TeamTwoStar

"I Found It!! Oh, no, Nevermind. It was just some trash."

I've got an Idea!! No Blue Frowney faces for DNFs. It sould be a blindfolded smiley face or a smiley face with a hand up showing the "I'll be right back in a minute" hand gesture. That would be more descriptive. It would say, " I didn't get it this time but I will be back!" And the Blue Smiley face for the 3 difficulty micro cache right next to the Dumpsters that... you just never want to go back to, Ever.

You can do unknown. That is perfectly fine. However, if it was my cache I would say that it was a regular container. As for difficulty.. That is harder. I would say at least a 2 because it is not something you would look for often, but unless you found the Most Perfect Spot ever and it blended in so well that even you could loss it, then it would still be no harder than a 2. It looks pretty cool, but I think you will find that it is going to stick out a little where ever you place it. I found a fake rock the other day, it looked pretty real. But I guess I picked up on the fact that the colors were slightly off and it was the first thing I picked up at GZ. So I think it would be lower than a 2.5.

It think it is the easy ones that for no reason you just can't find that are the worst. I mean it is rated 1 or 2 difficulty, but you just can't find it no matter what you do. You turn over every single stone and lift every branch, and have stuck you hand in gods knows what and still come up empty handed. We looked in this area off of a trail in southeastern PA and we looked and looked. This was not a cacher freindly area, plenty of thorns, rusty metal, and low limbs of tree that you need to climb over and under. My sister and me search and seached one side of the trail, then the other and further off the trail. We lifted every stone, every limb, and looked in every crevas. We didn't see anything. Only a 1.5 dif too. It was getting close to dark and we needed to go so we left. Second attempt, I was alone that day and searching all the same spots we did before and climbing here and there and all over GZ. I was about to give up and leave because it was cold, raining, and misrable that day, when I see this fallen limb not two feet of the trail. It had a piece of wood wedged at the end and I didn't think that that could be where it was, but I took a look anyway. The cache wasn't even off the trail two feet... Other than the cooridantes being slightly off there is no reason we didn't find it the first day. *Palm face* We got the smiley on this find, but we made the terrian a 4 or 5 when it only needed to be a 1 or a 1.5.. We parked close to where the cache was located, about 800 to 500 ft from the cache. It seemed like it would be very quick. Not a big deal right? Wrong! We ended up climbing down this huge hill, crossing a steam, almost lossing my shoe in the mud, bushwacking through 200 ft of thorns, only to get to the other side and have to climb up this huge hill..... We ended up finding the cache.. but because of where we parked, we had to back track through all that stuff AGAIN! After that, I try my best to look for the easiest route possible.

Well, it depends. What I think about muggles depends on what hat I am wearing, cacher or CO. When I am a cacher, they ignore me and I ignore them. I am just a wierd person standing 30ft off the trail in the woods. If they are curious enough to come up and ask, then I have no problem explaining what I am doing and what geocaching is. It is the short explaination. If you are geocaching now, then you must have heard it from somewhere, right? Who knows, they might end up playing and likeing the game as much as I do. When I am the CO.... #$%^&*#$%^&*% #$%^&*(!!!!! I must have the fastest muggled cache ever. The day after it was publish a muggle walked off with it, and Helpfully *sarcasim* took it to the police station for us. Wasn't that nice *sarcasm*? When I am a CO, I don't want muggles near my cahce. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=be5eef3b-5b8d-465a-84c4-96ecbcce6a2d Luckily, the cache is one of our closer caches to home, and I took care of it in the morning. It depends on what perspective you are taking.

Oh boy, I would have given them "the look!". Shame on anyone who would do such a thing. OH no!!! Not "the look" Rofl!

For a minute when I saw a new post, I thought our account got hacked!! And then I remembered that you are probably playing on your computer too!! LOL XD -J-chan

We found something the otherday that we are still laughing about and wanted to share! We are newer to geocaching...so we havent seen it all yet The other day we were looking for a 1.5/1.5 regular placed by a local park association. It had a number of logs with people saying it was an easy find. So we found GZ which was just a patch of bushes and tall trees in the middle of a flat field. We started looking at all the obvious and not obvious possible spots with no luck. Just we were about to leave my sister looks up and low and behold, somehow, someone had taken the time to hoist the ammo can AT LEAST 30 feet up this tall tree. April fools joke? We will post a pick later...got some great ones. We asked another finder if it had been up a tree when they found it and they comfirmed it used to be on the ground. This would have been more annoying but we had so much fun for the next hour or so laughing about how the heck it got up there, and why...and how to get it down, and just what was in that box, and what should the rating be now, ect. I have to say it is very tempting to see if we can find a way to get it down We took a pic of the box in the tree and sent it to the CO. What's the funniest thing that ever happened to you while geocaching?

Since everyone loves a good online rant, I decided to go ahead and start one We were at an event for Friday the 13th with lots of the active local cachers in our area. While out looking for a new cache that was placed for the event, we noticed that someone had totally disassembled a sprinker head, right near GZ (parking lot of a restaurant) and left it in pieces on the ground. What the heck?? That was really annoying to see from someone who should have known better...and why, you ask, is it annoying?? Cause that kind of stupid crap is what will give geocaching a bad name and ruin the game if caches are banned because landowners are afraid of property distruction!! It would have taken a few seconds to put the thing back together too. RANT OVER. Lol. Any thoughts?

I read a news article about a geocacher that died because he was looking at his GPS or something and tripped oversomething and fell down a big drop. It is nice to consider safety when placing your cache, we do, ..but at the same time, common sense on the cacher's part goes a long way, and we all play at our own risk.. I think part of the charm of geocaching is that it is largely user regulated, aside from some basic guidelines...and I like that. The more you try to control it and add more and more rules over someones lack of judgement or isolated incident...the more the creativity is stifled.

You have a pretty convincing argument. LOL. Every one has a very convicing argument. Its not that I don't know what the sizes of the caches are, but my cache is more ambiguos, it has features of a micro and a regular box.

you'd be surprised. We had one locally that was on the side of a telephone switching box that had many visits from the service people. It lasted two years. Along the way, the local thugs painted grafitti over it and the phone company repainted the box, including the cache. That is the best thing that I have ever read on a forum. LOL, the difficulty must have gone up when it got painted! It got the perfect camo then!!

Ok... Ahem... "Micro or regular." How was that? Actually, I'd go for the "Other" size You don't need to be a smart@#$%... LOL : ) Anyway that sounds like a good idea!

I am not going to exactly tell you what my cache is but I would really like your help on this. The outside of the cache is the size of a regular box, but because of the "fun surprises" I have put into making this cache unique, there is No room for Any Trade Items, No room for Travel Bugs or Geocoins, and No room for anything bigger than a bison tube for the log book. I have been thinking about listing it as a micro, because the thing that makes micros a micro is that they have no room for swag. However, it is the size of a regular box on the outside. Which would you list it as, a micro or a regular size? Thanks for all your Answers! P.S. You don't need to write a lot, if you just want to say micro or regular, that's fine.

This is just my opinion but I would just let it go. Smiley Faces don't equal points. That is something that people get confused. Your number of finds is not equal to how fast you are or what your skills as a cacher or anything. It is your own personal acheivement. I have 424 finds and if I lied about the number of finds I have had, I am cheating myself and no one else. If they want to lie and say they found something they didn't, let them. Like I said, in the long run, they are only hurting themselves. So yeah, I would let it go. It is just a game, don't let them spoil it for you.

I glad that it made the list...but why is it so low?.... I know that geocaching beats "wild swimming" and "lighting a fire without matches". I guess not everyone understands the epicness of geocaching.

LOL, PERFECT. Thumbs Up!! I really can't say anything that is better than this. You hit the nail on the head. To Bob: You know the log, the hints, going geocaching with freinds that is all part of the fun of geocaching. Their aren't any rules that exclude multiple people going out and caching together. For me one of the best parts of geocaching is that it is a social game, something you can do with family and freinds. A system that penializes you for playing with you friends is not right. Just go out and find the boxes, have fun while doing it, that is what it is all about.

Even if you get the membership, you can still have problems. Recently, I tried getting three caches published in a small park. Trust me there is nothing listed for miles of this park (and it has been that way since at least December), but appearently someone else has an Unpublished cache in the area....and either they need to give up "claim on the land" or we can't list our cache there. It happens. You can get the membership so that you can see the other caches in the area and move it to a place that will be OK or you can keep guessing. Even so there can still be an invisible problem.

Like the other cacher said, I think it comes down to what you were looking for. If you were searching for some micros in the park you went to, which could have been standing on them and not found them. Becoming a geocacher means that you need to learn a lot. Where people like to hide things, what looks out of place, and what depending on the kind of container it is where you should look. The difficulty is just as important as the size of the cache. Some of these things blend into their surounding so well, even experienced cacher would have a very hard time finding the cache. Another thing is that the geocache is rarely located exactly where your GPS says "0 ft". There are a number of reasons for this, but that is part of the game. What you sould do is start looking at the surounding area once you do find ground zero. You look at local land marks like rock piles, trees, guard rails, any thing that is around. Those types of things tend to be the place the cache is placed in or around. Like everone else said you should look for a regular sized box for your first few caches, then maybe try some small, them maybe some micro. Find ones that have a terrian rating of 1 to 2. Then final thing is make sure that the difficulty is a 1 or a 2. Once you start to learn where the geocaches are likely to be you can find 30 in a day if you want. The geocache that you were looking for probabley did not go missing, it is more likely you could not find it. We had the same problem at first, we didn't know what we were looking for or where to look so our first few caches were mostly DNF. However, now we know many of the tricks cacher use to hide the cache we can find them pretty easily now. Keep trying you will get there.

These are the items that have become part of my geocaching bag: Pens Camera Extra Logs Mirror (for difficult to find micros and nanos) Gloves (to protect my hands; who knows where I might be sticking them) Flash Light (mini for crevases, Big for Night caches and caches found at night) Swag (small and large items) Bandaids Tweezers GPS Extra Litium Batteries Compass (for difficult GZ areas) Panchoes That covers 97% of any situation that I have run into while out geocaching. Most of the time though I only need my GPS and a Pen.

Like I said, it was not supposed to be in a tree, but it was. To end the debate, and hopefully get the topic back on track, I contacted a previous finder. They told me that it was laying on the ground in a bush. Hence the 1.5/ 1.5 rating. It doesn't take a genious to read the log and figure out where it originally was placed on ground zero. I am pretty sure that a muggle came around and just to mess with us they threw the cahce into the tree, rather than out right stealing it. Honestly, it wouldn't be that hard to throw it up there. And for the average, not fitness buff, american, with no tools or tree climbing training the cache was unaccessable. (Btw, a close up zoom picture of the tree may make it look closer to the ground, but its not. It would be as high as the roof of my house, with no limbs to grab on to.) I know some of you guys have some really cool stories.. Please share them.

Tell that to the person that put it up in the tree. LOL, I think they threw it up there and it got stuck. They could have used a ladder but that would have been a lot of work and that would have had to have beed a huge ladder.

I say use your judgement. If it is a generic nano, bison tube or magnetic holder on a gaurdrail on the side of a road with a simple logbook, why not replace it, if it is obvious it was muggled. But not the special ones. I dont worry about the fading ones so much. Thats geocaching. They come and go all the time. It would be cool if Groundspeak would create a system that after 30 days, if noone has stepped forward to fix the cache (CO) then they would take volunteers on a first come first serve basis to adopt them. Their are a few easy ones in my area that i would gladly adopt that the co is mia.

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I hate to be the one to break this to you, TTS, but sometimes caches are hidden in trees deliberately. I will admit that a 1.5 terrain rating would make it seem as though it shouldn't be up there, but before posting pictures of it to the cache page, you probably should have asked the cache owner. You may have inadvertantly posted spoiler pictures of the hide. In addition, as has been rather abruptly mentioned, you really shouldn't claim a find on a cache where you didn't actually sign the log, particularly if this really was deliberately hidden in the tree. Besides... how much better the story would have been if you had climbed the tree! Nope, I am aware that some caches are placed in trees. However, with this cache that is not the case. The tree was unclimbable, the d/t was a 1.5/1.5, for us to have had to climb up a tree one of those numbers would have had to have been a 4 or higher. By reading the log, I could tell that at originally the box was left on the ground in the scrawney bushes. It doesn't take a genious to read the log and figure out from GZ where the cache originally was. If I'm wrong, I'll shave my head.