Jayme H

Welcome new lurkers! We are so glad you are here...thanks for introducing yourselves. Happy caching!

What fun cakes...I love the creativity. Who knew geocaching could be so tasty!

Happy March! We had a fun, mini friend reunion this weekend. Some non-caching friends came from Colorado and Oregon and we all rented a house in Tacoma together. We were out at a bar on Friday night with a larger group and my husband and I realized that we had 3 more geocaches that we needed to find before the clock struck midnight. LOL! So we slipped away and grabbed a few quick smileys before February turned into March. Isn't it funny how these little goals that we set for ourselves seep into our everyday activities. That's how you know you're addicted. The next day we took everybody (including a set of 4 year old twins) out to find a geocache in the rain, on the beach, in Point Defiance Park. The little guys love "treasure hunting." They were chanting "geocache, geocache" while getting their shoes on before we left. I really love sharing this fun hobby with friends. Have a great week, everybody! P.S. We've almost made it through the dark days of winter...for those of you who participate, Daylight Savings Time switches next Sunday! WooHOO!!

Glad to hear it. I've got my fingers crossed!

LOL! We were chatting more around the office this morning about this. It seems that by being nice and offering this option we have accidentally caused a stir. The TOU say that we don't have to offer the option, in this case we were trying to be courteous. It could have been the individual cachers who were asked, but asking the event owners on the submission forms seemed simpler in this case...so the event owners were picked instead.

You got it thebruce0! We realized that we do a lot to focus on geocache finders and encourage them to get out and play the game all the time. We thought it might be nice to shift our focus on those who make (substitute: create, hide, construct, etc) geocaches. Geocache quality is important to the community. In supporting specific events that bring the community together to talk specifically about what makes a great geocache (creative camo, amazing hike with a view at the end, tricky puzzle, etc) we are hoping to support knowledgeable community members in educating their local community about what makes an outstanding hide.

Exactly. We wanted to be nice and give event owners an opt out option. The thought behind wanting to use the pictures is to highlight some of the well planned maker events for the rest of the community....maybe they will inspire more great events, more quality caches, more respect for those who do hide quality caches. The intent was to lift up the game and the community. I hope this explanation helps.

So...the 10 day forecast of clear skies (that I was so excited about last week) turned out to be a lie. Weekend after weekend of not getting outside to play was really getting to us, so we packed up our jackets and headed north for some adventure time...in the newly predicted snow warning. For those who live outside of the Pacific Northwest and normally have HUGE snow storms, I apologize for my use of the term "snow warning" - serious messages from NOAA get us all excited here. What we had was an amazing FULL day of caching fun in the slush, wet snow, rain, dry snow, and compact snow (not pictured). I remember a moment while driving up north where I just got incredibly excited....out of the blue I stated (in a very clear Bilbo Baggins accent) "We're going on an adventure!" My sweet husband did a double take and we just started giggling. Caching brings out the silliness in me I guess. I took a few pictures to share with y'all. It was so beautiful! I love how all the trees get perfectly highlighted. Anyway...it felt so great to get outside and play with my sweetie. Isn't it funny how you seem to forget about all those "things you need to do" when you are out looking for a cache? I love it.

All of the individual Mega-Events get to plan what they want their Lab Cache adventures to be. I am also looking forward to hearing about the fun Lab Caches that the MOGA organizers create. Have fun!

Thanks for the updates. We did deactivate MANY accounts from our hard bounce list - glad that it may be helping! I just had a chat with our IT fellas and they will be checking out your e-mail to verify that it's one of those that got stuck last week. As for this week, it's possible that your newsletter may not have gone out yet. We have 3 million weekly newsletter subscribers so it can take up to 3 days from when the first batch gets sent out - which was Tuesday, due to the President's Day holiday. Let me know if you don't get a newsletter by tomorrow and I'll relay that info to the IT folk.

Hi there! I've let our Events Coordinator know that you are wanting to make a post in the Mega-Events forum. She is the gatekeeper of that one. She'll be in contact with you to help you get your information in the right spot. Good luck with your event!

Congrats to The Leprechauns and all other who have maintained their August streak! Keeping a streak alive through a stormy winter is tough stuff. Days continue to get lighter, later and August will be here before you know it! Cache on!

Hey folks, Just a quick reminder to keep judgements out of the conversations please. We all enjoy playing different aspects of this game. If you'd like to compare percentages of how many of one type you have found, that's fine...just do it without a judgement (ex: lamestream) attached. Thanks!

Love those pictures, gang! Crazy snow in one spot, A/C blasting in another spot....in Seattle we have just been WET. I applaud all of you who have been getting out and grabbing smileys in your respective weather. Geodarts: Nice spot! Thanks for taking us all on a little beachy mind trip with you. We've got some clear skies headed our way. Looking forward to putting the pen to some paper this weekend.

Yep, this is getting off topic, but I want to let you know that there are only 2 Lackeys that are responsible for the forums. That would be Moun10Bike and myself. I'm sorry that the lack of information coming from HQ feels like we don't care. That's not our intention at all. We wish we could share everything that is happening here at HQ with the community...but the honest truth is that sometimes we either don't know or expectations from community make it hard. We would hate to tell you an expected release time for something specific and then have the developers run into an unforeseen problem that delays that fix for you guys. We are working on communicating more effectively with the community in the forums and the shift to constructive conversations have been a big improvement in the content that we can bring back to our meetings. I hope that keeps up! Either way, we care about the community's needs and wants and are working on building that trust back with you guys...even if we can't tell you everything we are working on to earn it back.

There are a handful of us in different departments who read various topics...and less who will post. But it is all of our responsibility to relate what we hear from the community (from the forums, attending Mega and local community events, Help Center questions, I <3 Geocaching surveys, etc.) back to everyone at HQ.

Hi Pup Patrol.

Yep, we are definitely paying attention. I attended a meeting today where the confusion surrounding this was discussed.

Nope, the I <3 Geocaching Lab Caches will not alter your hide count. If we get feedback in the surveys that people are wanting that to happen it could be implemented in the next test round.

Good question! The I <3 Geocaching Lab Caches will expire at midnight (your local time) on February 28th. This means that if you want to participate by creating a Lab Cache for someone to find, they will need to enter the find code in by the end of the month. Have fun!

Happy Monday, folks! From the look of these stories and pictures, it seems that there are some excellent adventures getting you outdoors to play. Keep it up! Last weekend we went to Portland to visit some friends and ended up doing a bit of city caching - we grabbed some Virtuals, Multis, and an EarthCache. What a great little tour of some neat hidden places and a nice way to learn some history of the city. Geocaching is the BEST travel guide. Anybody get outside this weekend? Anyone fly to New York and go geocaching?

We would like more feedback from the community around them before we make up our minds. So we are testing them to see what folks think. We have decided things without the community's input before and realized that it's an incredibly important piece to the puzzle.

Not this time around. There are no 'Found It' logs for the I <3 Geocaching Lab Caches. If we hear a lot of people wanting to add logs into the mix (via the soon-to-be-available surveys), maybe we'll add it to the next fun test. I haven't glanced at Facebook's TOS lately, but you might want to check them out before sharing a (potentially graphic) story there. It sounds like the wheels are turning on a unique idea...good luck!

Ah, yes. Good point! It has to be "National Math Month" somewhere, right? 1 is always less than 3.

My thoughts exactly, but it was mandatory. Silver lining: I'm amazing at it now!