HaLiJuSaPa

It wasn't said to disrespect your opinion and I do agree that if a cacher WANTS to have it not be in their find count, there should be an option, I was just explaining why it may never happen and why it's extremely doubtful that they'd ever move them to their own platform. Remembering back to when they stopped accepting new virtuals and old ones slowly disappeared from eventual archiving the complaints a lot of people gave; made worse when Earthcaches were taken off Waymarking and new ones counted for a find again, many people thought they hypocritically did that because no one was finding them on the Waymarking site and earthcaches involve the sponsorship of an organization that was probably dismayed at their sudden unpopularity. I'm assuming (albeit MANY years later) that AL's were put in to kind of placate the people who lamented virtuals going to it's own site and thus what I said.

To be honest, if they didn't count AL's as finds, probably 90% of the people doing them now would stop doing them. Look at how popular "Waymarking" is.....

This is for finding an Adventure Lab, not creating a new one for others to do right? If so, did it still credit you for the finds? Usually it does that after you successfully answer the questions at each stop, so if it's say a 5 stage Lab you have 1 find after the first stage, 2 after the 2nd etc. I've had times where I didn't complete a Lab in one visit so I got credit for 2 finds out of the possible 5 but as I went back to it another day I got credit for the other finds accordingly. If that is the case the only issue is that you were not able to log a comment to the OP (like "great AL", etc.). This happened to me once but I still got credit for the finds. If it is not that then I'm not sure what to do, sorry.

Thanks for all the responses. I think I will stick with my smartphone, possibly adding a smart watch to it. My past concerns were reception and accuracy (which is why I used the Forerunner, as someone noted, especially recently, my caching has been little enough that I'm not too concerned about downloading waypoints). I technically still have the old IFinder Go if I really wanted to use it, I just find it cumbersome.

Hello all. Go back about a decade or so and I was all over these forums. But it has been awhile (those "little kids" with Grover in my profile picture are now 17 and 15! And except for one post in 2017, I haven't been on here in almost 6 years). Something I noticed today brought me back for now. I started caching in 2005. The first few years, I used a Lowrance IFinder GO, simple but cheap. Then for many years I used a Garmin Forerunner 305, yes you had to download waypoints one by one, but I liked the convenience of having it on my wrist. Well after several years it finally broke about a year ago and I have been using my smartphone with the Geocaching app (a Galaxy S7 Edge, now a Galaxy S9 since September). GPS technology in smartphones has improved to the point that it's quite usable for caching (a couple of years ago before the S7 Edge I tried it on an LG G Stylo phone and it was awful and unreliable, don't know if iPhones were that bad then), but I wonder about the possibility of breaking my phone when hiking (although I use a pretty high end Otterbox case). So I decided to look into another Forerunner (more on that later) and into a handheld. What I discovered: 1) Although still pretty old technology, I noticed that the Forerunner 405/410 is more like an actual wristwatch size. How well is it for caching? I have seen forums where some complain that you can't even download waypoints 1 at a time like you could with the 205/305, but I am more interested in if GPS reception is the same or better than the 205/305 and if it has a similar interface (i.e. compass rose and distance) for finding caches to the 205/305. 2) I was shocked to see that Lowrance and especially Magellan doesn't make handhelds anymore (except for the Australian market which is as far as you can be from where I live without going into space). It looks like Lowrance stopped a long time ago (anyone know when?) and my guess with Magellan (could not find an absolute answer) is sometime in early-mid 2017. What happened? Is Garmin just that dominating or did smartphones become so good as a replacement for a handheld GPS that the market for them has shrunk to almost nothing? Is there anyone besides Garmin who makes handhelds (I have nothing against Garmin obviously, just hate seeing "monopolies"). 3) I see many decent Magellan handhelds are now on eBay for under $100, sometimes as low as $30. Is it worth getting one vs. continuing to use my smartphone for caching? Any answers on this would be much appreciated, thanks.

Nice idea

I actually have a TomTom XL and have never used it for caching. While in the sense that you can navigate to a lat/long waypoint you CAN use it, the interface is really designed for use in a car, or at least on streets, not hiking trails. Besides, I don't think it's too durable for hiking (though that can be argued for most cellphones, which is one reason I've been considering going back to handheld GPS). What I do use it for is navigating to the parking for a cache hunt, though with so many options for doing that on your smartphone too I've tended to go that route as well. Only reason I don't eBay the XL is my wife seems to like using it for her navigation needs a lot more than a smartphone.

I don't think TPTB realize the uproar this issue has caused in the caching community. Just about every caching Facebook page whose region is within 50-100 miles of this event is talking about it and either posting snippets of this thread or links to it (it's how I learned about it as I'm rarely on the Groundspeak forums anymore) and there's a lot of serious geocachers who go to this event religiously who are at least thinking of opting out, even calls to boycott it (I have not gone to this event and won't be able to this year either, but I honestly would've been one of the ones to cancel if I was intending to go). My biggest concern (and one others have given) is in terms of the precedent this gives. One thing being shouted out a lot is what's next, land managers will do this in a park that a historic cache like Cache Ninja's GERBIL is in (oldest cache in NJ and one of the oldest in the entire NY metropolitan area) and do it in?

I noticed the Explorist 310 seems to do a similar thing for not much more price and it appears better performance. Thoughts on that welcome too.

Hi. I used to be in these forums a lot but am not anymore. I used to use a Garmin Forerunner 205 for geocaching because of its simplicity, ease of being on my wrist and ability to download waypoints (before that I had a Lowrance iFinder Go2 and did all this manually....ugh!). However, after many years, it broke and died. I recently got an Android smartphone and now use the Geocaching app to download caches and do paperless geocaching and really enjoy it. We also bring my wife's and son's phones as a backup doing the same thing. It's convenient, but my wife's screen broke, not on the trail, but it has me concerned about using a smartphone for "woods caching" and I would love to get a handheld that does the same thing. The Magellan Explorist GC (would be my first Magellan BTW) seems to be the handheld that most approximates doing this while being relatively inexpensive. Any thoughts on this unit? And if it's not the best one for what I want to do, any other suggestions? Thanks in advance of your input!

Just curious, why are you selling them?

I think it makes sense that the VAT and exchange rates would raise the price. But Groundspeak should've warned you with more advance notice than they did.

Hi, we used to cache in your area several weekends/year as my in-laws have a small "2nd home" in Beech Mountain Lakes that we'd kind of use from time to time as a short vacation getaway. Unfortunately, life has "gotten in the way" and we're not there anywhere near as much as we used to. However, we were there once this year, during July 4 weekend. Only did a couple of caches. While we probably are not going to be around there anytime soon, for curiosity I looked at the Google cache map of the Hazleton area and noticed that the number of caches has literally exploded since even then! While this is a proud achievement for you, I noticed a lot of the new caches have "(Hazelton Geocache)" as part of the cache name and was wondering what that was about? Thanks for your reply.

That happened about 4 months after we started geocaching and if I remember it right there was about a month or two of warning, it wasn't like there was no knowledge of Locationless vanishing until Dec. 31, 2005 and then on Jan. 1, 2006 they were all locked.

I have to admire that you went out and bought an ammo can and lots of good swag for your first hide! I wished we lived in your area as we'd definitely find it. Next week marks 6 years since we first started caching (we made the finds on August 21, we just didn't sign up on GC.com until Sept. 2). Back then, the majority of hides, especially in the Northeast, we ammo cans. Now when I find an ammo can hide (which is probably 1 out of 10 hides if that), especially if it was hidden in this decade, I joke how they are the "payphones" of geocaching, as they seem so rare and passe now. But I have to admit we're guilty of hiding tupperware and micros in recent years. Finances are not what they used to be, and it gets hard to replace stolen ammo cans and keep filling them with goodies. But I hope yours goes well, good luck!

I'm rarely on these forums (still cache though, less than I used to but at least once/month) so hearing about this I had to go back and see. After railing on this for a good year or two circa 2006-07 or so, I never thought they would ever come back. I wonder what did it? A) Potential competition like Opencaching (which I have to admit at least in the NY metropolitan area has not made a dent though) Realizing the hypocrisy of pulling back Earthcaches from Waymarking, which they did because "money" (or more accurately "sponsorship") talks? Speaking of EarthCaches, to be fair, it should come back as something like HistoryCaches as someone else here suggested, not the full lame virts, etc.

Though not from southeast PA, kind of sad to hear this. I occasionally "lurked" the site (a bit more active with the NEPAG site since I used to cache up there a lot, but not recently). But I kind of understand, I haven't even been on the Groundspeak forums in a long time, sometimes life just kind of gets in the way. Even the site I mostly post to (MNYGS - Metro NY Geocaching Society) has a lot of periods of "dull/no activity" on their forums and more so the Lower Hudson Valley Geocachers site. The one other "regional" site I post to, CT Cachers, seems to have more forum activity though, however, mostly by just a few "power posters".

The environmental group Going Coastal (http://www.goingcoastal.org) has partnered with Groundspeak to place a "trail" of 10 EARTHCACHES, each very much walkable to one another in Inwood Hill Park in extreme northern Manhattan and a similar set in Liberty State Park in Jersey City, NJ just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Enjoy! I don't know if they have or are planning any other Earthcaches in other parts of the NY metro area. It does appear from their website that their current focus as an environmental group is on greater NY City with an eventually expansion of activities to metro Boston.

Maybe if Opencaching takes off it will force GC.com to rethink bring virtuals back......or at least merge the (in my view) failed Waymarking site into the GC.com.....like maybe virts would count the way benchmarks do now.

1 ) Fly to America. 2 ) Drive to Groundspeak Headquarters in Washington.\ 3 ) Present Jeremy with 8.2 billion US dollars, cash. 4 ) He temporarily unlocks a Locationless whilst the rest of the Lackeys aren't looking. 5 ) Log it quickly. I know you were obviously tongue-in-cheek but this did remind me that Earthcaches were "grandfathered" but then brought back once the organization behind them realized that they would be completely ignored on "Waymarking" even though to me bringing them back means virtuals should be back too as they are essentially a "virtual" (whereas I can understand the issues with Locationless and Waymarking is perfect for that.....if only they'd count the stats together that site would soar). So money really does talk......

You're right about Aquecache, my lower Westchester bias is showing..... Thanks for the info, that makes sense.

Thanks, just tried it, putting a cache on "ignore" automatically recreates the list, so that's how you do it. Thanks again!

I had noticed that the 3 caches on my ignore list were all archived. In trying to figure out how to take them off, I unintentionally removed my Ignore List, not the caches. I can't seem to get the list back for future usage. Please let me know how I can get this back, is it as simple as creating a bookmark called "Ignore List" and the GC.com site just recognizes from the name what to do with the caches in there? It didn't seem to work when I tried that as a test. Thanks for any input you can give!

Quite late here (haven't been on the forums much), just realized about your site while trying to update our profile after our 500th find. Thanks, will miss much and best of luck to you.

Wow, I guess just like how we've been on the Groundspeak forums very little, this thread itself has dried up. Anyway, "tooting our own horn" a bit to note that our 500th find occured today at Sleepy Hollow-1 (GCAE), the oldest existing cache in the NY Metropolitan Area.