Trekks

Entry

This little Bobcat and several others were sitting at the Bear Valley Lodge in Eastern/Central Oregon right down the road from Aydens Cache GCZ35W. The lodge owners assured us they were friendly.

I'm at Oregon State University. Today I will actually have a chance to organize all these answers. I had a small accident and I have a broken nose and my teeth went through my lip. I have to stay home from work and classes today because my husband has to watch me for any signs of serious head injury. The doctor gave him a sheet of paper that he has to follow. I am not hurt too badly, just very sore. At least I will be able to organize all these great answers I am getting!

Thanks! You guys are all great! I actually took a break today to find a couple caches rather than writing about them!

Well, Evergreenhiker wrote my paper for me Seriously, these are great answers. I am so happy that everyone is willing to answer questions for me. I will absolutely post my paper when it's done. Since it's going to be pretty long, I'll probably just post it on my web page and send a link out. It's not due until March 10th. Thanks again everyone, this is great! The more answers the better!

Well....let me see if I can explain/justify....from one cacher to another... I am in grad school (Anthropology) and we are learning how to do ethnography. Our assignment is to study a culture and write about it. Most people seem to be doing religious groups or Native Americans. I wanted to do something different. After long hours of thinking, I was opening up some tupperware and realized that geocachers do have their own culture. We have events, there are some people who live for caching, some who do it casually, some who only find one kind of caches....we have a specialized language of sorts (muggles etc). We engage in an activity that has some sense of uniformity, we have a worldwide community and also a local sub-community. People from all social classes, all ages, all ethnic groups, people with disabilities, people who use mountain top caches as a challenge....so many different participants. It's a solo activity, it's a group activity...There are rules/guidelines, there is community service (CITO)....I could go on and on....but, that's the short version of how I feel that it relates to anthropology. Basically, geocachers have their own culture. It's one that has to be explained to people, but if you are in the culture, if you are a cacher, you belong to the community. Think about if someone asks you about caching who has never heard of it. The challenge is to write about it without making us all seem a bit off our rockers! I hope that explains it, but I am happy to answer any questions.

Hello All! I am writing a paper for an anthropology class. Would you please answer these questions for me? Please email answers to dianna@learning-quest.com Thanks so much!! What is your caching name? How and when did you start caching? What is your favorite type of cache? Does your whole family cache together (if applicable) or do you cache alone? With friends? How many people usually join you on a typical outing? How many caches do you usually attempt on a typical outing? Have you bought any special equipment (besides a GPS) for caching? How often do you cache? How many caches have you found? Do you hide caches? Does your vehicle display a geocaching sticker? Have you ever gone on vacation or left the state specifically to go caching? Where did you go? When traveling on business, do you cache when you have free time?

All I can tell you about them is they spammed me through the geocaching.com site mail function. They went to my profile and made it look as if I was being contacted by someone from geocaching.com The email didn't have anything complimentary to say about gc.com

I would have to say my favorite was Navdog's Tomb Raider because that was the cache where I introduced my best friend and her husband to caching. We spent a whole day caching together before she left for her tour of Iraq.

And....earlier something was said about putting caches in Walnut Park. If you do, don't make it a container that you are attached to. The Walnut Park caches keep disappearing. I lost 2 of them and gave up on putting out another.

I posted a note over in the EVC (Emerald Valley Cacher's) forums. That's their area. http://gotcache.com

Me too. I love how the new listings are looking. It's information at a glance. I really like the directional arrows. I find those the most helpful. Good work!

Yeah, I guess that's what I am saying. I don't like caches that seem to have been carelessly dropped rather than cleverly hidden. I don't like micros magneted to every third lightpole on a street and I don't like them hanging from a blackberry bush 50 feet into a thicket. Call me picky I like going to cool places, seeing great scenery, or even something not so great, but interesting. Maybe I'm just becoming a cache snob like Chubby Forest Monkey Anyway, it's nice to be able to not have to wade through the ones I don't want to find without having to find them simply to get them off my first page. Thanks for the ideas and I hope it will be a feature in the future!

Cool, I'll try these suggestions. It just gets so annoying sometimes to sift through three or four pages of results that I know I am not going to go find. It's not micros themselves, it's the sheer number of the ones that are so poorly planned it's almost like they were tossed out the car windows as people drove by.

I did a search of the forums to see if this topic has been covered, but didn't come up with anything....so....if it's already been covered, can someone point me in the right direction? I would like a way to remove the listings of caches from my closest caches page when I know there is no way that I am going to go out and find them. They are not in what I consider interesting places -- they seem to be caches for the sake of putting out a cache. For example, on my first page they are all micros. I know one of them is hidden under a porta-potty in a new housing development. Those are not caches that I am going to go out and find, but I almost have to just to get them off my closest caches page. Is there a way to get rid of these? Any plans for a checkbox that will allow caches that you know you are not going to go find to be hidden from view?

I have to agree with Lazyboy. Great wedding. They looked wonderfully happy.

Sent a message to Team Misguided. We'll take King of the Hill - GC2F11

We went up yesterday and snagged the cache and paid our respects to Renfew. I highly recommend this one! Get up there and get it!

My negative impression of them is based on participating in one of their events....if you want good team building and fun, have Fractal and Soup do your event. That will be an event to remember.

Four of mine have been stolen recently. They take the cache containers and all the items, but leave the logbook. They sign the logbook -" Took everything, left nothing."

Well, this could be a DNF, and technically I guess it was, but we actually managed to log it....we were looking for a cache on the side of a hill and found many beer cans. Eventually we did find the cache, nowhere near where it was supposed to be and totally empty. It had been muggled (probably by the beer drinking litterbugs). The container - 5 gallon white bucket - was the container listed in the cache description. We technically found it, but no logbook, so couldn't log it. We went on our way to do more caches, came down off the hill and drove into town. We started on our walk to the entrance to a wetlands area. We had to park down the street from the entrance and walk to get to it. As we were walking, my husband looked down.....there was the logbook from the muggled cache. So, we signed it and mailed it back to the owner. First time I have found a cache and the logbook miles away from each other.

Funny, I just posted on the EVC forum today about the same thing. It seems that people are just hiding micros everywhere because that's where it fell when the car door opened. I was wishing there was a way that you could filter your finds on your "closest to home" list that could exclude these. I am so tired of heading out to find a cache only to see when I get there that of the tens of acres that it could be hidden in, it's an altoids tin attached to the stop sign with magnets. Why not put a full-sized cache somewhere on that trail that starts near the stop sign. My interests have never been to rush out and get a FTF, but there are some people in my area who have taken that to such extremes, that one member of a family will go hide the cache and the other will get the FTF and compliment each other in the logs about the great hiding spot. Even worse, is a few of my caches were stolen lately. The logbooks have been left and signed "Took everything, left nothing." Not to be all scrooged or anything, but the only caches around here I can get excited about anymore are those hidden by Chubby Forest Monkey or Odder. Unfortunately, until the tendons and ligaments in my ankle heal, I have to stick with the predictable - "oh look another hollowed out white birch log stuck under a douglas fir, I wonder if that's where the cache could be." I have a couple in the works that will not be cache and dashes by any stretch of the imagination. Of course, they are in cooperation with Chubby Forest Monkey and Odder.

I just posted a note on cache: GC808D This cache needs to be archived. We went out and looked and it is definitely gone. Also, the cache owner has not been to geocaching.com since March 29, 2003.

Logscaler, We seem to only use our camper at Champoeg, so that would be available for you after the weekend .

And it will all be gone tomorrow.