sdarken

If you want to make zip lock bags last longer, put a little tape on either end of the plastick lock part. It will help stop the bag from tearing when it's opened. If you put a little tape on the bottom corners too you may be able to prevent the bags from tearing there too.

Damage around a cache area can be caused by a couple of people behaving badly (or not knowing any better) or it can be caused by the combined affect of having dozens of people each causing a small amount of damage as they search. A well-hidden cache that's accessible to a lot of people in a fragile location (eg: a carefully landscaped area) is a recipe for problems.

I like to see people waiting a while before they place their first cache so they can decide whether this is really a game that they will enjoy in the long term. I see a lot of people join, find 10 or 20 caches, place 1 and then drop out altogether. Their contribution often then dies a slow painful death. Most new cachers don't have an ammo can or top quality container for their first hide. That's one of those things you learn about when you visit enough caches and see the affects of moisture and wear-and-tear.

I'd be interested to hear how you contracted Lyme Disease. Ticks? Or something else? I dont think bug spray is foolproof against ticks so a visual inspection is usually a good idea if you're in that kind of area. I'd read that you'd need a tick lodged in you for 24-48 hours before there was a likelihood of Lyme disease. I pulled a number of them out of myself. Usually I find them within a few hours at most.

Unless I'm mistaken the millionth cache was created some time ago. Lots of caches have been published and archived (or never published at all) so there are less than a million active caches at present. I think you're asking when there will be a million active caches. It should be possible to pin it down to a particular day. I dont know how frequently G.S updates the stats on the home page. Just to be annoying....my guess.... 3rd of April 2010

I got tired of being a radius slave and chasing a moving target of clearing my local area so instead I've been working on finding every pre-2007 traditional cache in my county. I think I have one cache left after actively caching for more than 3 years. I was thinking it might be fun to hike to the highest point in every nearby county. If there are caches at each one it will be a bonus.

Wow. So let's get this straight. (The original post is a little confusing and it took me a couple of reads to understand it.)..... You placed a cache, one of the first finders was unintentionally spotted by a muggle who just happened to be in the area to fix something nearby. So you sent a pretty nasty email telling that finder to be more careful next time. No wonder you got a pretty rude email in reply. Caches get discovered accidentally all the time. It's part of the game. You should reconsider your response. I don't think it was justified and maybe it's best if you don't place any more caches.

There has 2B a solution to this problem. Can I point out that the obvious solution is to switch to another medium. Putting it bluntly, have you tried pens? Maybe your graphite thief will get discouraged go somewhere else.

In regard to the most states covered in one day, take a look at this log entry that shows hitting 46 states in 8 days: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...de-520a753e42b9 That has to be some kind of record in itself.

I thought they admitted to spliting up at some points, which is why it's not accepted by a lot of people as the record. I believe these Danish cachers have the closest thing to a legitimate one-day record (315): http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...=194370&hl= Yep. I agree. It's an interesting concept though but not as difficult as you might think. Most drive-ups are probably rate 1/1.5 for a total of 2.5 per cache. You'd only need 40 of those to hit a 100. On the other hand, achieving a total of 100 on terrain alone would require a string of 25 four star terrain caches or 33 three star terrain caches. That would be quite a challenge.

You are not quite correct on that. That video is composed of 2 pieces:- - The first bit show Dave Ulmer with the first cache (stash) - The second bit of that video was taken some years later as the site of the original cache was being prepared for a memorial plaque. That's why they were using the shovel/spade. (The plaque exists on that spot today.) It was during that site preparation when the OCB was rediscovered.

Yes. Actually I think it does more than imply it. Providing links to past discussions is a service. Some people will use it, some won't. If I was new to a forum and asked a question that had been discussed many times, I'd want to know that. I wouldn't want anyone to suggest I was a moron for not knowing it was on the dead horse list but otherwise it would be fine by me. I've never seen those links kill a discussion. If forum regulars want to discuss the same topic again, they will regardless. It's been said many time that's there are no new topics here. If we didn't cover old ground fairly frequently the forums would be a very quiet place indeed.

I'm very glad that you brought that up, because with all due respect, your link posts often come off as one of the least friendly. I really don't believe that is your intent... Kit Fox produes the kind of results that most of us wish the built-in search engine would produce. Perhaps he needs to open a new account under a new name (eg: "Search Fox") and we could pretend he is our own special geocaching search engine. I'm still waiting for someone to successfully come up with an appropriate verb like we had with Markwell to describe the ability (and willingness) to dig out relevant threads. I can only imagine how long that takes.

I'd say that I probably use the hint more often than not. If I have the hint in my GPSr I will usually make the decision once I arrive at the cache area. I dont have much patience for anything resembling a needle-in-a-haystack. I also use the hint in high muggle areas. When the area is more secluded and if I have no particular time-limit, I'm happy to search much longer.

To texasgrillchef: I agree with your desire to have a ratings system. I especially think of this whenever I'm visiting a new area and I dont have time to wade through hundreds of caches to find a few I might enjoy. (When I'm caching in my local area I have time to review each cache and decide if I want to find it.) When you talk about rooting out bad apples I think you'll turn a lot of people against you. A rating system should be about caches, not cache owners. (There's another thread in the forums about wanting a feature to ignore cachers at the press of a button. That might be a feature request you may want to support). If you find caches that are not (or no longer) allowed, the owner or a reviewer should be notified. A rating system isn't the solution for that. If you hang around the forums long enough you'll begin to understand that there are multiple ways to play this game. Apart from following the guidelines, there isn't a right and wrong way to play. Light pole and guard rail caches may not be something that most people don't find very interesting but they satisfy the needs of some cachers some of the time but that's a whole different topic.

I stumbled across this video on YouTube and thought other people might be interested to see it. I'm not sure if this full video has been posted before. (Part of it was posted in 2004). In the first part of this video Dave Ulmer shows the contents of his original stash. The second part of the video is taken at original stash location some years later as the site is being prepared for a plaque. The Original Can of Beans is rediscovered on camera.

Thanks for the entertaining contribution. The only part where my opinion differs is your characterization of 2006+ cachers as "new". Since I fall into the 2006 category (and know several others that also fall into that category) I think I'm qualified to say that if someone has been geocaching for 3 years and is still tossing out LPCs and dumpster caches, it's not because they dont know any better, it's because that's the kind of game they enjoy playing. Being new might be an excuse for a short while but eventually it has to be a conscious decision. A one-click-to-ignore-a-cacher feature sounds like a useful addition. And once we have that feature how about a screen that shows who has me on their one-click-ignore list. That might be fun.

Since this thread hasn't already been locked for going off-topic let me add a few unscientific observations regarding the introduction of the hands-free only cell-phone law in California: The dumb: - a lot of people started holding their cell phones in their right hands instead of their left hands since it makes them less visible to a police officer driving up beside them - a lot of people start holding their phones down at chest-level using speaker phone. They seem to believe that as long as you're not holding it to your ear, you can't get a ticket. That's wrong:- you still get a ticket. An unexpected result: - I can't prove this statistically but I believe a lot of law-abiding people have stopped using cell phones in the car as much. If it's not built into the car, having a hands-free device avavilable and charged to receive and make calls adds an extra level of complexity to the process which results in people not being able/willing to use their cell phones while driving. A lot of people are still using hand-held cell phones and are risking getting a ticket. Obviously the threat of a ticket and the cost of a ticket is not sufficient to discourage a quite a large segment of the population.

A couple of years ago I found a cache and there was a note in the logbook at that the cache had been found by someone that had been doing some nude hiking. He claimed he had inserted a body part into some playdoh that he'd found in the cache (and had returned the playdoh to the cache). As I recall he even left the address for a nude hiking website in the log book.

(going off topic a little) It seems that a fairly high percentage of people dont log DNFs at all. The percentage of people that will log multiple DNFs on the same cache is even smaller.

In almost all cases it seems that a cache can only be adopted if the original owner agrees to it. If the owner has gone missing and is no longer responding to emails then adoption is generally not possible. I dont know if there are regional differences in how things work but around here, if an owner is absent and the community wont take care of a cache (and the cache needs help), it will most likely be archived. As I recall, the policy around forced adoptions changed some time in the last 12 months.

Here's a virtual with over 3800 "found it" logs though many of those are armchair cachers: What in the World : GC6D43 http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...62-4eca70ad99ec but it's hard to imagine a cache with more "Finds" than the cache mentioned earlier with over 9000 finds. Four Windows : GCF55A http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...88-f4291a31d94a

After posting a response earlier in this thread, I just returned from a lunchtime caching trip. I didn't find the cache but I did find the following at the cache site (scattered around under various bushes) which I CITO'd: - 3 unopened cans of herring - 3 unopened cans of cherry soda - 1 unopened bottle of water I also took 6 copies of an April 2009 edition of the SF Chronicle.

No. Reviewers dont check. When a cache is submitted, the cache owner is supposed to have obtained permission. [Edited to add: GOF & Bacall is correct. There are times when reviewers asked for proof from the cache owner. ] If you dont feel comfortable about searching for a cache move on. If you're confronted by someone that claims to be the land owner while searching, use your best judgement but you should be able to tell them the real reason you're there. If the land owner objects to the cache being there, notify the cache owner.

I've found lots of things (other than caches) while out geocaching: - a case of beer in a storm drain - a brand new pnuematic nail gun still in the box - a buried box containing momentos of a teenage romance Recently I discovered costume jewelry and ripped up $1 and $20 dollar bills scattered around a obscure part of a nearby mountain. I turned this loot into a cache ... GC1Q6HJ - Tam Treasure Mystery