Skippermark

Then I guess I read the overall guidelines wrong. Thank you for the fast reply! The commercial aspect of the guidelines pertains to the cache listing itself and not what's in the cache. The guidelines are pretty open with what can be included in a cache. It's mostly common sense stuff and no illegal stuff. "Explosives, fireworks, ammo, lighters, knives (including pocket kni♦ves and multi-tools), drugs, alcohol or other illicit material shouldn't be placed in a cache...Food items are always a bad idea...Even the presence of mint flavored dental floss has led to destruction of one cache."

Agreed. $25 per cache is crazy. Last year here in CT, the state parks doubled their entrance fees hoping to increase revenue. People fought back, and the fees were still raised, but at a much more reasonable level. If the fees hadn't been lowered, people were just going to stop going, which would have actually decreased revenue. As Brian said, they should be encouraging people to visit the parks. In tough times like this where people aren't taking world-wide vacations, make it attractive for residents to stay home and visit local places. Don't give them an excuse to go somewhere else. Every year there's an event that draws 200+ people to a park. There's 40 caches in the park for the event. People camp, visit for the day and pretty much sell out the park. Visitors pay a lot just to go to the park for the event. Making people pay an additional $1000 to hide caches wouldn't fly.

Not just confusing, but you're cheating the FTF hounds. And that.

A friend has found all 400 of his finds using a car type GPS. Seems to have good luck with it. He hasn't placed any hides yet. Another friend used a car GPS for his first 100 finds, and even hid some using it too. His coords were bad (50-130 feet off) on the hides, and he wandered around lost when trying to find them. He couldn't wait to get a "real" GPS. Maybe it depends on the brand of GPS or the amount of tree cover, things like that.

True, there aren't many larger (regulars & above) in urban areas. I wanted to buck the trend, so I put a large plastic container in a bush directly next to a busy bus stop in a large business park. I figured it would probably last awhile since the only people who go there are business people, and it probably wouldn't be found by kids or "general" muggles. I cammo'd the sides but left the top and bottom clear so people could see inside and clearly wrote "Geocaching Game Piece - Do Not Remove" on the top and bottom. It was clearly visible if someone looked into the bushes. It lasted for 2 1/2 years before getting broken apart by the landscape crew who came through and mowed down the bushes that it was hidden in. The logs were great because people said they were shocked to find such a large container in such a busy spot. Some wouldn't even check the size before getting there and assumed they were looking for a micro in the bus stop.

Used event logs are cool because you can go back and see old signatures and reminisce. Used logs at a new cache, not such a good idea because they can be confusing to people.

It was 2:2 until you found 4 more yesterday. does it bug anyone else that those two posts don't say 3:1 and 1:1? LOL. It doesn't bug me, but I was sort of thinking the same thing. A 2:2 ratio isn't bad. A 2 hider would most likely be able to maintain that amount of hides. Even a 4:6 hider shouldn't have too much problem. It would be better to know the true number of hides rather than a ratio. A 6:2 ratio seems a lot different than 1926:642.

From the guidelines under "Off-Limit (Physical) Caches"..."Caches near, on or under public structures deemed potential or possible targets for terrorist attacks. These may include but are not limited to highway bridges, dams, government buildings, elementary and secondary schools, and airports." As others have said, it may have been placed with permission, so contacting the owner will clear things up. If so, it wouldn't be a bad idea for the owner to put a note on the page saying, "The police station is aware of the cache" or something similar. But, if no permission was given and he keeps the cache in place, he'll likely presume it was you who reported it, so you may want to go directly to the reviewer instead if you don't want to have any issues with the owner.

As others have said, there's no right answer. It comes down to how many you can maintain. There's another high school aged cacher here in CT who has over 40 hides, and they are all good. He rides his bike to them, and they are all well maintained. He has some further way that his parents drive him to if he needs to work on them. I'd say place a couple, see how things go. If you get good reviews and people seem to like them, hide a couple more. Just don't go crazy and hide a bunch just for the sake of hiding them. Put them in cool places that mean something to you and others will appreciate seeing.

There have been some issues with this in the past, but I thought it was all set. Was the GPX created using GSAK or something like that? Possibly the GPX file is corrupted? I'd try again with a different GPX. If it does the same thing, I'd post a note in the Feedback site at the link below. The support team hangs out there and will see your note and be able to help. http://feedback.geocaching.com/forums/7527...hing-for-iphone

Relocating to the GPS section.

Yes, and the part of the site that is used to solve them changed a couple years ago, but the method is the same.

Okay, someone started a new thread for the "Mindless Cache Placement" thread so it wouldn't be talked about here. This thread is for discussing world record cache runs. If you want to talk about ways to filter out certain types of caches, please start a new thread about that. I don't want to have to hand out tickets.

A new thread has been opened about caches in questionable areas. Let's keep this one on topic. Thanks.

A few years ago when caching wasn't as popular, a friend went into the woods to try for an FTF. A minute or two later a guy heads off the trail and stops near my friend. Since my friend didn't know if it was a cacher or not, he wasn't sure what to say. Finally, he said, "Are you looking for what I'm looking for?" The other person got a big smile on his face and said, "I think I am..." It was pretty quick that my friend realized they were not looking for the same thing, and he high tailed it out of there.

I have mixed feelings about power trails. On one hand I think it would be a blast to do something like the ET series, but on the other it upsets me that people don't pay attention to the cache pages like for the alien head and drive to the caches even though they've been asked not to on the cache page. Is getting to a cache quickly worth so much that finders will take the chance that it will give caching a bad name and anger those who oversee these lands and possibly get caching banned?

It happens to us too. Four of us couldn't find an "easy" magnetic key holder recently. The next few made a point of saying how easy it was. "In the first spot we looked." "Super quick grab." "In and out in less than 30 seconds..." Grrrr.

"Geo-rallies" are popular in some areas. There's one in Maine & one in Massachusetts that are very popular. For the one in MA, the caches are placed for the rally, but they are not listed on the GC site until a couple weeks after the rally is over when the caches are changed from "rally caches" to regular caches that anyone can find. There is usually an event to commemorate the start or the end of the rally, but the event is open to anyone and not just those who participate in the rally. Since you're in CT, I'll give you some background on rallies here. A group of cachers who participated in and loved the Maine one wanted to do one here. They placed about 60 caches around the state (8 in each county), got everything ready to go and found out that no one was interested in it when only one person signed up. The reason people gave when asked why they weren't interested was that the rally was more about driving than caching. No one (well one person did) wanted to drive around like crazy trying to get what would probably be 15 or 16 finds. Perhaps if the caches were concentrated better, with 6 or 7 in a park and hidden in a couple parks in one county there would have been more interest since the focus would be caching and not driving.

Maybe we should go with the lunar cycle, about 29.5 days.

I'd say a month as well.

I like attending geocaching events because it helps me remember that geocachers are real people, which can be easy to forget because so much of caching involves a computer and not actually talking to someone. When I'm at an event, I quickly realize that even though everyone has different ideas, the ultimate goal (I think) of most cachers is to hide caches that they hope others will enjoy finding and that they themselves have fun while finding caches that others have placed. Wanted to add that at most events, even those who like totally different things (hikes versus numbers, regulars versus micros and so on) usually end up hanging out together and having a great time. Even though they like different things, they know that everyone caches for different reasons, but the main thing is to have fun while doing it. It can be hard to remember this when doing everything "behind the scenes," but when you're face to face with others and sharing in good conversation, everyone seems to have a much different attitude.

Yes, it will alter the stats of those who found it at a 4.5. Whatever the current rating is for a cache is what it will show in finders' profiles. If the cache is going to change significantly (ratings, new hide, new location), I'm in favor of archiving and rehiding.

Cacheopedia has a wiki article about it here.

Closing per OPs request.

Being that it's a CT cache and that I frequently cache down that way, I would definitely look for it. I really enjoy cemetery caches, especially if there are interesting markers to look at. One thing I'd add to the cache page is an additional "Parking area" waypoint with coordinates to the entrance to the cemetery. Because the cache is so close to the highway, if someone is using a "road routing" GPS to get there, their GPS will probably tell them to stop on the highway since it won't be aware of the cemetery entrance. For something like this, Google Maps is probably good enough to use to get the coordinates to the entrance. It's pretty accurate down there, so you shouldn't need to make a special trip to get the coords.