Laughing at the Sky

Drive-by quickies have taken me to some amazing locations. On my trip to Alaska and Canada we stopped at viewpoints, lookouts and sights we would never otherwise have found. Yes, some are a waste of space but on a trip from A to B there isn't often time for a hike into the woods. Well, that sounds great. There's nothing better than exploring new places (and by the way, I must explore North America someday). But if in those situations it is all about the location, to me it does beg the question: why even bother retrieving the cache and signing the log? If the main purpose is the location, why not just follow the GPS to the location and then enjoy the location? The reason I'm asking that is because I asked what the point is of seeking a cache that's just a log in a little tub, and you said it's the location. So once you're at the location, goal achieved, right? You've found what you were looking for: the location. I can understand a bit more the desire to sign the log if it's a really interesting hide that was tough to find. But if you get to a beautiful location and then you've still got to find a boring micro, doesn't that seem a bit pointless then? How has it added to the beauty of the landscape in front of you? Or is it about telling others that you were there? But do many people really read the logs? Aren't they usually mainly just "TFTC"? But I have always struggled to see the point of signing physical logs, as I have previously mentioned either earlier in this thread or in another thread. Last year I went through a phase of being really into hunting down trackables and moving them, and I often wouldn't bother signing the physical logs. Once I'd got the trackable in my hand then job done. The cache was just the means to get the trackable.

I never really see the point of drive-by quickees. If it's somewhere so easily accessible, and it's easy to find, and all you get is a log book to sign, this seems like an entirely futile exercise to me. Now, if the container is interesting, or if seeking out the cache takes me to somewhere nice or interesting that I wouldn't have been to otherwise, now we're talking. As for cache contents, I'm 37, not 7, so most of the silly little things in there don't interest me in the slightest. What would interest me would be items of value, like money or book tokens, but I know that the vast majority of cache owners wouldn't have disposable money to afford that. I like trackables. Geocoins can be beautiful, and some travel bugs can be interesting objects. And with any trackable, it's satisfying to be part of moving it along its journey. Actually, I don't really understand why all cache contents aren't trackable. If you're going to make the cache itself trackable, then why not the contents too. I know that geocaching is about the fun of trying to find hidden things, but for me there has to be something actually worth finding. If it's just a piece of paper rolled up in a film tub by the side of a road, I'm not finding anything worth finding. No interesting location, no interesting container, no interesting contents, nothing. Just a way to kill time. The time would be better spent going to a nice location and having a nice day out, even if there's no caches there. If it's about the numbers, fair enough. But on your death bed are you really going to be thinking, "Ahh, well at least I found 50 more caches than Dave did"?

The simple point I was making is that 29 finds is rather early to declare passion for something. At 29 finds, someone has only just started. I found considerably more than 29 caches in my first 3 months but I wouldn't have called myself passionate. I was excited with the novelty of it though. But it definitely took me more than 29 finds to get a feel for what I like and don't like. Arthur & Trillian, on the other hand, has been at it for over 9 years and has found more than 3 thousand micros. Now that's passion. Or even obsession perhaps. Still, an obsession that gets a person out and about can't be that bad

I love mircos with a passion! The trill of finding a cache I have been looking for 40 minutes for is just so fun. Regulars are fun but its kinda a given of were they are unless its a multi... I see you are a new member who only joined in April 2015 and has only found 29 caches. Your passion for micros is probably mainly due to the novelty of being new to the game. Come back to this thread when you've found 200 more micros, and let's see if you're still just as excited about spending 40 minutes looking for a piece of paper to sign.

Now THAT'S dedication!

For me, a box cache that is able to take items, but only contains rubbish little things like pencil sharpeners or little plastic things, is a waste of that size of cache as far as an adult is concerned. I know there's a chance that young kids might like that, but to an adult it seems as pointless as a boring micro. This is why I like TBs and GCs, because they are often interesting objects. I saw a REALLY BEAUTIFUL geocoin yesterday. It made my day actually. Then a short while later I found a cache that was the best cache container I've seen in a long time. I seem to remember that the very first geocache contained some really good things like CDs, food, etc. Although I know that could get expensive if you had to keep replacing valuable items like that on a frequent basis (you could do that with a 5 star difficulty cache though). But a plastic box containing a pencil sharpener, a bouncy ball, a little bag of marbles, a dirty little doll with its head snapped off, and a penny, somehow seems a bit pathetic. Of course, if it's an interesting container or an interesting place, then forget everything I just said.

Hi 02Tracey, I have an eTrex 10 too. If you plug it into your computer's USB port, then wait a minute, you can open it as a drive. Then click into the Garmin folder, then the GPX folder. Place your cache files in there. You can either download GPX files for individual caches from their cache pages, or you can do a pocket query. Either way, you place the files in the GPX folder.

I have an eTrex 10, just because that's all my parents could afford to buy when they got it for my birthday 2 years ago. It does the job, but I've always been disappointed by the map. It's also slow sometimes - takes a few seconds to respond when I select something. Still, when the first bunch of geocaches I found on my own were done without a GPS. Just a map and a paper note of the details from the cache page. So any GPS was a huge step up for me, to actually be able to be taken closer to the co-ordinates.

We should make that the official geocaching uniform. Safety goggles and hard hats must be worn at all times.

I think avoiding being noticed by the general public is all part of the fun of geocaching. The thrill of possibly getting caught adds to the excitement, a bit like if a couple were "at it" in the woods. It's the feeling of danger which makes it fun. Although it can be frustrating if there are people just sat around who won't move on and you just want them to go away so you can get on with finding the cache. There are some situations where you just have to not care though, like on a busy road with lots of cars going past. Then you just have to go for it and pretend they aren't there.

For me, it's like this: Caches that don't interest me: A boring container in a boring location, without any travel bugs or geocoins (this doesn't just include boring micros, but also includes larger caches that are just a normal box filled with stupid little things that only kids might like) Caches that DO interest me: A nice location, regardless of container or contents An interesting container, regardless of location or contents Travel bugs and geocoins, regardless of container or location

You're rubbing a sore spot with me. I recently put out a medium-sized cache with about five decent items in it, only to check on it a couple of weeks later and finding just two left -- and nothing else. I was very disappointed in my fellow cachers. Could have been muggles?

Yes, I was thinking that exact same thing at the same time while I was writing that post. But I decided to still write it anyway just to see what other people would think of it.

So the situation you get is that people will go after new caches close to them, just because they are easy to get to. Then over time, if these caches are good, they will naturally get favourite points. So if a cache has been in place for several months, or even a year, and has no favourite points, you know it's nothing interesting. Heyyyy, this makes me wonder something actually... To make COs up their game, you could have a rule where if a cache doesn't get any favourite points within a year, it gets archived. Make way for someone else who knows how to hide a good cache. This may sound harsh, but can you imagine how great the overal quality of geocaches could become if there was a fear that your cache could get archived if it's not up to standard.

Ohhh, I see. So they are designed purely to be really quick and easy to find. So it really is purely for the numbers. So what I did was more of a challenge series. The fact that most of them were on footpaths rather than next to the road, this actually made it more of a challenge than if those 50 caches were all next to the road and really easy to find. Wow, I could find hundreds in a day if all I had to do was drive forward a bit, hop out the car and it's in my hand straight away, then straight back in the car and so on. I really can't see the appeal of that though. I mean, how many times can I drive forward a bit and briefly hop out of the car? If they're that easy to find, why even bother with the caches? Just drive forward and keep hopping out of the car, see how many times you can do that in a day, like some kind of maniac with a bizarre compulsive disorder

Another thing you can do is to just go for caches that say they have trackables in them. This is not a guarantee that they will have, but it increases the chances. You might get about a 50% success rate with that, maybe less, it varies. One thing I used to do a while back was to just go for the ones supposedly with trackables in, then if they didn't have one in I would take delight in appointing myself the Trackable Police, and I would alert both the cache owner and the trackable owner that it was not in the cache. Alternatively, if you want to find trackables and want an almost 100% success rate at finding them in caches, you can look at the log. If travel bug or geocoin is not mentioned in one of the recent logs, it's not likely to be in the cache because people tend to take them pretty quickly. It can be good fun finding trackables, because they are usually more interesting objects than the average geocaching swag. Especially the beautiful geocoins. The only problem is, once you've found a whole bunch of them in one day, you then have to find somewhere appropriate to place them. But you can always just dump them in a TB Hotel.

Do multi's they have an higher chance of not being micro's. Or you can just specify the container size when doing a search or pocket query. Simple.

Oh yes, definitely. I came away from that day feeling like I'd had a good adventure and cracking day out, but definitely also a feeling that I don't want to make a habit of approaching geocaching in that way. The thing is, this series of 50 caches was in a ring around a the countryside surrounding a town. There are plenty of other geocaches actually in the town, and also elsewhere nearby. So you could easily do 10 of that series combined with 10 other caches nearby to make your own convenient loop route. I think that's a good point actually, to make our own minds up about what we want to do on a particular day. Just because there are a bunch of caches in a series in numerical order, it doesn't mean they have to be done that way. We can pick and choose and do it however we want. By the way, why is not the trail I did a power trail? I heard about power trails and types "geocaching power trails" into Google. It came up with geocachetrails.com. The one I did was the largest trail near to me.

I'd think that most people wouldn't notice much of their surroundings when they set a goal like this for themselves. Their mind is set on reaching the goal so they're watching the clock, the distance left, and the numbers they're getting in hopes of finishing in time. Most everything else comes in second. Not my kind of fun at all but many people seem to like doing it. Maybe the problem then is the goal, my record is 768 caches in one day, we took a 2 hour nap in the middle after checking into our hotel and had a nice lunch. I probably took 200 pictures during the day as well and at no point did we ever feel rushed as we really had no goal of how many to find. Well, I was walking round (many of them were on footpaths, so it was the only way to do it really), so sometimes a lot of that 11.4 minutes is the actual traveling time between the caches. Then there's perhaps 5 minutes to search for the cache. Also, I'm really into my photography. I don't just do random quick snaps, I like to take my time with it. But this is not a competition, in my mind at least. Obviously it is for you, and that's totally fair enough. 768 in one days is insane! Even if you spent 10 hours at it, that's less than a minute per cache, which is just bonkers!

I would agree with you, but the problem is that most box size caches contain items which are meaningless to me. A while back I was really into finding travel bugs and geocoins, but I realised I was using too much fuel in my car because often you have to drive quite far between them. I think the most interesting caches are those in interesting location, or those in interesting containers. In my experience, it's actually quite rare for the contents of the cache to be anything of interest, regardless of size.

This is an excellent point actually, and something I will definitely keep in mind. I've just started my own thread where I ranted about the pointlessness of finding 50 similar caches all in one day. So, using the favourites bit of the filter on the search, I can really narrow it down to just the best caches. Just because there is a big series of caches in one place, it doesn't mean I have to find them all. I could just find the best ones. Thanks for this

Hey everyone! Yesterday I did my first power trail. It's called the "USA Mega Series", and consists of 50 caches. I'm not normally into challenges just for the sake of it, but I just wanted to try it out to see how it went. So I aimed to find all 50 caches in one day. The route was 10.9 miles between all the caches, but that's "as the crow flies", so the actual distance I walked was almost certainly significantly longer. I started about 8:30am, and by about 6:00pm I had got round them all. My find score was 43 out of 50. I kind of enjoyed it, but by the end of it I was worn out and sore. A lot of the caches were under bridges, and I found myself climbing about and getting into various awkward positions. However, the problem I have with a scenario like this is that it's too rushed. I'm all for a brisk walk to keep the fitness up, but when you're rushing just to get the numbers there's no time to really enjoy the journey. It turned out to be a really nice day once the clouds cleared, but I felt like I didn't really have time to fully enjoy it. Also, with so many caches all hidden by the same CO, many of them were the same; just a camo bag under a bridge. This is one down-side to doing a series created by one person: there will be a lot of similarity between the caches. So I think I confirmed what I already believed, that doing geocaching purely for the numbers is not really my thing. But I think it's true of anything in life really. If you're rushing just to get lots of things done, you don't really have time to enjoy it. It's like, last summer I had a day trip to London, and I tried to pack in so many places to see in one day, a lot of the day was just this blur of rushing. So with geocaching, I'm back to thinking that the best approach is to pick a nice area, and then design a nice route that takes in a bunch of geocaches as a nice extra. If I'm planning to be out for the whole day, a more realistic number is about 10-20. 50 caches in 9.5 hours is one cache every 11.4 minutes, which includes walking between the caches. That's nonsense if you want to actually enjoy the day and experience the landscape. There were times when I just wanted to rest for a while longer and take in the scenery, and there were places where I wanted to take photos but didn't have the time. Even with the 7 caches I didn't find, I wonder if I'd have found them if I hadn't been in such a rush. I think it's just a difference in mindset. Some people thrive on challenges and competitions, so will approach geocaching with the aim of getting their find count as high as possible. Others, like me, want to just use it as an excuse to see places we haven't seen before and enjoy the day out. An extra 50 added to my find score or a nice day out? I know what my priority is. What's yours?

Agrred 100%.. Geocaching to most of us is...coords. Find/DNF. move on. Jeepers C! Also agreed 100%. My question has been answered anyway.

What I often like to do is to read the description and the hint while I'm still on my way, so then I know what to look for. As an example of an easy one, if the hint mentions something about a style, then I'll know to look for a style. Also, one thing I've realised as I've become more experienced at geocaching is that I now know a lot more about what kind of things to look for. Recently, I bumped into two newbie geocachers, and they were shocked to see that the geocache was a stick. They had no idea that a geocache would be an actual real wooden stick. These days, I look for sticks, fake rocks, piles of stones that might have a micro container under them, all the usual standard things. But I'm into geocaching more for the experience of being out visiting new places, so these days I don't tend to spend too long searching. 5-10 minutes, and if I still haven't found it I move on, unless I think it's going to be really worth spending longer to find it.

+1 A couple years ago, a business trip took me to Massachusetts. While I was there, geocaching took me to a number of places that I wouldn't have visited during that trip otherwise, including an afternoon wandering around the MIT campus exploring its public art. That's a good way to look at it actually. Perhaps while we're in an area, geocaching can take us to hidden corners of that area that we would otherwise not have seen. That's a really good point actually. And I think that should always be something to keep in mind when people hide new caches - you should be bringing people to an interesting place.