MMaru

I am planning to get myself an actual bag one of these days, but right now, my "geo-bag" is my entire car. But what I try to keep on-hand when I'm going geocaching: camera, pens (never just one... learned that too quickly!), extra logs and baggies, extra batteries for my GPS, my phone in case of emergencies, and medical scissory things that act as tweezers but are a little more narrow and also lock. I recently picked up some cheap gardening gloves that are rubber on the palm side - these have been GREAT for those hides that are nestled in thorns! I also got two little "Cache Aid Kits" from an awesome geocacher who attended an event I hosted a couple weeks ago, and I've already busted them out a couple times. They have various sized baggies and logs, a toothpick, paper towels... and it's all bundled up inside a pill bottle, easy to grab and I can store it in my glove compartment.

I have to agree with the others. There are a number of different things to consider with this. 1. Add a note in your geocache descriptions asking that the finders take a moment to look around the site, and write a little something about what they enjoyed about their find, especially if you're asking for feedback to make future hides even better. Naturally this isn't going to guarantee no more TFTC logs, but it might make the finder give a little extra thought and a few more keystrokes to their log. 2. Privately and ***POLITELY*** (the key word here!) e-mail the person and let them know that you'd love to hear more about their experience with your hide, and if they wouldn't mind writing more in their log to help appeal to other future cachers. 3. Consider things from the cacher's perspective. Yes, you took the time, money, thought, and effort to place the cache. But they also took their time, money (gas money), thought (deciding to seek out your cache amongst their many choices), and effort to go find it. As a CO, of course you have every right to WANT more than just a four letter log which has about as much insult to any semi-experienced cacher as the four letter words our mothers wouldn't let us say, but it's not your RIGHT to demand that. Furthermore, if the cacher is new, or just never learned otherwise, maybe they genuinely didn't know that TFTC is not desirable. When I first started caching, I did it solo. I picked up everything I knew from the website and the Idiots Guide to Geocaching, and for all I knew, TFTC was exactly what you were supposed to put in your log. It wasn't till I got more experience and started hearing CO's venting a bit about the frustrations of TFTC-only logs that I learned to start writing more. If every CO who got one of my TFTC logs deleted it, I'd have gotten really frustrated really quickly at my numbers getting screwed with and probably would have given up the sport. 4. Consider your motivation. Frankly, if you're placing hides so that people will tell you how wonderful and brilliant you are, or how looking for your cache enriched their lives, maybe you should reconsider your reasons for becoming a CO. 5. Recognize that everyone plays the game a little differently. Me, I love to write big, long logs (sure that's not a surprise considering the length of this post...) because I like to share my experience. But then again, I usually only go after a couple finds at a time - most in one day for me was fifteen, and that was pretty extreme for me. But there are people who will go on power trails, or go after dozens or even a hundred or more finds in one day. They love the numbers aspect of the game. Not every cache will stand out to them, and if they're logging in the field or trying to hurry along to the next cache, maybe they don't feel that they need to take the time to write more than TFTC. Whatever the case, as long as they found the cache, signed the log, and logged online, they weren't doing anything wrong. That's my two cents on the deal!

I'm thirty and aside from geokids, I have been one of only maybe three people under fifty at almost every event I've gone to, both here in Missouri and back where I used to live in Pennsylvania. My first event was a meet and greet at a Tim Horton's, and I remember going and feeling so bad for this couple who looked to be in their eighties, surrounded by all these crazy geocachers, thinking that they probably came for a quiet cup of coffee and had no idea there was going to be a loud gathering here. I came to find out that they had over ten thousand finds, had cached in every state in America, and sure didn't mind telling a noob like me some of their best stories! But yea, it seems to me that that majority of geocachers I meet are part of the older generation.

I have a geocaching binder. I generally make a print-out of a series of caches that I'm planning to do, or keep details of multi, virtual, or earth caches. I find it a lot easier to take the paper route than to keep pulling it up on my etrex. I also use it to jot down notes beside the cache listing - did I do any maintenance? Was there something that really stood out to me about that cache? Do I want to make sure I give it a favorite point? Is it a cache that fulfills a specific logging goal (cemetery cache, for example) that I need to make sure gets added to a certain bookmark list? I use these notes when I go to log the cache later. I don't save them beyond that. I keep a scrapbook, but it's for my whole life, not just geocaching. Still, I do have pages of geocaching adventures there, too. I try to write detailed logs since COs seem to appreciate more than just a "TFTC" so that sort of serves as my geocaching journal!

Seems to me that this thread took a very sharp and sudden turn into rage-politics. That is undoubtedly on the list of things that turn people away from a hobby. There was an RPG I played for almost ten years that eventually lost all pleasure largely because of forums, and even in the short time I've been poking around these forums, I've already considered staying off of them because of the dramatics. Luckily that is the minority and there are a lot of very friendly and helpful posters here, too - not to mention the sheer entertainment! To go with what the OP appears to be about: I've been into the hobby for a year and a half. I have only had a proper handheld GPS for about three months and have already found more caches in those three months than I did in the whole of the previous year and change I was caching using an auto GPS. I have cached solo from the get-go; however, at events, on forums, etc. I've found the 'oldtimers' or 'veterans' or what have you to be some of the most eager to share hobbyists I've ever encountered. I'm pretty shy in person, so it meant a lot to me that, at the very first event I ever attended, when hitting fifty was my big dream goal, I was barraged with invites from more seasoned cachers who wanted to share their wisdom and experience, and show me some of their favorite caches. I go to events as much as possible now and even though I still tend to cache solo, I love to sit and listen to the stories, or mention a cache I've been struggling with and get tips. If it weren't for the old-timers, so many of the newer members might have just given up in frustration. Here on the forums, I've found myself asking a lot of questions, and have always received a pretty prompt and helpful answer from those who have been around longer. That sort of example makes me look forward to the day I no longer feel like a noob and I can help someone else get into the hobby.

I'm happy that GS is trying to update and improve the search, but I'm with the majority here - I prefer the old search engine. The new one looks a lot sharper but is more challenging to navigate and doesn't yield the results the way I would like. I'd like to be able to search more than just thirty miles out of my area. The overall readability leaves something to be desired, too. I know it seems minor, but with all the spacing used, and no highlighting of every other cache to help line them up, it's just a bit less legible than the old search. To be fair, though, I didn't take advantage of the option to try out the new search when they were offering the sneak peek to premium members, so I feel a little hypocritical complaining about it now

I would have loved to go to KC Comic Con! Alas, last month's Visioncon murdered our savings... When Groundspeak announced the two Pi Day souvenirs a while back, I started looking for events. The closest Pi Day event was about an hour away, which would not have been a problem except that Pi Day was the same day as the Springfield St. Patty's Day parade, which I was marching in, and I'd have been cutting it REALLY close with line-up if I'd gone to that event. So... I hosted my own event! We had a great turn-out, quite a few cachers sharing breakfast at Denny's. It was really awesome cause I got to meet one of the many wonderful people who are helping to run the upcoming MOGA, which I'll be attending for my first time. One cacher who couldn't stay but stopped to sign the logbook that my fiancé made for me gave me two 'cache aid kits' full of goodies to help repair and clean up caches. I also introduced a trackable that I made specifically for Pi Day. I had spent the past couple of days stopping into various stores trying to find a keychain or a little toy or something in the shape of a pie, but came up short. So, while I was baking some cookies for my guy, I threw together a little pie made out of salt dough, sealed it in Mod Podge, and brought it along to the event. I was hoping to release it later, but it ended up being a really busy day! After the event, I ran to Walmart to pick up my prescription and grabbed half a dozen mini pies. Gave a couple to a friend who was helping me out big time with my parade costume, and brought the rest home. After the parade, we were invited out to dinner. I was keeping an eye on the window at the restaurant, wondering if we'd have daylight enough to grab that mystery cache. We were eating at Red Robin, and it was my first time there. I ordered a slice of the chocolate pie because of the holiday and even with three of us pecking away at it, needed a take-home box. It was massive! My muggle-ish guy came along with me after dinner to the first stage of a cache that, as it ends up, we didn't get the coordinates correct for the first time! So we revised and made the find right after it got dark! We went home to rest for a little under an hour before we hit the road again for another social gathering - it was a busy day!

Does the difficulty generally refer to how challenging the puzzle will be to solve or how difficult the cache will be to find once you get the coords?

What about setting this up as a puzzle cache where cachers have to find the coords by researching inside the museum, and then having the actual cache on the grounds outside the museum?

I'm on Facebook too much - I keep wanting to 'like' these posts! Love hearing about these tricky tools!

Inspired by the thread about standard height, and Roman!'s suggestion of wearing some very fashionable ankle-breakers to reach those caches hidden well above our heads... What is the weirdest tool you've ever used to obtain a cache? I personally was going for a cache recently that was placed on the far side of a tree that had no low branches to climb onto, and was right up against a barbed-wire fence that you had to lean over to reach the cache. It was a 1.5/1.5 so I was not expecting to struggle with it much at all, but it was hanging from a branch that was well out of my reach. I have not yet added a long grabby tool to my collection, and trying to knock it loose with a pen wasn't giving me enough height. I dug through my purse to see what else I could possibly use... and ended up using an action figure of Hajime Saito from the anime Rurouni Kenshin, who, amusingly enough, is supposed to be one of the taller characters on the show. Raising his arm gave me just the right last bit of height I needed to retrieve the cache and to replace it back on the branch I nabbed it from. I used to keep Saito in my purse as a placeholder for pictures, but it's nice to know he doubles as a reaching tool!

I'm glad the cacher and his family are safe.

For me, I wouldn't feel right logging a cache that I did not personally find and sign. But I would appreciate a little tip of the hat from the finder in their log, something simple like, "Found with the help of MMaru." I would also hope that, if I ever did a cache like this, they would return the favor. On the other hand, this is a long-distance version of team finds, where a group goes out together, they all hunt but only one person finds and signs the cache log - not every individual in those instances has been the one to actually 'find' the cache, but it's commonly accepted that they all get the credit and the smiley for the find. I don't group cache but I don't see anything wrong with it. Ultimately, it's no skin off my nose whether someone else logs a find that they helped with, but didn't make the find themselves.

Excellent! Thank you!

Just a quick question - and I'll be honest, this is for my own selfish purposes, cause MMaru wants her souvenir! - do the people who set up events get credit for attending? Specifically, I was going to host a Pi Day event since the nearest one to me is over an hour away and I have some clashing commitments for the time period that day. If I host the event, and obviously I will be there, will I still get the souvenir for it? Or do they not get credited to COs?

The Ice Walk sounds awesome! Work computer won't let me view the video, sadly - will have to try it when I get home! I'm not so dedicated that I will cache in this weather. Right now, it isn't even too terrible - our snow is half melted, though every other night it seems to want to turn into ice, but I like being dry and warm. I'll wait till it's not so slushy and muddy before I get back into my geocaching spirit!

My best day so far has been fifteen caches in a day, so I can't say for sure from personal experience. However, there are a couple possibilities here. Chances are, the person is doing a power trail. Here in my area, there is a walking/biking trail that runs several miles and is VERY heavily saturated - my list where I first started saving caches along the trail (which, because this is a favorite exercise trail for a lot of cachers, has changed, adding some and archiving a few, even in the month or two since I started my bookmark list) has nearly two hundred caches on it. I've gone for a couple of those caches, and because of the way the trail is set up, most are fairly easy, geared towards being family-friendly since the trail is so great for family outings. It would not be difficult to take the bike along the trail and tackle a couple hundred finds. Another possibility is that they are caching with a group, making the search go that much more quickly. Then everyone in the group logs the find, regardless of which specific member actually spotted the cache first. Incidentally, to answer your initial question, I do not think that a GPSr could keep up with our pal Barry enough to make his speed a factor in geocaching Possibly if Cisco were helping from the other end... hm...

I use an etrex 20, which allows for considerably more characters per a title, but also cuts off a lot of these sorts of cache titles. I usually keep a paper log while I'm out in the field so that I can take notes as I go, and if I'm going after a series, the numbers at the end are often cut off, making it difficult to keep track. I usually have to backtrack into the description so I can get the GC code to go by instead. To get to the general cache site, I manually punch things into my auto GPS, and usually just make an acronym. It might be easier if COs labeled the differences in their caches in the beginning rather than the end - but then again, would that make it more difficult to know which caches were part of a particular series? For example: The Witching Hour - MMaru's Reading Challenge Book Series Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - MMaru's Reading Challenge Book Series Yukarism vol 1 - MMaru's Reading Challenge Book Series Skip Beat! - MMaru's Reading Challenge Book Series N0S4A2 - MMaru's Reading Challenge Book Series If all you're seeing are the first parts of these titles - The Witching Hour, Harry Potter, Yukarism, etc - would you necessarily know that they were all part of a specific series? I think that whether the differentiating factor is at the beginning or the end, it will present a challenge.

I actually started getting into geocaching to make a change from some of my other hobbies. I like to read, craft, and game - all activities that are stationary and mostly indoor activities. Geocaching gets me out of the house, moving around, getting some sunshine and exercise that I wouldn't get otherwise. The only other hobby of mine that it really seemed to fit right in with is exploring cemeteries. Like others have mentioned, I tend to geocache around travelling - I've already informed my future husband that we will be doing at least one quick cache run on our honeymoon so I can get Florida on my map I usually look for caches to do along the way whenever I'm taking any sort of trip. Added bonus for the trip and it breaks up the monotony of a long drive

The reason you weren't getting email replays is this thread was from 2013 -- I was simply typing on it to see if the original host of this mission was attempting again this past season - which he/she wasn't replying and I think has step out of geocaching for a while by the last view of their profile It was a personal message sent through the regular geocaching website. The problem seems to have been resolved, though - started getting replies from people again. I'd love to be part of this event next year - maybe we could even do a summer vacation edition!

I personally do not think a CO has the right to try and correct how people log. I am not a CO myself, so I haven't experienced the frustrations of crappy logs firsthand, but just from looking at caches, I like to read the logs and am more likely to go after ones that have interesting tidbits. The CO may have had every justification for feeling like they deserved more than a TFTC, but I don't think COs have the right to demand that and try to force other people to play the way the CO thinks they should play. In particular, in this situation, if a finder has written a nice log on nineteen out of the twenty finds, I'm not sure how the CO felt justified in demanding a better log of the one single cache that only had TFTC. That being said, when I first started geocaching, I just kinda went for it on my own with no more experienced cacher guiding me along. I did not know for a long time that TFTC was as unappreciated as it is, and would have appreciated a CO politely pointing it out to me. I learned after a while, but even now, I try to write a bit more, but sometimes there are those P&G hides where I'm straining to think of what I could possibly say about it. I think this whole situation is just another example of how no matter what, you're pretty much darned if you do and darned if you don't.

This looks awesome! Alas, I will not be able to attend - 400+ miles is a little farther than I can travel for fun these days. I do want to make it out to Mingo someday, though!

Are you a traditional cache person? Multi, gadget, earth, virtual, mystery, Wherigo, event? What size/difficulty/terrain? swag, no swag, trackables, no trackables? urban, rural? just seeing what the majority is into, just out of my own curiosity. I like earth/virtual caches - always take you to something interesting! But what I tend to go after most are traditional caches, especially ones that are hidden in or around cemeteries. I'm not really a fan of urban caches. I like the ones that take me out to someplace quiet. I personally don't care for puzzle caches or multis... I like things to be pretty straightforward. I like regular sized containers. Swag isn't important (though I like seeing what people leave, especially people who make their own trademark item to leave in caches! I love travel bugs! I found my first one without knowing what it was till I followed the instructions and logged it. Now, I'm hooked! I don't specifically seek them out, but if I come across one, I will almost always grab it and move it along.

For a typical caching day, one where I know I have a couple hours of sunlight overlapping with my free time, I usually try to go about 20-30 miles away, then pick up more that I am passing on my way home. I've gone much farther only because I drive back and forth between PA and Missouri, so I'll usually go for a few caches each trip just to break up the monotony of the drive.

I feel you - last year, I was still living in Erie, PA, where we had the #1 spot for the most snow in the nation. I moved down to Missouri this past summer and am watching, wide-eyed, as I am actually filling in my calendar with finds in January and February, both of which were completely blank last year. I went to a meet and greet back in Erie where some of the hardcore cachers were talking about shoveling paths in the snow so they could look for caches - I'm not sure I'll ever be THAT dedicated!