flyawayprairie

I do not agree with your statement. It is most definitely possible to find out where geocaches are. In fact, tens of thousands of people all over the world find them every day, based on coordinates given on the website. You won't know where puzzle and multi caches are hidden without solving or working them out, but for MOST caches, you CAN determine what is hidden in an area. Same with puzzle type letterboxes: until you solve the puzzle, you won't know where the letterbox is (we have a local one that is a challenge!). I got started in letterboxing as a way to get my mother out of the house and get some exercise (she will be 93 years old next month). We are low income and cannot afford a GPS unit, nor do either of us know how to operate one. Reading and figuring out the clues to letterboxes keeps her mind active and helps combat dementia. Just because everyone on this forum owns a GPS unit and knows how to use it, does not mean everybody does. This is one of the reasons I chose letterboxing over geocacheing. Learning to use a GPS is way too much for a 93 year old woman to learn. She can't even read a compass. But, she loves figuring out the clues and hunting the letterboxes. So, if one does not have a GPS or know how to use one, how are we to know where your caches are, so as to avoid putting our letterboxes too near one?

This is in all my letterboxes: THIS IS A LETTERBOX This box you found is part of a world wide treasure hunting game called Letterboxing. Inside, you should find a rubber stamp and a logbook. Feel free to sign the logbook, but please return the letterbox where you found it, well-hidden from view. THIS IS NOT A GEOCACHE! TAKE NOTHING FROM THIS BOX! LEAVE NOTHING! THIS IS NOT A GEOCACHE!! Please do not disturb it, and leave it exactly as you found it. To learn more about letterboxing or how to participate, visit http://www.atlasquest.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .... and still the stamp gets stolen and swag left in it's place!

My first letterbox was placed within a few feet of a geocache. I had no way of knowing there was a geocache nearby. If the geocache is well-hidden, as it should be, then we don't know where they are and it's impossible to know if there is one near. Luckily, my brother (who is a geocacher) found my letterbox while he was looking for the geocache. I labeled the container "LETTERBOX" in large letters and left a note in the box about letterboxing. I put "THIS IS NOT A GEOCACHE. PLEASE DO NOT TAKE ANYTHING OR LEAVE ANYTHING" in large capital letters both in the note and on the container. Before I could get back to move the box, the stamp that I spent hours carving was gone and in it's place was a cheap plastic bracelet. So, what is the solution here? We have no way of knowing where your geocaches are, so it's impossible to avoid them. We label the box. We put notes in the box. What else can we do? Oh, and by the way, I've only been letterboxing since September of this year, but in the last 8 months, I have found 4 letterboxes missing and geocaches put in their place. Exactly in their place... as in, one of them was exactly behind the third brick on a bridge. I've also found 3 letterboxes vandalized and the stamp stolen. 2 of these had cheap swag placed in the boxes in place of the stamp. All of them were labeled and included a card with the URL of the letterboxing website. There are several letterboxes that have simply gone missing. I do not blame the geocachers for this. It happens. A kid finds the box, someone who thinks it's trash throws it away, it gets carried away by animals, people steal them for whatever reason. BUT... when only the stamp is gone and a cheap trinket is left in it's place, what are we to think?