niraD

What happens if you select just the "Show Hides" filter, without the "Do Not Show Finds" filter?

My favorite night cache was a multi-stage puzzle night cache. One stage used reflective tacks, another provided one piece of a physical puzzle, another used UV flashlights to read coordinates written in fluorescent paint, another provided another piece of the physical puzzle, another had an elevated reflective container and we had to find the mechanism to lower it, another provided the third piece of the physical puzzle, and so on. It took more than an hour to complete all the stages, and the county park closed at 10pm, which made it much harder to complete during daylight saving time, because you couldn't start the first stage until it was dark (about half an hour after sunset). But it might be better if you found a few multi-stage puzzle caches before you tried to create something like that.

For many caches, the difference is that a 5 difficulty requires "specialized knowledge, skills, tools, or significant effort to find, solve, or open." This is similar to a 5 terrain requiring "specialized equipment such as scuba gear, a boat, rock climbing gear, or similar." I've seen a 5 difficulty used for elevated caches where the CO expects seekers to use a tool to retrieve and replace the cache. I've seen it used for multi-caches where a tool (e.g., a UV flashlight) is needed to decode the information at each stage. I've seen it used for puzzle caches where programming (specialized skills and tools) is required to solve the puzzle. Before Groundspeak had definitions for the half-star ratings (1.5, 2.5, 3.5, and 4.5 stars), I sometimes saw 4.5 stars used as "5 stars lite", meaning that equipment/tools were needed, but the necessary equipment/tools weren't that hard to use or obtain.

If you don't trust your coordinates, then test them. Enter your coordinates into your device, and then approach the cache location from at least 100ft/30m away. The arrow should point right at the cache location as you approach. Repeat the process, approaching the cache location from various directions, from at least 100ft/30m away each time. No matter which direction you approach from, the arrow should point right at the cache location. If it doesn't, then adjust your coordinates until it does. Bonus points for repeating the test on another day when the GPS satellites are in a different configuration. Also, the Help Center article How to Get Accurate Coordinates should prove useful.

I didn't realize how much abuse the location of my first hide received from skateboarders. I had to visit the site at least once a week, trying to keep the cache going. Eventually, they destroyed the wooden steps the cache was hidden under. After they city replaced the steps, before I could rebuild the camouflage to match the new steps, they destroyed the steps again. The city gave up, and so did I. I learned a lot about choosing a location and hide style that isn't going to need a lot of maintenance from trying to keep that cache going.

The Check for minimum distance section of the guidelines says it this way: "A physical stage is any object placed by the cache owner, such as a container or a tag." There is more info in that section of the guidelines, as well as in the Waypoints and stages page in the Help Center.

Just because there is no GPS signal at GZ doesn't mean that the CO can't use a GPS device to get accurate coordinates for GZ, or that seekers can't use a GPS device to locate GZ.

And then there are the guidelines prohibiting temporary caches and caches "intended to move" (e.g., because they're on a ship that moves).

I've occasionally used Command-Shift-N to open "Incognito" windows when I need to have multiple accounts logged into a particular site at the same time. As far as I can tell, these windows and their cookies and other authentication tokens are completely independent from each other, and from the main window(s). Maybe something like that could be used to start multiple cache/event listings, so they're all ready to submit in different browser windows, without needing to install as many different browsers.

Does it have a goal to travel to a specific location? If not, then I wouldn't worry about it. It's traveling. It's okay if it travels somewhere that it has traveled before. Even if it does have a goal to travel to a specific location, were you aware of the goal when you picked it up? Was the goal on a tag of some kind that is attached to the coin? If not, then I wouldn't worry about it. It's traveling. If you feel extra generous, you could print the goal from the coin's page and attach it somehow to the coin, so future geocachers will know its goal.

Just to be clear, these are the items (generally tags and coins, but there have been a few others) with a tracking code that can be tracked on the geocaching.com site. They are NOT considered trade items. You don't have to trade for them. You just move them to new caches and log their travels on the geocaching.com site, hopefully moving them in a way that helps them towards any goals the owners might have created for them. These are all essentially the same. They are items that geocachers can trade for. The rule I learned when I started was "trade up, trade even, or don't trade." As long as you leave something of equal or greater value, you're free to take things from the cache container. But don't trade for things that need to stay in the container, like the log, or the stamp of a Letterbox Hybrid cache. Edit to add: And signature items are just things that someone left that are often homemade, with their geocaching name on them. Check my profile for a photo of the personal signature tokens that I've made.

A common recommendation for beginners is to stick with small size, regular size, and large size caches. Until you're more experienced, avoid micro size caches, some of which are smaller than most beginners can imagine (sometimes called "nanos"). Save those for later, after you have some experience. Also, stick with caches that have a difficulty rating of no more than 2 stars . Save the more difficult ones for later. You may also want to choose caches with easy terrain ratings. (The difficulty rating tells you how hard it is to find the cache once you get there. The terrain rating tells you how hard it is to get there.) And it is often best to start with traditional caches, which will be at the published coordinates. Multi-caches or mystery/puzzle caches or other cache types can require more work just to figure out where the container is located. Under ideal conditions, a consumer GPS device will be accurate to about 3m (10ft). That applies both to your device, and to the cache owner’s device, so you may find the container 5-6m (16-20ft) from ground zero under ideal conditions. Under less than ideal conditions, both GPSr readings can be much less accurate. Once you get within that distance of ground zero, put your device away and look around for places where a container could be hidden. Where would you hide something? Do you notice anything unusual? Is anything too new, too old, too organized (e.g., UPS: an Unnatural Pile of Sticks/Stones), too symmetrical, not quite the right color or shape, etc.? Don’t look only on the ground; the cache may be knee-level, waist-level, eye-level, or overhead. How might the container be secured in place? With magnets? With a hook? With string? With fishing line? With something else? Does anything move when you touch it? (Be careful when touching things though.) Go ahead and read the cache's additional hints (if provided), and read the past logs and look at any photos in the cache's image gallery. They may help you understand what you're looking for, and how/where it may be hidden. It may also help to look at some of the cache containers available online. For example, check out the cache containers sold by Groundspeak. Also, take a look at the Pictures - Cool Cache Containers (CCC's) thread in the forums, and check out some geocaching videos on YouTube. See also: How to hone your Geo-Senses (blog post)

Yep. Back in the day, I would copy-paste the content from cache descriptions into text notes on my Palm PDA. My normal geocaching routine revealed coordinates (and other information) hidden in this way.

Back in the day, before modern numbers trails existed, there was a team that found 200-something caches in a 24-hour midnight-to-midnight numbers run. They focused on easy caches near parking and planned their route in advance. They did take some heat for signing the outside of many containers, rather than opening the containers and signing the logs. With modern numbers trails, it's possible to get hundreds of finds in a 24-hour numbers run without taking any blatant "shortcuts" (like the Three Cache Monte, or any of the divide-and-conquer systems). I heard of one solo numbers run, on a motorcycle (which made blatant "shortcuts" impossible), where the geocacher found 400-something caches in a 24-hour period. Here's what a numbers run looks like on one of these numbers trails: If you add some of the blatant "shortcuts" then your numbers can go even higher, especially with the various divide-and-conquer systems where numbers are limited only by the number of sub-teams you have claiming each others finds as part of the combined "team".

I already ignore Groundspeak's Message Center because other tools that I already use work better. If Groundspeak added some multi-user chat feature, then I would continue to use other tools that I already use, tools that work better.

I grew up in California, and keeping an eye out for poison oak became second nature. Now that I'm in Tennessee, I have to watch out for poison ivy. I'm still working on that myself. The last time I had poison oak, I found that topical Benadryl helped me the most. My brother has been fighting the poison oak on his property for years. As soon as he comes in from working with it, he heads straight to the laundry in their garage, strips down and throws everything into the washing machine, and then slathers himself with Tecnu. He seems happy with that routine. Yep, the urushiol (the irritating oil) in the plants remains in the bare vines/branches. Plus, the leaves are no longer there to help you identify the plants.

The Help Center article EarthCache logging tasks says that you can't ask geocachers "to quote information from a sign." That isn't quite the same thing as "must not rely on signage".

One of my caches was muggled, along with several others in the area that were all probably muggled by immature adolescents. I left it disabled for a few weeks to give the bored kids time to find some other amusement, and when I replaced the cache, I used a different container with different camouflage, and moved it to a slightly different spot (but still in the same corner of the community garden). That's perfectly normal. If the essential experience of finding the cache changes, then I think it's better to archive the old listing and create a new listing. For example, if my cache had moved from the community garden to the nearby church parking lot, then I would have created a new listing, even if the new location was within 528ft/161m of the old location. On the other hand, churning cache listings by archiving and relisting for every little change is annoying. If the essential experience is still the same, then leave the listing in place and just edit it to reflect the changes.

What does that mean. Search a large area for any likely hides? He was generally much more focused than that on his searches. He would use information in the cache description (including the theme of the puzzle, if any), information in the logs, and knowledge of where other caches were (and thus, where there might be openings for the puzzle cache). Then he would search specific locations that matched the information he had.

Back in California, I knew someone who routinely brute-forced puzzle finals. If the puzzle looked interesting, then he'd solve it and find the cache using the solved coordinates. But if the puzzle looked tedious, then he'd brute-force the final. To him, brute-forcing was more fun than solving a tedious puzzle.

I once found a trailhead cache, but I didn't experience it as a trailhead cache. I rented a pedal boat from the marina across the lake and experienced the cache as a D5 boating cache. And then there's the D5 puzzle cache that I know was solved in a few different ways by the first dozen or so finders. I guess I don't worry much about whether my experience finding a cache matches what the CO "intended"...

Welcome to geocaching! And welcome to geocaching with other geocachers. It doesn't have to be a solo activity. I've gone geocaching in groups, and some of those groups have included the CO. And sometimes we've come to a stage that needs to be repaired, and the CO has described what we should have found and/or given us the coordinates for the next stage. And usually, different people have contributed in different ways, like a multi-stage puzzle night cache that I found with a group. One person climbed a tree to retrieve an elevated stage, another found the mechanism to lower another elevated stage, another solved a puzzle, another had a UV flashlight to read a clue that used fluorescent ink/paint, and so on. Also, there are two main method for groups to operate when it comes to the final container location. I've heard the most common method called the Three Musketeers method ("One for all, and all for one!"). As soon as anyone spots the cache, they declare victory and everyone logs a find. I've heard the method I prefer called the Huckle Buckle Beanstalk (named after an old children's game). When you spot the cache, you walk a few steps away and declare that you've found it. When the last person spots the cache, everyone logs a find. That way everyone gets the experience of figuring out the hide. And yes, people usually start giving hints ("warmer", "colder", etc.) if the last person is really not finding the cache.

Is the Black Sea considered a marginal sea of the Mediterranean Sea, and thus a marginal marginal sea (a marginal² sea) of the Atlantic Sea?

I don't know... I can think of some adolescent boys who might really enjoy trade items like that...