junglehair

Back in my University days, I took a really interesting course on park management. As part of that course, we spent a week in Banff National Park talking to Park Rangers, researchers, etc. Banff is an interesting case. It is Canada's first National Park and has hordes of visitors every year. The Trans-Canada Highway runs right through the middle of the Park. They have quite the balancing act to do to try to keep the Park pristine and enjoyable for future generations, while allowing all the visitors that want to see it now. Yes, the Parks are open to the public, but the Park Rangers need to be able to manage how and where the public travel while they are in the Park. There are safety issues to consider, endangered species, and all sorts of other factors. Giving them the heads up about placing a cache there allows them to check if there are any issues with having additional visitors to that area.

I have a couple of EarthCaches in urban areas which can be done from the sidewalk. These did not require permission. The EarthCaches that I have which are in parks, were all placed with permission of the park. I've never had any trouble with getting permission from the park managers to place an EarthCache - they are usually quite excited about it. Sometimes they have additional comments that they want added to the cache page (park hours, stay on trails, no dogs, etc.), but that's about it. It has always been a positive experience for me.

My response would be almost exactly what Arby Gee said, except I would have added the "u"s because I too am Canadian. The fav points help to narrow down which of the hordes of traditional caches to go after, but I have my own set of criteria when chosing which EarthCaches to do. Often that just comes down to how much time I think it's going to take and if we have time for it.

I haven't really noticed a change. My Canadian Earthcaches are not being logged much these days, but I also own one in Queenstown, New Zealand which gets visited very frequently. Photos have always been an optional task on that EarthCache and people post a photo about 2/3 of the time. This hasn't changed since the updated guidelines.

As an EarthCache owner, I really prefer when someone sends me an email and immediately logs the EarthCache as found. That way I get the two emails together and can file them and forget about it after I email to confirm their answers. When they log the find several days after they have emailed me, then I don't usually remember getting their email. I have to go through my records to see if they sent in the answers yet or not.

Your vacation plans sound very similar to a trip that we just took after Christmas. We flew to Halifax and found Canada's First Cache on the same day we arrived. If you are going there, I recommend also doing the caches on Graves Island. We went there for an EarthCache, and were really glad we did. You will want to see the monument at the posted coords for that cache. The gates are closed and we had to walk in, but if nothing else, at least check out the monument. On the way home, we stopped in Peggy's Cove because Tromelin had never been there before and that's one of the biggest tourist destinations in Nova Scotia. We didn't have time to make it down to Lunenburg and Mahone Bay, but those areas are really nice too. That night, another big storm hit the maritimes, so we were dealing with lots of snow after that. The next day we cached in the city of Halifax and found lots of nice caches to do. The snow didn't hamper us much there. Day 3 of our vacation we drove to Charlottetown, PEI. We stopped to find a cache in NS first, and then did about 10 in New Brunswick (which was a bit of challenge since there are not very many caches on that stretch of road), then we took the bridge across to PEI and found a cache there. Very easily accomplished in one day, but we just made the trip one way. We stayed in PEI for two days before heading back to Halifax. Caches there were tougher to find with the snow and we DNF'd many of the ones we attempted. Be warned, it will cost you $42.50 to take the bridge off the island again, but you can cross over to PEI for free. We also found all the webcams along our way and the "First Post" virtual caches in Halifax and Charlottetown. Another area in Halifax we really liked was Point Pleasant Park. Lots of caches there, but it will involve quite a bit of hiking to get them. You can't drive into the park at all. Really nice area though. Hope that helps. P.S. If you like seafood, I also recommend checking out "McKelvies Delishes Fishes Dishes". We couldn't pass it up since the name was so funny, but the food was great. It's a fancier sort of place though which is reflected in the prices, but the food was great. A cheaper and less fancy alternative is the Bluenose II restaurant. It wasn't open when we were there, but I have eaten there before. The place has been in business forever, so they must be doing something right. Have fun on your trip!

I just set my camera to a lower resolution and I've never had trouble uploading to the site. I don't usually need a 3MB+ sized image for geocaching pics. If I go away on vacation, then I'll bump up the resolution, but for things like the now optional pictures at EarthCaches, lo-res is the way to go. Takes up less room on my computer too.

I was there many years ago. We made a special detour when driving down to GeoWoodstock III to visit Centralia. It truly is a cool place. I think we were there before that EarthCache was published though. Etermal Flame Falls is one of my favourite EarthCaches I have visited. It is located in Western New York. It's an eternal flame set in behind a waterfall. Some of my other favourites are already well known areas such as Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland, Petrified Forest National Park in Ariozona, Bryce Canyon NP, Arches NP, etc. But these are already National Parks or national monuments. I love it when EarthCachings takes me to some hidden away place that few people know about.

I don't imagine it would be as easy as that. Remember the listings are now submitted through geocaching.com, so it is the same template that is used for regular geocaches. What would you populate the "EarthCache Classification" field with on a traditional cache? Sure, it could be N/A, but then every geocache that get's submitted would need to select that. It could cause great confusion for a newbie wondering what EarthCache classification they need to put for that piece of tupperware they just placed in the park next door.

I apologize for going off topic again, but I would like to address cezanne's comments. First of all, I can certainly sympathize with you. Canada is considered the 51st State by many Americans, so I can understand how you feel in Austria being compared to or lumped in with Germany. The fact remains that Germany and the USA are really the big players in geocaching these days. Obviously it would be difficult to provide a translation in every language, so you would target the ones with the highest numbers of players. Right now, that is English and German. It makes sense to me that the German reviewers would cover other german speaking countries. I don't mean any offence by this, but it seems that your stance on the language issue is just a matter of stubborness on your part. You have the ability to provide the information in german to help the reviewers, but you choose not to out of principle. I'm all for having principles (my caches are written using the Queen's English, not American English, "colour" not "color" for example), but that doesn't make it Groundspeak's fault, or the GSA's fault, or the Reviewer's Fault that your EarthCaches cannot be published. There are many countries where the general language guideline is an issue due to the multiple languages being spoken. Obviously there are, and have to be, exceptions in some cases. I would take offence to a german only EarthCache being published in Canada, but if it was french only I would understand. I do not speak french even though it is one of our official languages.

Hi cezanne, My understanding of the language guideline is that an EarthCache must be written in the local language. I was also under the impression that German was the official language in Austria. I live in Canada where we have two official languages - English and French. I would assume someone could submit an EarthCache in either language. The reviewer could request a translation if they were not fluent in one of those languages. However, someone could not submit an EarthCache that was only written in German as the locals would not be able to understand it. I don't think the language requirements reflect the Reviewer's language choice, unless as I stated, they need it translated to assist with the review process. There are some countries where multiple languages are spoken, whether they are the official languages or not. I have a friend in Belgium who is probably more fluent in English than he is in his native language (Dutch). I would think exceptions could be requested in countries where English is widely spoken, but I do not know if that is the case for Austria. If you submitted an English only EarthCache in Austria, what percentage of the population would be able to understand it?

Here is a link to one of the EC challenge caches. There may be more, but this is the only one we are aware of. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=15cafdaa-428a-4e87-9fda-01fc3284f303 Good luck. Thanks KKM. I may have to put out my own version of an EarthCache Challenge cache here in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada as I don't believe there is one like that around here. JH

I haven't seen an EarthCache Category challenge cache. I don't think we have one in our area. Could you provide a link with an example? I like this idea. Even though there may not be official categories any more, you could likely manage by showing that you've found an exmaple of an EarthCache that would have fit into whichever categories you are missing. If I was the owner of the challenge cache, I would certainly accept that.

Perhaps you could combine the EarthCache into one about the waterfall and the gneiss. You could bring them to your spectacular example of gneiss and get them to examine it and learn what features about it help geologists to identify it as gneiss. Then perhaps you could take them to the waterfall and ask them if the rock that the waterfall cuts through is also gneiss, based on what they have learned at stage 1, or some different type of rock. Of course, it's always helpful to ask them to give reasons why they decide one way or the other so that it's not just a 50/50 guess. Are there other outcrops of gneiss in the area? If so, you could have them examine the sample and waypoint one, and then give them 3 other waypoints to visit to see if they can identify which of those locations also shows an exposure of gneiss. Are there examples of sedimentary layers in the area? You could have them examine the gneiss and the sedementary layers and describe differences between the "layering" that appears in each rock type and think about why those differences would occur. junglehair

I know others have already answered your question, but I couldn't resist throwing in my 2 cents. A GPS, or Global Positioning System, really has 3 components to it: the Space Segment (satellites), the Control Segment (control stations, ground antennas, and monitoring stations), and the User Segment (the GPS receivers, or GPSr). Now with that said, it's always been a pet peeve of mine when people say GPSr. I know it's technically more correct, but it's pretty obvious when I talk about my GPS, I'm not talking about the system as a whole. You would be just as correct to continue calling it your GPS unit though. Funny story somewhat related to that. I worked in an office where I trained people in the use of mapping and recreational grade GPS units. I had a call one day from one of our remote offices asking if I could send up another satellite. "Umm, excuse me?" What they really wanted was an extra external antenna because they had broken the cable on theirs. I just thought it was kind of funny. "Sure, let me just call Lockheed Martin and see if they have a spare one kicking around somewhere and I'll launch it into space for you". As for the photo of your GPS, you don't have to worry about that any more as the new guidelines have made photos optional. Originally people asked for photos of the cacher to be posted. Then the rules were changed so that you couldn't require people to show their faces in the photographs, so most photo requests became "a picture of you and/or your GPS". Of course, that's not easy to do if your GPS is also your camera. So that is why you see that requirement often, but people should be changing their listings to comply with the most recent guidelines, which is to make all photo requirements optional. So did you get yourself a fancy new GPS unit now that the old one finally died?

One of my EarthCaches which is my favourite and a favourite of many people that have completed it requires a great deal of effort to complete. It does not require a geology degree, but it does take a fair bit of time and research. I introduce people to Manitoba Tyndall Stone by having them visit several buildings in downtown Winnipeg and search for fossils. On the cache page, I list 5 sets of coordinates, 5 photos of the fossils they need to find, and the 5 names of the fossils. To log a find, they must send me a list matching the names, photos and location. I'm sure it has been ignored by many p&g cachers, but it has been found my many people who have really enjoyed the learning opportunity it provides. I have received many great comments about that EarthCache. I don't require photos as proof they were there - it's pretty obvious if they can answer the questions. So in this case, I'm not necessarily taking people to a really wonderful spot, but it's the challenge to figure which fossil is which that people really enjoy. Learning can be fun too. My EarthCache has inspired at least two other similar EarthCaches in other cities that I am aware of.

When I was assigning my Favourites, I went through the list of EarthCaches I'd found first and gave points to the ones I liked the most. Then I did the same for puzzle caches, virtuals, and webcams. I have over 5000 traditionals found, so I never bothered going through each of those to mark my favourites - I just searched for the ones that came to mind. That could be a reason why traditionals are not getting as many votes. But then again - I did search my list of EarthCaches first as that is one of my favourite types of caches.

From a programming standpoint, it would seem a bit cumbersome to be able to assign souvenirs when someone reached the various EarthCache Master levels. It would be easier to just earn one if you've logged 20 EarthCaches, for example, rather than the masters requirements of having them in a certain number of different countries/states. Otherwise, I like the idea of a souvenir for EarthCaches - especially if an EarthCache is logged on International EarthCache Day.

Please refer to Post #73. As an EarthCache owner, I review every log for my EarthCaches. If I don't receive an email from them within a few days of logging the cache, I send them a friendly reminder. I have never had to delete a log. This is not what I meant by a power trip. There are very few EarthCache owners that I would put in that category, but I have run across one or two. I never had photographs as a requirement to log any of my EarthCaches.

I don't really see what the big deal is here. Photographs have never been a requirement on traditional caches, and yet their image galaries are full of photos when the cache is located in a great area. This shouldn't change with the EarthCaches. I think people will continue to post photos if they want to - I know I will. The difference is the "if they want to" part, not because they have to. Unfortunately, there are always a few cache owners that seem to take the fun out of things by carrying it too far. I found that with the virtual caches too. Some seemed to have a power trip about them and wanted you to do things just so in order to earn the priviledge of logging their cache. I would far prefer to see an EarthCache that says "it would be great if you could include a photograph of the waterfall from your visit so that we can see the changes over time/season" rather than "in order to log this EarthCache, you MUST post a photo of the waterfall".

I didn't look at your profile, so I don't know if you own any EarthCaches yet or not, but my advice would be to try to create one close to home first, so you can get an idea of all the things the reviewers are looking for. It would be a shame to get home from your travels to Oregon, and then find out that you need more information about the site. If you have already gone through the process at home, then by all means go ahead and develop one in Oregon. I live in Canada, yet I own two EarthCaches in New Zealand. I do get a kick out of the logs that say they "really enjoyed visiting my beautiful country" I guess my other advice would just be to take lots of pictures. If your logging tasks are not strong enough, they may ask for more site specific details. If you have photographs to refer to, you may be able to come up with something even after you get back home. Good luck and enjoy your travels!

So far, my AWESOMENESS rating for their new website is a big fat ZERO!

I received a response to my email. They said they were travelling and internet access was spotty at best (I can certainly understand that). They didn't have a way to print off the questions, so just tried to answer as best they could when they got home. The photos do appear that they were taking along the trail, so I am fine with their answers. I wrote them back and thanked them for the explanation and then gave them the answers as was written on the signs along the trail.

I was thinking the same thing. I'd probably pay the $25 if I had a really great cache idea and I wanted a nice area to place it. I certainly wouldn't pay $25 to be able to through a film canister under a lamp skirt. It will likely result in far fewer caches in the park, but I bet they'd be well worth going after. If they alternative is to ban caches because they don't have the manpower to oversee it, then I'd prefer to have the application fee.

Well, I decided to email them back to let them know their answers were not exactly what I was looking for and that the information they find online might be slightly different from what is written on the signs along the trail. I was nice about it and said there's probably a good explanation - I would just appreciate hearing what it was.