STNolan
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Posts posted by STNolan
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The end of the year is a time for setting goals! What are your Geocaching Goals for the next year?
My goals for the year are:
- Find a cache in at least 2 new countries.
- Bring my total US Counties cached in to 1200
- Host at least 20 events/CITOs
- Hide at least 5 more Earthcaches
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1 hour ago, CAVinoGal said:
Kudos to you for responding to all finders!! Wow! Occasionally I will get a reply back from CO's of EC's or Virtuals, but it's rare. I do enjoy getting the feedback, knowing if I was right or wrong ... but usually I hear nothing, and my Found it log stays.
I think it's part of being an EC owner. I rarely tell people they're flat out wrong. Sometimes I provide some additional details etc, but for me EC is less about being 1000% correct and more about learning something. Did your answers show you learned something? Then great!
That being said I do occasionally miss some responses (i.e. ones that come in via email as opposed to the message center) and when I'm out of cell services for a month + at a time. But generally my goal is to respond to everyone. I mean they took the time to send the answers, the least I can do is message them back.-
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Another Earthcaching weekend come and gone! I managed to find one, but spent most of my weekend responding to cachers. I lost count but I think my ECs received somewhere on the order of 150+ logs this weekend! Finally finished responding to all finders yesterday evening!
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On 6/11/2023 at 10:57 AM, brekkcaching123 said:
I have some EarthCaches in the review queue. [3 of them] All I say is be patient. I did this a while ago, it was in the queue for 25 days. I thought this was a bug, So i archived the caches.
I might add to @Rock Chalk's recommendation and recommend you find a few Earthcaches before submitting any for review. Best of luck though - they're a really fun part of the hobby! -
On 11/12/2022 at 5:52 AM, hzoi said:
Across the river in northern Virginia, AweSnap and MJBinski have a number of play-anywhere Wherigos that are well maintained. Not quite as many as southern Maryland, but you're more likely to find them once you've solved the puzzle. See, e.g., the Name That Tune and WOOBG series.
Thanks for the tip!
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On 11/7/2022 at 4:58 AM, CheekyBrit said:
OK, update on the 'bigger better' challenge.
https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC9XA74/71643
The bigger better challenge I tried to create turned out to be unpublishable. The determination was it was a bit too confusing. I'm sure someone else could word it better than me. Current submission is below. The other issue is HQ wants challenges to be checkable manually as well as with the checker. So even though the checker spits out the answer instantly, they want people to be able to do it by hand and that's really hard - quite a bookkeeping task. But the challenge checker is awesome. Check it out!
Submitted cache page:
Like the childhood trading game of 'bigger better', you are trying to find a group of at least geocaches that are bigger or better than each other. Date found is not a factor so this is not time limited in any way. The sequence of your finds is also not a factor - find them in whichever order you wish.
We are using difficulty, terrain, type, and size as our categories. To add to your qualifying group a geocache has to increase in at least one of the four categories, but cannot decrease in any of them. You need a group of at least 20, but up to 26 is possible.For difficulty and terrain, it is easy to grasp, 1 is the lowest and 5 is the highest.
For size we need to exclude the virtual size caches-
not chosen
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micro
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small
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other
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regular
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large
And for type, in order of getting 'better' and excluding ones without 'size' we have:-
traditional cache
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multi cache
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mystery cache
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letterbox cache
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Wherigo cache
Here is an example of a qualifying group. There are a few places another geocache could be added, such as a Difficulty 1.5 terrain 1.5 size not chosen traditional. I highlighted in green each time one of the categories increases. You'll notice none of the categories get smaller as you go down the chart. The chart is only organized smallest to biggest for visual clarity, these geocaches could have been found in any date/sequence order.
You can use this challenge checker below to see if you qualify. It was made by bmuzzin.
It is possible to score up to 26 in this game and I currently qualify with a score of 22.
Just for giggles I decided to run the checker as well (also your description made perfect sense to me so I'm not sure how/why you'd need to dumb it down):
I qualify with 24/26 max:
You passed the challenge! You have 24 out of a required 20. Here is your list:N gccode name type size difficulty terrain 1 GC46G45 Gulls, Sand & Water 
Traditional Cache (1) Not chosen (1) 1.0 (1) 1.0 (1) 2 GC3WFHR The Nineteenth Hole Traditional Cache (1) Not chosen (1) 1.0 (1) 1.5 (2) 3 GC2ZQRF Ribbit! Traditional Cache (1) Not chosen (1) 1.0 (1) 2.0 (3) 4 GCE67 Officers Scenic Cache Traditional Cache (1) Not chosen (1) 1.0 (1) 2.5 (4) 5 GC70ZK6 Nana's Birdhouse by the Tracks Traditional Cache (1) Micro (2) 1.0 (1) 2.5 (4) 6 GC2Z8BQ Skookum Bridge Traditional Cache (1) Micro (2) 1.0 (1) 3.0 (5) 7 GC2W633 Mare Island San Pablo Bay Trail-- Overlook Traditional Cache (1) Micro (2) 1.5 (2) 3.0 (5) 8 GC2DZ39 RG18 Micro D I Tawt I Taw A Puddy Cache Traditional Cache (1) Micro (2) 2.0 (3) 3.0 (5) 9 GC30KDC Overlooking the Empty Beach Traditional Cache (1) Micro (2) 2.5 (4) 3.0 (5) 10 GC1X3PQ CT Gazebo Series - Liberty Green Traditional Cache (1) Micro (2) 3.0 (5) 3.0 (5) 11 GC41QM0 Chief Little Feather's Lost Cave Traditional Cache (1) Small (3) 3.0 (5) 3.0 (5) 12 GC27MHE Milcoins Groton Cache 001 Traditional Cache (1) Small (3) 3.0 (5) 3.5 (6) 13 GC3EXDF Let's not ruin the holiday Traditional Cache (1) Small (3) 3.5 (6) 3.5 (6) 14 GCZ604 Civic Triangle Multi-cache (2) Small (3) 3.5 (6) 3.5 (6) 15 GC5HJJB Not Another Mindless County/State Challenge Unknown Cache (3) Small (3) 3.5 (6) 3.5 (6) 16 GC4TBWR A Tale of Two Cities - K-Town (Challenge) Unknown Cache (3) Small (3) 4.0 (7) 3.5 (6) 17 GC8T07W 10^100 + What the Heck is this? Unknown Cache (3) Small (3) 4.5 (8) 3.5 (6) 18 GC7GNJ9 Bowie - 100 Souvenir Challenge Unknown Cache (3) Small (3) 5.0 (9) 3.5 (6) 19 GC54XJ7 WVCACHERS3: 10 - 5/5's - 3 Types Challenge Unknown Cache (3) Small (3) 5.0 (9) 4.0 (7) 20 GC56GMY World Traveler Challenge Cache Unknown Cache (3) Small (3) 5.0 (9) 4.5 (8) 21 GC1F0Q4 Follow the Lights Unknown Cache (3) Small (3) 5.0 (9) 5.0 (9) 22 GC4RFEJ 5 Countries Challenge Unknown Cache (3) Other (4) 5.0 (9) 5.0 (9) 23 GC2CFP9 Club 81 - Fizzy Challenge Unknown Cache (3) Regular (5) 5.0 (9) 5.0 (9) 24 GC3HVRA New England County Challenge Unknown Cache (3) Large (6) 5.0 (9) 5.0 (9) -
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On 11/2/2022 at 7:13 AM, hzoi said:
There are still quite a few. Just budget some redundancy into your plan - while the two teams behind most of the Wherigo hides there did a great job setting out caches back in 2014 or so, they have favored archiving over cache maintenance for the past few years, so the map has seen some attrition for a while now.
Having spent the last week attempting to solve these I may have to say my goal is already not achievable - far too many of these are "read my mind" WIGs which just seem impossible to solve. Back to the goal-drawing board. -
On 11/2/2022 at 7:13 AM, hzoi said:
There are still quite a few. Just budget some redundancy into your plan - while the two teams behind most of the Wherigo hides there did a great job setting out caches back in 2014 or so, they have favored archiving over cache maintenance for the past few years, so the map has seen some attrition for a while now.
Yeah I've seen the numbers decline - hitting myself for not making a WIG run last year when I was at DINFOS - I'll need to complete all the "play anywhere cartridges" before I go to ensure that I'm ready for a long day!
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I really wish I could remember last year's goals. Ah well for next year I'd like to try the following:
- Find 100 Caches in a single day
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Reach a 100 WiG milestone
- Got a two-week TDY trip to Maryland so I might be able to have this happen in a single day.
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Complete a new County Challenge
- Washington or Oregon are the most likely options.
- Find GCD
- Find a cache in 1 new country
Most of those should be pretty easily attainable, but we'll have to see what the Caching Gods have in store.
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On 10/18/2022 at 8:58 AM, STNolan said:
Just came back from a few weeks in Europe!
New Countries/Regions:
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Germany
- Hessen
- Baden-Wurttemberg
- Bayern
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France
- Île-de-Franc
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United Kingdom
- London
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Iceland
- Capital Region
- Southern Peninsula
Had a great time and ended up with about 75 new caches (mostly Earthcaches and virtuals as I was attempting to make geocaching an unobtrusive part of the overall vacation). Although I've been to France, Germany and Iceland before (pre-caching days), the UK was a completely new country to me.
Oh I forgot technically Tyrol, Austria as well (Thank you Zugspitze!)
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Germany
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Just came back from a few weeks in Europe!
New Countries/Regions:
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Germany
- Hessen
- Baden-Wurttemberg
- Bayern
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France
- Île-de-Franc
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United Kingdom
- London
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Iceland
- Capital Region
- Southern Peninsula
Had a great time and ended up with about 75 new caches (mostly Earthcaches and virtuals as I was attempting to make geocaching an unobtrusive part of the overall vacation). Although I've been to France, Germany and Iceland before (pre-caching days), the UK was a completely new country to me.
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Found out that we've got a short fused opportunity to visit Europe later this fall and we're taking it! I'll be looking to grab France, Germany, and the UK for sure, also potentially Luxembourg and Austria depending on how the exact planning goes.
I'll also be able to get Iceland, but I've already found a few there back when I first started. Should be a good time!
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On 5/19/2022 at 12:10 PM, CheekyBrit said:
I've not seen challenge caches used in a GeoArt before and thought I'd give it a go. It's only 44 challenges but should make some people happy.
Funny, I've seen your name in the Project GC forums a bit lately - I'm also working on a Geoart with Challenges (albeit much less ambitious than yours).
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My goal for 2021 was to finally cross the 1,000 counties cached in bar. With the help of a cross country move and some LONG weekends in Pennsylvania, I was able to finally do that this year (currently sitting at 1,061 counties cached in).
My goal for 2021 is to reach a 366 day streak (currently at day 208) and to finish up two more state county challenges (based on where I'm currently living I'm hoping those will be Oregon and Washington).
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On 10/29/2021 at 3:23 PM, kunarion said:
Most of my cache pages are just text, but with some formatting like line feeds and stuff. But I have to set aside extra time if I'm editing a page that has a photo, just in case the server will throw up all over it.
*When the server throws up all over it.
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Ah.... I love a problem where the answer seems to be "just deal with it."
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I did a bit of searching but can't quite find the topic I'm looking for - please forgive me if this has been covered.
I've noticed lately that I can go into a pending cache description and edit the image (I.E. Resize it, lock it to the left or right alignment, add alternative text etc) and then save the page I'm working on. I'll come back later and find the image has returned to it's original size and position on the page - the only thing that remains is the alignment. This happens regardless of whether I click "save" or "Save and Preview."
To clarify - when I click save and preview the cache page looks just the way I planned it. It's when I go back to edit something else that the image reverts to it's original size and placement. If the rest of my HTML code can stay the same I'm not sure why my images can't. For the record I upload my images to the geocaching server, these are not linked from another page.
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On 10/19/2021 at 5:14 AM, Awesnap said:
That being said, responding quickly and in more depth is a little tougher during International Earthcache Weekend...
I have my logs and messages set up to arrive via text message - while I do have quite a few caches they tend to be pretty remote (traditionals), difficult (puzzles) or unattractive to a large segment of the geocaching populations (earthcaches) so in general I get a few texts per week about logs and messages.
On International Earthcaching weekend... my phone BLEW. UP. It's great to see so many people out enjoying Earth Caches, but I definitely had to spend a considerably longer time responding to messages.
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On 10/19/2021 at 5:27 AM, Awesnap said:
At first I just wanted one published to diversify my stats. I didn't realize then that it would awaken a geology lover in me, or that I would love the research of making them. Each one of my Earthcache creations has its own backstory which makes it special to me.
Did a particular location just fall in my lap? Did I have to go deep into research to even understand it? Was it a long grind getting landowner permission?
That being said my favorite that I have done was the Indian River Inlet in Delaware.
I wanted to also give you a public thank you for letting me adopt and use one of your write ups to publish an EC up in Pennsylvania!
I had a great time grabbing several of your ECs on the East Coast while I was on my 10 week visit to Maryland earlier this year!
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On 8/24/2021 at 5:42 PM, fizzymagic said:
The key thing to remember is that the rules are whatever Groundspeak HQ says they are. They are not invented by the reviewers. They do not have to make sense; a couple of months ago I had a challenge cache revoked by headquarters because I inadvertently described the challenge using a perfectly ordinary word for a mathematical concept that they did not like. (I described combinations of latitude and longitude degrees as "squares" instead of "combinations.") Without any attempt to understand the concept, HQ issued an emergency order to my local reviewer to archive it after he had approved it.
I did not bother appealing; you must simply understand that this is not a democracy, and whatever HQ says the rules are is what the rules are, and comply without complaining. I am not, in fact, complaining here: it's their site and their employees (the reviewers) and users are bound by their rules.
A big part of the problem is that many cachers are under the impression that the reviewers are representatives of the caching community, as opposed to instruments to carry out HQ's will. Give that up and everything becomes a lot easier.
BTW, in this particular case I partly agree with HQ's position, and I am hopeful that challenges based on words spelled with attributes will be forbidden as well, as they are lame. But the principle remains the same.
And as evidence that the reviewers are not just making these things up out of thin air: one of Keystone's challenges (under his user account) that I thought was very innovative and fun would no longer be accepted under the new rules.
Drat - this looked fun and I wanted to just test the checker to see if I qualified... but unfortunately it's also disabled.
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On 4/28/2021 at 6:34 AM, terratin said:
Probably this one here: https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC5R7BJ
it's just a fantastic little outcrop with so much to see that really, really needed an EC. I still think it's a bit too difficult (maybe I should up D), but change of depositional environment is not easy.
Sometimes I find that the best Earthcaches are in unassuming places that just teach me something new or causes me to put a lesson to the test.-
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22 hours ago, Michaelcycle said:
New county souvenir: Ecuador! I'm not doing any traveling but I am racking up some souvenirs from places we have cached in the past. Pretty cool to stand on the equator:
Had to dodge traffic in a busy street to get this:
As for the souvenir artwork I think they should have included the Galapagos hawk, they were everywhere at Bartolome and fearless:
I got my equator crossing a bit differently... unfortunately there's no Cache at the "X"
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3 minutes ago, Keystone said:
LOL... you know about me when it comes to forum threads about the review process -- "Gotta catch 'em all!"
I hope the rest of the reviewing team knows how big an advocate you are for them. Taking the brunt of the anger on the forums lol
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Just now, STNolan said:
I won't speak for @Keystone (who is our resident Forum Reviewer)
Whoops, looks like Keystone beat me to answering. I knew I was typing too slow!
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2024 Geocaching Goals
in General geocaching topics
Posted
I'll be able to see your new virtual from my backyard... but I have no intentions to hike to the summit of Rainier anytime soon lol