JimmyEv

Where's my gold ammo can? I feel left out.

Vacationing in a different part of Texas, I drove up to a 4.5 terrain cache. On a paved road. In front of me was a gate, secured to a tree with a rusty old chain. There was a shiny new bolt on the chain. The idea flashed through my head that the shiny new bolt was the cache. But, no, it's a 4.5...must be high up in the tree. Looked in the tree, didn't see a cache and didn't see a way to climb it. Got home a week later, posted a DNF, and the cache owner e-mailed me. It was the bolt. The terrain rating was high because it was a long drive down a lot of back-country roads. I think he lowered the terrain rating to a 4.

That's like saying that watching football on TV must be better than actually playing it because so many more people watch than play. I would submit that the fact that they are EASIER is the primary reason more people find them. Kinda like how it's easier to watch a game than to play it. I'm not saying anything is better than anything else. I'm pretty sure the reason more people go after these is because they're easier. Using your analogy: Putting football on TV for more people to enjoy isn't a bad thing. So why is putting out an easy cache that more people will enjoy a bad thing?

Because these are the ones that geocachers apparently like, judging from the number of times they're found. Round-trip hike of eight miles through palmetto-hardwood-bottomland forest? Four finders since December. Micro in the shopping center? Four finders since last weekend. I got tired of these lame park and grabs about last year. They were boring. So I started doing only terrain 3.0-4.5. Then I ran out of money for all the travel that involves. So I adapted to the micros. Bicycling between them makes getting to each one a little adventure. And looking for every single one, no matter how 'lame', is cool because you get a break. And then they don't seem 'lame' anymore. It's all in the way you approach it.

Lets say you live in a Suburban area. The handful of parks are saturated. The one museum in the area has a cache in front of it. What's left? Shopping centers. I've taken to putting out micros while bicycling, if I see an interesting spot. And maybe if I just feel like taking a break. In the city, this isn't a problem. Around my house, well, there's really not anything but shopping centers, office complexes, and little playgrounds. Guess that's what happens when your town didn't exist 15 years ago. And since people are most likely to maintain a cache close to their home, that's where it goes.

Tourism is a hobby. Lots of people visit graves when traveling. Like Arlington National Cemetery. Geocaching is just another form of tourism. Except instead of the Lonely Planet guidebook pointing out Stephen F Foster's grave, its a cache page.

I tried for a cache in Volant, PA that was being guarded by a nest of snakes. Everytime I went near one of the holes a big fat snake would come slithering out. But I don't think they were rattlers. I didn't get any closer though.

Some caches are bookcrossing caches. They're full of books to be swapped. So I doubt that leaving cards explaining the websites would offend most people. Of course there's always one.

Yeah. They wield their bellies as weapons.

This would be interesting. You could put caches at different distances from parking and compare the damage, or lack thereof. Or you could hide a micro/small/regular container and compare the damage (or lack) from those. Then you could write a master's thesis.

How are ammo can hides not lame? They're all the same, varying only by regional topography. In a bush, a palmetto plant, under a pile of sticks, under a pile of rocks, covered up by leaves. If all the ammo cans were within 500 feet of parking, then everyone would hate ammo can hides. It's not the hide that's fun with larger caches -- it's the adventure getting to the hide. Usually a hike deep into the woods, swamp or desert. The key to enjoying micros is to stop driving, jumping out, grabbing, driving on to the next one, repeat. If you make getting between micros part of the adventure, even Walmart parking lots become fun.

I've never deleted a log. Twice I've accidently logged 'found' instead of a DNF. They weren't deleted. I had to change them myself to a DNF a few months later when I couldn't figure out why they weren't showing up in my pq's.

Why can't you just e-mail the owner asking them if they still want to maintain the cache? If they don't respond or don't want to, and nobody wants to adopt it, you could post an SBA log with a note for the next person to cache-out the cache. If there's an abandoned cache in our area that the community doesn't want to maintain, the e-mail and SBA works just fine. And there's a few hiders with only one or two caches who don't cache, don't log into gc.com, but respond to the logs on their caches.

That was a year ago! I thought NM logs were new. And this is the first time I ever heard of the Maintenance Performed log. Maybe others have a long learning curve too?

Maybe there should be a bookmark forum or thread? If people wanted to list their bookmarks there, then it would be searchable.

My 500's usb connection is real fickle. Sometimes it's recognized, sometimes it's not. Usually if a loosen the connection and retighten, somewhere along the line it gets recognized. But sometimes that doesn't work either.

Thanks.

Why do all the rest of the regional forums have local groups pinned at the top, but this one doesn't? Makes it very very hard to find local Pennsylvania groups. I can't even find NWPA by googling it. Anybody have the link?

This is becoming confusing or I'm just thick. What is the difference now between an agenda cache and an educational cache? Are all education-themed caches considered an agenda cache? Two specific examples that I've been bopping around in my head for some time. I wanted to do an alligator-themed multi-cache. The cache page would be all about Alligator mississippiensis . Would this be somehow considered an agenda cache promoting the saving of alligators or something? If there was a themed one for the Atwater Prairie chicken? Especially since it's endangered, this might be considered an agenda? I just thought they would be interesting.

Duh.. at least there are two of us in the world... never could figure out why the pencil needed to be protected from moisture... And folks know it's not a trade item, how? They don't. But they don't necessarily know it's not a trade item just because it's in the baggie either. I would think that if a cacher saw only one writing implement in the cache, they would know others might need it to sign the log. I do like the idea of leaving pens out of the baggie because I've seen many a wet log book caused by a pen put in the baggie.

That was for all Premium members? I thought that was a benefit to Charter Members only. It's currently listed on http://www.geocaching.com/subscribe/ so I would think it's for all Premium Members. I thought that too. I remember missing the 'Charter' thing by about a month or so from procrastination and I was like, 'Dang, I didn't get that rate locked in.' Now I'm like 'Yea! Yes I did!'

This has bothered me too. I wish the 'GC' would stay and only the 'XXXX' would erase when I highlight the box, instead of the whole 'GCXXXX' disappearing, forcing you to re-enter the 'GC.' Silly and minor, but yet still troubling.

I've thought about posting SBAs on caches outside of my local area, not because of guideline violations, but because they had only DNFs for the past year and a half. I decided against it because that's for the locals to do, and I think the same applies to alleged guideline violations. Those are up to the local caching community and the local approver. I've done a lot of these. Thankfully they were stuck in the ground and not buried. Otherwise I would've never found them. I don't know how you found those buried ones.

Multis with a creative theme are cool, especially if some parts are cleverly hidden. The thing that bugs me about multis over four stages or so is that if one stage ends up missing, it ruins the entire hunt. And more stages mean more chances of at least one stage disappearing.

For some odd reason, difficult-to-find micros are much more annoying when I'm bicycling between caches than when I'm driving between caches. At least give a good hint. I beg you.