeting other geocachers, interesting puzzles and funny or creative hides.

Well what do you know... there's the filter! I missed the pull-down menu with that option a while back. Maybe the site changed its layout once upon a time and I lost the tool. Glad to have it brought back to my attention, I really like using it.

I used to be able to do this as a non-paying member using the map-compare tool, which was cool. I found the info helpful especially if I was thinking about hiding a geocache in a location, but was wondering why smoeone hadn't already used the amazing spot I had found. Often, finding an old archived cache in the lcoation and then reading through its history would let me know of potential issues for a location. For the last year or so, I haven't been able to do this, so maybe the feature got moved behind the pay-wall. If someone could confirm this, I'd like to know.

To throw out a contrary opinion to most of the previous responses: I have seen folks fill in previous finders on a replacement logsheet where the cache is one that requires special effort to find. High D/T ratings, tough puzzle that kind of thing. In these cases, the logsheet becomes a list of the "elite" who went through the effort to find this crazy cache, and I do not fault COs for wanting to maintain the physical list. As a finder of some of these, I appreciate this gesture by the CO, it makes me smile. But it is a pretty silly gesture when you think about it. So I'd say, if you want to have the replacement log show all the previous finders, go for it.

I wonder about this too. I adopted out several of my caches when I moved away from Tennessee and one CO in particular took over a couple which had high favorite point percentages (for relatively few finds). Not too much alter, the Virtual Rewards came out and I was thrilled to see that they received one of these. Of course, their own cache creations are works of art (milled aluminum puzzle boxes and the like) and get tons of favorite points, but I still wonder if the adoption of my well maintained and favorited caches helped them earn that Virtual reward. I'd like to think so!

Be careful you aren't jumping to conclusions. I sometimes will leave a FTF prize in a cache with a note attached to it identifying it as such. I will not always make any mention of a FTF prize on the cache page. This way, the FTF is a nice little surprise that is found, rather than something that is anticipated. Maybe it is presumptuous of a finder to grab something for a FTF prize if the CO did not intend there to be a FTF prize, but it may also be presumptuous to assume that the CO did not mark something as FTF prize in the cache.

This thread needs to be renamed to Poetry in Cache Log Form or something like that. I found a Haiku cache with my kids and people were encourage to write Haikus in the cache logbook. There was one Haiku that the kids really loved. Snake snake snake snake snake I don't want to see a snake OMG HISS HISS To this day we still yell out "OMG HISS HISS" when we are walking around snake habitat.

I think mine is 5.5 years, but this is based on simple browsing through a history of some of my many DNFs (over 700). Is there an easy way to search for your DNF redemption? Do you need something like GSAK to do this? The one that I think is my oldest is a cache in Santa Fe that I DNF'd in July 2011 while we were visiting. I couldn't anticipate it at the time, but we ended up moving to Santa Fe about 5 years later and the cache was still there, and this time I was able to find it (after one more DNF though...)

For what it is worth, I have had some recent Letter box hybrids published and I consider them to be in the "traditional" letterbox style. The only GPS usage is the coords for the starting location. https://coord.info/GC7NDHY https://coord.info/GC7EQVB and a few older ones I published in Tennessee that have been adopted out: https://coord.info/GC5W1PM https://coord.info/GC60FKJ