timbee&suebee

I use this category when I place a cache that is not a single container or not typical - like a micro inside a large host. I think it has a place so I hope they don't drop it.

Sounds like these caches need to be temporarily disabled until the are is clear again. But barring that, I know I would certainly appreciate a note on the cache listing page (either by the CO or someone local in the know) telling me of any potential road closures or other impediments to finding a cache. I would hate to drive all the way out to an area to do some caching only to find out the area was closed.

We placed five caches within a state park at one time. Since it's a little out of the way we decided to have them published all on the same day so that someone seeing the listings/checking out the map would have more incentive to come find them since there were five to find. To make sure they would all be published at the same time I wrote a note to the reviewer on each listing letting him know that I would like them all published at the same time and I noted which other caches I wanted to have published. It took and extra day since he had to verify the coordinates of one of them but I think it was worth while. Of course, one person got FTF on all of them which we were figuring might happen. Funny thing is, even though they are all close by there are only a few people who have bothered to get all five in one day. Most of the logs have indicated that some people found one or two but not the others. But they are of different types (puzzle, multi's traditional, short walk, longer walk, etc) so I guess some people prefer some types and avoid others. To the OP, I think that if your caches all have the same theme and are on the same trail I would have them published at one time. One thing I dislike is when I go get a cache and find that another one (or more) is published in almost the same spot a day or so later. I'm a lot less likely to take the trip back to look for the other one(s) unless they are very close by.

One of the more recent caches we published was in a state park. We had permission from the park manager and he signed our cache placement application. We mentioned in our cache listing that we had permission to place this cache. The reviewer contacted us to ask the name and contact info of the person who gave us permission. I don't know if that is standard procedure for state parks or his new policy. He mentioned something about having the info on file if anyone asked. Either way, it wasn't a big deal so I sent the info he requested and the next day he published the cache. So when we published more caches in that park and one in a town (which I got permission from the mayor to place) I added that same type of info to the reveiewer note in advance of him asking.

We try to make our milestone find caches ones that are in very nice locations, or well thought out or something else along those lines. We actually 'saved' making the find of a very difficult puzzle cache for our 500th find just so it would be more memorable. We took a photo with one of us holding a sign we made with the number 500 on that.

You didn't say why you wanted to log your own cache as a 'find'.

And don't forget that you don't have to leave TBs just in caches you're finding the first time. There's nothing wrong with going back to one of your past finds to drop off a TB. If you think back, you can usually very quickly think of a large, safe cache that you've found in the past where you could drop off a TB. I've done this many times when the caches I'm finding have been too small to contain a trackable. We've done this. We took a TB once that we had intended on moving north as the TB owner requested. But our trip plans changed and after having had it in our possession for more than two weeks we thought it would be better to drop it in a local cache (that we had visited before) that gets a lot of visits and let someone else move it along rather than holding on to it for next time we were going to make the trip we had planned.

We just came across this for the first time the other day. We were quite surprised to find a TB wrapped around the outside of a magentic key holder. Knowing that this was never going to last that way, we took it with us. When we went to log that we had retrieved it we found that it had never been logged out of the previous cache it was in (which also appeared to be a micro) or logged into this one. I checked cache logs and see that the person who was most likely to have done this had just a couple of finds so he was probably not familiar with trackables. Maybe a newbie mistake but it just seems like common sense to not drop a trackable unless it's large enough to go in the container. We made sure this particular TB not only made it to a cache container large enough for TBs but also one that gets a lot of visitors so it could be on it's way to it's destination again.

Mainly because many if not most archivals come about because of an inactive or unresponsive CO. You need the CO's agreement to adopt their cache. If they are inactive and not responding to emails, how do you get their agreement/assistance? To do it any other way would simply cause problems -- something that I am sure that Groundspeak and geocaching.com would rather avoid. It is a fair system.... wait for archival, place a new cache instead of trying to revive a piece of junk. Add to that: this creates a new listing that all previous finders get another cache to increase their finds with. Agreed. There was a lovely spot nearby that had a cache that had been missing for some time. The CO was someone like we are talking about - only a couple of finds, placed a cache they never maintained then dropped out. I attempted to contact the CO to find out if I could adopt the cache but as I suspected, he never wrote back. So I posted a "needs archived" and waited the month for the reviewer to close out this cache then placed a new cache in almost the same spot. It not only brought out new cachers but ones who had found the one in this spot previously and who have commented on how nice to have the spot revived and the improvement on the quality of the cache placed now.

Just checked your stats and see that you are a newbie. I'm glad you are getting excited about the sport and it sounds like you are doing a lot of homework before placing the caches you have ideas for. You did not, however, mention anything about requesting permission to place caches in the areas you have selected. If the forested areas you talked about are in a state park, contact the park manager to find out what their cache guidelines are. If the area is on National Forest or Park land you might want to try someplace else for a hide. Although I have heard of some of them allowing caches at the local level, in general, there are no caches allowed on federal property. If these are private property, check the tax maps for the county the property is in to get the owner's names and address to contact them to request permission. There have been enough stories of cachers being confronted by property owners who did not give permission for a cache placement and you don't want to place anyone in any danger because of this. Also, you mentioned that you chose places in the woods. Are there trails to these locations? A little bushwhacking is one thing but if you have selected a spot a mile into the woods with no trail you might not get too many people bothering to look for it.

Sounds all so familiar :-) The other problem with just ignoring those caches is that if no one is bothering to look for them, no one is posting DNFs or needs maintenance or other logs that indicate a problem and there is nothing to show a cause to request that the cache be archived by the reviewer and that seems to be the only way to get rid of these inappropriate caches.

Thanks to both who responded. After some discussion we decided that logging our new TB from cache to cache was sufficient so we will not bother with logging it 'home' after each trip. Good to know we have options though.

Interesting idea but I think that would be a lot of work for the reviewers to have to check into all the finds of each person who wanted to place their first hide to make sure they met the minimum requirements.

I like this analogy!

We have a local cacher who has placed over a hundred caches but hasn't been active for more than a year. Although some of his caches are getting archived through a long period of "DNFs" then "needs maintenance" then "needs archived" and the reviewer waits a month for a response from the CO (which isn't forthcoming) before it's officially archived, many of his caches are still being found. So archiving them isn't really necessary. And I don't know what the rules are, but I don't think a reviewer can archive a cache if it's still being found if the CO hasn't given permission. I think the other issue with this plan is that a reviewer would have to keep track of the logins of all the cachers in his ares (which could be thousands) to see if they are still active. A daunting task to say the least. That's a good idea but unfortunately, a CO has to place a cache up for adoption and/or invite a specific person to adopt the cache before it can happen. We attempted to adopt a cache that had had many DNFs but was in a nice location. We wrote to the CO and asked if we could adopt their cache but they hadn't been active in a long time and they never wrote back to us. Eventually we added a "needs archived" note and after some time the reviewer archived it freeing up the location for a new cache.

Not sure if this should be in the "Trackables" Forum of the "Caching" forum but thought we would try here first. We just bought a vehicle TB sticker and plan on using it to track mileage between home and caches that we visit. Yesterday to get it started we "visited" a cache we just placed very near our home as the starting point. Tonight we attended an event cache and logged a "visit" to that cache to log the mileage. I realize that if we want to keep track of our total miles, we need to then "visit" our close-to-home cache again and then each time we return home from caching for the day. My concern is that if we do that every time we go out caching (which is at least 2 or 3 times per week), the logging section of this listing will get overwhelmed with all our "notes" recording our dropping of the TB for mileage and cachers who are out to find this cache and want to look through past logs will have to scroll through all of that. We know a local cacher who does it that way and he has 155 "write notes" in his close-to-home cache listing just for that purpose. So my question is, is there a way to make a cache at our home coordinates that is not available for the public to see or visit but that we can use solely for the purpose of recording mileage?

We try not to pick up TBs unless we are planning on moving them within a week or so. But one we took a while back sat in our possession for about a month because we had planned to bring it to a cache further north (where the TB owner had requested it go) then some issues came up that prevented us from caching in that area as soon as we planned so we hadn't moved it. There was a message on the trackables page letting us know that we had this TB in our possession in excess of 14 days and we needed to move it along (or something along those lines). We wrote a note to the CO appologized for the delay in moving it and explained the situation. Then next time we were near a rest area, we dropped it in a cache there because they get visited frequently and we knew it would move quickly again. So... I think the idea is to move it within 14 days. If you know you won't be caching in that time period, don't take the bug, just "discover" it instead and leave it for the next person who will be able to keep it moving. If it's your bug and you don't see it moving, give it two weeks then write to the last person to retrieve it and find out what their plan is for moving it. It may not be that they are planning on keeping it but just the things have come up and they haven't had a chance. A message from you might nudge them to place it in any cache just to get it moving again.

We've actually found photocopies of TBs in caches. I think the owner was concerned about his actual TB going missing-in-action as so often happens, so he made a photocopy of his TB front and back, put it in a sealed plastic bag and dropped it. We tracked it and moved it along like we would any other TB. So I guess you have to decide if what you found was just an info sheet that was attached to the original TB or if it is meant to be the TB itself and should be moved along.

We attended a geocaching event this past weekend and saw over 30 vehicles in the parking lot with vehicle TBs. We got all the tracking numbers and logged them as "discovered". And it appears almost everyone at the event did the same thing so each of the vehicle bugs had lots of hits that day. We liked the idea so much that we bought our own vehicle TB and just attached it to our car yesterday. Our main idea is to use it to track mileage for the caches we find. We really only expect it to be "discovered" when we attend geo-events where there are a lot of cachers around who are interested in that kind of thing.

We have started doing this. That way the TB owner knows that thier bug is missing in action. We've received some thank yous in return.

Yes... Although our first hide wasn't stellar, by the time we reached 100 finds we had learned a lot about good locations vs bad and good containers vs run-of-the-mill. Since that first hide we have hidden 10 more caches and have three more being published soon. Some caches are fairly straightforward but are in nice locations. Some are much more creative and I can see that finders appreciate that by the number of favorite points we have received. I do agree with many of those who posted since my original post to this thread. Those who only find GRs or LPCs will probably only hide the same type in the same locations so requiring a number of finds to place might not do much good. And since these are low maintenance, they can go on forever even if the cacher doesn't stay active. But since we live in a rural area and don't do much urban caching anymore, these are not the ones that bother me. It's those newbies who get exicted about their first couple of finds (and of course we want them to to stay in the sport) who "know a cool spot" for their first hide but, because they haven't had much experience don't think of things like what the vegetation in an area might be in the summer as opposed to the winter and the spot becomes dangerous becasue of thorns or snakes or ice. Or they haven't read the placement guidelines (which I realize is true for experienced cachers as well as newbies) and place caches in restricted places or on private property without permission. And what we often find is those who haven't found many cache containers and haven't seen the good ones and the ones that don't hold up end up not putting much thought into their own containers or contents and place ones that aren't waterproof, etc. so the containers become a maintenance issue. And if they haven't stuck with the sport, the containers aren't kept up. We have also found that those who haven't had much experience finding also haven't had much experience reading cache listings to get an idea of what is good information to put in a description or a hint to actually help someone find their cache. All of these scenarios are ones we have run accross on multiple occasions and more times than not, when we check the COs stats, we see that they have very few finds and dropped out within a couple of months of starting caching. But my thought into requiring a certain number of finds before placing their own hide isn't just about getting experience but also to know they are going to stay in the game. We have seen so many people with hides that made less than 10 finds then dropped out. By requiring a certain number of finds, or as someone else suggested, a certain time period to be active, there's a better chance that someone will stick with it and maintain their caches or learn more about caching. Again, as I stated earlier, I realize there is no simple answer. I just wanted to see what others thought of this and I see that I'm not the only one with this gripe.

If someone has a link to the previous thread on this discussion I'd like to read it. I understand that this is probably a common gripe and something I have to live with along with some of my other pet geocaching peeves. I just wanted to know what others thought of it and what geocaching.com's stand was on suggesting rather than requiring a certain number of finds before placment.

This is just what I have been doing to get these abandoned caches out of our area. Point taken.

When we first got back into geocaching last fall, we thought about placing a cache of our own. We read the guidelines that suggested (but not required) that cachers have at least 20 finds before placing a cache of their own. We actually waited until we had close to 100 finds just so we had experience with different types of hides and knew we were going to stick with this hobby. But I find that there are an awful lot of caches in our area that are poorly placed or thought out then later not maintained. And almost all of these were placed by people with just a couple of finds under their belts who then stopped being active with geocaching. I'm sure there has been discussion on the forums about this subject before (I just couldn't find the thread) but I was wondering if geocaching.com has discussed making it a rule that a cacher needs to have at least X number of finds (I would suggest 50 myself) before a cache hide can be approved?

Most of the time I find that if there are a lot of DNFs posted and no response from the CO they probably aren't active anymore and won't be checking on, maintaining or replacing the cache. If that is the case, I will log it as a "needs archived" so the reviewer can disable the listing, attempt to contact the CO and, if unsuccessful, archive the cache so it stops showing up on queries and opens the spot for someone else who might want to place a cache nearby. Generally, the only time I post a "needs maintenance" is when we have found the container and it's in bad shape and needs to be replaced.