Zzzoey & illDRIVEuNav

quote:Yep, but I was trying to avoid doing so for a couple of reasons, including that the problem could be easily fixed if the owner chose to. I understand but I also know that when there are a few no finds, and then I can't find it... it makes sense to hit that little button. If the cache owner is alive and breathing, he/she will get the message. If not, after (how many is it anyway?)should be archiveds the cache will go the way of Sadaam (adios or something like that!)

I love ammo boxes, but I wonder if anyone else has had this happen to them. Only with the smaller ammo boxes mind you. When I pull them out of their hidey hole, and perch them on a rock or log or even on the ground... when you open the lid, if the contents aren't heavy enough, the whole thing falls over. I would enjoy a more balanced style of ammo can! Something you could open and leave open while you write in the cache log and your own log. Can't tell you how many times I have scrambled around trying to pick up stickers, pencils, beads, marbles, etc.. after opening the thing, grabbing out the log book and just standing there writing. They seem to have a mind of their own and flop over. Am I alone here? Those darn military guys need to start thinking about OUR NEEDS for a change

A tacky cache is a tacky cache, whether it be in a cemetery or tossed into a ditch next to an interstate, with garbage and used needles all around. Some of the more interesting caches we have done were inside cemeteries. If you don't like them, skip hunting them. If you go to one you find tacky or completely lacking taste, hit that little checkbox that says "this cache should be archived".. if a few people agree with you, then POOF it's gone. One cache we found, Dead Governors involved us going inside the mausoleum and finding clues to get the coords of a cache that was on the cemetery grounds. The caretakers were aware and had given permission. The guy that was there (caretaker) when we were, was obviously amused to watch us scrambling around. I see nothing wrong with it. Another cemetery cache, Jaekel Cache was a beautiful tribute to the cacher's ancestor, and in a very scenic location. You just aren't going to like all styles or placements of caches. I've said this a million times and I will say it again. When there is something on television that bugs you, the best thing to do is vote with your remote and turn the channel. If you don't like certain caches, by all means don't hunt them. Just my 2 cents.

Gee... seems like a good reason to use the "Cache should be archived" checkbox then. *sigh*

We've moved on folks, but thanks for the repeated advice. As for the cache, we logged it and posted our original cover page photo. Marky if you really want to see our view check the log at GCF17A. As a side note, one of the virtuals previously turned down by Eric, the other one mentioned in our original post, has been accepted upon our second submission. Thanks ncflyers! If you are interested it is called Goldfield: Duel in the Desert (GCF70E). Maybe someone from the SE would like to look it over and tell us why ncflyers have such "low standards". Anyway folks... Thanks for all the differing opinions. It never ceases to amaze us how conversations in the forums can get so far off track at times, but that doesn't hurt the entertainment value one iota. Time to work now... Sigh!

We've recently had the same thing happen. In one case, a non-area cacher placed a new cache directly next to two other caches, and DIDN'T even find the two already existing. Both were within the .10 radius. Another one is a cache we placed that has been surrounded by controversy being as it is in a Wilderness Study area. We tried our best to make sure it made as little impact as possible. Someone found it and then put another one in the same general area. I guess *bottom line* you cannot control what other people do... but I would hope that new cachers take the time to investigate areas and try not to place new caches on top of others. If you see a spot that would be a neat place to hide a cache, someone else may have already thought of it!

My first thought after reading a few posts was, geez.. I have found pocketknives in a few caches. If they were neat ones, I took them in trade. I have also seen ones that looked as if someone had used them for cleaning out their toenails and decided they would make a good cacheable. Not a big deal. EXCEPT! Jeremy has a very good point. We have actually hit a cache that an inmate found right before us. It sortof gave me the heeby-jeebies... He had no idea what geocaching was, and was pulling weeds and branches when he stumbled upon the cache. He wrote a friendly log and said when he ggot out someday he would like to see about what geocaching is... Jeremy has a point. Why help arm anyone like that? Or, it could just be a group of 8 year olds that happen upon the cache. Granted, you can run across a sharp stick or even find a knife while wandering through undeveloped areas. I just don't think it would be a cool headline: Inmate escapes by stabbing work crew supervisor with knife found in a geocache... Residents outraged. Just a thought.

quote:Does nobody think to grab their camera when they see a tick in their leg? Um, NO... When a freaky insect has imbedded itself into your flesh, the last thing you think about is getting a photographic memento of the occasion. But.. how about this? The next time our tick-magnet Barney gets a "traveler", we will get out the new camera and do a juicy macro shot of the bloodsucking parasite for ya. Barney, like most living organisms, knows when his flesh has been penetrated by a parasite, but unfortunately for him.. he lacks the hands that us humanoids have been blessed with. You don't really need to know what they look like so much as to *while in a tick prone area* pull off your clothing once in a while and get your caching partner to do a thorough inspection. Luckily, we cache as a couple, and this hasn't been a problem. In fact at times it can be quite entertaining. I (Zzzoey) got my first tick a few months ago. I wish I could say that I knew it had attached itself to me. However, it wasn't until later that day, while changing my geogrunge shirt.. that I felt the evil demon that had burrowed into my side. On a side note: Carry tweezers... and if you happen to get the opportunity to pull one out, don't twist it or pinch too hard.. and if you have any sort of alcohol around, it is best to kill the little bugger, as they can live through many things, including forceful detachment. Oh yeah, and don't forget to take your time.. and get a photo of it as it sucks your life force from you.

you didn't put 30+, 40+ or 50+ as an option! or for Oregone and Explosis, perhaps an option of over 100 would work...

So were we correct to place only virtuals while in the SW? We thought that was the case but we've been chided for not stashing film cannisters. It is doubtful that we will attempt any more tourist caches... But we find them to be a great way to commemorate our experiences.

Wow folks thanks for your replies, interesting points of view one and all. Having received a reply from Eric we now know that he would've denied both submissions, given the opportunity. This comes as little surprise to us. Judging from his comments it seems the one virtual of ours that he did approve was in essence to throw us a bone, because he denied the two others the same day. The cache he accepted could've easily been an offset, or even a film cannister, but why quibble, we were happy to get 1 out of 3. This conversation has done a lot to show us how regionalized this virtual vs. micro argument is. Sissy seems to be quite adamently against virts because she wants to convince people to let her place caches on their property and she's afraid they'll find out about the option. This is totally foreign to us here in Oregon. We have lots of space for more caches on public lands where they are accepted and understood. As for Sissy's insistence that we give a good description and follow the guidelines, our mistake was making the description TOO good. Here's how the accepted cache described what we called the base of a handrail: At the coordinates listed you will find a manmade structure signed and dated by two dedicated young men who worked for the National Park Service during the era of the 1st Manned Moon Landing and the Woodstock Music & Art Fair. Our mistake... The point we're trying to make is that it seems to pay dividends to be more vague and ambiguous when describing what's being looked for, because then no one asks questions. As for the title of this thread, it's misleading. We don't hope to change any of this, we just had to get it off our collective chests. We've been in touch with the cache owner and he was very kind. He offered to let us take over the cache which we have no intentions of doing. We do plan to log it as a find because we were able to answer his verifying questions. After all, we had intended to ak the exact same question. But to those who would say, "Live with it and move on" because admins are all different people with different interpretations, that's a complete contradiction. Because of the individuality of admins we now know that we probably could continue to resubmit a rejected cache until it's approved by a more liberal admin. We were fully prepared to "live with it and move on" until this basic inconsistency was revealed to us. Finally, we must speak to Richard and his love of the media. We did not say that publicizing caching is evil, we just believe that oversaturation is becoming a problem. We have had zero negative publicity in our area so we are not sensitive to that issue. But we've had articles in the local paper and a feature on local tv and the cachers are coming out of the wood work. In the last week we've been beaten to two hiding spots where we had been developing complicated cache concepts by newer cachers with more energy than us. More than anything our hope to keep the sport out of the public eye is based largely on greed... There, I said it... We want to keep this thing all for ourselves Thanks again for all of the input and don't take this summative response to be a closing of the topic.

This is cross-posted from the general forum... We would appreciate any and all input... Well folks here's another dilemma offered up by geocaching. And it involves a few pointed questions... 1st... Has anyone here ever had a virtual cache denied upon submission, only to see it admitted later in much the same format, but placed by someone else? 2nd... Has anyone here ever noticed a discrepency between the standards of acceptance for different admins, particularly concerning virtuals? We tried to place a virtual on the south rim of the Grand Canyon a few weeks back and it was denied by Eric the Admin... Today we noticed a cache called Peace on the Rim (GCF17A) that showed up in the exact same spot and, no offense to the owner, exhibited much less commitment, particularly in the aesthetic beauty of the page itself. We take a lot of effort to decorate our pages with background and photos... We don't expect this from others but we do think it enhances the value of a cache, although we suspect it is given little creedence by some admins, if not all of them. At any rate, we were denied, according to Eric, because our verification emphasized the view, and we all know "a view can't be a cache". We had asked cachers to either take a photo of themselves and their gpsr at the spot our cover photo was taken at OR they could tell us the two names that were written in the concrete at the base of the hand rail where the coords were taken. Eric suggested that the cache was invalid because a view can't be a cache, and the point a cache takes you to should have some cultural or historical value. If you take the time to look at Peace on the Rim you will find that the validation makes it sound like this is practically a historical monument, but it's the exact same verification we asked for, only we made the mistake of giving a more realistic description of the feature. Out of purest ironic poignance we are considering a retroactive log of Peace on the Rim as we have the verifying information and we need to make something positive from this. So has placing a virtual become a game of fooling the admin into thinking it's a valid spot on the Earth "in the spirit of geocaching"? We hope this is not the case... We had another virtual denied by Eric that was submitted the same day. It has historical merit but he claimed it was too close to the road and "not in the spirit of geocaching" because it wouldn't be a cache you would take a newspaper reporter to in an attempt to explain to them what geocaching is... Sigh... If I was taking a reporter geocaching, which I would never do because I want to keep geocaching out of the public eye as much as possible, I imagine I would look at the icon next to the title and avoid any virtuals altogether. This seemed like odd justification to me. Once again we had taken the time to create a unique page with spectacular photos and background as well as historical research. In all honesty we are thinking about resubmitting this cache and hoping for a more liberal admin to be the approver. Having looked at Eric's background a bit he doesn't create or seek virtual caches... Which is fine, for him, but we question whether his preferences have affected his judgement in the approval of virtuals, some of which are all the way across the country from his home in Georgia. It is quite possible we are just taking our first rejections personally and over-reacting childishly... But we didn't say a thing until we saw this new cache pop up and we had to share our concern. So let us know what you think. We hope Eric might have some input as well.

Well folks here's another dilemma offered up by geocaching. And it involves a few pointed questions... 1st... Has anyone here ever had a virtual cache denied upon submission, only to see it admitted later in much the same format, but placed by someone else? 2nd... Has anyone here ever noticed a discrepency between the standards of acceptance for different admins, particularly concerning virtuals? We tried to place a virtual on the south rim of the Grand Canyon a few weeks back and it was denied by Eric the Admin... Today we noticed a cache called Peace on the Rim (GCF17A) that showed up in the exact same spot and, no offense to the owner, exhibited much less commitment, particularly in the aesthetic beauty of the page itself. We take a lot of effort to decorate our pages with background and photos... We don't expect this from others but we do think it enhances the value of a cache, although we suspect it is given little creedence by some admins, if not all of them. At any rate, we were denied, according to Eric, because our verification emphasized the view, and we all know "a view can't be a cache". We had asked cachers to either take a photo of themselves and their gpsr at the spot our cover photo was taken at OR they could tell us the two names that were written in the concrete at the base of the hand rail where the coords were taken. Eric suggested that the cache was invalid because a view can't be a cache, and the point a cache takes you to should have some cultural or historical value. If you take the time to look at Peace on the Rim you will find that the validation makes it sound like this is practically a historical monument, but it's the exact same verification we asked for, only we made the mistake of giving a more realistic description of the feature. Out of purest ironic poignance we are considering a retroactive log of Peace on the Rim as we have the verifying information and we need to make something positive from this. So has placing a virtual become a game of fooling the admin into thinking it's a valid spot on the Earth "in the spirit of geocaching"? We hope this is not the case... We had another virtual denied by Eric that was submitted the same day. It has historical merit but he claimed it was too close to the road and "not in the spirit of geocaching" because it wouldn't be a cache you would take a newspaper reporter to in an attempt to explain to them what geocaching is... Sigh... If I was taking a reporter geocaching, which I would never do because I want to keep geocaching out of the public eye as much as possible, I imagine I would look at the icon next to the title and avoid any virtuals altogether. This seemed like odd justification to me. Once again we had taken the time to create a unique page with spectacular photos and background as well as historical research. In all honesty we are thinking about resubmitting this cache and hoping for a more liberal admin to be the approver. Having looked at Eric's background a bit he doesn't create or seek virtual caches... Which is fine, for him, but we question whether his preferences have affected his judgement in the approval of virtuals, some of which are all the way across the country from his home in Georgia. It is quite possible we are just taking our first rejections personally and over-reacting childishly... But we didn't say a thing until we saw this new cache pop up and we had to share our concern. So let us know what you think. We hope Eric might have some input as well.

No luck finding any matches for Zzzoey but we did get one humorous result when typing in illDRIVE. Oddly, this just happened to be an excerpt from the only Fractal cache we've had the privilege of finding... illdrive is the only one who spent enough of his wasted childhood grilling in the dark corners of killer skanky arcade joints like this to qualify hehe...

On our trip Mar 15th through like a week later, illDRIVE mostly wore shorts, while I with my shiny, porcelain white legs kept them hidden beneath blue jeans. illDRIVE cut his shins on some thorny tree, he says he got it at Mosquito Cove cache near Zion NP.. He says that he didn't get torn up so much by cactuses.. but by the usual (we are used to this) sage, and some thorny tree he remembers seeing and apparently thrashing around in at many of our southwest caches. If I had any money leftover from this Spring Break, I'd put up a prize for anyone who can guess what that thorny tree is, perhaps from their geocaching experiences in Nevada, Arizona and Utah. I (Zzzoey) have to say, I didn't even get sunburned. I really expected to. I was shocked the North Rim of the Grand Canyon was closed.. I am shocked that you guys down there even HAVE a winter.. I just didn't think you did! It was explained to me about how skinny the saguaros get when they are underwatered... but when we got to Phoenix, the clouds had opened up, and the saguaros looked as fat and happy as ever. No blooms though. Something like 200 gallons of water one of them can suck up during one single rainstorm. Amazing. I think we could harness this energy and become mideast oil independent or something. Um.. yeah I was happy in jeans and my leather hiking boots. The geopup however, was injured the second day of the trip... rock hopping near Gold Ace cache, near Beatty, Nevada. Great cache by the way. Some rock sliced clean through the pad on his paw, and for the rest of the trip he AND we babied his injury. Watch for puppy paws too!

I have no input other than... We have lost one travel bug. It never even left the cache we started it in. It was a Mickey D's toy from another cache. No big loss. We have placed a travel bug in a cache that then was archived. We contacted the cache owner and the travel bug owner. No reply. The travel bug owner (cameraThyme) also attempted to contact the cache owner. No reply. Travel bug gone. Not a big deal. For either of us. It was between us (the travel bug owner or the last handler of the travel bug) and the person last seen with the travel bug. No one else. I agree with the post about how you shouldn't invest more in a travel bug than you are willing to lose. A hundred emails from Seth! is just as effective as a hundred emails from various cachers (in my opinion) because if they aren't answering one.. they won't answer any. Dat's the breaks!

Thanks for the input everyone! We had an absolutely incredible trip... We enjoyed our visit to the South Rim very much and got some beautiful photos. Then when we headed east to "Mary J. Built This", a very cool cache, it snowed and hailed and the clouds filled the whole canyon. Very odd weather patterns. We hit numerous caches during our trip and also put together a few virtuals which should pop up some time in the next week. Thanks to those who informed us of the North Rim closure. Your input gave us a chance to go to plan B, Zion, which was still open to private vehicles for the scenic drive. A worthwhile trade-off. We were amazed to see that therewere no virtuals in Zion. Soon this will no longer be the case.

We will be heading south over the next week to do some caching/touristing and we want to hit the Grand Canyon area bigtime. We were hoping to hit the south rim and then circle around to the north rim. I was sharing this plan with a friend who has been to the north rim and she was concerned that we might still hit some winter weather at the north rim this early in spring... So what do the cachers of the SW think? We drive a heavy suv so we're not too worried but we'll be traveling on a tight schedule and don't want to get bogged down with any snowy roads or heinous traffic. We'd also like to hear about any super-stellar caches in the area that we might've missed in our research... Thanks for any input!! Zzzoey

would have to be when a cacher finds one of our caches and says "this is what geocaching is all about" Nothing speaks louder than that to us. Inspires us to create better caches.

Glad to hear you guys are going to state. Best of luck! A cool little online catalog for sports (or anything else) themed trinkets is Oriental Trading Company. Good luck and happy caching!

That worked!

Zoey is the name of my oldest, fattest and most spoiled cat. She looks exactly like Socks, the formal presidential cat. I used this name in bulletin boards/IRC chat from the early 90's, but as more people began using more names, I had to expand to Zzoey and eventually Zzzoey. Some people think it means I am always sleepy. illDRIVEuNav, my husband, has a pretty self-explanatory name. Though many times we both navigate, and if the road gets real rutted or steep, I have to drive The capital letters spell DRIVEN, which could mean he has lots of drive, or he is driven mad by the 8th graders he teaches.

if you are group caching... sortof destroys the idea of hanging with friends and searching for something together. This may mean some people have to slow down while the slower folks catch up. Common courtesy. You don't want to gloat about finding a cache 5 minutes before anyone else because they were taking a breather while you sprinted off to find the cache. It's just tacky.

I love this program, but lately it has me pulling out my hair. When I pull up a topo map in ExpertGPS, then say find a city I am interested in caching near, I set a waypoint and then go to "View Waypoint Online".... it doesn't do what it used to.. it used to go to the expertgps site and give me the option of viewing nearby caches or placenames. Now it goes to a cache page on geocaching.com... ALWAYS the same cache page (a cache I already found that is NOWHERE near where I am looking)... what could have changed the way this retrieves? And how do I fix it?

We are driving to Phoenix in a few weeks and will go right past this cache. Now to find a license plate!